The London Olympics are already achieving the number one aim of the politicians who brought them here, which is making our politicians feel very important indeed.
The media is quite frenetic in its efforts to make us all believe we should be terrifically proud of the fact we are hosting the Olympics, as though there were something unique in this achievement. If we can’t competently do something that Greece, Spain and China have done in recent years, that would be remarkable. Of course the Games will be on the whole well delivered, sufficient for the media and politicians to declare it an ecstatic success. Some of the sporting moments will be sublime, as ever.
But did it have to be in London? We won’t know the total cost of the Games for months, but it will cost the taxpayer at least £9 billion and I suspect a lot more. I also suspect the GDP figures will, in the event, show that the massive net fall in visitor numbers has hurt the already shrinking economy further.
But to take the most optimistic figure, holding the Olympics in London has cost every person in the country an average of £150 per head in extra taxes. That is £600 for a family of four. Actually it is in the end going to be well over £2,000, as of course the money has been borrowed on the never never, and taxpayers are going to be paying it off their whole lives, along with the sum ten times higher they are already paying direct into the pockets of the bankers through their taxes.
The very rich, of course, don’t pay much tax, so they are not worried.
But to take just the figure of £600 extra taxes for a family of four, the lowest possible amount, and not including the interest. Is having the Olympics here really worth paying out £600 for? If Tony Blair had approached the head of the family and said “We are going to have the Olympics in London, but it’s going to cost you £600, would the answer have been from most ordinary people: “Yes, great idea, this is that important to us”?
People are not disconcerted because they don’t see that they have to pay. There is no special Olympics tax, and they pay their taxes in a variety of ways, and individuals are not the sole source of taxation. But this is nonetheless real money taken from the people in pursuit of the hubris of politicians.
I love sport. I hate the corruption of the International Olympic Committee, Fifa and the rest; I hate the vicious corporatism and militarisation of our capital and absurd elitism of the transport lanes; the sport itself I love. But with the economy contracting, and the NHS being farmed out for profit, is it really worth £600 for a family – and many families are really struggling in a heartbreaking way – is it worth the money to have the Olympics here rather than in Paris?
Of course it isn’t. I think many of us will feel an extra pleasure watching the Opening ceremony because it is British. Patriotic pride will surge. It is not wrong to enjoy the spectacle tonight on TV. The corporate well connected and ruling classes will enjoy it in the stadium.
But after you have watched it on TV, ask yourself this question. How much more did you enjoy it than enjoy watching the Beijing ceremony, and was that margin of extra enjoyment something that everybody in the room would have paid out £150 for?
Because they just did.
How’s this for cognitive dissonance?
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BBC News24 headlines this evening:
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headline #1: Video appears to show Syrian rebels allegedly executing group of unarmed men in Alleppo.
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headline #2: Syrian rebels receive heavy weapons to defend Alleppo from Assad’s forces.
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I am now of the opinion that the Ministry of Defence and/or the Foreign Office are writing this constant stream of pro-rebel bile and occasionally a journalist get’s a look in, but only after careful screening and changing/inserting words like ‘allegedly’.
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There was an excellent report on RT exposing the latest Syrian ‘defector’ who, it was claimed, was part of Assad’s propaganda organisation and controlled the Syrian media. Only problem with that is that no one in Syria has heard of him, even at the TV station he is supposed to have been running for the last 18 months.
“personal attacks by some commentators on someone like me who is immediately identifiable by the name I use.”
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I’ve not seen it happen to the clearly identifiable “Uzbek in the UK”.
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[Mod/Clark: Giles, the rest of this comment is too aggressive and personal. Please rephrase.]
According to the Guardian, we don’t need to worry about Al Qaida being the baddies anymore,as they are now the good guys helping out the rebels against the Assad Government. Thats ok then. We just need to conveniently forget that they have been the reason given for countless illegal wars and leading to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of civilians over the last ten years
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jul/30/al-qaida-rebels-battle-syria
The notorious US security firm Xe/Blackwater has set up military camps in Turkey’s border region with Syria to train armed al-Qaeda groups fighting against pro-Assad civilian police. WTF has happened to America?
