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.
Clark, the sun is shining and I’m making fresh rolls, seeing some really scrumptious home made plum jam hit the buttered and still steamy roll and sinking you teeth into it, is worth far more than wasting your time being goaded by a psychopath or two.
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Thanks for the view you painted Mark G, so many points I agree with. My conclusion is, what the fuck are we still talking our mouth to shreds for? should we not be supporting an Independent candidate? or do something else that limits the establishment minorities power to usurp our life and society?
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But then I read the fuck brain comments on Guido’s blog from 5 days ago and thought, but why? let these idiots vote for the same old scum again, they would not realise a good candidate if s/he smacks them around the chops.
http://order-order.com/2012/08/07/cchq-begin-corby-candidate-contest-badly/
They are programmed to vote for Bedlam, ‘please sir, can I have some more’, and they deserve what they get.
Sadly this blog is confused, by its owner, the technical framework, many time Clark has pointed to the fragilities of it, It works like a broken record, now you hear some thing, then you don’t.
If there is anybody genuinely wanting change, rather than talk about it, now is the time to concentrate on other things in life. If this bals up economy , system and electoral fraud that calls itself coalition is really bad for us and the world, then what are we doing here talking amongst ourselves, listening to some sock puppets winding us up and taking our life’s time away with looking at their bare arse brains?
I shall read, occasionally, and when there is action behind people’s words, I shall join in, until then, friends and fellow travellers in time, I duff my cap to you, slurp my last bit of Assam, and wish you health and happiness.
As someone who reads regularly and values this blog, but rarely comments (‘lurker’ I suppose, but I think the term is unfairly pejorative)I’d like to say I’ve been watching this thread with a mixture of horror and admiration.
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I’ve been afraid that someone would get really hurt, or say something they didn’t mean and give deep offence. I think that despite the passion, and troll interference, people have generally kept their cool pretty well. I know some people feel hurt, but hope they can forgive and put in perspective things which were written.
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I do hope ALL the regular contributors stay with the blog and keep contributing – it is really valuable to a lot of readers.
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Moderators are vital on a blog like this, as i think we all realise, given the trolls who are out to wreck things, and possibility of people getting carried away.
THANK YOU CLARK and JON !
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So the little sockpuppet creep is in Nottingham. (And there was me wondering back in 2010 if he was in the States.)
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PS: My bad. Having seen the rest, I reckon “Holocaust Denier” came through without any ‘Approve’. But I hope Jon deletes the lot of them anyway.
Onwards and upwards for Coe. His ambition knows no bounds. Where next? Rogge’s job?
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Olympic Games: Lord Coe made legacy ambassador
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-19231492#
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A puff piece in the IoS too.
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But sports politics are a different matter. His eye is firmly fixed on the presidency of the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) which would lead to an automatic seat on the IOC, where, in a decade or so, he could even become president.
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He must wait three years for the IAAF opportunity, when present incumbent Lamine Diack steps down, and he will have a fight on his hands with new IOC executive board member Sergei Bubka, another iconic Olympian. But after the glories of London, you would expect Coe to win this one.
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While waiting, he could be put in charge of a combined UK Sport/Sport England, and there is already pressure on him to become either president or chairman of the British Boxing Board of Control, not least from promoter Frank Warren, who is orchestrating a campaign to remove the present chair, Charles Giles.
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Coe is a great fight fan and a former steward of the board, but whether he will relish this particular scrap is open to question. Whatever, it is unlikely he will be lining up at the jobcentre alongside the lesser mortals in the Locog team.
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What also remains to be seen is how long the feel-good factor will last. The Olympics have given Britain a much-needed makeover as a nation in terms of patriotism and philosophy, and Coe’s hope has to be that what they have done for the country and for sport will linger long in the consciousness after the first Rooney groin strain nudges the current euphoria off the back pages.
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{http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/profiles/sebastian-coe-london-2012-has-been-beyond-my-wildest-dreams-8034865.html}
Cameron is hosting a campaign against hunger initiative today.
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{http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-19230427}
Olympic stars support campaign against hunger.
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One of the participants is Save the Children whose president is Princess Anne.
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Brendan Cox, director of policy at Save the Children, said the summit was an opportunity to give London “probably the most important and the furthest reaching Olympic legacy of all time”.
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He said: “The hunger crisis, which is currently spreading right across Africa, is one that we can deal with, we can prevent, but it means a change in approach.
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“It means addressing the causes, and not just the symptoms, to put this much higher up the political agenda.”
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Very recently, their chief executive, Justin Forsyth, was twittering giving war criminal Gordon Brown congratulations on his appointment as a UN ambassador for education or similar. More hypocrisy from a so called non governmental organisation. How many children were killed, injured, made fatherless, motherless and or homeless in our offensive wars when Brown sat alongside Blair and then for the following three years?
