Boing Boing » olympics

Why does nobody think Usain Bolt cheated?

Maggie Koerth-Baker — Mon, 13 Aug 2012 13:03:17 +0000

Covariation theory is a psychological idea that helps explain why we instantly suspect some record-breaking athletes of doping, while giving others the benefit of the doubt. (Via Melanie Tannenbaum)

WARNING: STREET ART TOURS ARE ILLEGAL!

Cory Doctorow — Mon, 13 Aug 2012 02:38:33 +0000

My neighbourhood in East London has a lot of very nice street art, and a fair number of hipster entrepreneurs who lead tourist parties on "Street Art Tours." Artist Dr D combined the Olympic police-state with the Street Art Tour phenomenon to make this great prank notice, which I snapped on the way to our weekly Sunday brunch.

The Daily Duff: *STREET ART TOURS- ILLEGAL!*

Why do Olympic records keep getting broken?

Maggie Koerth-Baker — Fri, 10 Aug 2012 21:58:21 +0000

Over at Discovery News, Emily Sohn asks the question I've been wondering for the last two weeks. Why are Olympians today better at their sports than Olympians of the past? Why do speed records keep getting broken? Why can gymnasts do more elaborate routines?

I mean, I have plenty of reasonable, speculative answers for those questions. But I hadn't seen them addressed in a factual way. This is great. And fascinating.

The answer, experts say, involves a combination of incremental technological improvements, as well as a growing population of people attempting a larger variety of sports that they start earlier and stick with longer. The mind plays a big role, too, especially when it comes to toppling seemingly insurmountable barriers, like the four-minute mile of the past or the two-hour marathon of the future.

"There is almost certainly a species limit in terms of physical capabilities, and I suspect we might be in the range of that," said Carl Foster, an exercise physiologist at the University of Wisconsin, Lacrosse. "But every time scientists say humans are not going to go any faster, they've been shown to be wrong. You can take that one to the bank."

Through calculations of maximum power output, oxygen use, heart function and other factors, some researchers have attempted to predict what the absolute limits of human ability will be. Much-debated estimates include 1:58 for the marathon (a five-minute improvement over the current men's record of 2:03.38), and 9.48 for the men's 100m.

Read the rest at Discovery News

Russian synchronized swimmers performed to the theme from Suspiria to the delight of Olympic horror nerds

Jamie Frevele — Tue, 07 Aug 2012 17:40:12 +0000

The Russian synchronized swimming team performed their routine at the Olympics today. I won't spoil the results if you're waiting to watch the performance at another time, but you can check out the results here. Why is this noteworthy? Because their routine was set to Goblin's theme from Dario Argento's classic 1977 horror movie Suspiria. Suspiria. (And Tim Burton's Sleepy Hollow, but Suspiria!) The video above is not from today's performance, but from their qualifying routine that took place back in April that used the same music, so it's probably the same routine (or close). Watch and listen as Natalia Ischenko and Svetlana Romashina turn dainty, graceful water dancing into a horrific painted-doll opera of limbs. Synchronized, twisty, demented limbs. (via Trailers From Hell)

Caturday

Xeni Jardin — Sat, 04 Aug 2012 17:40:35 +0000

Boing Boing reader Nicholas Longtin of Minneapolis has carefully 'shooped a series of photos from the 2012 Olympics to include his cats. I'll consider it complete when this shot's included. (via BB Flickr Pool)

A be-mulletted Eric Bana has some very useful advice for aspiring Olympic athletes

Jamie Frevele — Thu, 02 Aug 2012 19:42:22 +0000

Before he played Nero the evil Romulan, the Hulk, and other dramatic roles in gut-wrenching movies like Munich and Black Hawk Down, Eric Bana put on silly wigs and did impressions as part of his actual, full-fledged comedy career. The only time he's come close to doing a comedy film was Funny People, which is only about comedy. We have yet to see Bana show off his chops, but in the meantime, we have this sketch from the Australian show he was on in the '90s, Full Frontal. It's even Olympic-themed! "Horsey!"

