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<a href="http://www.zcommunications.org/zspace/davezirin">Dave Zirin</a>
» "Drones, Missiles, and Gunships, Oh My!" Welcome to the 2012
London Olympics <br><br>
<a href="http://www.zcommunications.org/drones-missiles-and-gunships-oh-my-welcome-to-the-2012-london-olympics-by-dave-zirin.pdf">
PDF Version</a><br><br>
</font><font size=4> </font><h1><b>"Drones, Missiles, and
Gunships, Oh My!" Welcome to the 2012 London
Olympics</b></h1><font size=3>By
<a href="http://www.zcommunications.org/zspace/davezirin">Dave
Zirin</a><br><br>
<a href="http://www.edgeofsports.com/2012-05-14-729/index.html" eudora="autourl">
http://www.edgeofsports.com/2012-05-14-729/index.html<br><br>
<br><br>
</a>As many as 48,000 security forces. 13,500 troops. Surface to air
missiles stationed on top of residential apartment buildings. A sonic
weapon that disperses crowds by creating "head splitting pain."
Unmanned drones peering down from the skies. A safe-zone, cordoned off by
an 11 mile, electrified fence, ringed with trained agents and 55 teams of
attack dogs. <br><br>
One would be forgiven for thinking that these were the counter-insurgency
tactics used by U.S. army bases in Iraq and Afghanistan, or perhaps the
military methods taught to third world despots at the School of the
Americas in Ft. Benning Georgia. But instead of being used in a war zone
or the theater of occupation, they in fact make up the very visible
security apparatus in London for the 2012 Summer Olympics.<br><br>
London, which has the most street cameras per capita of any city on
earth, has for the last seven years since the terror attacks of 7/7/05,
been a city whose political leaders would spare no expense to monitor its
own citizens. But the Olympic operation goes above and beyond anything
we’ve ever seen when a Western democracy hosts the games. Not even China
in 2008 used drone planes or ringed the proceedings with a massive,
high-voltage fence. But here is London, preparing a counter insurgency,
and parking an aircraft carrier right in the Thames. Here is London
adding “scanners, biometric ID cards, number-plate and facial-recognition
CCTV systems, disease tracking systems, new police control centres and
checkpoints.”<br><br>
Stephen Graham at the Guardian refers to the entire state of affairs as
“Lockdown London” as well as “the UK's biggest mobilisation of military
and security forces since the second world war.” He is not exaggerating
in the slightest. The number of troops will exceed the forces the UK has
had in Afghanistan.<br><br>
It’s not just the costs or the incredible invasion into people’s privacy.
It’s the powers being given to police under the 2006 “London Olympic
Games Act” which empowers not only the army and police, but also private
security forces to deal with “security issues” using physical force.
These “security issues” have been broadly defined to include everything
from “terrorism” to peaceful protesters, to labor unions, to people
selling boot-leg Olympic products on the streets, to taking down any
corporate presence that doesn’t have the Olympic seal of approval. To
help them with the last part, there will be “brand protection teams” set
loose around the city. These “teams” will also operate inside Olympic
venues to make sure no one “wears clothes or accessories with commercial
messages other than the manufacturers’ who are official
sponsors.<br><br>
The security operation also means the kind of street harassment of
working class youth that will sound familiar here in the United States.
As the Guardian reported, “Officers have powers to move on anyone
considered to be engaged in antisocial behaviour, whether they are
hanging around the train station, begging, soliciting, loitering in
hoodies or deemed in any way to be causing a nuisance.”<br><br>
There is no reason that the Olympics have to be this way. There is no
reason that an international celebration of sports – particularly sports
more diverse than our typical high-carb diet of football, baseball,
basketball, and more football – can’t take place without drones and
aircraft carriers. There is no reason athletes from across the globe
can’t join together and showcase their physical potential.<br><br>
But the Olympics aren’t about sport any more than the Iraq War was about
democracy. The Olympics are not about athletes. And they’re definitely
not about bringing together “the community of Nations.” They are a
neoliberal Trojan Horse aimed at bringing in business and rolling back
the most basic civil liberties.<br><br>
Not to shock anyone, but there are no signs that any of the security
apparatus will be dismantled once the Olympics are over. Local police
forces have just been given an inordinate number of new toys and the
boxes have been opened, the receipts tossed away.<br><br>
In many ways, this is what the games have always been. From Hitler’s
Berlin Olympics in 1936, to the slaughter of students in 1968 in Mexico
City, to the Gang Sweeps in Los Angeles in 1984, to Beijing's mass
displacement of citizens in 2008, the “crackdown” has always been a part
of the Olympic games. But in the post 9/11 world, the stakes are even
higher to expose this for what it is. The Olympics have become the
spoonful of sugar to help the medicine go down, and the medicine is that
our elected leaders have seen the enemy, and it is all of us. <br><br>
<br><br>
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