The shock-and-awe of mega sports events

Christopher McMichael, Open Democracy

The overlap between the security measures for major sporting events and contemporary war zones are a striking and increasingly globalised phenomenon. Lest we forget that the Olympics and the FIFA World Cup are ostensibly about sport and not security, London 2012 chairman Lord Coe was recently moved to offer his assurance that the British capital will not be a “siege city” come August. However the presence of warships, surface to air missiles, thousands of military personal and pre-emptive bans on protest suggests otherwise.