Happy Banaversary [The Hairpin]

The Unbearable Lightness Of Being British

Wystan Mayes — Wed, 01 Aug 2012 16:51:01 +0000

Photo: Shimelle (cc)

The epithets attached to the Olympic opening ceremony piled up: eclectic, spectacular, monumental, shambolic, parochial, world-beating, hideous, embarrassing, filmic, and even inspiring. In its parts, the spectacle was all of these things because of the whole, which formed a gush of free-floating anxiety, a confession on a therapist’s couch.

Many commented on the ceremony’s focus on times past, in what viewers outside of Britain took as a flamboyant history lesson or, less charitably, as a statement of a country with no future. This was, however, no simple portrayal of past events, but a raid conducted to shore up a particular view that exists at this time; a malaise suffered here and now.

In this respect, it was significant that director Danny Boyle posed Britons as stoic victims of two world wars and not victors, inventors of an environmentally destructive Pandemonium (Milton’s capital of Hell) not liberators of humanity through the scientific revolution (where was Newton?). British school children are, indeed, more likely to be aware of the pollution created by industry than its role in making sure they can read history at all.

Many on the right in Britain balk at the ceremony's sugared presentation of our National Health Service, which has not been ‘free’ since soon after its inception and which now relies heavily on private finance to keep going. However, the mythology of our history here was not straight-forwardly ‘left’ or ‘right’ wing at all.

Caribbean immigrants to the U.K., arriving on the Empire Windrush, were welcomed with open arms this weekend–not immigration police and hostile locals. None of the suffragettes in the stadium threw themselves under the monarch's horses. Recent bombings were deemed worth mentioning (if not by America's NBC, which cut them from its broadcast) but not the more significant loss of life in the struggle over British rule in Ireland.

Even the punk rockers were robbed of their more ‘unsavory’ associations with drugs and rebellion. This was a thoroughly contemporary vision, deracinated and empty of traditional ‘politics’ or even ‘reality’. In Boyle and writer Frank Cotterel Boyce’s sensitive vision, we ordinary Brits became sick children, mourning soldiers, love-struck teenagers and harmless old rockers and anything else you can't argue with.

This is a British society in which the presentation of an idea always has an easier passage if it is attached to a victim or an innocent, rather than to a vision of the future. It is a Britain where schools are fortresses because children are very rarely attacked by madmen, and where families of the victims of appalling crimes, such as the parents of murdered teenager Stephen Lawrence, are expected to become policymakers.

This self-consciousness was summed up (and subverted) in the genius touch of turning Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II, into a self-deprecating joke. It was beautifully done and, yes, ‘very British, Mr. Bond’. But as one of those teens, unable to finish a dance routine without stopping to text each other, might have said: WTF?

Everything seemed double-edged. Even an ideal like the celebration of heroism was presented more as an opiate’s dream than a hope, with ‘Heroes’, David Bowie’s theme from the heroin flick Christiana F, serving as soundtrack.

Britain’s lack of a future orientation has much to do with an arbitrary and defensive relationship to its history, as displayed this last week. The past haunts us like a Warner Bros.-licensed specter, but even these ghosts are more substantial than our tenuous grip on where we come from. The opening ceremony showed us a Britain where the past is not so much another country, but a Neverland where visions of tomorrow slip further out of reach.

As Bowie wrote: “I could be King, and you could be Queen”. Putting aside the literal constitutional impossibility of such an outrage, we forget now how any of us ever achieved such Olympian heights.

Let's hope the herculean efforts of the sportsmen and women—here to demonstrate human excellence—remind us.

Divers making weird faces in midflight

Cory Doctorow — Wed, 01 Aug 2012 16:36:00 +0000

TheFW has gathered together a gallery of striking photos of Olympic divers' faces, captured in midflight by various photographers working for Getty Images. It turns out that divers make some pretty weird faces.

This Is How Olympic Divers Really Look While Diving (via Making Light)

(Image: downsized, cropped thumbnail of a photo by Matt King for Getty Images)

Twitter apologizes for part of the Guy Adams/NBC/Olympics affair

Cory Doctorow — Wed, 01 Aug 2012 15:22:50 +0000

Here's a followup on the earlier story about Twitter suspending a journalist's account after he tweeted the work email address of an NBC exec and asked people to write in complaining about NBC's broadcasts of the Olympics.

