By Garth Mullins - rabble.ca

The effusive Olympic spirit which...seized the nation has reached its crescendo and is now dissipating. The poor, Dickensian, bedraggled, speculated, gentrified, evicted, regenerated, invaded, real-estate-inflated, occupied East End is abandoned to fitfully sleep off this hangover and stagger forward into the promised post-Games legacy...But the Games have a rather unfulfilling aftertaste. You never get what was promised and you won't ever get back what was lost...But you do get condos.

By Dave Zirin - August 14, 2012

Now that the smoke has cleared, the medals handed out, and Paul McCartney safely returned to storage, the other shoe can officially begin its descent. The Olympic party is over and a hangover of Big Ben proportions awaits. If the Olympic planners had been honest, they would have used the closing ceremonies to introduce the new sixth Spice Girl, “Austerity Spice”.

By Dave Zirin - August 9, 2012

China is the chief economic rival in the world to the United States. Just like during the Cold War, the Olympics have become a proxy war where “medal counts” connote more than bragging rights but are a comment on the health of a nation. China is rivaling the United States in medal counts so their dominance has to be explained in as critical, ugly, and even as racist a way as possible. The message is that they have medals because they just don’t love their kids.

By John Pilger - August 09, 2012

Unlike those original Australians forced to defend their basic human rights and apologize for their distinctiveness, [non-Aboriginal Australian Olympic athletes] have enjoyed every advantage and privilege. Their “indiscretions” and victimhood are accompanied by a sense of entitlement that has shredded the national myth of “fair go”, not to mention an Olympic prowess of which we all were once proud.

By JULES BOYKOFF - Counterpunch

This week marks the one-year anniversary of the London riots. In the wake of last summer’s destruction and the flurry of finger-pointing about who was to blame, London’s Metropolitan Police launched what they called “Total Policing.” A peculiar brew of creepy branding and wishful thinking, “Total Policing” has always been freighted with fuzziness — no one’s quite sure what it really means.

By LINN WASHINGTON Jr. - Counterpunch

One year after riots rocked 66 areas across England for five days in some of the worst disturbances in that nation’s history, the issue that initially ignited those disturbances – police abuse – remains an unresolved problem...Those August 2011 riots...erupted on August 6th after police attacked a group peacefully protesting outside a London police station against police fatally shooting unarmed Mark Duggan...“The past 12-months have been terrible. We still have no answers about why my son died...”

By Lauren Kelley - August 6, 2012

The IOC currently has some 300 people on staff whose only job is to go around the UK making sure no one violates its branding policies...Here are some of the IOC’s more ridiculous demands.

By Dave Zirin - August 6, 2012

In a 2012 games so ruthlessly defined by an out of control security and surveillance culture outside the arena, we should take the inspiration of Oscar Pistorious to heart. The world does not have to be what it currently is and the future is not written. We would all do well to take the lead of Oscar Pistorius and welcome into our lives “the dignity of risk.”

By Dave Zirin - August 05, 2012

Today, it’s still the third rail of Australian politics to claim pride and solidarity with the nation’s indigenous people. Damien Hooper is finding this out the hard way. Hooper is an Olympic boxer making major waves both in and out of the ring. The light heavyweight is...a threat to win gold...He’s also a threat to be sent home by the Australian Olympic Committee. Before fighting...the 20-year-old’s ring attire included a black T-shirt emblazoned with the Aboriginal Flag. Hooper...knew that he was breaking the Olympics “no politics” rule, which states that you can represent only your country or approved corporate sponsors.

SchNEWS - 2nd August 2012 | Issue 822

London's Olympic ceremony didn't stand a chance of competing against Beijing in scale or spectacle, but Team [Great Britain] is sure as hell giving the Chinese a run for their money when it comes to state repression.

By Chris Marsden - 4 August 2012

London appears like a city under occupation. The global elite have descended on London to party and do business deals, and the city has been handed over to them as a virtual fiefdom. It is London’s residents — those who will foot the bill for the games even as their lives are blighted by hardship, poverty and unemployment — rather than Islamic fundamentalists whom the oligarchy considers to be a threat...The government and the state forces have determined that the lower orders will be kept away from the proceedings and there will be no political protest or incident involving a VIP to sully the capital’s reputation as a financial and commercial centre.

By LINN WASHINGTON Jr. - Counterpunch

One year after riots rocked 66 areas across England for five days in some of the worst disturbances in that nation’s history, the issue that initially ignited those disturbances – police abuse – remains an unresolved problem...Those August 2011 riots...erupted on August 6th after police attacked a group peacefully protesting outside a London police station against police fatally shooting unarmed Mark Duggan...“The past 12-months have been terrible. We still have no answers about why my son died...”

By Garth Mullins - July 31, 2012

Once again, radio waves are jammed full of Olympics hype...But the 2012 Games come with theme music from the canon of punk rock...As a back-in-the day punk and critic of the 2010 Vancouver Olympics, I was nauseated to hear the opening chords of the Clash's classic punk anthem 'London Calling' accompany these breathless London updates

By Dave Zirin - July 30, 2012

It’s understandable why the ceremonies upset supporters of neo-liberalism and the growing movement of Britain’s white nationalists. It’s even more understandable why many left-of-center people in the United States took to twitter in praise of what was on display. After all, any acknowledgment in mass culture that there is such a thing as a working class or a history of protest would be radical in this country.

By David Renton - Znet

Sports begin in the most basic of human responses – the pleasure of running, jumping, testing your own reflexes and those of the people around you. But the sports business is escaping from these moorings. All over the sporting world, we see the same phenomena: declining access to public land or to other free facilities to enable people to participate in sports directly, declining opportunities even to watch sports live...rising ticket prices...and a tendency for sport not merely to mirror the worst excesses of private capital but to be used to give allure to some of the most controversial of businesses.