Those coming from Central Asia, Bahrain, Qatar or Saudi Arabia to the Olympics, interested to see what life in a democracy feels like, will find it seems exactly like life at home in their dictatorship. 17,000 soldiers will be glowering over the venues, checking identity documents, stopping and searching. The mlitary will occupy residential buildings, be buzzing overhead, rolling down the streets and patrolling the river. There will be missiles on land, sea and air, though nobody knows what the threat is that this is supposed to counter.
What will make our dictatorship resident visitors feel especially at home is the contempt for the ordinary citizen. Not only will they have the military all over them and be subject to frequent stopping and questioning, they will be expected continually to get out of the way of their betters. Special VIP lanes on the road will allow officials to sweep by, while normal citizens will simply have to sit in gridlock and stew. Who cares? The military will stick missiles on your roof if they wish. What they are going to shoot down, and which bit of London it will land on, is not to be questioned.
Here in Ramsgate we are losing our regular train service to London completely for the duration. All the HS1 trains are being commandeered to run a shuttle service between Ebbsfleet and Stratford. 22 trains a day from Ramsgate are simply cancelled. Slow trains are available, but a journey normally 70 minutes will become – at the fastest possible – 2 hours and 35 minutes. A large number of commuters will simply be unable to get to work anything like on time, and have to spend door to door over seven hours a day in travelling as well as their working day. Nobody was consulted. Quite a few don’t yet know – there has been no determined effort to tell people. Leaflets are available in the ticket office if you ask for one.
But the leaflets might as well just say, “You are fucked, and we don’t care”.
The extra 3,500 military personnel it was today announced will be used at the games cover a shortfall in Group Four personnel. Group Four were providing 4,000 paid staff and 6,000 unpaid volunteers. It is the unpaid volunteer numbers which are short by 3,500.
Most people are not stupid. They may volunteer happily for sport or for charity, but to work for nothing to make tens of millions of pounds of profit for Group Four as it exploits them, plainly does not have universal appeal. Those 2,500 who have volunteered to work for nothing for G4S are the idiots in this story. How gullible can you be?
Bob Russell, MP for Colchester, today in parliament made the excellent point to Teresa May that Group Four (or G4S as they now call themselves) should not be employed because of their role in aiding and abetting Israel’s illegal activities in the West Bank and human rights abuse there. With breathtaking chutzpah Teresa May replied that it was this kind of valuable international experience that made Group Four the right company to provide security for the games.
Which brings me back to my point at the start. Those visiting from oppressive regimes will feel absolutely at home. That is the one and only thing you can trust Teresa May to ensure with grim efficiency.
Clark,
Out of curiosity try an onionrouter (tor) and let us know how that goes. Although you must remain aware that tor itself is compromised and take note to change your passwords after any communication.
,
Also do you want to elaborate a bit more about your cryptic messages? (undisclosed … ) Are you getting harassed?
Fedup, no, I’m not being harassed. A reader here e-mailed for some help with a laptop. I replied by e-mail, and announced it here because so many of my e-mails have been disappearing this week. The ‘undisclosed recipient’ bit is just that I don’t reveal people’s identities without their permission.
.
Yes, TOR could be worth a try, but I’m off out now, so don’t expect any more from me until early morning.
.
Got any links about TOR being compromised please? And how were you witnessing the conversation you describe above?
.
Back later…
Thanks, Fedup, very interesting indeed.
In 1982 it was the ‘rebels’ who staged ‘hit & run’ bomb attacks against the Syrian government. Some say time heals Suhayl, one can easily forget the past if life gets better as it did in Syria under Bashir. Fisk said, “Syria is not the police state it was under Uncle Hafez.”…
.
I do not play the child death numbers comparison game Suhayl – I do know Iraq sanctions and the illegal Iraq war child deaths transcends any modern conflict casualties.
.