Twitter has confirmed that their own employees alerted NBC -- who are working in partnership with Twitter on the Olympics -- that the Independent's Guy Adams had tweeted the email address of an NBC executive, and encouraged NBC to fill in a form officially complaining about this.

Twitter's general counsel Alex Macgillivray -- whom I like and respect -- has apologized on behalf of Twitter for this, saying that it was a violation of company policy to "proactively" police users' communications.

However, Macgillivray defends the suspension of Adams's account (which has now been lifted), saying that Twitter can't be expected to know, a priori, whether complaints about private email addresses being published are legitimate. The suspension here turns on whether the NBC address Adams tweeted was "public" or "private." When Twitter receives a complaint saying that a private email has been posted, it suspends the user in question and then entertains the user's side of the story.

I can see the rationale for this: if you stipulate that disclosing a user's personal information can sometimes cause serious harm, there's an argument to be made for erring on the side of caution at the start of the process, and then investigating further. However, this has to be weighed against the fact that Adams's own correspondence with Twitter's accounts team show that he quickly made a good case that what he had done did not violate Twitter's policy -- that the address he'd published was already public -- and yet the company didn't rescind his ban until much later. If you're going to shoot first and ask questions later, later had best be sooner.

That said, we want to apologize for the part of this story that we did mess up. The team working closely with NBC around our Olympics partnership did proactively identify a Tweet that was in violation of the Twitter Rules and encouraged them to file a support ticket with our Trust and Safety team to report the violation, as has now been reported publicly. Our Trust and Safety team did not know that part of the story and acted on the report as they would any other.
As I stated earlier, we do not proactively report or remove content on behalf of other users no matter who they are. This behavior is not acceptable and undermines the trust our users have in us. We should not and cannot be in the business of proactively monitoring and flagging content, no matter who the user is — whether a business partner, celebrity or friend. As of earlier today, the account has been unsuspended, and we will actively work to ensure this does not happen again.

Our approach to Trust & Safety and private information (Thanks, Xeni!)

UPDATED: 17-y-o arrested in England for sending nasty tweet to losing Olympian

Cory Doctorow — Tue, 31 Jul 2012 18:01:29 +0000

Update: I misread the article -- the same 17-y-o later sent some pretty dreadful threats to the Olympian in question: "i'm going to find you and i'm going to drown you in the pool you cocky twat your a nobody people like you make me sick," etc. My initial reading was that these were other peoples' harrassing tweets. #readingcomprehensionfail

Police in Weymouth, Dorset, England came to the home of a 17-year-old boy and arrested him, because he had retweeted an unpleasant sentiment to an Olympic athlete. The offending tweet? "You let your dad down i hope you know that." (This was a pretty dickish thing to tweet, as the athlete in question had previously dedicated his performance to his recently deceased father). The charge is "malicious communication." The law in question is the Communications Act 2003, Section 127(1)(a) ("a message that is grossly offensive or of an indecent, obscene or menacing character"). It's great to see that the spirit of the Olympics is alive and well: athleticism and international cooperation means that people are only allowed to say nice things or they go to jail. Just about the only thing worse than being a dick on Twitter? Being a loony authoritarian cop who arrests people for being a dick on Twitter. (via /.)

Twitter does something really, really, really stupid - will they fix it?

Cory Doctorow — Tue, 31 Jul 2012 05:27:07 +0000

Update: Twitter has officially apologized for part of its actions in this story.

You've heard by now that Twitter suspended Guy Adams, a journalist from the UK paper The Independent after Adams posted the email address of an NBC exec and urged his followers to send in email complaining about the network's (shamefully bad) handling of its Olympics broadcasts. Dan Gillmor in the Guardian has some context about how totally, boneheadedly stupid Twitter is being here, and what they need to do to fix it.