“Peace and friendship with all mankind is our wisest policy, and I wish we may be permitted to pursue it.”
Thomas Jefferson
http://www.rt.com/news/syria-rebel-massacre-aleppo-627/
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Hi Technicolour – prolific again – nice one.
“personal attacks by some commentators on someone like me who is immediately identifiable by the name I use.”
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[Mod/Clark: Re-post deleted.]
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What’s wrong with that, Mod/Clark? He brought his personal issues into the public domain. I’d rather you ban me than be subject to your pious and prissy moderations. You seem to get some sort of thrill out of writing over people’s comments!
Talking of blind support for Israel, this one made me retch:
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8exU2klXr3k
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Though it’s not blind, of course. Can’t see why they don’t just do away with elections in the US and award the presidency to the candidate who sucks up most to Israel. Looks like he’s doing the audition as it is.
Giles, what is wrong with it is that it’s a personal attack upon a contributor, rather than upon their arguments. That’s the rule I decided to use, and so far it seems OK to me. You don’t have to make the decision.
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And if you want to leave, no one is stopping you.
Still having fun with the editing, I see, Clark (Moderator). Must be fun chopping and changing others’ posts, and then adding bits and bobs to your own. It was an attack on his argument/opinion/accusation, regardless of the personal issues/teenage hang-ups involved. Taken on their own you’d be correct.
Giles, OK then, distil out the arguments from the insults, post the arguments and keep the insults to yourself.
I do chop but I don’t change comments. Specifically, I don’t change the meaning of comments. Sometimes I add line-breaks to make the text easier to read, sometimes I edit in contributors’ own corrections that they posted as a separate comment. And yes, I do edit my own comments sometimes.
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Giles, as for “thrill” and “fun”, your speculations inevitably say more about you than me.
“..in the negative sense that most of us haven’t needed to develop the ability to function in a multilingual environment thus freeing us to deploy that brainpower elsewhere.” (Clark)
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The reverse, in fact. People’s brains benefit enormously from multilingualism, according to research.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/10/091029151807.htm
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Extract: David Marsh, specialized planner at the Continuing Professional Development Centre of Jyväskylä University, who coordinated the international research team behind the study, says that especially the research conducted within neurosciences offers an increasing amount of strong evidence of versatile knowledge of languages being beneficial for the usage of an individual’s brain.
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“The research report brings forth six main areas where multilingualism and hence the mastery of complex processes of thought seem to put people in advantage. These include learning in general, complex thinking and creativity, mental flexibility, interpersonal and communication skills, and even a possible delay in the onset of age-related mental diminishment later in life,” Marsh relates./
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“What’s the problem? Racists depriving you of your free will?”
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That doesn’t sound like you, Clark.
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Clark: “but I see nothing definitively racist in anything Komodo has written here.”
Technicolour: “Right, that’s interesting to know.”
Clark: “Do you think that I’m racist? Are you trying to suggest to others that I’m racist?”
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How did you get to there? And that doesn’t sound like you either, whatever is going on.
Nuid:
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Firstly, yes, learning multiple languages is very beneficial. Other research shows that people learn languages faster and better if they start young. But this makes no difference to the argument about feeling uneasy if surrounded by people speaking to each other in a language one doesn’t understand. I did say it was “in a negative sense”. And I wonder how broad the multi-language research is; our brains do respond to exercise, but time is limited and brain capacity finite, so I’d be surprised if something wasn’t displaced by learning extra languages, especially learning them later in life.
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Nuid: “Whatever is going on?” – I was wondering the same thing! Technicolour has always seemed a reasonable and fair contributor to me, so I was surprised to see such misrepresentation of Komodo’s arguments, another decent contributor in my estimation. The “Racists depriving you of your free will?” jibe was my response to having my direct question completely ignored with the excuse of “I haven’t had a chance”; that just seemed outrageous, because the question itself was such a chance.
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“Do you think that I’m racist? Are you trying to suggest to others that I’m racist?” – As I wrote immediately below that, these are genuine questions. Given Technicolour’s misrepresentation of Komodo’s position, I couldn’t decide if “Right, that’s interesting to know” was a simple statement or an insinuation that my mode of thought was suspiciously close to that of an alleged racist.