Time does not heal in Iraq because conditions are worse now than under Saddam. Can the 4 millions displaced families return? 61% of the 1.5 million returning refugees regret their return as condition are still(2011)too insecure.
.
The grieving mothers returning sometimes wish their throats had been cut!
Hi Nuid, Mary;
.
Thanks for the heads-up about Glenn G moving to the US Guardian – interesting. I’ve read the ML board thread, and it does look like a few are damning him as sold out already – I’d be more inclined to wait and see. The real test for me is how the Guardian are going to treat comments after his articles; if they have agreed a genuinely free-speech section, they’ll be in the weird position of letting their mods to clamp down normally on (say) a Monbiot article, but grant unusual leeway to discussion after a Greenwald piece.
.
I rather liked that he worked for Salon as well, since – whilst it is still obviously a capitalist business – it felt like it was outside newspaper groupthink, that arguably makes corporate output even worse.
.
So, I wish him luck, although I am a touch disappointed that I don’t have an excuse to subscribe to Salon. And I won’t be paying the Guardian any money, on principle.
.
Sigh. Ah well, ‘least we still got Rolling Stone and Private Eye!
Another misfeature of Firefox is its dns prefetch feature which looks up all the ip address for any and all links on a page whether you click or open these links, simply by opening the page containing any links, this also adds a lot of extra unnecessary dns traffic, turning this off both for http and https can only be done from entering about:config in the url entry bar and changing the boolean preference keys network.dns.disablePrefetch, network.dns.disablePrefetchFromHTTPS from their default false, to true.
Many versions of Firefox also have a dangerous misfeature where, particularly on the linux versions, where accidentally pasting the contents of the clipboards contents on an empty page or in most parts of an open web page, automatically replaces the url in the url bar with the contents of the clipboard, trys to make a url out of it and fetch the page, so you might have prvate text on the clipboard say a website password e.g. with “1234.mypassword” on the clipboard and the browser goes off and tries to fetch the website http://1234.mypassword/, this can disclose private information both on the wire and in dns logs upstream. There is no fix known to me for for this brain-damaged intentional security risk. Firefox is becoming increasingly unpleasant in its default configuration, with feature creep when such features are not desired, offer no advantages and compromise security and privacy.
In the about:config page you will find the remote google servers hostnames for the phishing/reported attack protection features, which can be erased, I know of no other lookup source for this, but do not desire any such lame and intrusive ‘protection’.
This is from last month:
.
http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Backchannels/2012/0621/CIA-aiding-Syria-rebels-Usually-that-s-just-the-beginning
.
Yes, thanks, Mark, it is said that it was an attempt by the CIA, again using Islamist forces, to overthrow the regime in 1982. As usual, civilians took the brunt of the response.
Hi Angry, welcome back! Everyone likes you now. I really laughed at the ‘Mecca of furniture production…’ After a five minute search on Google I found ‘Pork Mecca’.
Guys this bit of suppressed news is getting out, and despite the blanket ban on the story, the story has made it out.
Reuters had flashed the news of an assassination attempt on Clinton during her visit to isreal, the news has been picked up by the al Alam. However despite this, none of the corporate newsganda organs have cared to pick up on it. Obviously there are too many other interesting news around and they have not got around reporting the attempted assassination on US secretary of state, as the news of Egyptians throwing shoes and tomatoes at her cavalcade went very much unnoticed!!!!!
Israeli radio and Reuters broke the story then went mysteriously silent, an assassination attempt inside Israel, on Secretary of State Clinton.
Soon afterwards, al Alam went public with a translated version which is being boycotted by news services.
,
The initial reports are to be found here;
-ttp://www.alalam.ir/news/1212914
,
,
related stories are here:
{-ttp://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=iauXCxH8GmA#!}
,
,
This is classic put the shits up the pratts and they will do as they are told tactic that is so often used by the isrealis.
,
,
Israel’s race toward World War III
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2012/07/20/251835/israels-race-toward-world-war-iii/
,
,
The full story is to be found here, and more, now hows about that campers?
