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.
Passerby:
Euphemisms for that state are so common here and in many places, no-one could wilfully misconstrue which place was referred to, and someone already claimed ‘shitty strip of land’.
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Peak Oil is certainly more interesting than immigration, didn’t we all agree to drop the divide-and-rule poisoned meat and try something constructive, any attempt to micro-manage immigration/emigration is deeply sinister and doomed to failure and wide abuse.
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Glenn’s assertions are so wooly that it isn’t even possible to determine from his outbursts whether he actually disputes that oil, like many things is finite. Or that we have burned at least half of the gross oil supply in roughly a hundred years and what is left, the other half has to last till eternity and there are things for which there is no substitute. The active US military uses more in a day than many small countres consume in a year. No-one is predicting suddenly soon there will be no oil, that won’t ever be the case but that there will be much less of it and some will be derived from costly and environmentally damaging sources. Over the next 30 years prices will despite short-term fluctuations climb skywards.
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Below follows more speculative stuff, a distillation of information and thoughts though Glenn has already laid down rules forbidding stream of consciousness stuff. Too bad.
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We are maladapted to deal with that inevitable inescapable situation, private motoring will more quickly than anyone thinks be curtailed, the military, militarised police, fire and ambulance services will monopolise fuel; abandoned cars will become roadside landmarks, food production and distribution heavily impacted, advanced societies will collapse. Only the fittest who can queue to exhange their ration credits for essential foodstuffs at the denuded supermarkets and walk some hostile miles back home will survive.
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The wisdom of conservation of our north sea oil was never considered, it was pissed away at rock bottom prices right through the eighties, at American encouragement, to beggar the USSR which had its income cut to the bone from the low prices obtained for its own oil resulting from the prolonged cheap glut and combined with its also US instigated Afghanistan miseries, collapsed. Our nations black-gold gift from the seas sacrificed as our heavy share of the price of creating the power-drunk monstrosity the US has become post fake ‘cold war’.
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America has temporarily secured additional short-term stop-gap oil from South-America, the UK and Europe put the squeeze on Norway to make up their shortfall and to continue accepting funny money virtual dollars in lieu of payment, or face another ‘lone-nut’ incident.
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Access to all middle east oil is precarious, all is subject to the whims of Israel’s unstable paranoid and extremist governing parties and the US’ proxy warriors stage-managed and their off-script unpredictable freelance antics.
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The one seller with immediate spare production and reserved (about just five years of current total consumption, fully exploited) and perfect willingness to sell, is being boycotted, but is serene, having calmly endured vindictive shifting sanctions since Pres. Carter’s last days. Iran is free to sell to anyone unintimidated by the US’ unilateral blockade and wouldn’t want worthless US paper in exchange, so other currencies, precious metals, goods in kind and bartering will take place; the oil market is not one whole anymore, so quoted barrel prices detach further from real world conditions and buyers need not acquire dollar credits to negotiate purchases, the dollar weakens. Hyper-inflation.
Agree with Kim Gavins view of the closing fiasco, nothing but an blatant advert for London, stale, 60’s claptrap, trying to benefit from dross.
This is the true reality behind the multicultural gloss applied. This morning one was able to comment and comment I did, later to be axed, most likely in support of the English Chess Federation, seemingly riddled with racialists who had a good jolly in Austria.
It reeks!
http://www.edp24.co.uk/news/crime/racism_allegations_overshadow_trip_of_marshland_st_james_chess_team_representing_england_in_austria_1_1480749
Cryptonym
….. the oil market is not one whole anymore ….
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The latter day Pearl Harbor aka 9/11 was the swan song of the voracious and glutenous bunch of consumers whose parasitic existence and its flawed and fraudulent systems have been the standards to be adhered to and emulated.
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As late Gore Vidal put it; “the day my cousin gore was defeated and Bu$h won, was the end day of the republic”.