Adams has posted his correspondence with Twitter, which claims he published a private email address. It was nothing of the kind, as many, including the Deadspin sports blog, have pointed out. (Here's the policy, which Adams plainly did not violate, since the NBC executive's email address was already easily discernible on the web — NBC has a firstname.lastname@ system for its email, and it's a corporate address, not a personal one — and was published online over a year ago.)
What makes this a serious issue is that Twitter has partnered with NBC during the Olympics. And it was NBC's complaint about Adams that led to the suspension. That alone raises reasonable suspicions about Twitter's motives.
Now, Twitter has been exemplary in its handling of many issues over the past several years, including its (for a social network) brave stance in protecting user privacy; for example, it has contested warrantless government fishing expeditions. So I'm giving the service the benefit of the doubt for the moment, and hoping that this is just a foolish — if possibly well-meaning — mistake by a single quick-triggered Twitter employee. If so, Twitter should apologize and reinstate Adams' account immediately. If it does so, there's little harm done — and the company will have learned a lesson.

If Twitter doesn't reinstate Guy Adams, it's a defining moment

Guardian reconstructs Olympics basketball match in LEGO

Xeni Jardin — Mon, 30 Jul 2012 14:03:34 +0000

If NBC's Olympics coverage were this adorable, I would not only watch it, I would forgive them for delaying it and pretending like it were live. Video: "Brick-by-brick men's basketball: USA v France" (Guardian.co.uk)

Sick of the Olympics already? Olwimpics browser blocker is your new best friend.

Xeni Jardin — Sat, 28 Jul 2012 16:28:27 +0000

Greg Leuch at fffffat unveils the Olwimpics content blocker for Chrome, Firefox, and Safari. Sweet Jesus, thank you. (via @gautamramdurai)

Olympics chief rings in the games

Rob Beschizza — Fri, 27 Jul 2012 14:42:07 +0000

UK Olympics secretary Jeremy Hunt rang a bell Friday morning to herald the beginning of the summer games. The bell disintegrated, parts spinning into nearby bystanders.

The middle of nowhere

Rob Beschizza — Thu, 26 Jul 2012 20:56:37 +0000

Mitt's international tour, day 1: "Say something so undiplomatic that your host sees no reason not to publicly insult you."

Olympic gold medals contain only 1% gold; would cost $25,000 if pure

Rob Beschizza — Thu, 26 Jul 2012 15:38:05 +0000

The amount of gold in an Olympic gold medal has fallen to 1.34 percent, thanks to gold prices that recently peaked at $1,895 an ounce. At current prices, a pure 400g medal would cost about $25,000 to make, with a total bill of about $50m for the games.

"The last time the Olympic Games handed out solid gold medals was a hundred years ago at the 1912 Summer Games in Stockholm, Sweden," writes gold brokers Dillon Gage. "Gold medals were in fact only gold for eight years. The 1904 Olympics in St. Louis introduced the gold medal as the prize for first place."

The 2012 gold is 92.5 percent silver, 1.34 percent gold, and 6.16 copper, with IOC rules specifying that it must contain 550 grams of high-quality silver and 6 grams of gold. The resulting medallion is worth about $500. For the silver medal, the gold is replaced with more copper, for a $260 bill of materials.

The bronze medal is 97 percent copper, 2.5 percent zinc and 0.5 percent tin. Valued at about $3, you might be able to trade one for a bag of chips in Olympic park if you skip the fish.

Olympics: the alien invaders that destroy our cities

Cory Doctorow — Thu, 26 Jul 2012 12:25:58 +0000

(Image by Smuzz)

A topical message from our overlords

The zen of the underwater treadmill

Maggie Koerth-Baker — Thu, 19 Jul 2012 13:24:15 +0000

Something I enjoy: Specialized equipment that looks completely and utterly ridiculous when you watch people using it out of context.

Case in point, this advertisement for the HydroWorx X80 Underwater Treadmill. You have never seen Olympic-caliber runners look sillier. (Sadly, it's not entirely underwater. When I first saw the name of the clip, I was really hoping for guys in scuba gear.)