Craps one of my investigative comments has gone into the queue I hope.
.
[Mod: yes, released now.]
Suhayl Saadi and King of Welsh Noir,
.
Hi there! Hope things are going well for both of you!
SECRET:
.
China’s long-range nuclear forces are believed to be on high alert and ready to launch in minutes i.e. warheads mated.
.
Information from Ronald O’Rourke:Jane’s Information Group Ltd: Other intelligence sources.
.
China has a number of Jin-class (Type 094) SSBNs carrying 12 JL-2 MIRV type missiles each with 4 * 120Kton thermo-nuclear war-heads. The new type 096 SSBN with 24 tubes has Russian improved JL-2 missiles with a 7000 mile range again each carrying 4 * MIRV’s 220Kton thermonuclear warheads.
.
China’s nuclear strategy is damage limitation,it assumes 70 million causalities would result from a Chinese attack on 30 populated U.S. cities. China is near completion of the final phase of a nuclear facelift that the intelligence community predicts will result in 90 – 100 warheads “primarily targeted”
against the United States by end 2012.
@jon
.
i already wrote that + more
Yes Clark did get my e-mail and sent back a very helpful reply almost by return about a problem I am having with my laptop.
Clark
.
You will have to read ALL the way down this thread, its not a long thread. For myself, I don’t trust anything or anyone anymore, I think we are all tracked on the web, and not only the web.
.
http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?s=7ff7e0909e60e2f3516663ddb8058749&showtopic=19304&hl=
.
{http://www.wsws.org/articles/2011/apr2011/ipad-a28.shtml}
“90 – 100 warheads “primarily targeted” against the United States by end 2012.”
.
A few years ago I remember reading that the most updated nuclear weapon has a 100% kill ratio of 294 miles, I will repeat that, 100% kill ratio of 294 miles.
“UK receives first F-35 stealth fighter jet from US”
.
“the current cost of each jet is more than £100m.”.
.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-18919388
.
“Eisenhower warns us of the military industrial complex.”
.
{http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8y06NSBBRtY}
Firefux, nothing is perfect, but some things are still better than others. Mozilla have a close relationship with Google, and search engine royalties are Mozilla’s main monetary income. It isn’t surprising that Firefox does various things that benefit Google.
.
But with Firefox, the user can take full control, because all the information necessary to do so is publicly available. Yes, you need to open the preferences and change a setting if you want to switch off Firefox’s “Safe Browsing” connection to Google. But you can switch it off.
.
I regularly set up and configure people’s systems for them. When I configure Firefox, I have to make this choice on behalf of the user. I usually leave safe browsing switched on, because I figure that they are at less risk sharing some information with Google than if they get no warning, browse to a site that hosts malware, and end up sharing potentially the entire contents of their computer and all their on-line activity with unknown criminals. I do try to explain, but… Oh I won’t go into all the difficulties of that. I hope you don’t regard me as one of Google’s agents for this choice.
.
The people who write Firefox have uncountable decisions of that sort to make. I, too, find it annoying that I have to disable third-party cookies whenever I configure Firefox. I find it more annoying that I have to explain that this leads to a misleading (and rather alarming) warning if they try to log out of Microsoft’s Hotmail site. Firefox’s developers had to choose which defaults to set. If their defaults led to repeated warnings, the popularity of Firefox would be damaged, and more people would turn to a browser like Internet Explorer, the workings of which are basically secret.
A few years ago I remember reading that the most updated nuclear weapon has a 100% kill ratio of 294 miles, I will repeat that, 100% kill ratio of 294 miles.
,
Dependent on the structure of the bomb, ie a fission bomb which cannot yield more than one half of one mega tonne, however a thermo nuclear bomb or a hydrogen bomb can yield a lot more, the biggest being the Russian Tsar bomb with a yield of one hundred mega tonnes (this device has been air dropped and tested not at its full capacity, youtube it and see).
