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The Times, Ramadan and the London Olympics

JamieSW — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 21:57:29 +0000

Grumpy Muslims in 2012 Olympics terror shock! When Muslims are feeling tired and hungry during Ramadan they present a terrorist danger, alleges the Times.

The story is so pathetic that it barely warrants serious discussion. But it’s there in the Times. On page 4. And the article is typical of so much media reporting of Islam.

The paper published this “news” item on October 27 under the headline “Police warned of Ramadan tension during 2012 Games”.

The story claimed that Scotland Yard was concerned that the 2012 Olympics in London would “clash” with Ramadan, making it harder to “reduce tensions between Muslims and police” during the Games.

Instead of offering any proof, however, that a religious festival could present a problem for police, the Times article switched in its second paragraph to speculation about terrorism. The 40th anniversary of the shoot-out at the Munich Olympics – in which 9 Israeli hostages died after they were taken hostage by Palestinians – meant there was an “Islamic terrorist threat” to the 2012 Games, the paper said.

Only then did the story returned to Ramadan and the London Olympics. It quoted the head of the highly respected Woolf Institute of Abrahamic Faiths that the police would need some basic training to deal with religious issues that might arise during the Games: “During Ramadan you’re going to have a lot of tired, hungry, less evenly tempered people because they haven’t eaten for 18 hours.”

The implication is clear: tired, hungry Muslims are more likely to lose their temper and… commit a terrorist attack on the Games.

MWAW contacted Dr Ed Kessler, head of the Woolf Institute. He wrote back that he was “very unhappy” with the Times article, which “failed to depict the conversation” that he had had with the paper’s reporter. He said it was “sensationalism of the worst kind” and was “inaccurate in its reporting about the Olympics, Ramadan and the proposed Munich commemoration”.

Dr Kessler has written to the Times to complain, but the paper has yet to publish his letter.

The Times’ method is clear: take a bit of flimsy information from the police, slap on some unrelated speculation about terrorism, throw in a quote – torn out of context – from a respected source to make the piece appear reasonable, and let the reader draw their own racist conclusions. The article is constructed to make it appear that fasting during Ramadan makes Muslims more likely to commit a terrorist atrocity.

This is dog-whistle reporting: the article is couched in reasonable language but sends out a clear message that Islam is dangerous.

It is because of reporting of this kind that MWAW is holding its conference this year on Islamophobia.

Olympian Failure

Ellie Keen — Thu, 15 May 2008 23:11:34 +0000

When Ken Livingstone lobbied for the 2012 Olympics he argued that the resulting investment was needed desperately by east London, as it had seen none since Victorian times.

Yet the games have received a chorus of damnation in recent weeks. A study by the New Economics Foundation (NEF) thinktank has shown that the regeneration of the East End of London was wishful thinking, at best.

This shouldn’t come as a surprise. New Labour tends to see “regeneration” through the prism of how much profit can be made by business, blindfolded by its belief in the “trickledown” system. The report states that the games will mean that small local businesses will be unable to compete with the multinational stampede into east London, while residents will be priced out of the area. Indeed, the 1992 games in Barcelona displaced tens of thousands of low income families, while the 1998 Seoul games displaced 720,000. China is currently going for gold, with an estimated 1.25 million already displaced from Beijing.

Josh Ryan-Collins, the co-author of the NEF report, said, “The regeneration legacy was not just an enlightened addition to the plan for the games – it was central to the bid.”

We will be paying more than double what Tessa Jowell, minister for the Olympics, first estimated. The original budget was set at £4 billion, £738 million of which was due from the private sector. The new budget stands at £9.325 billion, with predictions for private investment down to just £165 million. The extra cost will be picked up by direct taxation and the National Lottery – 20 percent of the lottery’s total “good cause” budget.

MPs on the Public Accounts Committee last month damned the original budget estimations, saying they “ignored foreseeable major factors” including tax and security. Policing and security costs have risen by £600 million since the original proposals, with the “delivery budget” up from £16 million to £600 million. The bid also omitted a VAT bill of £836 million.

Is it any wonder then, given New Labour’s notoriety for its anti-Midas touch on white elephants ranging from Wembley Stadium to the Millennium Dome, that three quarters of British people don’t think the Olympics will benefit them?

One of the tests for whether London was to host the games was the level of public support. Perhaps that public support would have been less forthcoming had they known the true cost.

London Olympics terror threat used to vastly increase surveillance powers

tim — Sat, 03 May 2008 08:53:47 +0000

The threat of terrorism at the 2012 London Olympics is being hyped up in order to justify a vast increase in the surveillance powers of the British state.

According to a memo leaked to the Daily Telegraph, Home Office officials are planning to expand the police DNA database to identify suspects and use greater powers to track individuals through advanced closed circuit television (CCTV) technology and the Oyster card used by millions of people on London’s bus and rail network.

