Yahoo! News reported that Iran is upset, as usual, over a the London 2012 Olympics logo. According the the article, Iran claims that the logo (above) spells out the Biblical word for Israel, namely, Zion. Truth is I kind of see it. But do I think that the 2012 Olympic committee in London did it intentionally? No. Why would they? Just to piss-off Iran? That makes sense, everyone loves annoying lunatics with potential nuclear threat.
Furthermore, not only is Iran upset, but they are threatening to pull out of the Olympics! In their Olympic history, 14 summer and 9 winter, Iran has brought home 48 medals. That is not a lot. Other than political reasons, like Israel plays Iran in soccer, no one cares to watch Iranian sports. Iran, I have some advice, the nuclear bomb threat has been a lot scarier than removing yourselves from the Olympics. Keep it up!
http://sports.yahoo.com/olympics/blog/fourth_place_medal/post/Iran-threatens-London-boycott-over-racist-Olym?urn=oly-327678
I agree, it's a stretch that the logo is referring to Zion. First of all, I'm pretty sure that that logo's have to be approved by the IOC, a committee that tries to stay pretty neutral and may not have approved the logo if there was a political theme.
ReplyDeleteIn addition, though England is technically an ally of Israel, I don't think that they would go that far to make their Olympic logo a type of subliminal promotion of Israel.
I do think that the logo is strange though. The Olympics stand on the hope of promoting world unity for the three weeks that the competitions take place. Most logo's either show unity or represent the host country and I don't really see how this logo does either... but I guess that's for London to decide.
And for an added note- this would not be the first time a country threatened to pull out of the games. It's a pretty frequent occurrence and you're right, Iran is not one of the main competing countries and I'm not sure how much weight the threat holds. It will be interesting to see how this plays out though.
I think that Iran is taking it too far, just as they do most of the time. I'm not surprised to hear that they will pull out of the olympics if they don't change the logo. It would be a shame though if they actually listened to them. I agree with Alex that it was probably just a coincidence that their logo happened to look like it says "zion." Truth is, if no one would have told me i wouldn't have realized it myself!
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