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You have rightly highlighted the pressing issues that ought to be addressed instead of the tertiary and side issues that have been dominating the thread so far. Fact that some find the luxury of time to spend on plying their fiddle whilst the world is going to hell in hand basket is an all too apparent syndrome, given the complexity of the issues that are facing us all at the beginning of 21st century.
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Fact is Bu$h was selected and set in place because the Yanky Plutocracy were fully aware of the crash of their Ponzy economics, and were in the foreknowledge of the collapse of Enron. The insiders knew Kenny Boy (the smartest men in the room) was about to go under, and he was to be followed by many others who had pushed the fraudulent economics to hitherto unknown territories.
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The collapse of the defunct twin towers that would have cost a king’s ransom to be dismantled floor by floor and taken to the burial sights for their asbestos content. The fraudsters being in the knowledge that their profiteering had eaten away at the fundamentals of the market economy, were engaged in re-engineering the arrangements, yet could not help to take the last few free bites out of the free-lunch economic systems they had enjoyed so much.
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However, as ever the plebeians who are so used to nicking a pencil and goiong to confessions for their crimes were all too readily gullible enough to accept the cock and bull stories as their predecessor in the last lot of wars.
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Must dash, you have pointed rightly so to the dystopian future, whence personal movement is restricted, and the armies of robots and cameras control the population, and “humans” are more and more are dependent on various “credit” schemes ran by the corporates that employ these. In a fashion after the miners, scrip pay structures. A truly horrible and unimaginable way of “life”.
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[Mod/Jon: Posted as “Ned Kelly”, but same IP as “Passerby” – nickname fixed by mod]
Chris TT’s review of the London Olympics closing ceremony is summed up nicely by a one a person leaving a comment, saying: ‘It’s like a Daily Mail version of liberal outrage’
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Thats could apply to many people, i won’t mention any names obviously
(corrected version)
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Chris TT’s review of the London Olympics closing ceremony is summed up nicely by one person leaving a comment, saying: ‘It’s like a Daily Mail version of liberal outrage’
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Thats could apply to many people, i won’t mention any names obviously
‘It’s like a Daily Mail version of liberal outrage’ – Nah, mate. Did you not see poor Liam? It’s like a Mancunian Recherche de Temps Perdu.
Mind you, liberal outrage is a pretty fine tag. About time Liberals started doing something less bendy. What the Mail has to do with it, I can’t guess.
“Fact that some find the luxury of time to spend on plying their fiddle whilst the world is going to hell in hand basket is an all too apparent syndrome, given the complexity of the issues that are facing us all at the beginning of 21st century”
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This is a valid point, as is Cryptonym summing up of the dangers of where we are heading. But i find that if all these issues are pointed out at once, the vast majority of people recoil in horror and knee jerk pavlovianism. In other words it is simply too much for most people to accept and comprehend all at once.Hence, maybe one thing at a time may be more ‘palatible’ in general.
‘It’s like a Daily Mail version of liberal outrage’
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Funny that that gets your antenna up Technicolour!
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But yes Liam was awful – his voice was just totally different. I thoroughly enjoyed the cars driving around and the Spice girls though – that was probably the highlight for me. The rest,especially the attempt to exploit the John Lennon peace message was nausetingly hypocrytical
Well, I quite like Chris TT.
Not sure if playing ‘Imagine’ to a cabal of warmongers is hypocritical. Possibly hopeful?
“You have rightly highlighted the pressing issues that ought to be addressed instead of the tertiary and side issues that have been dominating the thread so far. Fact that some find the luxury of time to spend on plying their fiddle whilst the world is going to hell in hand basket is an all too apparent syndrome, given the complexity of the issues that are facing us all at the beginning of 21st century”
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Since Ned Kelly was both a rogue and a brave man, I’d be interested in your suggestions, “Ned”, as to what exactly we should be doing. In practical terms please (since, if you are who I think you are, you write quite a bit here too, when maybe you should be out manning barricades, or whatever you propose we should be doing.)
“Well, I quite like Chris TT.
Not sure if playing ‘Imagine’ to a cabal of warmongers is hypocritical. Possibly hopeful?”
