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.
I’m seeing a lot of ad hominem here, Cheeba. Nothing much by the way of rational discussion. But I’ll try again.
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You are trying, without actually using the term, to present me as a racist. My objection is to mass immigration, with very poor controls, into a heavily populated country whose social services were not designed for it, and are under heavy financial and political pressure. Peripherally, I object to the mass message that this is a good thing. I don’t think it is. I think diversity nullifies the concept of nationhood, and that nationhood is the only likely defence against becoming an amorphous global mass of work units.
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I don’t know if you are…what’s the ok word these days, Caucasian?..or not. It occurs to me that if you aren’t, I have probably offended you. Sorry if so.
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Yes, our culture is heterogeneous. Yes, British, if it means anything, means Celtic+Roman+Saxon+Norman+Huguenot+Jewish+etcetera. But each wave of incomers has been until recently relatively small, and assimilation into the mix has occurred without having to observe the special needs of the incomers as if they were in their country of origin. When in England, they did as the English did. Yes, even the Romans. There were ghettos and enclaves: they disappeared. The East End Jews prospered and moved out to Hendon and Essex, to be replaced by Jamaicans and Bangladeshis. They had time to do so, the Ugandan Asians likewise. But my feeling is that mixed-Britain is now being overwhelmed and that while we once rejected economic migrants from countries with which we had no connection, we are now embracing them with open arms, to the acute detriment of those who have been here for generations. Of whatever colour, creed or political stance.
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You will of course pick holes in this. It is much easier to do that than formulate your own stance, and I don’t blame you.
Whoops. Embracing people with open arms is probably beyond the powers of even an evil corporatist.
You don’t have facts or experience, Komodo. You have a ‘feeling’. Go and look at some facts before you start your random accusations. The UK is being ‘overwhelmed’? By whom? Where? Why?
Clearly, for those unable to look at Wikipedia, it is not. There are already strict rules for eligibility, and have been for years, and now a cap of 24,100 people a year. As Suhayl pointed out, immigration is *good* for a country.
But as usual with people who try and turn on others in times of economic hardship (otherwise known as ‘shitstirring’), it is unclear who the target is. Polish people – most of whom do not settle in this country? People with different shades of skin who have the temerity to take part in a ‘British’ celebration even though they are British? Refugees? Who has someone decently pointed out above either live desperate lives under the poverty net or are banged up in places like Yarlswood, where mothers went on hunger strike for five weeks in protest against the evil and inhuman conditions. What ‘special needs’ are ‘we having to observe’? Oh, is this about mosques and Muslims?
But in fact you seem to have a problem with something you sneeringly call ‘multiculti’. My stance, like CheebaCow’s, I guess, is that I have no problem at all with neighbours who are Somali, Tamil, Pakistani, Jamaican, Greek, Polish and more. But do tell me of your upsetting experience with this fictional’mass unskilled migration’.
The Olympics is mass-distraction. To bring your attention back to more important issues like The Leveson inquiry into media standards is being stage run by Jews to protect Zionist Rupert Murdoch’s criminal network (which reaches into the very heart of Westminster) from being dismantled.
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Mr Murdoch is a great friend of Israel so it is saddening to learn that both Leveson and QC Jay are Jewish. Oh, I hear your (pre-programmed) cries, but exactly the same thing was said when Goldstone was appointed as the UN investigator to Cast Lead and look what happened there, the whole report ended up being binned after Goldstone did his infamous U-turn. This meant that not a single UN resolution condemning Israel’s use of banned weapons on civilians during Cast Lead was even discussed, let alone questioning why the report was rubbished by it own author within weeks of it’s release.
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I’m not saying Jews are not honest but it is clear that they can be coerced by a foreign nation and therefore can not be relied on in a position involving the investigation of crimes by fellow religionists, particularity as their own religious dogma states that they are not bound to honour any oaths except between themselves, which renders “I swear to tell the truth…” totally meaningless.
Try the schools that all have to suddenly deal with 10 – 15 different languages, classes with small %’s being native speakers.
Then you have the NHS and other health agencies that have to deal with the influx of Immigrants.Communication and cultural differences are massive.
There are the local authorities that struggle to make sure that all of there publications are in the main languages and alphabets. Blair n Co never gave these things a thought.
