Cutting The Gordian Knot

Cutting through the bull one thread at a time. Armchair analysis of macroeconomics, geopolitics and everything else that effects us and the planet on a daily basis

Radiation and Rockets, Why I am Boycotting the London 2012 Olympics

Radiation and rockets at the London Olympics you ask? Yes, more than 7,000 tons of radioactive debris pushed just to the side to build the Olympic stadium and anti-aircraft missIes anchored on the rooftops of private London residences. War games, military and private security forces patting down the throngs at a cost of £1 billion ($1.54 billion) just for “security” alone, this is the straw which has finally broken the camel’s back for my lifetime of Olympics watching.

I have loved the Olympics since the first of my lifetime in 1968. I was just two months past my 3rd birthday when the Mexico City games glowed most nights and of course the weekends on the black and white television set in our modest living room. I would roll around in the floor on the scratchy, uncomfortable gray carpeting watching every second while my father who despised all that is sports complained because shows like the Wild Wild West and Hawaii Five-O were preempted by the Olympic spectacle. Not only did I watch at home but I watched at both sets of my grandparents’ houses. The games were ubiquitous on American TVs for 15 days that Fall.

I know it’s difficult to fathom a three year old remembering much of anything but I remember many events from those games nor was their controversial moments lost upon me. The shinning moments which stand out for me were the gold medals of track athlete Kip Keino of Kenya in the 1500 meters, Bob Beamon’s “Leap of the Century” long jump, a record which would stand for almost 23 years and of course who alive then could forget the introduction of Dick Fosbury’s unorthodox jumping style known as the “Fosbury Flop”, revolutionizing the sport of the high jump.

For me though it was not just about the competition. Even at that age I understood the games represented a coming together of mankind. It was a stark contrast to the images of the Vietnam War, the police actions against youth war and civil rights protests in America on the news nightly which I had already been exposed to. To that three year old, those games were a vision of what could be and what should be, people coming together for a common interest from all cultures, languages and races in peace and cooperation. Yes I was already acutely aware things in the world were horribly out of kilter. Children absorb far more than most imagine even at that age. However even in the midst of the hopefulness which the games already represented to me I was jolted in the second week by the reaction of adults around me to the awards ceremony for the 200 meter race where gold medalist Tommy Smith and bronze medalist John Carlos displayed what was dubbed the Black Power Salute on the podium.  The serenity of those games was somehow forever marred as many Americans reviled the athlete’s use of the awards stand to make a political statement. It created such public furor that both runners were were expelled from the U.S. Olympic team. It was all quite confusing for a very small child at the time but that continued to reinforce within me that things in the grown up world were not as they should be. Regardless I would go on later to love that year’s Grenoble Winter games watching Frenchman Jean Claude Killy win three downhill medals and American figure skater Peggy Fleming win her gold.

My love of the games has waned dramatically over the years due to the shift from amateur athletes to almost 100% professionals who if not actually employed as pros full time are so heavily sponsored and subsidized that you you’d be struck down by God for even suggesting they remotely resemble any sort of amateur competitor of 40 years ago. That, the constant use of performance enhancing drugs and the over commercialization of the games has all left a very bad taste in my mouth. It no longer is what it was or what at least what in theory it was supposed to be. The games have now morphed into such a grotesque representation of everything which plagues our modern society that I can no longer condone my even watching any portion of it. There comes a time when you must draw a line in the sand and say NO MORE to things which you do not believe in nor can morally or ethically support. This feeling culminated a couple of months ago when I learned that rocket launchers would be installed at different locations throughout London for “security purposes” during the games. These are meant to thwart any arial attack which might be attempted on the Olympic venue. The escalating militarization of police all over the world over the last decade is frightening enough but when things have gone so far as to put rocket launchers on top of buildings for events such as the Olympics which are supposed to represent peaceful cultural exchange things have just gone too far. I won’t go to sports events in America where fans are patted down from ankles to shoulders as they are now for NFL Football Games. I honestly can not watch games where residential buildings have been commandeered by the U.K. government without the consent of owners to host military artillery for a sporting event.

London Olympic preperations: missile launchers in Blackheath – video

The defense of London is costing over  £1 billion ($1.54 billion). Stunningly insane! We have millions of people unemployed, homeless and starving both in Europe and the U.S. since the economic collapse (not that I am ignorant of the worse plight of the Third World by any stretch of the imagination) yet they are spending over a $$BILLION AND A HALF$$ USD on security for a sporting even which will be most likely as most of the Olympics over the past coupe of decades be a huge net loss business proposition? The world truly has gone mad.

“WAR GAMES are coming to London this week as the military wheels out RAF Typhoon jets, helicopters and land and sea forces to test the capital’s £1 billion defences against terrorist attacks during the Olympics.”

“The Olympic war games – almost definitely the biggest peace-time military exercise ever undertaken in London – are scheduled to take place over the Bank Holiday weekend, between Wednesday 2 and Thursday 10 May.”

