Friday 6 April 2012

OLYMPIC CLAMPDOWN



So, the police are to take over three areas in Vauxhall / Nine Elms, which is rapidly developing into a security / spooks closed zone centred on the ridiculous, ugly and pompous piece of oppressive gigantism, the MI6 building, Spook Castle, for mustering, storing their vehicles and ‘logistical’ activities relating to the Olympic occupation of London. These are in and underneath the Flower Market building and next to the Battersea Power Station. No doubt you will have seen the little watch towers in Piccadilly Circus. These are just the latest additions to the massed ranks of the Army, Police and private security services which are to be deployed all over London like an occupying force with battleships in the Thames and missiles on standby. Thunderbirds are go !

The DLR, which will be crucial in shuttling spectators around the area, is already run by Serco, a security firm better known for dealing with prisoner transport. TfL now has a fleet of vehicles that can use sirens like police cars. They are unmarked. This means a bag stuck in a door on the tube will cause yet another screaming speeding vehicle rushing across London adding to the sense of tension and imminent threat. Its going to be like a Police state. Its bingo time for G4S and all the other private security firms that are contracted to dictate and direct who and how we, the public, will be able to interact, or not, with this all excluding piece of social engineering. I greatly fear that anyone without a laminated pass of some sort will be immediately suspect and subject to checks and interference almost anywhere in London for the duration. And, given that at least one of these additional police facilities is to be in place until the end of September it is not just going to apply for the length of games themselves. I certainly will not be going for a casual stroll around the Stratford or Bow Back Rivers area for these coming months, despite Stratford being where I was born, as a matter of fact.

No doubt there will be additional surveillance using even more cameras than already monitor almost every square inch of the capital. I have noticed how empty buildings now have these CCTV cameras erected at their perimeter as soon as they are vacated, even if fenced off and sealed. Emptiness monitored. When it comes to security money suddenly seems no object. As Iain Sinclair noted ‘surveillance abuses the past while fragmenting the present. The subject is split, divided from itself.’ I don’t know if there are any drones on standby, but would not be at all surprised. It is a self fulfilling prophesy and the further it goes the more invasive and objectionable it becomes.

A whole list of prohibitions were brought in early this year regarding what you cannot now do in Trafalgar Square. These included taking photos or videos and were imposed by the GLA Mayor without any consultation and clearly in response to the Occupy movement. No doubt they will remain in place throughout the Olympics and who knows for how long subsequently.  

Athletics participants are just about the most boring sports people on earth, and sports people are rarely of great interest once they have done their bit on the field or wherever it is they perform. Take Steve Redgrave for an example. Very good at rowing, he never did anything else but row for his entire adult life, seems like a decent bloke, but, not surprisingly, rarely has anything of interest to say. In particular runners seem to be just about the least interesting of the lot. The very nature of running in athletics is pretty dull and simply about finishing first. That’s it. Like a horse race but without the character or unpredictability. Those that take part are necessarily single minded and self interested. What it has to do with national self esteem I am at a loss to understand. If they win it’s a quick wrap in a flag for the cameras, other than that it is one against one, like all such sports, tennis, golf etc. They are like weird perversions of communal activity, drawing a crowd but without true communality and creating the spectator and star scenario so beloved of the powers that be and the all important advertisers that are parasitic upon the massed eyeballs.

In some ways sports teams actually entrench and exaggerate differences between social groups by location or association. The hyperbole, nationalism and the paramount and obvious commercial interests at work in the Olympics make a particularly unsavoury and hollow feast of individual vanity, the glorification of the physical and a worship of success in its crudest manifestation : he / she can throw / jump / run / swim faster than a bunch of others. If that is what you want to do, fair enough, but do not pretend that it has some implicit significant broader social value, what happened after the first revival in 1936 ? Germany went to war and invaded its immediate neighbour Poland starting a vicious and horrific period of conflict in Europe. 

The absurd spectacle of beach volleyball on Horseguards Parade which will require the delivery of vast quantities of sand and the closure of the Mall for weeks was presumably dreamt up by some marketing guru as a publicity wheeze. That the space is surrounded by war memorials and the Admiralty just adds to the sense of it being a stupid prank, or a schoolboy fantasy.

Archery at Lords, various music stars such as Madonna in Hyde Park, everything costing big money to attend. Are there any free events at all ? It does not appear so. The fact that volunteers carrying the torch will have to buy it is symptomatic of the whole business. This was an idea dreamt up by the Nazis in 1936, not an ancient tradition, as was the whole revival in its current form along with the media coverage as a propaganda exercise for the host nation.

Just heard an interview with the first person to cross the line at the Olympic Stadium. Asked what he would do with his medal he said ‘I will probably hang it on the wardrobe or something.’ Fascinating stuff. You read it here first.

Link : 1936 revival of the Olympic Games in nazi Germany
http://www.ushmm.org/museum/exhibit/online/olympics/detail.php?content=august_1936&lang=en



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