I was probably thinking too narrowly when I wrote “most of us haven’t needed to develop the ability to function in a multilingual environment, thus freeing us to deploy that brainpower elsewhere.” It might be simply energy, calories, that we get to deploy elsewhere. Brains are expensive in terms of energy, or so I’ve read.
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There is also the investment of time that parents have to make in order to teach additional languages.
Clark,
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You’re doing fine bro.Good modding within a minefield.
Komodo:
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You were initially arguing that ‘the definition of a nation is that its inhabitants have stuff in common. Not a hotchpotch of miscellaneous styles.’. I took issue with that and gave the example of Australia, where the culture has become more vibrant and uniquely Australian during the last 40 years when immigrants from around the world have settled there. 25% of the population wasn’t born in the country and the culture is stronger than ever.
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It now seems you are changing your argument to one about resources, it’s the population density that is the problem, not the diversity (‘Picture, if you will, the entire population of Australia living on Tasmania’). I am more sympathetic to this line of thinking. I personally am not a huge fan of mega cities and the idea of living somewhere like Japan or London is very unappealing to me. However as the Netherlands has a population density almost twice that of the UK, the idea that the UK is full doesn’t seem convincing to me.
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Suhayl:
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Great post about nationalism. I have quite a soft spot in my heart for the anti-colonial nationalist movements.
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Clark:
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“But what to do? With a sizeable proportion of the voters thinking mostly within the box provided by the corporate media, and the weightings built into the voting systems, what happens?”
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I wish I had a decent answer. To me it seems there are two options, the first being to wait until it gets bad enough that people demand better. National governments actually maintain considerable power in the modern world when they have real support from the people. After Argentina was made destitute by the IMF, WB and global business, the people demanded better and the government was able to tell the IMF to go fuck itself.
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The second options is far less exciting, and it just involves very slowly recreating structures to bring the community together again. One idea I’m a fan of (and I’m guessing it will be right up your alley too), is to convert library space into a ‘hacker’ space. wikipedia.org/wiki/Hackerspace
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BTW I got a small mod suggestion. When someones messages get held in the queue, perhaps you should approve the most recently posted version and not the original. Simply because the further back it pops into existence, the more likely it is that people will have already read that section and wont re-read it in case a post appears from the mod queue.
Clark:
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I’m not sure about your language argument. There are many multilingual societies, I remember how ashamed I was when I met beggars in India who were fluent in 12 languages, I can barely manage one. Maybe I am terribly naive, but when I hear people in Australia talking a language other than English, I don’t assume they are having a go at me, I assume they are talking about whats going on in their own lives. Babies and young children don’t seem disturbed when exposed to new languages.
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As someone currently learning a language (very slowly), I like to think that I am not getting dumber because of it 😉
erm sorry, in my first post today I meant Tokyo, not Japan.
“We just need to conveniently forget that they have been the reason given for countless illegal wars and leading to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of civilians over the last ten years”
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The Grauniad is a journalistic disgrace, as are all the corporate MSM when it comes to supporting the criminal banking cartels war against humanity.
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The fact is millions upon millions have been killed using the Al Qaeda false-flag excuse and very conveniently for the ‘Jewish State’ regional competitors have, at the same time, been totally destroyed or cowered into compliance. No coincidence of course that the criminal banking cartels happen to be run by Zionist Jews to an extraordinary degree.
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This is what happens to a society that refuses to listen to the dissenting voice. If people woke-up to the fact that Al Qaeda was a Western intelligence set-up, as Robin Cook noted, and 911 was a false-flag attack, back in the day when it mattered, then perhaps things would be different now, instead we stand on the very brink of WW3 – and why? Because Israel wants to attack yet another regional competitor Iran.
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And while the West is pre-occupied with Israeli foreign policy it never occurs to them that one day Israel will see those nations as the regional competitor. The ambitions of Zionism are quite clearly laid out, even today they are quietly taking control of the East African nations for their resources, particularly water.
What I meant by “easily identifiable” was that I post under a name which is identifiable in the public and private spheres and which can be linked to a real person, i.e. me. For entirely good reasons, I’m sure, many others here do not. So they are not “easily identifiable”. I did not mean “easily identifiable” as a ‘brown person’ – but it is fascinating that you thought I did.