Not that I am actually a fan of nor much of a believer in online polls but one sponsored by The Guardian newspaper in England posed the question whether people would feel safer with rockets on top of their buildings for the games and a shocking 57.2% of respondents voted yes!  At least 42.8% realized that having hardware like that on your house might actually prompt someone if nutty enough to try to make a political statement out of the games would now make your own house out as an alternate target even if the whole notion of it is pretty ridiculous.

As the deadline for the games approach though some Londoners have begun to stand up and against their city and their homes being turned into a police state for a sporting event.

Far-reaching Olympic security measures leave Londoners with bad tas...

Tue, Jul 10, 2012
“Less than three weeks before the Opening Ceremony on July 27, much of the pre-event chatter among Londoners revolves not around the competitions themselves, but the controversial measures being implemented to safeguard against terrorist activity.

On Monday, a high-profile court case began in which a group of London residents sued security forces because a surface-to-air missile – which could be used to shoot down a civilian airplane in case of a hijacking – is designated to be placed on the roof of their apartment building.

Residents of the Fred Wigg Tower in Leytonstone, less than a mile from where soccer icon David Beckham grew up, were seeking an injunction against the missile placement they claim increases their own danger of being under attack.” The high court dismissed the claims. “However on Tuesday (July 10) the High Court ruled in favour of the Ministry of Defence (MOD), agreeing that a tower block was a suitable site for the missiles.”

Now a new black hole for money to pour into for the games has come to light. The private security firm G4S seems to have spent the last 2+ years mulling around and failed to hire about 10,000 people to provide security for the games. In all that time they only managed to hire about 4,000 of the 13,700 personnel ordered for their £284 million ($441 million) contract. The government only became aware of this fiasco last week. The company has a £284m contract with the Government to provide 13,700 security guards for the Olympic Games, but only 4,000 guards are trained and ready.

It has emerged that ministers were warned that there were problems ...

“Mr Buckles also faces questions over how he only learned “eight or nine days ago” that his company was strugglingto find the 10,000 staff it was contracted to provide for the Olympic Games.The boss, who faces a grilling from MPs next week, insisted that both ministers and Locog had been kept fully informed of what was happening and said company had been “fully transparent” about the difficulties it encountered.He also said that some of the guards the firm has managed to supply may not be able to speak English. G4S stands to lose up to £50m as a result of the London Olympics security fiasco.”

So what are they going to do? Why they’re calling in more military to fill the gaps.

When did it become normal for human beings who are not at war to just accept living in a state where everything around them now resembles a state of perpetual war? It is as though the continual bombardment of terrorism propaganda from the previous decade, something which has personally touched so few people’s lives directly, something less likely to kill or maim them than their own police, the flu or being a passenger in a small aircraft has now produced a population which more than half would welcome heavy artillery mounted on their rooftops? If you don’t find that notion frightening then don’t bother reading the rest of this article because you have already been overtaken by Orwellian Doublethink and will not be able to remotely relate to what I am talking about. That philosophy makes it impossible to see reality any longer.

Now lets get to the comedy part of this whole completely ridiculous military show an obvious excuse for economic stimulus and more money printing to pay for it all. Here they are trying to convince the public that we have to be so incredibly careful because mad bombers lurk behind every corner and that hellfire could rain down from the skies at any moment. While telling us we must be on our absolute most guarded and careful alert ………………. all the while the British military running this farce just puts down their rocket launchers, ammo and equipment leaving it lay unguarded outside of a London apartment for anyone to walk through and take pictures of while the boys are away from the pile of goodies having a smoke break or a spontaneous game of hacky sack.

London 2012 Olympics: ‘missiles left unguarded’ outside East London...

After that it all makes about as much sense as body scanning and patting down airline passengers for weapons but letting them board with belts, boot laces and 5 lb aluminum clad lap tops all of which could be used to both incapacitate and secure hostages. It’s not about safety it’s about control and feeding the military industrial complex of the entire world more money. War and control are big, big business with lots of fringe benefits for the people, corporations, governments and especially banks which run it.

As if this all of this were not enough to make you not want to participate in this year’s Olympics we also have the little known issue of over 7,000 TONS of radioactive waste most of which (the part they will admit to) was discovered under the site of the new Olympic stadium. The mix which includes radium, polonium, thorium and uranium could not possibly have been naturally occurring but the Olympic authorities tried their best to make it out to be just that. That’s a tough sell when the stadium is built on the site of a former dump. The next disgusting part of this being a cover up is the developers and the Olympic Committee tried to hide it from the authorities after it was discovered. The proper authorities were not advised nor consulted before removal of radioactive materials was already undertaken. By moved we mean 400 meters from the stadium where it supposedly will be safe for the next 1,000 years. Yes and I have a pineapple grove for sale in Antarctica I am willing to sell you for a very reasonable price.

This entire incident was literally swept under the rug before anyone in real authority could control it. Proper removal and decontamination of the site obviously were not handled according to the book.

The contractors had no authority nor did they have instruction as how to handle radioactive material being removed. Both the safety of not only the workers but of residents who were likely exposed to radioactive dust from the construction site were not given any thought. From what I can gather no nuclear regulatory authority was even consulted on the matter.

