Forum Post: 2012 Olympics: Police-state measures for London as super-wealthy party

2012 Olympics: Police-state measures for London as super-wealthy party

By Paul Stuart 
7 December 2011

When London’s Conservative mayor Boris Johnson travelled to Beijing in 2008 to receive the Olympic flame from the Chinese state, the promise was that the 2012 games in Britain would be a “people’s games”. This would involve the maximum participation of the local population of East London where the main Olympic site is based. However, with four years of austerity and the districts surrounding the Olympic site sinking into desperate hardship, and the eruption of riots this summer, the games are being approached based on the calculation that Britain is a country on the edge of mass social conflict. Preparations have assumed the character of an orgy of luxury and ostentatious displays of wealth by the financial elite, coupled with police-state measures directed against working class districts. The main Olympic site in Stratford East London is surrounded by 17 kilometres of electrified fencing, with up to 900 cameras 50 metres apart and patrols by attack and search dog teams. New software has integrated the entire CCTV network, enabling an individual to be followed across the whole of London. “Threat Assessment and Behavioural Analysis Software” is under development. The government is planning “exclusion zones” around key Olympic sites. The Times reported that Section 44 of the Terrorism Act, which allows the police to stop and search without any cause or even suspicion, will be applied throughout Britain. This is combined with the Olympic Act, which gives the police the right to force their way into private property and remove protesters and banners. Limits on the powers of police have been lifted, and this has been extended to security staff contracted to the Olympic authorities. Yesterday, it was confirmed that spending on security has almost doubled from £213 million, and is now approaching £553 million. This was only the latest twist in the extraordinary events surrounding the Olympic preparations, which include the proposed deployment of ground-to-air missiles for the first time on the British mainland….

…On top of this, each country will bring its own massed ranks of intelligence agents and security personnel. Sponsors at the games such as Coca Cola will also provide their own private security firms to protect their corporate guests. They will help police the suspension of the democratic right to protest and to enforce the commercial and advertising rights of major corporations such as McDonald’s.

Corporate limousines will have exclusive use of designated roads, each fitted with technology to change traffic lights to green on approach and red after departing. Estimates say a hundred miles of public roads will be taken over for private use. The London Underground will be patrolled by police wielding machine-guns. State repression is designed to protect the billionaires, the political and financial elite and their hangers-on, who have snapped up the best seats and accommodation, as they drive past areas that have been devastated by their economic policies. Evening Standard columnist Steve Jenkins was forced to declare that “the run-up to the Games suggest that the event is fast parting company with fun. For London Olympics, read war zone.… At this rate, the Stratford Olympics site will resemble Camp Bastion in Helmand. It is in danger of hosting a festival of world security, with a handful of athletes tagging behind.”

Philip Stephens of the Financial Times wrote, “Welcome to London 2012: the apparatchiks’ games.” He described the Olympics as an “exercise in authoritarian elitism,” adding, “More than one million ordinary families have failed to secure a single ticket even to the opening stages of the most obscure Olympic sports. Civil liberties are to be suspended for the duration of the games.… Advertising sponsors have been promised what is chillingly called a ‘clean city’, handing them ownership of everything within camera distance of the games.… “The crackdown extends to what the Olympic Stasi call ‘advertising on the human body’. Freedom of expression can go hang.”

Canary Wharf and the Royal Docks are being prepared for dozens of billionaires’ super yachts to dock, with charges ranging from £2,000 to £11,000 a day. Part of the services provided will be speedboats to take the elite directly to the Olympic park along the River Thames. Mark Upton, director of the yacht advisory company MGMT, explained, “We have Michelin-starred chefs who can come and cook for you, plus personal shoppers, helicopters, tailors and jewellers on stand-by.”...

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2011/dec2011/olym-d07.shtml