According to the International Olympic Committee, “The goal of Olympism is to place sport at the service of the harmonious development of humankind, with a view to promoting a peaceful society concerned with the preservation of human dignity.”
This high-sounding boilerplate has long been at odds with the actual function of the Olympic Games, which have increasingly become a quadrennial celebration of nationalism, celebrity and corporate money-making. And never more so than the 2012 Olympics in London, which seem to have been deliberately staged by the host government to trample on notions of peace, human dignity and democratic rights.
The British government announced Thursday that it would mobilize an additional 3,500 troops for security duty at the Olympics, bringing the total number of soldiers, airmen and military police deployed for the event to a staggering 17,000, far more than are currently deployed in the imperialist war in Afghanistan.
The combined total of 49,000 uniformed personnel—17,000 troops, 12,000 police and 20,000 or more security guards—exceeds the size of the expeditionary force Britain contributed to the invasion of Iraq in 2003. It is the largest single mobilization of British security forces since the Suez Crisis of 1956. Full story...
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This high-sounding boilerplate has long been at odds with the actual function of the Olympic Games, which have increasingly become a quadrennial celebration of nationalism, celebrity and corporate money-making. And never more so than the 2012 Olympics in London, which seem to have been deliberately staged by the host government to trample on notions of peace, human dignity and democratic rights.
The British government announced Thursday that it would mobilize an additional 3,500 troops for security duty at the Olympics, bringing the total number of soldiers, airmen and military police deployed for the event to a staggering 17,000, far more than are currently deployed in the imperialist war in Afghanistan.
The combined total of 49,000 uniformed personnel—17,000 troops, 12,000 police and 20,000 or more security guards—exceeds the size of the expeditionary force Britain contributed to the invasion of Iraq in 2003. It is the largest single mobilization of British security forces since the Suez Crisis of 1956. Full story...
Related posts:
- Missiles, bombs, drones & battleships: London ready for Olympics?
- London's 2012 Olympic Games is psychological warfare...
- The 2012 London summer olympics: more than meets the "eye?"
- Olympism profiteering, exploitation and corruption...
- Who invented the Olympic Torch ceremony?
- A Gold Medal for getting us to hate the Olympics...
- Olympic Torch: why so much fuss about a Nazi symbol?
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