The memo discusses different means the government could use to persuade the British public to accept these measures. It asks, “To what extent should the expectation of liberty be eroded by legitimate intrusions in the interests of security of the wider public?” and concludes, “Increasing [public] support could be possible through the piloting of certain approaches in high-profile ways such as the London Olympics.”

To that end, ministers, police chiefs and officials have stepped up their demands for more security measures, utilising the Games. Last month, Lord Dear, the former Scotland Yard head of operations, made a public announcement expressing his doubts over present police capabilities to deal with the event. He said that the police force is too short of manpower to deal with the extra security needed and likened it to a “Sixties car in the 21st century,” adding, “If the model is flawed now, it will certainly be flawed in four years’ time.”

“It’s fairly obvious to anyone that major terrorist groups will not be particularly interested in attacking the Beijing Olympics,” Dear said. “But in four years’ time they will have the London Olympics as a target and we need to be best positioned to counter that well in time.”

Dear’s announcement was made despite the fact that there are a record 140,000 police officers in service and the Olympics security budget has risen sharply by £238 million in the last few months. At the end of last year, Olympics Minister Tessa Jowell released figures that showed that the initial security budget of £200 million in 2005 had spiralled to more than £1 billion.

Dear’s comments reflect those of the most senior officers in the police. The head of the Metropolitan Police, Sir Ian Blair, has also expressed concern over existing security arrangements and outlined a plan for them to be beefed up in readiness for the games. He has also said that special security and training will be required for athletes and the 200 heads of state expected for the opening ceremony. These proposals will inevitably involve extending the budget still further.

As well as increasing the number of police, the proposed scheme involves an elaborate and sophisticated security system spanning the whole of London. According to a BBC report last month, the Metropolitan Police Service wants to pool its 10,000 existing cameras with the thousands of traffic and congestion cameras already in operation across the city.

This would give the police control over a vast network of up to half a million CCTV cameras, making it the largest of its kind in the world. The network would then be controlled by a central £100 million bomb-proof command bunker operated jointly by the military, police and intelligence services brought together under the umbrella of the Olympic Security Directorate.

The Olympic security coordinator, Assistant Police Commissioner Tarique Ghaffur, has made several statements over the last few weeks that indicate just how huge the increase in surveillance will be. Speaking at an international security conference in Abu Dhabi, Ghaffur outlined new ticketing technology to be used on the London transport system to track the movements of every individual, as well as “second-generation” computer technology that can track individuals through face recognition. The computers can use identity-recognition techniques to compare video against a database of digital faces.

A pilot scheme involving 750,000 mugshots has already been completed. Using the facial-mapping software connected to the CCTV cameras, an alert will flash up as soon as a known person appears on the screen. He added, “We will have the most secure and transparent ticketing system. Tracking technology is being developed—a spectator will be tracked from the venue to his or her home with these tickets.”

Other measures outlined by Ghaffur include dividing London into three security zones, three extra helicopters to carry out close surveillance, an increase in the automatic vehicle number plate recognition system, and checks using biometric fingerprints on the 50,000 workforce being used to build the venues.

Currently, the police can only check fingerprints and photographs from suspects after they have been arrested. Under these new powers, the police will be able to carry out these checks instantly with hand-held devices that are connected to the security database. Peter Neyroud, the chief executive of the National Policing Improvement Agency, said, “We are trying to get a really disciplined understanding of how to use these tools before the Olympics. That is a really important time scale for us.”

As well as increasing the size of the British police force to 9,000 for the major Olympic events, there are also proposals to draft in extra manpower from private security firms and foreign armed police. Scotland Yard has called for these measures on the basis that too few British police have firearms training to cope with the events, and the costs of training them are prohibitive. The contracted armed police will be used to guard dignitaries, athletes, the main Olympic Park and other sports venues.

Ian Blair told a meeting of the Metropolitan Police Authority, “The principle must be that we don’t want armed foreign police, but there’s a ‘but’—and the ‘but’ is twofold. One, you may not be able to get any foreign police unless they are armed, because they won’t feel easy being unarmed in public scenarios like that. Two, do we actually have, in this case, sufficient capacity to have enough armed officers to do the job?”

All of these extra resources will mean that the security budget for the games will mushroom in the next four years. Denis Oswald, the chairman of the International Olympic Committee’s London 2012 coordination commission, has admitted that it is “impossible to predict” how much money will need to be spent when the games are still four years away. He said, “It’s a very difficult area but if we want to have occasions like the Olympic Games, where hundreds of thousands of people meet, then you have to make sure they are safe, otherwise you just give up and the terrorists will win.”

This refusal to draw up a fixed budget on the basis of a terrorist threat that is “impossible to measure” amounts to a blank cheque that Londoners and the British people will ultimately have to pay. More importantly, the machinery is being created that is necessary to impose a highly integrated police/military apparatus in Britain’s capital city, under the pretext of keeping the country safe from terrorism.

