Olympics 2012 security: welcome to lockdown London
London 2012 will see the UK's biggest mobilisation of military and security forces since the second world war and the effects will linger long after the athletes have left
As a metaphor for the London Olympics, it could hardly be more stark. The much-derided "Wenlock" Olympic mascot is now available in London Olympic stores dressed as a Metropolitan police officer. For £10.25 you, too, can own the ultimate symbol of the Games: a member of by far the biggest and most expensive security operation in recent British history packaged as tourist commodity. Eerily, his single panoptic-style eye, peering out from beneath the police helmet, is reminiscent of the all-seeing eye of God so commonly depicted at the top of Enlightenment paintings. In these, God's eye maintained a custodial and omniscient surveillance on His unruly subjects far below on terra firma.
The imminent Olympics will take place in a city still recovering from riots that the Guardian-LSE Reading the Riots project showed were partly fuelled by resentment at their lavish cost. Last week, the UK spending watchdog warned that the overall costs of the Games were set to be at least £11bn – £2 bn over even recently inflated budgets. When major infrastructure projects such as Crossrail, speeded up for the Games, are factored in, the figure may be as high as £24bn, according to Sky News. The estimated cost put forward only seven years ago when the Games were won was £2.37 bn.
With the required numbers of security staff more than doubling in the last year, estimates of the Games' immediate security costs have doubled from £282m to £553m. Even these figures are likely to end up as dramatic underestimates: the final security budget of the 2004 Athens Olympics were around £1bn.
All this in a city convulsed by massive welfare, housing benefit and legal aid cuts, spiralling unemployment and rising social protests. It is darkly ironic, indeed, that large swaths of London and the UK are being thrown into ever deeper insecurity while being asked to pay for a massive security operation, of unprecedented scale, largely to protect wealthy and powerful people and corporations.
Critics of the Olympics have not been slow to point out the dark ironies surrounding the police Wenlock figure. "Water cannon and steel cordon sold separately," mocks Dan Hancox on the influential Games Monitor website. "Baton rounds may be unsuitable for small children."
In addition to the concentration of sporting talent and global media, the London Olympics will host the biggest mobilisation of military and security forces seen in the UK since the second world war. More troops – around 13,500 – will be deployed than are currently at war in Afghanistan. The growing security force is being estimated at anything between 24,000 and 49,000 in total. Such is the secrecy that no one seems to know for sure.
During the Games an aircraft carrier will dock on the Thames. Surface-to-air missile systems will scan the skies. Unmanned drones, thankfully without lethal missiles, will loiter above the gleaming stadiums and opening and closing ceremonies. RAF Typhoon Eurofighters will fly from RAF Northolt. A thousand armed US diplomatic and FBI agents and 55 dog teams will patrol an Olympic zone partitioned off from the wider city by an 11-mile, £80m, 5,000-volt electric fence.
Beyond these security spectaculars, more stealthy changes are underway. New, punitive and potentially invasive laws such as the London Olympic Games Act 2006 are in force. These legitimise the use of force, potentially by private security companies, to proscribe Occupy-style protests. They also allow Olympic security personnel to deal forcibly with the display of any commercial material that is deemed to challenge the complete management of London as a "clean city" to be branded for the global TV audience wholly by prime corporate sponsors (including McDonald's, Visa and Dow Chemical).
London is also being wired up with a new range of scanners, biometric ID cards, number-plate and facial-recognition CCTV systems, disease tracking systems, new police control centres and checkpoints. These will intensify the sense of lockdown in a city which is already a byword across the world for remarkably intensive surveillance.
article continues at
http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2012/mar/12/london-olympics-security-lockdown-london
article extract and sourced, from Guardian website
http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2012/mar/12/london-olympics-security-lockdown-london
Comments
Hopefully there will be no repeats of Munich 1972 olympics. Looks like the 2012 Olympics will be happening. Will this be the last and final olympics before the poles shift? I am wondering.
I have no fear, in fact I think all this about fear is a bit overblown. trouble is there has to be a sufficient head of steam, the problem is , people are easily lead, I was one at one time, by God how one changes. . I think when it goes down to the wire we may be surprised just how many refuse it be cowed by these idiots. too many are waking up, I am not pessimistic, still it my go down hill for a while.
Nick even though things look bad right now, I really believe they will be changing very soon. The fear they induce into us is a little unbearable at times. It does seem like an unsurmountable task to stop the evil that just keeps on and coming.
its the sae peole behind the scenes, quite possibly not f this planet, though if that is the case and Tolec is right, this part may be coming to an end. I still say there are severe or even ultra severe earhchanges in the offing, that is the only explanation I can think of for all this nuttiness. and it s nutty, half the idiots who organize all this madness must be terminal psychopaths, or worse. They must have such a hatred and contempt for humanity we cannot imagine it.
whilst we perish they survive ,that is the motto, but we will wait and see. Whilst i get easily riled, I am still a glorious optimist, but until this evil order of things is crushed once and for all, times will be very interesting indeed.
Up the revolution....forward with the militias.......LOL
Your country is almost a mirrow image of ours, just at slightly diffirent stages of tyranny. I really doubt if many countries even still like either one. We are growing poppies in afganistan together, what good friends we are.
Have you read all the article? they are demonising the Muslim inhabitants of walthamstow is it, one of the London boroughs. a few more drone attacks by the (ig)noble RAF and SAS and they will have all the terrorists they can handle in London.
It looks to me like a two headed hydra, i just sent an email to the list, Washington one is one of the heads, London the other. A sort of security pincer movement. See what works on one capital, see what works o the other, and slowly bring it all together. I would like to see what the role of the united nations in all thus and suspect it is lurking like some fetid rubbish heap, in the background. I Hope the security agencies are reading this one!!!!!! Well done GCHQ, three cheers for the boys and girls at MI 5 and MI 6.
Going of my trolley here, Byron, had a damned good day actually, the old bull dog is waking up writing this.
so, watch out for the aftermath of the games ans see how much of all this remains in force, should be very interesting indeed, aren't you glad you live out in the sticks? I am. away from it all.
You can bet there is more if this was leaked. You have been saying all along it was getting out of hand and here is the proof. The ultimate terrorist insanity hype.