Kevin Blowe on the demise of the Food Standards Agency and the announcement that

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 protesters 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.