They’ll agree with Komodo that they are being underfunded and overwhelmed.
Labour have admitted to making immigration easier. That’s social engineering. It has been a catastrophe. Nothing wrong with lots of different colours and flavours but we should have shown a bit more respect for our own culture / s, languages , regions of which Britain has many, before we left the gate open.
It’s irresponsible for Britain to give passports out to people just because they can run,jump or swim faster than the aborigines.
As for the Poles going home ? Some will. Up in Scozland there already was a thriving Polish community after the war and the new arrivals feel pretty comfortable.In fact was speaking to one who shall vote for Independence.
Many of the ones who you class as unskilled Techi. have qualifications but they need to be translated and accepted by the UK before they can practice.
Immigration is a mess and its got bugger all to do with racism.
Clark I wish you had not singled me out. There is somwething wrong about that counter. I first went online in May 2007 and did not discover this blog immediately. If I had posted 200,000 comments in 5 years (and I have had two longish breaks in that time, one for illness and one for political reasons) I would have been posting 109 posts every day of every year!! Sorry but the count is nonsense.
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On ZBC this morning, there was a report about Romney’s ‘foot in mouth’ continuing tour to Israel and then to Poland. He has apparently said that the Israeli GNP is many times higher than the Palestinians because of their ‘culture’ or something equally stupid. Radio 4 Today allowed a Republican congressman Chris Smith on this morning to support Romney, to spread the poison, to repeat the lie about Admadinejad wanting to wipe Israel off the map, repeating anti Hamas untruths, and so on. Naughtie did correct the GNP comparison by stating that the Palestinians were under a military Occupation, but he allowed the other stuff through.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/b006qj9z/console 49 mins in
Oh, again, these generalised, shitstirring assertions. So tedious. For real experience, teachers I know in Newham, which has the second most diverse population in the UK, rejoice in teaching an eclectic range of students. They are overwhelmed, not by the demographics, but by the crazy pressures of the government imposed curriculum and the paperwork. This is country-wide, not borough-specific. Children who arrive with little English learn with astonishing rapidity: they need to and they want to. Appalling to dismiss them as a problem.
“It’s irresponsible for Britain to give passports out to people just because they can run,jump or swim faster than the aborigines.”
What have aborigines, those exploited, dismissed people, have to do with this? You betray yourself.
There never has been ‘an open gate’. Look at the facts and the history. Also look at previous discussions on this board: people who sling around this nonsense always slink away in the end. But I have work to do.
Just fatfingered and lost a post. Recap, please check whether your target lacks facts and experience before assaulting. Please provide evidence of your own superior f&e also.
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As Donnie says, this is nothing to do with racism. I remember seeing a film whose name I forget about an Italian immigrant’s first experience of Australia, which was mentioned as an example of a diverse culture earlier. Maybe it’s out of date, but the very clear message was “when in Oz, do as the Ozzies do, or bugger off”. The shrift that whingeing Poms get there is notorious for its brevity to this day. I don’t think there’s too much wrong with that attitude myself.
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Norman Finkelstein seems pretty impervious …….
ROFL, the poor bastard was kicked out of his job, he was smeared, and harangued out of US. It never did him any harm, did it? Fact that zionism is the epitome of racism does not come into any debate though.
It was GDP not GNP that Romney was talking about.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-19055643
@John Goss: “What do you have to gain by trying to belittle my observations?”
My apologies. However I think that speculations about conspiracies should not be labelled as fact. The observation that there are plenty of Youtube videos on a claimed conspiracy does not make their content true. I wouldn’t call the theories about Christ from The Da Vinci Code fact.
“They are overwhelmed, not by the demographics, but by the crazy pressures of the government imposed curriculum and the paperwork. This is country-wide, not borough-specific.”
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Yes, and also by the breakdown of family discipline – not the case with second-generation kids of West Indians and subcontinentals for sure. But look at some of the third and fourth generations asserting their alternative “culture”…a culture which the locals adopt with enthusiasm, little Tim Westwoods. As a matter of fact, I usually see the ones who make it to higher education. There are relatively few, and I know the admissions people do not discriminate.
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“Children who arrive with little English learn with astonishing rapidity: they need to and they want to.” Once again, the arriving generation has until recently wanted to assimilate. Diversity was an irrelevance to these. They’re not the ones asking us to move the goalposts.