,
Furthermore other factors involved: are the heights at which the bomb explodes and the target that it is aimed at to destroy.
,
Therefore the 294 miles is an out of context figure that is in line with todays sound bite standards. However even given that the claim holds true, then why in hades has israel got four hundreds of the said destructive hydrogen bombs? How come the worlds most destructive weapons are in the hands of a bunch of unstable lunatics en mass suffering from Masada complex (all or bust, or they don’t give shit if they die attitude, as in line with the crazed zionist act they so often put on for the benefit of the gentiles).
,
Furthermore given that US has many thousands of these weapons along with tactical ie field nuclear weapons systems or howitzer shells and mortar shells some of which were used in the Fallujah attacks (do a search on Fallujah birth defects which corroborate the claims).
,
Finally taking note of the fact that US is the only country in human history to have used these ghastly weapons, compounded with the veracious appetite of US for other nations’ resources, and the profligate life styles it promotes, in addition to the reckless disregard of US to any and all international conventions and human rights, then we can understand the needs of Chinese, Russians or any other nation to be armed and at the ready to respond in kind to any attacks from US. It is high time all the world took the PANC manifesto for the US “full spectrum dominance” (ie owning the planet) at its face value and understand the dangers that US and her toadies are posing to the whole of the planet.
,
The monstrous waves of destruction that has been unleashed by US upon the planet with a no holds barred attitude, has resulted in US steadily killing more and more people on mass across the planet through various military and clandestine attacks.
,
Therefore your concerns ought to be directed at the US aggression and US disregard for other nations sovereignty and the human rights of the nations that US so ruthlessly attacks to impose a system of governance that has proved to be a singular failure as we have come to see for the duration of the last decade.
“UBS Issues Hyperinflation Warning For US And UK, Calls It Purely “A Fiscal Phenomenon””
.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/ubs-issues-hyperinflation-warning-us-and-uk-calls-it-purely-fiscal-phenomenon
.
“UK public borrowing rises in June”
.
{http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-18921115}
This is a Syrian Govt outlet and so needs to be taken in that context (and having a link to a David Icke speech is not a good idea, since he may well be an agent of disinformation, he may exist to help discredit oppositional views by associating them with nonsense). Nonetheless, there are some interesting pieces and links on the site (eg. the article by Prof James Tracy). Apart from the use of satellite technology, taking over the media output and so on, what had occurred to me was the similarity to the tactics of the Contras in Central America in the 1980s – to which he refers in the piece. The means used are full-spectrum, from the manipulation of space tech to the use of progressive/left journalists to the use of death squads:
http://friendsofsyria.wordpress.com/
Sadly, the co-editor of Counterpunch, Alexander Cockburn, son of Claud, has died aged 71.
I went to the site daily and found interesting and informative pieces. I especially liked the Poet’s Basement at the weekend for the choice of sometimes zany poems.
.
This is one of today’s three which seems quite apt
.
A Moving Staircase in Deluth Remembers Rainstorms
by ZORBA HASSIUM CHAOS
.
An estimated 1.3 million species
have gone extinct during my lifetime
and I never even had the decency
to say good-bye
.
20 synthetic elements
have been synthesized,
all radioactive, all unstable
and I never had the decency
to say hello
.
My manners are deplorable.
Hello. Good-bye.
.
Zorba Hassium Chaos was born. He smokes a corncob pipe and is the only living practitioner of the Way of the Mist(sic)ical Temple of Moses Om.
.
RIP Alexander Cockburn
http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/07/20/duke-ford-chaos/
@kingfelix – ah, apologies; I missed your comment. I’ve been busy of late, and so I tend to scan-read threads for obvious moderation duties, rather than giving each the reading it deserves!
Passerby
.