Also: I've apparently reached the age where current Olympians look to me like they ought to be too young to drive. Crap.
Thanks, Eli Kintisch

Brandishing the Olympic Torch

Rob Beschizza — Wed, 18 Jul 2012 01:11:41 +0000

Photo: Zoelee

London Olympic committee says you're only allowed to link to their site if you have nice things to say

Cory Doctorow — Fri, 13 Jul 2012 19:39:45 +0000

James Losey from New America Foundation sez,

The Atlantic's Alexis Madrigal, who has estimated how long it would take to read every privacy policy you encounter highlights an interesting bit from the "Linking Policy" in the Terms of Use for the London 2012 website:
"a. Links to the Site. You may create your own link to the Site, provided that your link is in a text-only format. You may not use any link to the Site as a method of creating an unauthorised association between an organisation, business, goods or services and London 2012, and agree that no such link shall portray us or any other official London 2012 organisations (or our or their activities, products or services) in a false, misleading, derogatory or otherwise objectionable manner."

Hey, LOCOG! I think you're a bunch of greedy, immoral corporatist swine who've sold out London to a bunch of multinationals and betrayed the spirit of athleticism and international cooperation. You're a disgrace. And I'm linking to you. In a most derogatory manner.

What are you going to do about it?

(Thanks, James!)

McDonald's chip monopoly at London Games relaxes one hairsbreadth

Cory Doctorow — Thu, 12 Jul 2012 08:41:17 +0000

The McDonald's sponsorship deal at the Security Games in London meant that Olympic workers are not allowed to buy chips (AKA fries) unless they come with fish. A chorus of complaints from site workers has led to a relaxation of the sponsorship terms so that workers (but not visitors) can buy their chips from the vendor of their choice, even if they're not served with fish.

From The Guardian's Robert Booth:

It all results from one of the stranger twists of Olympic planning. McDonald's sponsorship deal included the exclusive right to sell chips in and around Olympic venues. Other caterers had negotiated special rights to serve chips with fish – but not chips on their own, or with anything else.
Cue frustrated scenes at the lunch counter in the ceremonies catering area where staff were toiling over the staging for Danny Boyle's 27 July opening extravaganza. "Please understand this is not the decision of the staff who are serving up your meals who, given the choice, would gladly give it to you, however they are not allowed to," read a notice pinned up by staff. "Please do not give the staff grief, this will only lead to us removing fish and chips completely."
"It's sorted," said a spokesman for Locog. "We have spoken to McDonald's about it."
But the embargo will hold in other areas. That means no chips with anything other than fish anywhere else in the park unless spectators dine at McDonald's.

I know a couple of people on the lighting and automation crew at the Security Games and they report that there's a mass lunchtime exodus from the site by its workers every day as they troop off to find anything to eat that isn't McDonald's.

Chip-hungry Olympic workers celebrate freedom from McDonald's monopoly

(Image: Big Mac meal with Chocolate Shake, Fillet-O-Fish, Chicken McNuggets - McDonalds, Hume Hwy AUD16.80, a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike (2.0) image from avlxyz's photostream)

Olympic missiles on your roof, whether you want 'em or not

Cory Doctorow — Tue, 10 Jul 2012 15:29:35 +0000

Hey, guess what? If you live in the UK and the army wants to put surface-to-air missiles on your roof, you don't get a say in it.

Google and NBC stage “War Games” to prepare for hacker attacks on Olympics online coverage

Xeni Jardin — Thu, 05 Jul 2012 18:21:53 +0000

Photo: london2012.com.

The WSJ's Joel Schectman reports that NBC and Google are conducting “war games” in at least three countries, in preparation for possible hacker attacks or hardware screwups that could interrupt web streaming of the 2012 Summer Olympics Games in London, which begin this month.

The planned online streaming, if successful, will be the largest-ever online offering of a sports event.