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Wouldnt that be nice. The sponsers and partners tell you all you need to know.
http://www.london2012.com/about-us/the-people-delivering-the-games/olympic-partners/
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Same difference sadly.
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Peace is war and war is peace and all that,
Why is it not news that the British Chess Federation virtually cast out their own competitors from the international youth competition with racist slurs and innuendo?
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Did they demoralise Leeysa, Ibrahim and Yousouf bin Suhayl with their racialism?
Why bother to read the tea leaves and Olympic analegies, what it really meant that a did this and x did taht, when the reality is that British Sporting Institutions, such as this cranky teapot outfit, are still riddled with racism.
Its not just the police force, its inherent and it will not change, not that anybody is interested.
the interest in racism for some seem to come from the Hope not hate email they receive ever so often, Absolution through membership, bravo, that will set the mind at rest, for a while.
Interesting that, as far as I can tell, there was no coverage in the UK of Iran’s stunning medals success at the London Olympics.
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Iran came 17th in the Medals table – that’s almost the same position the UK was in 4 years ago in Beijing (we were 16th then). It was far and away the highest-placed Middle Eastern/majority Muslim country (apart from Kazakhstan). 12 medals: 4 Golds, 5 Silvers, 3 Bronzes. They did better than Spain, Brazil, South Africa, India, the Czech Republic, Jamaica (in spite of the magnificent Bolt and Blake), Denmark, Poland, Turkey, Malaysia, Kenya, Romania, Canada and a whole load of other countries. That is a huge achievement.
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If the USA/UK was interested in peace vis a vis Iran, they’d be trumpeting this example of positive, peaceful engagement. Of course, we know that they are not interested in peace. It was really annoying when, a few years ago, the US regime snubbed President Khatami’s approaches.
Well done, the athletes of Iran!!
On the Zionist Fortress Americas plan to take over the US Joe Vialls wrote presciently way back in 2003 that:
“plans were then added to cripple at least 50% of active service US military units, and disarm the civilian populations of N. and S.America, after staging a comprehensive series of high-profile “lone-nut” massacres in school yards and elsewhere.”
Did he say elsewhere?
Like cinemas and Sikh temples…….?
SCISSORS PLEASE I WANT TO CENSOR MYSELF….
“Or maybe Cowellian karaoke artists just don’t last. And the geniuses die too young. Sad.” Nuid.
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Yes, I know.
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Cryptonym, with the greatest respect, whatever you think of Glenn’s expressed views on this or that, let me say he is most certainly not a troll, but a respected longstanding commentator on this site.
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Komodo, as Ace the Face might have said, there’s nothing wrong with scooters, desert boots, neat clothing, Franco-Italian hairstyles and groovy music. It’s an attitude of mind.
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Yes, good article by Chris TT. Valid points, if somewhat predictable positioning. I agree very much with his general points about exoticisation (see also under Edward Said and, uh, me). It’s one critique, not sure it’s the only possible reading of all the facets of the event, though (see under Crab and some others, on this thread). I’m also not sure the word, “dangerous” or the phrase “banality of evil” (which makes us think of clerks dipping pens in inkwells at Aushwitz railway terminal) would be appropriate. The use of such hyperbolic language tends to undermine the validity of the critique. And, unlike Chris TT, I definitely don’t like Russell Brand’s persona/material.
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Oh, and btw, Akram Khan isn’t Indian, he’s of Bangladeshi origin. His dance drew on South Asian styles, he is trained in kathak and so I suppose the dance might legitimately be described as, “Indian”. This may seem pedantic, but it is a common theme I see running through much (liberal and conservative) British commentary and arts funding/gatekeeping – Pakistan(i) (esp.) is used to depict bad things about South Asia, it’s a ‘red flag’ word and people will urge/pressure one not to use it; India(n) is used to communicate good things and opens up streams of funding; and Bangladesh(i) is sort of in between, all in the ongoing imperial divide-and-rule pecking-order which is branded into the Jungian subconscious of this country.