In the same article that I was reading (I think it was ?, maybe another web site I came across), there was another weapon called something like Demon, this weapon is the size of a New York skyscraper!, it is designed to kill but do as little damage to buildings as possible, when it hits its target it explodes and sends extremely fine particles over a very large area, it showers them down, going through the earth to the centre of the planet, kills everything, even those sitting inside a very deep nuclear bunker!. Well, thats what the article said. I am no expert on weapons of any sort, I would ban them all.
Clarke, Firefux;
.
I agree that the decisions about functionality from the browser makers are a balance between usability and privacy. A couple of extra points:
.
* A browser that had third party cookies turned off by default, if it had sizeable market share, would create a big backlash from online advertisers; no-one who knows what this feature is would turn it on, and neither would anyone who doesn’t know what this feature does! Quite how it would create difficulties for Mozilla it is difficult to predict, but Google is most unlikely to welcome it (their version of privacy is “we use and store your data carefully” rather than “we don’t collect the data in the first place).
.
* I would wager a privacy add-on exists that offers a graphical set of controls for DNS prefetch and all the other things (most of which are hidden in about:config) that create a series of privacy-convenience trade-offs. I’d recommend browsing through the excellent collection of Firefox plugins online, and trying a few out.
“there was another weapon called something like Demon”
,
The current state of humanity has enabled us; to put million ways of killing other human beings into practice, but as yet curing a simple cold seems to be out of our reach.
,
The weapons systems that kill all biological creatures whilst leaving the buildings and structures intact are built around “neutrons” and normally referred to as neutron bombs. The radio active (ie little invisible rays as in microwaves cook and destroy the cells in the living beings) emissions are hose piped all over the place so to speak killing anything that is made of flesh and blood, or for that matter plants too. This weapon was reported to have been used on the Saddam airport (now Baghdad airport) in the initial phases of the last Iraq war.
,
However you also could have read about the “DIME” (dense inert metal explosives) that effectively vaporises the metal shavings, and it is built around usually tungsten and other heavy metals. This weapons produces a super heated jet out of the metal shavings, which is directed at the victims of the weapon. This results in lancing through the victims’ body, and cutting bits off, and or halving the victim in any of the axis that he/she may happen to have come into contact with the super heated vaporised metal jet. The injuries from this kind of weapons are very difficult to treat due to subsequent infections as well as the added dimensions of heavy metal poisoning which are are added complications.
,
These DIME weapons are often used on Palestinians, and Lebanese, although they have been used in Iraq, and Afghanistan too. All too often these weapons decapitate the unfortunate children because they have been designed to operate effectivly at the heights of two to three feet above the ground.
In case anyone has e-mailed me, I haven’t received anything since the one I mentioned above from ‘Undisclosed Recipient’ yesterday evening, and before that, one from Mark Golding, yesterday early morning.
.
John Goss, did you get my re-sends? See 20 Jul, 2012 – 9:19 pm above.
Jon, I agree. A great strength of Mozilla’s practice of open source is that anyone who can program can make add-ons. The fruits of this freedom are well worth browsing through.
.
Firefux, I hope you’ve got a JavaScript blocker:
.
http://www.whenisfive.com/2011/11/27/my-final-plea-for-you-to-use-noscript-why-you-get-owned-because-sysadmins-are-stupid/
“Russia to deploy monsterous ‘Satan’ nuclear weapon in arsenal”
.
http://theextinctionprotocol.wordpress.com/2011/12/21/russia-to-deploy-monsterous-satan-nuclear-weapon-in-arsenal/
.
“I can calculate the motions of the heavenly bodies, but not the madness of people.”
.
Isaac Newton.
Sorry to butt in on the conversations on weaponry and browsers, but it is true about Alexander Cockburn’s death. This is his friend and co-editor.
http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/07/21/farewell-alex-my-friend/
.
There is also a good conversation on Dissident Voice between Gary Corseri and Charles Orloski from which you can gauge what it’s like living in Amerika at the present time.
{http://dissidentvoice.org/2012/07/a-conversation-with-charles-orloski/}