For the past nine months the network’s online team, together with Google, which is managing the streaming of the games, have simulated hundreds of disruptive scenarios, some lasting eight hours. They have simulated a range of problems from broken broadcast encoders to traffic overloads and hacker assaults on the systems, NBC staff told CIO Journal.
“We have it very well-scripted, so we know that when a problem occurs who is on point and what steps we need to take,” said Eric Black, vice president of technology for NBC Sports and Olympics. “At some point during the games there’s likely to be an outage, but the goal is for us to be on top of that and have no end-user impact.”

Sarah Robles: The strongest woman in America lives on $400 a month

Maggie Koerth-Baker — Thu, 28 Jun 2012 18:28:14 +0000

Meet Sarah Robles. She can lift as much as 570 pounds. In last year's weightlifting world championships, she bested every other American—both female and male. Sarah Robles is going to the Olympics in London this summer. But at home, in the United States, she lives on $400 a month.

Track star Lolo Jones, 29, soccer player Alex Morgan, 22, and swimmer Natalie Coughlin, 29, are natural television stars with camera-friendly good looks and slim, muscular figures. But women weightlifters aren't go-tos when Sports Illustrated is looking for athletes to model body paint in the swimsuit issue. They don’t collaborate with Cole Haan on accessories lines and sit next to Anna Wintour at Fashion Week, like tennis beauty Maria Sharapova. And male weightlifters often get their sponsorships from supplements or diet pills, because their buff, ripped bodies align with male beauty ideals. Men on diet pills want to look like weightlifters — most women would rather not.

Meanwhile, Robles — whose rigorous training schedule leaves her little time for outside work — struggles to pay for food. It would be hard enough for the average person to live off the $400 a month she receives from U.S.A. Weightlifting, but it’s especially difficult for someone who consumes 3,000 to 4,000 calories a day, a goal she meets through several daily servings of grains, meats and vegetables, along with weekly pizza nights. She also gets discounted groceries from food banks and donations from her coach, family and friends — or, as Robles says, “prayers and pity.”

She's not alone. Holley Mangold, the other American woman who'll be doing Olympic weightlifting in the same division, works part-time for a BBQ restaurant and lives in a friend's converted laundry room.

In fact, while the biggest stars in the most-watched events can pick up million-dollar endorsement deals, the truth is that most Olympic athletes live on extremely modest incomes. That's especially true in countries like Canada, which lacks the kind of government support system you find in places like China and Russia, but also lacks the plethora of large and small private endorsement deals that are available to some (but not all) American Olympians.

I think this is interesting. Every time the Olympics come up, I hear friends and talking heads alike arguing that the amateur athlete no longer exists. Everybody in the Olympics is really a professional and that makes it all less exciting—or so goes the conventional wisdom. The reality is that, for the most part, we're talking about people who make big sacrifices to be able to compete at a high level in a sport they're obsessed with for its own sake, not because they're getting rich. Sponsorships, rather than tainting the sport, do also help some athletes know where their next meal is coming from. After reading some of these articles, I think the vast majority of Olympic athletes probably fall squarely into Happy Mutant territory.

Read the rest of Buzzfeed's profile of Sarah Robles

• Read the New York Times' profile of weightlifter Holley Mangold
• Ivestopedia: Olympic Athletes—Back to Reality
• Wired: Olympic Runner Fights to Change Sponsorship Rules
• ABC News: How Can Olympic Athletes Find a Real Job?
• Time Magazine: Keeping Afloat (which contrasts the profits of the U.S. Olympic Committee with the small incomes that support many Olympic athletes)

US Olympic Committee says sorry to knitters whom it claimed "denigrated" the games

Cory Doctorow — Fri, 22 Jun 2012 16:44:21 +0000

The US Olympic Committee has apologized for describing the knitters' Ravelympics as "denigrating" to real athletes. Ravelympics are an activity on Ravelry, a community for knitters, in which members compete to complete knitting projects while watching Olympic events, producing hybrids like the "afghan marathon" and "scarf hockey." The Olympic Committee, worried that they will have a hard time raising millions for giant, evil companies like Dow Chemicals if knitters are allowed to share patterns that include the Olympic rings, sent a grossly insulting legal threat to the knitters of Ravelry:

We believe using the name "Ravelympics" for a competition that involves an afghan marathon, scarf hockey and sweater triathlon, among others, tends to denigrate the true nature of the Olympic Games. In a sense, it is disrespectful to our country's finest athletes and fails to recognize or appreciate their hard work.