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And Khan’s dance was cut by NBC – why??
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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/olympics/9436048/Akram-Khan-disappointed-NBC-failed-to-show-his-dance-at-Olympics-opening-ceremony.html
But Chris TT makes a good point about some arts ‘middle agents’ who have no creativity and who think in lazy ways (esp. about anything to do with the ‘exotic’).
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In a nutshell, the Opening Ceremony was a carefully choreographed, possibly domestically-directed (foreigners often didn’t ‘get’ it) and sometimes engagingly risky work of art; the Closing Ceremony was basically pretty ‘safe’ internationally appealing Stadium Pop (and some acts performed better than others). Given that context, I’m not sure what else he expected.
Eight attacks in 11 days on houses of worship, mainly mosques
http://www.salon.com/2012/08/14/eight_attacks_11_days/
Yes, know far too much about the sponsors. Doesn’t stop the artists trying to have a crack back though.
Wow, so the ‘most watched US TV event in history’ (http://sports.yahoo.com/news/olympics-most-watched-us-tv-event-ever-nbc-162656607–oly.html) cut Akram Kham’s tribute to peace and community and liberation and hope? It is being reported (though usually, wrongly described as a tribute to the victims of 7/7) and the hashtag NBCfail was trending on twitter.
Two elderly gentlemen, one a policeman the other a researcher discuss 7-7:
http://projectavalon.net/forum4/showthread.php?46942-7-7-Kollerstrom-and-Farrell-Are-Dead.
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[Mod/Jon: Posted as “David Cromwell”, but same IP as “David Edwards” – nickname fixed by mod]
Ned Kelly,
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Pearl harbor was of course a successful provocation much like the American incitement for war in the Persian Gulf today together with same embargoes or more correctly illegal sanctions of a sovereign State. Britain had managed to decode the Japanese cipher and passed the intelligence to America warning of the attack. Americans died in numbers similar to the WTC catalyst in 2001 70 years on.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCollum_memo
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I believe the recent collision where USS Porter hit a Japanese owned oil tanker in the Straits of Hormuz was meant to create an environmental disaster, a chaotic cover or casus belli for further provocation and driven ‘retaliation’ in Iranian waters.
Hi all. Please only use one handle when posting, to avoid the impression that you are using another name to agree with your own posts. I will modify nicknames back to their rightful values if I see this happening, as above.
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If people wish to change their handle permanently, as has happened in the past, that’s fine – but please be transparent about it 🙂
Chris Jones: Perhaps I have misread your points, and you might have done the same actually. I don’t like Obama’s policies much more than Bush’s – in fact they are worse in some ways, although he doesn’t seem gung-ho to go around starting wars all the time.
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Concerning A.J’s lies, I did once put together a detailed list on the most egregious examples in ‘The Obama Deception’ – will see if I can find it. It was hard to watch. Admittedly, Jones does come up with interesting stuff now and then, but when he switched his Bush-bashing seamlessly to Obama bashing before Obama was even sworn in, I started having serious doubts about his integrity.
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AJ’s followers tend to be very much of the true-believer variety, massively into conspiracies and are rather worshipful of Jones, to a worrying degree and become nastily defensive when He is called into question.
Cryptonym: Sorry if I ever doubted your hero. But you seem to have forgotten all about ‘The Obama Deception’ and dropped that entirely from the discussion now, favouring to bang on about peak oil, and pretending that (a) I don’t know what it is, and (b) I’m denying its existence. But if you like beating up on a straw man, have at it dude!
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You say “Present supply does not meet current demand, demand is invariably predicted to increase and supply fall, the bottom of the barrel is already being scraped by enhanced recovery techniques.” Fascinating. How do you suppose people are still filling up if more oil is being used than actually being supplied? Petrol stations watering it down maybe? 😉
Had been debating (as is my wont) with someone v pro Obama (Guantanamo, drones?) but this piece is interesting about what the Republicans have been up to in the meantime:
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/08/06-0
PS David Edwards/Cromwell are the editors of Medialens; doubt that either would be posting the above.