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Yes, my biography is easily available in many places on-line. As you will note, my first name is not, ‘Sid’ – but perhaps that was a typo on your part. I am working class, because I own nothing and sell my labour and if I did not sell my labour, I would be destitute. My father, to whom you referred, was the same; he worked in the NHS for 37 years. The vast majority of the population (of all colours and creeds) are working class. This is something I think we would do well to remember. We – and not David Cameron and his ilk – very much are “all in it together”.
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These issues to which I have referred are not my “personal issues”, Giles. These are widespread institutional issues and so do have a systemic impact of individuals and families and I think we ought never to forget that. If I illustrate something of the impact on families which the sort of bile which, over a long-hundred years, has emanated from, say, ‘papers like The Daily Mail’ and more recently, supposedly ‘respectable’ outlets like ‘Prospect’ magazine (and which has entailed fulminating coarsely or more subtly about “immigrants”) has had, it is said that I am bringing my “personal issues” into the discussion. As far as I can see on this thread, I’m not the one making personal attacks.
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Good day to you.
June 2012.
Israel begins deportation of South Sudanese migrants; Interior Minister says move protects national interests.
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http://www.haaretz.com/news/national/israel-begins-deportation-of-south-sudanese-migrants-interior-minister-says-move-protects-national-interests-1.436979
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July 2012.
South Sudan signs economic agreement with Israel on “water, technology”
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It is not clear, however, why the agreement was not signed with the relevant ministry but with the IMI which is a weapon manufacturer specialising, according to its website, in the production of modern land, air and naval combat systems.
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http://www.sudantribune.com/South-Sudan-signs-economic,43376
Militarization: The Olympic Flag in the Hands of Soldiers
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=32145
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The Olympics can be “a time of new, and renewed, friendships where deeper peace and understanding is forged.” That’s how the Archbishop of Westminster greeted the athletes who had arrived in London from all over the world. To convey this spirit, in the opening ceremony of the Government of Her Majesty did have the flag with the five Olympic circles, a symbol of peace, raised … by a team of 16 British soldiers, chosen from among those most distinguished in recent wars.
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At the head of the squad, made up of soldiers and officers from the three arms of the military, was Tal Lambert, director of communications of Lyneham and Brize Norton Air Bases, used last year in the war against Libya. Among other members of the RAF was Sergeant Suneil Raval, who distinguished himself in the wars in the Balkans and Iraq. Among those in the Navy and Marine Corps was Warrant Officer John Hiscock, who was awarded the Queen’s Gallantry Medal for his actions in the invasion of Iraq. Among those of the army, Platoon Sergeant Kyle Reains distinguished himself in combat in Iraq and Afghanistan, where he was wounded, and Lance Corporal Josh Rainey, with two dangerous missions in Afghanistan behind him.
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For the military squad to hoist not only the British flag but also the Olympic flag was a highly symbolic gesture: a reaffirmation that the forces of the United Kingdom and other NATO countries do not conduct wars of aggression, but operate in the interest of peace and humanity. It is outrageous that the International Olympic Committee has authorized this choice, which should be banned in any country in the Olympics are held. Equally outrageous is that the international press has ignored it, though they are present in London with thousands of journalists. Their task was to describe the hat worn by Her Majesty at the time when the Olympic flag was hoisted by the soldiers who were renewing the glory of the British Empire.
I heard an amazing revelation from a US Marine yesterday. Ever since the Vietnam war the US Army have an established protocol used when working with local militias and foreign forces (think Iraqi and Afghan army).
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Basically the Americans do not trust the locals so they have a code word amongst themselves which if uttered by the ‘team leader’ is a sign that they must count to six and then kill all the non-Americans. It was described as a mechanism to prevent infiltration by the enemy – any suspicion that any foreign forces members were compromised by the enemy would mean the end of that entire unit.
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After hearing this it occurred to me how many times we have heard of NATO soldiers being killed by trainee police and soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. I began to wonder if these are instances where the Americans didn’t kill them quickly enough or the locals knew the code word and immediately killed the NATO soldiers when they heard them use it. Worth a ponder.