After a lot of hue and cry, the USOC said sorry, and suggested that knitters could give away the stuff they make to the USOC.

Jun 21 Statement from USOC Spokesperson Patrick Sandusky (Thanks, Gladys!)

Scottish cops auto-Godwin Olympic sceptic

Cory Doctorow — Wed, 13 Jun 2012 11:29:00 +0000

Afraid of the Knock on the Door sez, "An old age pensioner, living in a residential care home, received a visit from the Scottish police plain clothes division following his letter to a local newspaper in connection with the Olympics due to be held in London this summer. He wrote about the connection of the torch relay with Germany in the 1930s. **Contains irony.**"

Mr Coull said: ''It was invented by Nazi propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels, to please his boss Adolf. Hitler loved the idea of the relay, and the connection with pagan mythology in ancient Greece, emphasising the Aryan nature of the games.''
The pensioner, who completed a history degree at Dundee University in his late 50s, said in his letter that he would be ''there to protest this fascist display'' on the Angus leg of the relay.
A few days after the letter appeared, Mr Coull and wife Keri received the surprise CID visit...
''I asked if protest was now illegal. They said no, it isn't, but there will be lots of folk out to cheer the Olympic torch, and we wouldn't want you to get hurt by them, or vice versa. I think they were a bit nonplussed that both myself and Keri were laughing so much. I assured them that I had no intention of hurting anybody.''

'I started laughing, and kept on laughing' — Olympic torch protester gets a police visit

G4S: the scandal-embroiled "private security" behemoth that will provide 10,000 "security contractors" to London 2012

Cory Doctorow — Mon, 11 Jun 2012 05:23:27 +0000

Laurie Penny takes a look at G4S, the scandal-embroiled "private security firm" (they're not technical mercenaries because the "security" people who work from them are usually born in the same territories in which they operate) that is the world's second-largest private employer, after WalMart. The company is providing 10,000 "security contractors" to the London Olympics, like these people, who think that it's illegal to take pictures from public land. G4S has lots of juicy contracts around the world, like supplying security to private prisons in the West Bank where children are held. They're also the proud inventors of "carpet karaoke," a technique used at private asylum-seeker detention centres, which is a fancy way for "stuffing a deportee's face towards the floor to contain them."

What difference does it make if the men and women in uniform patrolling the world's streets and prison corridors are employed by nation states or private firms? It makes every difference. A for-profit company is not subject to the same processes of accountability and investigation as an army or police force which is meant, at least in theory, to serve the public. Impartial legality is still worth something as an assumed role of the state – and the notion of a private, for-profit police and security force poisons the very idea.
The state still has a legal monopoly on violence, but it is now prepared to auction that monopoly to anyone with a turnover of billions and a jolly branding strategy. The colossal surveillance and security operation turning London into a temporary fortress this summer is chilling enough without the knowledge that state powers are being outsourced to a company whose theme tune features the line: "The enemy prowls, wanting to attack, but we're on to the wall, we've got your back." If that made any sense at all, I doubt it would be more reassuring.

Laurie Penny: Don't listen to what G4S say. Look at what they do

Austerity Jubilee: unemployed workers tricked into being Jubilee stewards, denied toilets, left to camp in the rain

Cory Doctorow — Tue, 05 Jun 2012 12:44:42 +0000

Long-term unemployed workers say they were bussed to London to act as stewards for the Queen's Jubilee, told they would be paid for the work and cared for while in town. When they arrived, they were told they wouldn't get paid (this was "work experience" not a job), and were made to strip down and change into uniforms in public, pitch tents in the rain, sleep under a bridge, and left without toilet facilities for 24 hours. They were told that if they didn't accept this "training," they wouldn't be considered for work during the Olympics.