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I could also point to Chinese communities recently reported to have no more than basic, or no English after three generations. None of what you state is universally true.
““It’s irresponsible for Britain to give passports out to people just because they can run,jump or swim faster than the aborigines.”
What have aborigines, those exploited, dismissed people, have to do with this? You betray yourself.”
No, you betray yourself. Find a good dictionary.
“There never has been ‘an open gate’. Look at the facts and the history.”
There are controls, yes. But they are inadequate. And they are fewer than three or four decades ago when we only permitted Commonwealth immigration and did not consider economic hardship a qualifier.
“Also look at previous discussions on this board: people who sling around this nonsense always slink away in the end. But I have work to do.”
LOL
Passerby:
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I know Finkelstein has suffered a lot for his scholarship, I just meant that he is a Jew that Israel is unable to control. I think the suggestion by Chest Pain that Jews are fundamentally loyal to Israel first is ridiculous.
Looks like agent Cameron’s school-pal, sacked Tory MP Aidan Burley had is own vision of a good Olympics opening ceremony which he put into words on Twitter by saying, “Thank God the athletes have arrived! Now we can move on from leftie multi-cultural crap. Bring back red arrows, Shakespeare and the Stones!”
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So what’s wrong with The Queen, NHS and James Bond?
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Personally I would have depicted bombed out buildings, crying children searching for food and the British SAS dressed up as Arabs carrying bombs.
“Personally I would have depicted bombed out buildings, crying children searching for food and the British SAS dressed up as Arabs carrying bombs.”
No, Mark. That’s scheduled for the 2112 Olympics. Suitably sanitised as part of our glorious past, it will be fed directly into our descendants’* brains via their compulsory prefrontal implants, and they will be required to work two weeks assembling widgets at Macdonald’sMicrosoftMorganStanley to pay for the ecstasy the show induces.
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*Thank God I haven’t got any, poor little virtual sods.
Fascinating – and sad. As FedUp wrote, you just have to scratch the surface. Nothing much changes, it seems. CheebaCow and Technicolour, very well said.
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CheebaCow, I recognise the political potency of some hip-hop and to some extent am aware of its manifestations in various parts of the world (though not to the extent you are!). Thanks a million for the links, very much appreciated, they look exciting – will definitely check them out.
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“I recognise that lots of people do like it and identify with it in the way the one can with music. I also recognise that like most art-forms, it is polyvalent, it has multiple referents and you know, some/many art-forms have both empowering and limiting dynamics – they don’t always align tightly with politics or political orientation. Read Robin Denselow on this, for example… Like punk music, in Britain, it is thoroughly British (and in France, it is thoroughly French and in Palestine, it is thoroughly Palestinian).” Me.
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So what I was saying was, although I am not always attracted to the sound (I am sometimes) and while I guess to some extent I’ve reacted to the limiting expectation on the part of some white (and other) arts progammers in the UK that hip-hop is ‘what black and brown people do’, I am aware of the importance of hip-hop as a socio-political phenomenon and that millions of people are attacted to its sound. I was also re-stating (since clearly it needed re-stated) that it is a British (and Palestinian, and [various regions of] African, and French, etc.) art-form with grassroots specificities depending on the locale and the political/social situation.
Mary, I don’t Clark was singliong you out, I think he was celebrating a milsestone for the blog. I don’t think he meant that you personally had posted 100,000 posts; it was simply that you’d happened to post the 100,000th post (in total, from everyone) on this blog. Possibly, Giles’s comment just after it may have led you to suppose otherwise.
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I find your posts and links very illuminating and useful and they have expanded the compass of my knowledge on many matters; I think your contribution to this blog has been excellent and powerful. You’ve also always been pleasant to me, which I greatly appreciate.
I think the suggestion by Chest Pain that Jews are fundamentally loyal to Israel first is ridiculous.
He may have a point there, often times when the imperatives of personal life, work, tradition, family ties, and religion are mixed, these combined trump any other lines of thought.
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Look around and you will find the worst excesses of the settlers that are getting excused by the same diaspora whom lament the Warsaw ghetto, and the property theft by the Nazi, some seven decades ago, whilst fully aware that the said settlers are committing their theft, and murder spree as of now in the twenty first century.