London’s Olympic Reverie

Tim Holmes — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 17:04:39 +0000

Four miles from my doorstep lies one of Europe’s largest construction sites: 500 acres to be transformed into an Olympic Park and Village in time for the 2012 Games. At the moment, it’s a wasteland. A few hundred tenants have been evicted from a council estate. Nineteenth century garden allotments have been bulldozed, as have a cluster of pitches used by weekend footballers. Migratory birds have been chased from their inncer-city marsh habitats and local residents find themselves corralled by fences, plagued by noise and harassed by security guards.

Over the next five years, the nuisance and inconvenience will spread. Costs will mount up. Already, the initial estimate of £2.5 billion has been revised upwards to £9.3 billion, the bulk to be covered by the taxpayer. In return, we’re told, there will be jobs, new homes and offices, regeneration for a deprived area, “the largest new park in London for 150 years,” an aquatic centre and perhaps another football or athletic stadium.

A report issued during the summer by the London Assembly has confirmed that there is no evidence that Olympic host cities have enjoyed the benefits promised them. Jobs are temporary and casual; left-over facilities are often unsuitable; regeneration ends up meaning property speculation and gentrification. A recent reconsideration of the Barcelona Games of 1992 – widely considered a success – concluded that “the only economic indicator that experienced an important impact as a result of the Olympic Games were price levels.”

London is already one of the most expensive places on earth. For millions of Londoners buying a home in their own city has become an unrealisable fantasy. Property inflation – which always accompanies Olympic developments – is just what London doesn’t need.

Despite much talk of London’s Olympic “legacy”, it remains unclear what this will consist of and how it will be measured. That’s in the nature of the Olympic deal: the commitment of the host city to have the facilities ready on time is ironclad; everything else is, at best, aspirational and negotiable. As 2012 approaches, meeting the timetable will take precedence over other considerations, including the safety of construction workers and the wishes of local people. Crucially, a precondition for bidding for the Games is the agreement by the host city to carry all their costs and liabilities. The risk is off-loaded to the public sector, but not the revenue. The two major streams of Olympic income – broadcast rights and the international sponsorship programme – remain in the hands of the International Olympic Committee. This shadowy and profligate body will determine the shape of the spectacle for which London is the host, and it is primarily to this body that the agencies constructing and managing the Olympic site will be accountable.

You’d think that such a one-sided arrangement would deter potential bidders, but not so. The myth that the Olympics are a boon endures, despite the evidence. It fits neatly into the neo-liberal model, in which cities (and countries) compete for investment on a global playing field, in which the priorities of private investors are the arbiters of social development, in which brand promotion equals increased market share.

London, however, is not a brand, or to be more precise, promoting the London brand on the global marketplace is nor the same as promoting the sustainable welfare of Londoners. The city’s great crises – economic inequality, sclerotic transport, a degraded environment, over-stretched public services – will not be addressed or mitigated and in some cases could be exacerbated by the Olympics.

The Olympics are an engine of distortion. Already, in response to rising costs, the government has raided existing funding for the arts and for grass-roots sport. As the 2012 deadline approaches, the Olympics are likely to swallow an ever larger share of the budget for the cultural life of the nation. The physical legacy will do nothing to correct the imbalance. London already enjoys a surfeit of internationally known sports venues (football, cricket, athletics, rugby, tennis). What it needs is accessible playing fields, of which the Olympics provides not one.

Shortly after London was awarded the Games in 2005, the British government rushed through legislation aimed at protecting the Olympic brand from ambush marketing. In its attempt to uphold the exclusive rights of organisers and official sponsors, the new law restricts freedom of expression in a manner that under other circumstances would have set off alarms. Somehow, because it’s the Olympics, we let our guard down and allow ourselves to be imposed on.

Perhaps too late, Londoners are turning sour on the Olympic project and especially the Olympic propaganda. In a recent poll, only 28 per cent agreed that the financial risk was “worth taking” because of the potential benefits, whereas 44% thought “the money could be better spent on schools and hospitals.” A vast majority – 89 per cent – did not believe the Government’s claim that the cost of the games would be no more than £9.3 billion. Only 3 per cent thought that the 2012 Games would be delivered on or under budget.

So the Olympics can be added to Iraq as another source of popular cynicism. The Games become a juggernaut of vested interests (government, corporate and media). Those who resist its priorities find themselves fighting an unequal battle. For Londoners, the primary Olympic experience will be one of disempowerment. We neither own nor control the spectacle that will be staged in our midst, at out expense.

It’s not that I’m hostile to the Olympics. On the contrary, I’m a fan. Despite the widely noted disparity between Olympic ideals and practises, there remains something uniquely compelling about this quadrennial global assembly of talent, with its admixture of big and little sports, big and little countries, amateurs, part-timers and dedicated professionals. It’s a two-week demonstration of the varieties of human excellence; here the chunky weightlifter, the lithe gymnast, the bespectacled sharpshooter, play their parts alongside the magnificently proportioned decathlete. And a closely contested 1500 meter Olympic final is an unrivalled three and half minute drama. It’s just that, as a Londoner, I wish it was taking place in someone else’s city.