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http://members5.boardhost.com/medialens/msg/1342601275.html
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Vile. Shame on all of them.
Shame on this woman too. She is now a television pundit almost non-stop following her successes in wheelchair marathons and seems to have embedded herself very well in the establishment including a peerage and is now pushing the ConDems Big Society trash. Note her connection to Bliar.
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‘Lady Grey-Thompson is currently a non-executive director for UK Athletics (2007), sits on the board of the London Marathon (2007) and the Board of Transport for London (2008). She is Chair of the Women’s Sports and Fitness Foundation Commission on the Future of Women’s Sport.
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Grey-Thompson is patron of numerous charities including Sportsleaders UK and is a trustee of V, the Charity that helps young people become volunteers. She is Vice-Chairman of the Laureus World Sport Academy and a trustee of the Sport for Good Foundation. She is also a Council Member for the Winston Churchill Memorial Trust and an International Inspiration Ambassador. As well as this she is the Patron of the Tees Wheelyboats Club, a group providing disabled people with access to the River Tees, and Chair of the Tony Blair Sports Foundation.
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In July 2011 Grey-Thompson was announced as the President of the Leadership 20:20 Commission, the Commission on the future leadership of Civil Society. She launched the Commission’s recommendations in Parliament on December 14th 2011.’
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanni_Grey-Thompson
Most of this article is behind a paywall, it is a review of a book (remember those?). Mentions this chap, Burnes. http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2012/aug/16/lessons-afghanistan/
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“The British had invaded to replace the Afghan king, because they felt he was becoming too close to the Russians, and that Afghanistan could have been used by Russia to threaten British India. By November 1841, Sir Alexander Burnes, the British political official responsible for Kabul, congratulated his superior, Sir William Hay Macnaghten, on the perfect tranquility of the country. A day later, Burnes was hacked down in the flames of his burning mansion; a week later, the British garrison was under siege; on December 23 Macnaghten’s mutilated corpse was hung from a butcher’s hook in the bazaar; and on January 6 the British army began its retreat.”
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History seems to be repeating itself with today’s Afghan ‘freedom fighters’ once again targeting the political and military leadership too, with recent American losses of senior warmongering figures. The supreme irony of trying to replace a secular Russian leaning socialist government in Afghanistan with Islamic extremists, whilst exactly what America desired for Afghanistan took place next door in Iran instead, strikes home.
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Another taster, a must read: http://killinghope.org/bblum6/afghan.htm
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Can Blair, Cameron, Hague and Israeli friends really be working to destroy America, by letting them off the leash and letting them rip, so ill-informed, so ineffectually and so counter-productively.
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These seem great reads, Blums ‘Killing Hope’ and Diana Preston’s ‘Dark Defile’. I only wish someone would scan them to pdf format and upload them to usenet, to give people a taster, author’s still need sales I know, but people need to read e.g. Blum’s book urgently.
Nevermind, I think we should all sit outside and, with your permission, partake of some of those delicious rolls you’re baking. Phil W, yes, absolutely.
Hi all. Sorry for the influx of trolling of late. In general it is best not to correspond in much detail with obvious troublemakers, since they’ll only be deleted later, which makes for minor gaps in conversational flow.
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Meanwhile, cups of tea for everyone, poured by Suhayl, fresh rolls and homemade jam made by nevermind, and excellent (if robust) discussion contributed by all. Lurkers and spectators very welcome, and if anyone feels slighted in the course of debate, my very friendly cat will nuzzle against you for half an hour, making loud purring noises. She’ll nibble kitty treats from your hand, if you like.
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Off topic: came across this recently, and it brought a tear to my eye. A man lets his arthritic dog drift off to sleep in his arms, in the warm waters of Lake Superior. Just lovely.
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http://www.stonehousephotoblog.com/2012/08/john-shep-on-lake-superior/
New readers to this blog may be wondering what the trolls issue is about. Briefly:
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We’ve had a few people come to this blog for the purposes of disrupting discussion in the comments. One set of those people – who I suspect may be just one person sock-puppeting – posts links to “alternative explanation” theories for various world events, in the vein of Prison Planet et al. The latest influx posits government involvement theories on the two mass shootings in the US (follow the links from here if you want to see what I’ve removed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jon_Rappoport).
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As regular readers will know, you can say pretty much anything here; but, if one or two commentators drown out all other conversations with their own hobby horses, it reduces free speech for everyone else. It doesn’t help when it is delivered with a mound of insults, either. I’ve deleted 19 posts linking to one article, which I think illustrates the scale of the problem.