This is so seriously WTF.
Obama has agreed to allowing a non-profit organization (Syrian Support Group – look out for this one) to collect funds to arm the FSA. The group has ‘vetted’ some of the FSA and the group’s lobbyist (an ex-NATO apparatchik – natch) has said all is fine – the organization will be looking into the legal ramifications should arms get into the hands of Al Quaeda. I feel so much safer already.
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http://news.antiwar.com/2012/08/01/us-okays-non-profit-for-arming-syrian-rebels/
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Another report suggests that the FSA has been supplied with ground-air anti aircraft missiles. Nah – then haven’t been mislaid from some rooftop in London, but supplied by good ole Turkey.
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{http://news.antiwar.com/2012/08/01/report-turkey-arms-syrian-rebels-with-anti-aircraft-missiles/}
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At least we know for certain that the US and the FSA lobbyists know that Al Qaeda is involved is the Syrian mass murders. It is clear that the Libyan model is being changed to work around the impediments to the desired outcome of regime change and destabilization.
The media hysteria over the Russian trial of Pussy Riot has gone to a new level with the deployment of corporate ‘pop stars’.
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http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/leading-musicians-including-jarvis-cocker-and-pete-townshend-protest-over-arrest-of-punk-band-pussy-riot-8000880.html
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Where are these people when we have just had a teenager locked up for tweeting that an Olympian let down his recently deceased father – bad taste and insensitive for sure but a crime? A crime worthy of losing ones liberty? That teenager now has a criminal record, presumably it said on his charge sheet “Being an insensitive teenager”.
The homeless man, Tony, sleeping rough, has gone. No doubt reported to the local authority by a concerned ‘citizen’ and then moved on by the rather aggressive Glaswegian park ranger. Poor man. He was doing no harm.
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Yet the ground in the other main park here was trashed after the heavy rain during a weekend music festival and then a week later by the stupid torch relay on which the said local authority spent a £quarter of a million! It will take weeks of hard work and many £thousands to restore. For the torch relay the county council plastered the area with road traffic signs (warning of tow away zone etc) and hundreds of banners in many different colours (with the London 2012 logo in that strange jagged script) attached to lamp posts along the route. The road signs have been taken away but the banners are atill there. They are about 10ft long and 4 ft wide. An eyesore and an irritation.
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A sight that did lift my spirits this morning was a mother mallard with her six newly hatched ducklings on the river. Such perfect little creatures and so far removed from everything horrible that is happening around us.
Globalism in its current form is fascist, it removes political responsibilities into the hands of TNCs, themselves now judged as ‘personal enteties’. We have done the subjective issue to death, we know that we can’t all debate the issue without falling out necessarilly.
It is important to realise that from the age of slavery onwards our views have been skewed between nationalistic / fascist attitudes of all shades and the need for greed and immigration. Jhappen tobelive in less borders, but sustainable enteties need limited protectionismn to work in aselr reliant way. Greetings from sunny Edinburgh.
Paid US and NATO mercenaries in Libya.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bjw3ijp9nwU&feature=share
Mary, I think that mallard with her chicks must be a second clutch. All the chicks on our ponds have grown into big boys and girls. Coots too.
Probably John. The first was probably washed out earlier on.
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This an unusual item to find on the BBC website. Except is there ‘gloomy introspection about the decline of the UK’s military might’? I would say there should be rejoicing if is decining even though it is still the fourth largest in the world.
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Viewpoint: G4S and the echoes of the East India Company
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The recent discussions around the G4S Olympic security scandal highlighted two jaw-dropping facts, writes historian Michael Wood.
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The first was that Britain still has the fourth largest military budget in the world, behind the USA, China and Russia.
In these days of gloomy introspection about the decline of the UK’s military might, it was to say the least, a surprise.
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But the second was no less amazing – that the personnel of G4S, a private British security company, is four times larger than the British Army.
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2 August 2012
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-19077733
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{http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00r12j3/episodes/guide} The Great British Story: A People’s History
Please sign and circulate.
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http://www.avaaz.org/en/petition/Save_human_rights_whistleblower_Bradley_Manning/?cCNkdbb