Close Protection UK confirmed that it was using up to 30 unpaid staff and 50 apprentices, who were paid £2.80 an hour, for the three-day event in London. A spokesman said the unpaid work was a trial for paid roles at the Olympics, which it had also won a contract to staff. Unpaid staff were expected to work two days out of the three-day holiday...
A 30-year-old steward told the Guardian that the conditions under the bridge were "cold and wet and we were told to get our head down [to sleep]". He said that it was impossible to pitch a tent because of the concrete floor.
The woman said they were woken at 5.30am and supplied with boots, combat trousers and polo shirts. She said: "They had told the ladies we were getting ready in a minibus around the corner and I went to the minibus and they had failed to open it so it was locked. I waited around to find someone to unlock it, and all of the other girls were coming down trying to get ready and no one was bothering to come down to unlock [it], so some of us, including me, were getting undressed in public in the freezing cold and rain." The men are understood to have changed under the bridge.
The female steward said that after the royal pageant, the group travelled by tube to a campsite in Theydon Bois, Essex, where some had to pitch their tents in the dark.

Unemployed bussed in to steward river pageant

Official Protesters of the London Olympics suspended on Twitter

Cory Doctorow — Thu, 24 May 2012 14:00:36 +0000

The Space Hijackers' Twitter account for their Official Protesters of the London 2012 Games has been suspended, following a complaint from the London Olympic committee:

Twitter. That harbour of free speech, undaunted by various Arab dictators. However, it seems that a quick word from LOCOG, the unelected body in charge of the 2012 Olympic Games, is enough to encourage Twitter to suspend our account. Apparently there's a danger people might think we're part of the Olympic delivery team. We're sorry if you were enjoying our tweets, we hope to be back up and running again, as soon as Twitter gets the joke. In the meantime, you might want to look at this website to get some background...

Twitter actually has a pretty clear policy on this: parody and protest accounts just have to have some indicator that they aren't the official item (e.g. "FakeCoke" or "CokeSucks" but not "OfficialCoke"). My guess is that Twitter's suspension of the account was on that basis. If so, it should be pretty straightforward to get it back up and running.

Oi! You Can't Protest Here! (Thanks, LDNBikeSwarm!)

Space Hijackers create Official Protesters programme for the London 2012 Olympics

Cory Doctorow — Fri, 18 May 2012 10:42:09 +0000

Leah sez,

Bespoke troublemakers, the Space Hijackers, have announced that they are the Official Protesters of the London 2012 Olympic Games. To this end, they've launched a site where you can register for tickets for the official protests. They have also outlined the top ten reasons why the Olympics are worth protesting against.
A spokesperson said "accept no imitation, we are the Official Protesters. We shall be taking steps to ensure no unauthorised protest occurs around the London 2012 Olympic Games".
The Space Hijackers stress that LOCOG, the IoC and the ODA should expect protest wherever Olympic legislation and regulation is applicable and enforced. An international network of Olympic protesters have partnered under the Protest London 2012 umbrella and are planning as invasive a campaign as the Olympic Games themselves. However, only those groups authorised by the Official Protesters of the London 2012 Olympic Games will be allowed to express dissent.
Disclaimer: "Official Protesters", "Official Protester", "Official Protest", "Protest", "The Space Hijackers", "Space Hijackers", "Spacehijackers", "Space", "Hijacker" and "Hijackers" are protected under trademark and copyright. Unauthorised use without express written consent from the Official Protesters of the London 2012 Olympic Games.

Some background: as part of its campaign to win the games, the UK promised the International Olympic Committee that it would extend extraordinary privileges to it and its corporate partners. It's a criminal offense to use "London" and "2012" or "2012" and "Games" in a commercial context without authorisation. Yes, criminal: you can go to gaol for putting up a pub signboard that says "Watch the Olympic Games here today!" Parliament's Olympic lickspittles also delivered a law that gives the cops the power to enter your private home and remove anti-Olympics posters. And there are 10,000 private security guards on-site who insist that you're not allowed to stand on public land and take pictures, despite assurances from the government and police that they've been trained and briefed.

Here's an earlier Space Hijackers action: "Life Neutral" certification for arms dealers.

Official Protests for the London 2012 Olympics (Thanks, Leah!)