Parky. (09.52)
Fuck off then.
Jon,i think that it may be possible that whoever that Apostate poster is/was,he might have been creating a strawman out of himself and his own argument. Prisonplanet et al should not be lazily dismissed as just ‘conspiracy farms’ – yes they often over dramatise but the information they put out is fact and evidence based and can be double checked by anyone.
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I think it is wrongly judged of you to dismiss any so called alternative views as hobby horses, or insuniate that questioning the mass media regime is somehow the work of crackpots. As we know ,it is the mainstream media that is peddling us false narratives on a mass scale.
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Regarding the recent mass shootings in America, I/we cannot know for sure obviously ,but numerous witnesses accounts suggest that these were false flag/psy op operations, as does many other things such as the sealed court trial and the background and drugged state of the ‘shooters’ themselves. It is well worth remebering that truth is stranger than fiction, but also that we all need to be aware of what is happening in America and here in Europe.
Hi Chris. I was very careful not to use the word ‘conspiracy’, as I specifically wasn’t taking a view on the correctness of the material. Apostate et al will be deleted for the reasons I gave above (i.e. nothing to do with the nature of the articles themselves), plus also Craig banned him (and his various aliases) for persistent disruptive posting – as Nuid mentioned earlier.
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Before we had moderation at this blog, the heavy stream of posts and insults from Apostate made it very difficult to discuss anything here, for some weeks.
Jon
11 Aug, 2012 – 5:02 pm
@Frazer, thanks for the update about Craig.
What is the news about Craig? I can’t find Frazer’s update with this long thread to go through. Can we all agree to reference the date and time when referring to someone else’s comments?
Hi Doug
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That update was at [10 Aug, 2012 – 6:45 am] – use the Find feature in your browser. Usually accessed via Ctrl-F on Windows and Linux, Cmd-F on Mac 🙂
Hi Jon
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Great,glad that particular point could be clarified
Not content with extracting £9bn and counting from the British taxpayers, LOCOG are flogging off Olympic memorabilia in an auction. High jump pole anyone? There must be millions of the London 2012 banners which festooned all the venues and all the crowd barriers.
http://memorabilia.london2012.com/allauction/auctionLanding
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The opening ceremony cost £27m or so we were told. The total budget for the four ceremonies (Olympic and Paralympic) was £83m so how much is tonight’s closing ceremony featuring all the old has-beens like George Michael and the Spice Girls feat. Mrs Beckham by special arrangement? Please God we don’t have anymore of Paul McCartney tonight. He was bad enough two weeks ago.
Alex Jones has some interesting and credible positions and an inimitable style, his regular radio show is a hoot at times, an emotional rollercoaster for the presenter and listener, as he himself runs through a gamut of emotions from exaltation over clear red flags flapping and literal and metaphorical smoking guns, to despair as he confronts the tumescent police state and end game corporatism that is intrinsically part and parcel of elitist crony capitalism, the only flavour on offer. He never, though fingers culprits except in crude outlines of global government and shadowy string-pullers and the permanent near-east beachhead statelet, you know the one, rarely gets nailed to a wall and dissected. The advertising however is banal and targetting the gullible, especially where it flatters and milks the hill-billy survival obsessives, in their fallback redoubts bristling with guns and cans of beans, the more terrifying thing is they might have a point.
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On peak oil, as was mentioned, growth in demand has long outstripped supply, with scarcity prices can only rise inexorably, excluding Iran’s oil from global markets can only accelerate price increases and by more quickly exhausting other non-Iranian supplies make Iran’s oil more of an asset to Iran than it presently is, in what is a sellers market. Israel seems to be intruding into Egypt’s Sinai region in force as speak, who can imagine what they might covet there now, my understanding is that any oil that had been there was utterly exhausted and sucked dry when the lengthily Israeli-occupied region was last returned to Egypt, leaving Egypt only with offshore rigs and dependent on ‘aid’.
Israeli soldier, facing 20-year manslaughter charge, gets 45 days in jail for killing two Gaza women
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/world_now/2012/08/israeli-soldier-takes-plea-deal-deaths-gaza-women.html
“He never, though fingers culprits except in crude outlines of global government and shadowy string-pullers and the permanent near-east beachhead statelet, you know the one, rarely gets nailed to a wall and dissected”
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There is that question of ‘why not just get the culprits then’ to it i agree – he/they have been pretty open and honest about this i believe, explaining that they are not only providing information but also earning a living by making money from advertising, and providing what could be called entertainment. They also put their backing behind people in power that can make a difference, so aren’t just a talking shop for people that like to be scared. I don’t think a simillar show exists in the same way in Britain as far as i know. It would be fascinating to see Craig Murray on the Alex Jones show wouldn’t it?