Jon I assume that the two Davids posting here are not the two Davids, Cromwell and Edwards, co-editors of Medialens?
I haven’t dropped the matter, you Glenn introduced something of which I know nothing and couldn’t care less and I told you so, I’m not here to indulge your fantasies. If you’re so knowledgeable and keen on this subject, have at it, no-one is stopping you. It is you who have become nastily defensive and rude the instant Jones was mentioned casually in passing in a couple of frivolous posts by several posters. AJ is clearly your pet hate, with which you are brimming, not any one else’s non-existant ‘hero worship’ –deal with your issues.
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Temporarily recovered and recommissioned wells with poor yields and short life are plugging the gaps, tiny new finds, not enough in total to meet a few days global demand are trumpeted as vast new fields and petrol currently is around 5% ethanol, by the beginning of 2013, 10% ethanol mixes (E10) will be introduced throughout the EU with greater still ethanol proportions introduced thereafter and 5% mixes withdrawn by 2020.
Glenn_uk:
Yes,cross wires but i still disagree with you. Unfortunaetly for all of us, Alex Jones is being proved right about Bush and Obama – the Obama deception has proven to be eerily correct. It is disingenious of you to type ‘Concerning A.J’s lies’ as this has not been proven or backed up by yourself in any way, apart from ‘some list somewhere’ that you may or may not find.
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Your insinuation and attempts at discrediting him and anyone who might listen to him as ‘crazed worshippers’, shows, at best, a form of inverted snobbery. Are we all crazed worshippers because we might watch Emmerdale farm or the Antiques roashow every now and then? If your talking about 24 news disinformation by the BBC et al, maybe youd have a point
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“Are we all crazed worshippers because we might watch Emmerdale farm or the Antiques roashow every now and then?
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Yes
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Btw, everyone’s seen the Mash, haven’t they?
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WAYNE Hayes, a middle-aged sales executive from Carlisle, has expressed regrets about the Olympics closing ceremony beamed directly from his brain.
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Hayes, who organisers deemed to be the most typical man in Britain, curated the ceremony via special electrodes attached to his head which fed details of everything he likes into a giant computer. This information was then transmitted into the Olympic Park in the form of incredibly lifelike holograms.
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Hayes said: “I thought that everyone loves a bit of Annie Lennox and Oasis to get themselves in the party mood but judging by the four hundred thousand death threats on my Twitter feed this morning, apparently not.
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“All I wanted was to recreate the brilliant spectacle of an early 1990s Brit Awards show and I tried to do that by free associating acts with the first words that came into my head, hence Fatboy Slim/octopus, and Annie Lennox/Viking boat.”
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http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/arts-entertainment/45-year-old-salesman-apologises-for-closing-ceremony-2012081337959
Oh, and peak oil, much as the idea appeals
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http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/03/29/the-myth-of-peak-oil/
@Mary – pretty sure it is not they of MediaLens fame, though I expect that’s why the names were chosen. Possibly related to Apostate and his sockpuppets – dunno.
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Crytonym/Glenn/Chris – I will have a look at some of AJ’s stuff. I’ve avoided it in the past, tbh, since last I checked it tallied with the fear of “coming one-world government” and NWO predictions. Alternative explanation theories aside, I’m somewhat with Monbiot on this topic: more/better legal structures at an international level would probably a good thing (if, of course, they are democratic). I suspect if the US/UK/Israel (and all the rest) could be hauled in front of the ICC, it would get wide support from the Left.
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The government-will-take-our-guns rhetoric is another feature of the Tea-Party section of the American Right: most developed countries have sensible positions on gun control (plus of course a better welfare state). The two in combination result in less gun-related deaths per year.
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So even on two topics from my dim-n-distant memory, I’ll think he’s wrong (as opposed to crazy or manipulative). Notwithstanding I’ll give it a go, and call it educational!