Muslims (and Arabs) are not “fundamentally loyal” to Saudi Arabia or (in addition to Israel, the other state in recent times created on the basis largely of religious denomination/communalism) Pakistan (thank goodness), Roman Catholics are not “fundamentally loyal” to the Vatican City, and Hindus and Sikha are not “fundamentally loyal” to India. Similarly, Jews as a cohort are not “fundamentally loyal” to Israel – what a terrible statement to make/support. It’s simply not true. That we are even discussing it in this way suggests omething rather odious, I think, which goes along with my timely reminder of The Daily Mail’s longstanding approach in relation to ‘immigration’ being a template for this kind of dangerous, racist nonsense. For me, I am not “fundamentally loyal to any flag” – in the WW1 sense – just to people, all people, everywhere and right here, where I am in this little street.
So, the usual stuff:
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a) There’s always been immigration anyway
b) We’re all mixed-race anyhow
c) The bankers get away with murder while you worry about immigration
d) Ugly heads reared, the sight of black/brown people, Daily Mail… blah, blah, blah
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Noticeably absent, as ever, is an argument in favour of the mass-immigration we have experienced in recent decades – merely attempts to excuse it, hide it, belittle those who oppose it. I think many of the commenters here, and to an extent the modern left in general, view any criticism of immigration policy as an attack on immigrants themselves. Living the kind of warped existence where everyone bar yourselves and your own politics is deemed fascist, where everyone else is a knuckle-dragging racist, a potential Hitler, it’s a sort of emotional gut reaction that must make you feel terribly good about yourselves.
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What mustn’t be allowed to take hold is the idea that ordinary, tolerant people, who do not have any affiliation with nationalist or racialist politics and who are perfectly aware of the contributions made by immigrants in the past, have had enough of what they see as massive and unprecedented change, made not just without them having been asked, but against their will. “Nobody asked us” is what you most commonly hear. Nobody asked us if we wanted a war with Iraq. Nobody asked us if we should bail out the banking class. You’d agree, there’s a total disregard for the will of the people in that. But when it comes to immigration, you place yourselves on the side of the elites and mock and ridicule anyone who dares object. And those who can’t be labelled hypocrites because they have a bit of Norman, Jew or Irish in them, are to be disregarded anyway because they get their opinions from the Daily Mail. Nobody, it seems, can see with their own eyes, because they have all been brainwashed by the right-wing media. I must remember, next time I pass through Tooting, Totton, or Tottenham, to avert my gaze at what has become of my country, because it’s all an invention of the right-wing media.
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Opposition to mass-immigration must always be portrayed as the preserve of racists, bigots and ignorant little Englanders. They must accept the fact of a greater Pakistan existing in England because Angles, Romans and Jews came here a long time ago. Whole areas of our cities must be made to resemble foreign countries because, hey, we’re all descended from Africans anyway. Dozens of entirely alien cultures can be introduced because there were Welsh, Scots and English here already, so we were already a multi-cultural land. If you oppose it then you’re only the latest in a long line of those who have sought to blame all our ills on foreigners and therefore you are discredited. And when all else fails, you are, of course, a racist. Are these really the arguments for? Smug, patronizing disingenuous evasion of the issues is what I would call them.
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So let’s hear it. Why do you support the settling of millions of foreigners in this land? Craig likes it for all the hot women it brings in. Suhayl reckons on a mixing of cultures being a good thing, though I don’t see much evidence of the mixing. Who supports globalization and the global movement of labour along with wealth? Who is for cheap labour? Or is it that a country with an ever-decreasing sense of shared history, culture and identity makes fertile ground for a particular cause or belief to take hold? What do you hope to gain from it and why?
Komodo “Once again, the arriving generation has until recently wanted to assimilate. Diversity was an irrelevance to these. They’re not the ones asking us to move the goalposts.”
What, you’re being made to listen to (British) rap, are you? Or being forced to add Peking duck to your school menus? Perhaps you are lamenting the loss of a great British Sainsbury’s site to a mosque?
What condition of ‘economic hardship’?