More interesting than British media coverage:
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JDaUGB3sjbs&feature=player_embedded#!
@Mary, interesting about Tanni Grey-Thompson. I’d say her supporting Tony Blair or Coalition policies specifically, was in each case incidental rather than deliberate. I reckon she is championing sport rather than being particularly right wing. I should think there are a great many roles (both high profile and not) in which one can be appearing to endorse war profiteering, the scams of banking, the corporate capture of politics (and so forth) without intending to.
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That all said, I do wish people would think about these things more. I’ve friends who will cheerfully take the Devil’s coin from all of the above, whilst I’ve suffered financially for trying to avoid it.
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@all: An antidote to Blair’s attempted returns, from Stuart Lee. Only for those who giggle helplessly at lavatorial humour:
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/aug/12/stewart-lee-tony-blair-comeback
Ceremony is luved up again. Beverly Knight (iirc) opens with a pop song with profoundly good lyrics.
Now a full on John Lennon’s Imagine 🙂
A small fraction of nationalism and militarism in the ceremony. About half the songs chosen or more contained especially humane lyrics.
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The BBC commentary could not touch the themes, they end “a Triumph for London, for Sport – a Triumph for Britain” But it was nothing compared to what was just broadcast.
Danny Boyle and british artists did really deliver. No rolling stones there was a good thing -not much sympathy for the devil. The composition and performance of “Im Gonna Win” by Muse was a masterpiece, it stood out dark and thrilling, it represented the hard competitive spirit honestly.
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At one point a cannon – symbol of aggression is wheeling around while leonardo machines are flying and cycling around representing invention, as the camera sees the cannon the accompanying lyrics are “where did we go wrong”
Every coincidence in a production like this is checked, and it was replete with humane subtle and explicit messages from start to finnish. A truly great production.
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Thanks Boyle and London and all.
I trust Theroux is paying a few shekels to Shelley.
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His stuff is pure Ozymandias
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http://www.potw.org/archive/potw46.html
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and relevant to all who are born of woman. All who strive will fall.
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Their tragedy is our comedy.
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Our comedy is their tragedy.
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My spending is your income.
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My income is your spending.
“Why do countless people all over the world go along with the war on terror? Why do so many people call for a police state control grid? A major component to a full understanding of why this kind of governmental and corporate corruption is to discover the modern science of mind control and social engineering.”
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http://alternatenewsmedia2012.wordpress.com/2012/06/02/mass-mind-control-through-network-television/
Thank-you ‘Cryptonym’ for the ‘killinghope’ link – a nice little primer to help understand the arming and financing of terrorists in the Syrian civil war.
Clark: You’re a good fellow, and I’m not sure what the problem is right now. It’s obviously more than just this blog. Take it easy, eh? Good wishes to you – I hope things work out. You have my email, send something please.
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Suhayl: Thank you, and please give me a little while to digest, read all the other posts and make a reply in a couple of days. Been very bogged down recently (new job, new bike too – these things are savage on time!)
Cryptonym: You’d have to be a particularly wide-eyed sap to actually believe that guff you put down about Alex Jones. Jones is a completely shameless liar, who puts himself over as a the fearless truth-teller you pretend he is – you’ve followed up the lie with some more lies, to make the original one seem a bit more credible.
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It’s kind of hard to take any other point you have seriously after that. On petroleum, for instance. “Growth in demand has long outstripped supply”, you say. Sure. That’s why all these refineries are being limited or shut down, right? Despite a well known excess in supply. And production is being capped, as an obviously provable fact? Good Lord, it’s not possible to wade into a single tiny point you write without being obliged to write sentences in refutation! Nothing you write could be further from the truth.
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That’s why it’s tough to take your Alex Jones types seriously – your lies and distortions are compounded into such density, that it takes spluttering minutes to unpack what you come out with in a single breath! Just take that “Obama conspiracy” pack of utter lie as exhibit #1 – the lies come so thick and fast by the halfway mark, one feels totally beset!
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Alex Jones is neither “interesting [nor] credible”. He’s a shameless liar and charlatan, preying upon the weak-minded and gullible that are just above the level of teabaggers. Sorry, Cryptonym, to see that you fall squarely in that category.
“Alex Jones is a completely shameless liar, who puts himself over as a the fearless truth-teller”
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Can you provide evidence to back up these specific accusations Glenn UK. Alex Jones is a good showman it can’t be doubted, but its hard to doubt his overall integrity or passion.Do you really believe Obama is a good guy?? You have heard of the totaltarian NDAA act and his weekly drone sprees accross the world i take it?