All regulation was thrown out the window for this project simply because it IS the Olympics and there are huge corporate interests at stake. Who cares if the digging up of all that radioactive waste up causes a few hundred workers cancer 20 years down the road or that a few hundred more local residents might also fall ill in later years? It’s the Olympics damn it and they must go on! Coca Cola and DuPont must get their advertising in.

The Olympics have now come to represent the global premise and practice of privatizing profits and socializing risk. Almost every Olympics now is a boondoggle for the host city and nation. While the tax payers foot tremendous tabs for unprofitable games, corporate sponsors still get what they paid for with hundreds of millions of people avidly watching the games in every country of the world. The people pay and pay and pay for these games and all we have to show for it are material souvenirs and retail products which will soon be obsolete, the consumption of more beverages laden with genetically modified high fructose corn syrup, beer and a lot of nutty people who collect Olympic pins having a few more pieces of flair for their hats and vests. The debt from the games however outlast the pins. Just ask Greece about how they’re doing with their debt these days. The Athens Games were a huge burden on the country costing $15 billion, most of it heaped upon the public and the venues were already covered in dust before their economic collapse. Talk about poor marketing research, all those now empty stadium seats, no one to fill them and nothing to watch. The Beijing games cost in excess of $40 billion and they claimed a profit of $16 million? That’s right I said $16 million and this figure is available from multiple sources. Read that again and do the math. Think about it. That’s not even a significant return on investment. That’s still a loss and I seriously doubt it’s even true they came out $16 million ahead. That’s the Chinese way of trying to save face when they just lost their ass on being an Olympic host.

The £486 million ($750 million) 80,000 seat stadium is going to be London’s post Olympic white elephant. No one seems to want it. First of all as soon as the games are over with it’s going to be downsized to at the most 60,000 seats and some older claims go as far as to say this disaster is going to warrant only 25,000 post game seats. London simply has too many stadiums as it is and who the heck wants to use a stadium with uranium in it? The World Cup 2018 long ago said they don’t want to use it. Later there was seemingly a small flurry of excitement as 4 football (soccer) teams had a brief bidding war for it a couple of years back. Ultimately it ended in no one wanting it after all. Most proposals I’ve read for the venue end up demolishing part or all of it.

“After the Games, the demolition of the Olympic stadium in Stratford to make way for housing is a possibility because government and sporting authorities so far have been unable to agree on its future use.”

Nice thought building housing on a site full of radioactive waste which wasn’t even properly handled and is actually still for all practical purposes on site.

So I am done with the Olympics. I will not support an institution which promotes the proliferation of the militarization of daily life. I will not support Games which indebt the people of almost every single nation  host to the games only to enrich corporate and banking interests. I no longer care to watch humans who now resemble high priced race horses rather than representing the finest in natural athletic ability at play during its physical youth.

The world is facing four monumental problems right now. Fukushima is probably the most horrific disaster to ever befall mankind since the Great Deluge and it’s being covered up just like the radiation at London’s Olympic Stadium. Just recently it was revealed that a third reactor, Fukushima Daiichi reactor #1 is also most likely in full meltdown. They don’t even have technology developed to address this as was discussed in a previous Cutting the Gordian Knot article.

Gundersen: Latest probe at Unit 1 indicates nuclear fuel has left c...

Honestly the radiation story was my impetus for writing this story because the more I learn about the nuclear industry it becomes clear that nuclear waste and hazard are hidden nearly everywhere you look. This dump in London is not an uncommon thing. Nuclear power is about profit with no plan for accidents nor provisions for the decommissioning of the plants at their end of service. The war on humanity being waged by the banking and corporate sectors are destroying society for all but the absolute pinnacle of the uber wealthy. The debt which the Olympics now creates for the common man is really unconscionable. It is just another leverage debt fraud by the corporations and the banking industry, an amuse bouche to the grander schemes such as an aquaintance put it, “…. Lieborgate, Robosigning, Robosettlement, CDOs, rehypothecation, High Frequency Trading, toxic assets marked-to-unicorns, the end of Mark-to-Market, ZIRP, NIRP, expert networks, insider trading, MF Global, and countless other examples of what happens when financial fraud is let loose with no fear of consequence in a Bernanke Put world.” It’s just another debt scam for the nation and city unfortunate enough to be chosen to bear the burden of host.

Another major problem we face is the attempt by major corporations to control the food supply with genetically modified seed, chemicals and kill genes by the likes of Monsanto, DuPont, Bayer and a few other choice corporations which may end up starving the world. DuPont is a major sponsor of the games. The stranglehold which the oil, coal and nuclear industries have on energy and their collective effort to prevent truly innovative clean energy keeps us tied to the banking debt and currency devaluation because through energy trade they control the world currencies. Unfortunately the Olympics now just looks like the poster child for all this. It has become their vehicle. The interconnectedness with banking, finance, corporate manipulation and them all being above the law make it impossible for me to enjoy any longer that human spectacle of “The thrill of victory and the agony of defeat“.