The points-based system is composed of five tiers, described by the UK Border Agency as follows:
* Tier 1 – for highly skilled individuals, who can contribute to growth and productivity;
* Tier 2 – for skilled workers with a job offer, to fill gaps in the United Kingdom workforce;
* Tier 3 – for limited numbers of low-skilled workers needed to fill temporary labour shortages;
* Tier 4 – for students;
* Tier 5 – for temporary workers and young people covered by the Youth Mobility Scheme, who are allowed to work in the United Kingdom for a limited time to satisfy primarily non-economic objectives
Oh, I see, you’re attacking the refugees now, are you? The UK is imprisoning without trial and sending back people who have been tortured. You might want to think again about the canard that anyone who suffers ‘economic hardship’ is entitled to live here.
But given that you haven’t provided a single example of how you, are anyone else, is suffering from this lie of ‘unskilled mass immigration’, I doubt it.
‘Aborigine’: you seem to be referring to the nonsense definition, when applied to the UK of “A member of the indigenous or earliest known population of a region”.
Cue pathetic insistence on an ‘original population’ here, which is then shown to be an eclectic mix of nationalities since day 1.
Passerby:
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To me it sounds like the same paranoia as when US Protestants thought the Pope would control JFK. The Jews I know don’t care about Israel, they just want to make a happy life in the country they were born in.
“I’m not saying Jews are not honest but”
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I’m not a racist but… ,
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A perfect example of a captive mind. Jews are no more a race than Mormons or Jehovah Witnesses. If you don’t follow the ‘but’ then you miss the point don’t you? The point was not racist but I understand that through media conditioning and brainwashing you couldn’t see that.
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If I say that Tony Blair’s chum Lord Levy was not an impartial Middle East envoy because he was Jewish am I being racist? Goldstone produced a good report and then retracted under pressure from fellow Jews, including his own family, who ostracised him.
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Just to recap, Jews are Eastern Europeans who converted to Judaism around the 8th Century. They have no connection whatsoever to the Hebrews of the Bible. In fact the word “Jew” has been steadily added to the Bible during the last four hundred years.
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I would strongly urge reading the Shlomo Sand book ‘The Invention of the Jewish people” to avoid further public displays of ignorance. Also, understanding what the word ‘Jew’ means and where it comes from would be an advantage. http://www.biblebelievers.org.au/jew.htm
Thanks Komodo you have presented the other ‘fork’ in the road ahead. I believe 2012 is the year of transition. The subjugation of Syria followed by the demolition of Iran then succeeded by manipulation, Olympic style authority and control is credible.
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Resistance or acceptance is the choice that will determine whether the transition will happen with cataclysmic changes or gradual peace and tranquility. Both will be an awakening to which there is no return.
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We are either the many or the few.
Has anyone else heard that Prince Bandar has been assassinated? For those that don’t know he was coordinating Saudi efforts in Syria. Apparently he ordered the bombing in Damascus which killed a number of the Syrian government.
Seems that it’s true. See how long it takes the MSM to report on that. Saudi Arabia is in crises, could go any day now.
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http://tehrantimes.com/middle-east/100129-saudi-spy-chief-prince-bandar-assassinated-report
I’m sure you all remember Mr Bandar.
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2007/jun/07/bae1
Chest Pain, you said:
“I’m not saying Jews are not honest but it is clear that they can be coerced by a foreign nation.”
Don’t fall into the trap of lazy thinking; it makes you sound racist.
It is not the British Jews that are the problem in supporting Israel whatever it does; it is the British Zionist Organisation and its supporters (80% of the Tory party for example). The majority of Zionist supporters in the USA are Christian Fundamentalists.
Having said that the *Israel Survey 2010 on British Jewish attitudes found:
1. For 82% of respondents, Israel plays either a ‘central’ or ‘important but not central’ role in their Jewish identities.
2. 72% categorize themselves as Zionists; 21% do not see themselves as Zionists and 7% are unsure.
*Institute for Jewish Policy Research (July 2010)
Mary, that’s 100,000 in total, from all contributors, including spam. It just happened to be you that submitted the 100,000th comment.
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Suhayl got it right. I saw Giles’ comment and almost commented to contradict him, but then I thought it was obvious that he was just being silly and that I’d have been pedantic to point it out.
BANDAR IS DEAD. This has huge implications for the region. Read it direct from Mossa…er, these guys.
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http://www.debka.com/article/22225/Saudi-silence-on-intelligence-chief-Bandar%E2%80%99s-fate-denotes-panic