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.
TGPIF – Thank God particle it’s Friday.
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Interesting piece here:
“Israel Admits War Causes Were Fabricated”
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“Even before the Hezbollah War, Israel knew it was hopeless to retrieve abducted IDF soldiers” — Ehud Olmert
http://www.roytov.com/articles/olmertlebanon.htm
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“What they are going to shoot down, and which bit of London it will land on, is not to be questioned.”
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Since they’re hardly expecting a fighter like an F-16, are they planning to shoot down a hijacked passenger plane right over London? One carrying a bomb perhaps? It’s increasingly looking like it’s all for show.
Seems there’s to be a 30-mile exclusion zone for all but scheduled commercial flights. Like the 9/11 ones, yes?
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So the answer to what they are expecting is an IED on a hang glider.
Komodo….the answer is in the new BA commercial on the TVs…
Thanks Mary. The canals, especially around the Midlands, are a pleasure to behold. Unfortunately it will not be for long now before they are in total disrepair. In the 1930s a gift was made to Birmingham City Council of Elford Hall in Staffordshire, a stately home which was used for housing paintings during WWII and afterwards to provide shelter for refugee children. No maintenance was done on Elford Hall and it was demolished.
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http://www.search.staffspasttrack.org.uk/engine/resource/default.asp?resource=5973
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I fear the same will happen to the canals. Cameron talks of charity when what he actually means is slavery.
It’s interesting (and worrying) to peruse Wikipedia’s article on “Authoritarianism”.
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“Authoritarianism is a form of social organization characterized by submission to authority as well as the administration of said authority. It is usually opposed to individualism and libertarianism. In politics, an authoritarian government is one in which political authority is concentrated in a small group of politicians”.
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Hmmm… keep talking.
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“Authoritarianism is characterized by highly concentrated, and centralized power maintained by political repression and the exclusion of potential challengers. It uses political parties and mass organizations to mobilize people around the goals of the regime.
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“Authoritarianism emphasizes arbitrary law rather than the rule of law, it often includes election rigging, political decisions being made by a select group of officials behind closed doors, a bureaucracy that sometimes operates independently of rules,[dubious – discuss] which does not properly supervise elected officials, and fails to serve the concerns of the constituencies they purportedly serve. Authoritarianism also tends to embrace the informal and unregulated exercise of political power, a leadership that is “self-appointed and even if elected cannot be displaced by citizens’ free choice among competitors,” the arbitrary deprivation of civil liberties, and little tolerance for meaningful opposition.
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“A range of social controls also attempt to stifle civil society, while political stability is maintained by control over and support of the armed forces, a bureaucracy staffed by the regime, and creation of allegiance through various means of socialization and indoctrination”.
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Remind you of anything familiar?
Well, no surprise to me. Britain is heading BACK to the best of it-Victorian times. Is not Victorian age called Golden Age of Britain?
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Rich are getting richer, poor are getting poorer, but who cares. Poor are stupid enough to trust rich to rob them yet again and again. Vote for Tory, Vote for Labour, Vote for LibDem poor will be F..cked anyway, bankers, and corporate gung will only benefit. Government’s actions are getting less and less checked, Western democracy is losing its legitimacy at home (whereas abroad it had lost it long time ago).
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Olympics is in par with the biggest rip off British public was subjected to in the last 6 years. Over 15 billions was spent, most came from public money, and only BIG corporations and gung of greedy landlords will benefit from it. The rest of us will further be subjected to martial law, to make way for BIG corporations to enjoy the show and make big cash at the same time.
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What a wonderful times we are living in.
CiD
‘Why are there so many conspiracies going around surrounding the olympics….’
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It could be something to do with freelance reporter Ben Fellows who went undercover to infiltrate G4S and claimed that they had imported 200,000 caskets and had plans for the evacuation of London.
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http://www.godlikeproductions.com/forum1/message1915227/pg1
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I’m making no comment on the veracity of his claim, but if you listen to his interview it’s pretty obvious that he is not a moonbat but a bona fide journalist who set off to make a straight piece of investigatory journalism and accidentally fell down the rabbit hole.
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Make of it what you will.
Not often I see myself defending Soviet system but here we go.
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Mr Murray, I just wanted to argue with you about your “nastier Soviet estates in Moscow” comment.
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It is not just you, but quite often the same argument is heard from British or US media about horrible Soviet estates and so on.
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FYI, housing in USSR was free and from what I have experienced, homelessness was absent. Yes, there was a waiting list which lasted for 3-6 years, but those on the waiting list were also offered temporary accommodation. I have been in some places in Europe, and living now in the UK I do not see how average European and British estates are any better. Of course if one compares average Moscow estate to a multimillion mansion on Billionaries Avenue, one would see huge difference, but comparing the same average Moscow estate to the average London estate, one would see very little if any difference. In fact I came across a number of estates in London, particularly multi-apartment estates that are far worse than average Moscow estates.
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Now why would you use “nastier Soviet estates” argument when on one side you are talking about accommodation provided for free, and on the other accommodation for which average Londoner need to work for 25-30 years to pay off mortgage debts?
Craig,
A bit late, but welcome back to the blogosphere. You must not stop blogging. You are pretty much the only source of critical, independent political analysis many of us ever see. It may seem hopeless sometimes but speaking as a former blinkered, inveterate tory w***er, you are saving people’s political souls. Keep going.
There is still doubt about the Indian contingent coming.
http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/olympics/news-london-2012/bhopal-backlash-gathers-pace-20120712-21yst.html
I wish they would bring out the 1970s TV series “1990” about an authoritarian future Britain on DVD. It starred Edward Woodward and Lisa Harrow.
John Goss
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Nice post on Cameron’s love of charity.
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Taking from the rich, giving to the poor. Wait a second, it is not Tory, it was Robin Hood.
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Taking from the poor, giving to the rich. That would be Tory love of charity work.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/07/09/1106647/-Your-corporate-democracy
Autres pays, mais memes moeurs….
Uzbek, not Robin Hood but Robin’ Bastard!
http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/society/olympic-volunteers-given-rocket-launchers-2012071334208
There are also few other DOWNsides of the Olympics hardly mentioned here.
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Few thousands of people had to move out of their houses/flats/flatshares in East London in Stratford and West Ham in particular as they were kicked out by their greedy landlords, who were promised huge rent revenues by greedy estate agencies. For some greedy bastards this materialised, for others failed to. As most of those who were kicked out were either foreigners (you know these Poles, eastern Europeans in general and these Asians) or so called lower middle class, these kicking outs did not make to the big screen. No actions from the Newham Council, nothing from the Mayor of London. Everyone were prising Olympics and how great it is for the nation and for the image of London. Well I guess no one noticed thousands of Poles etc. moving out with their belongings OR otherwise it was overshadowed by the great expectation of this great game.
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Besides this it had also inflated the rent in East London. Newham Borough is known as second most deprived Borough in London, with long list of all sorts of social problems. And yet, rent in Newham in 2012 now averaged to the rent in much more well off London Boroughs. May be it was a grand plan of Tory Mayor of London and Tory government to socially cleanse Newham, to make it unaffordable to all those who fail to pass Tory Social Status check.
“False Flags are a standard stratagem, particularly in democracies, in which it’s necessary to create consensus before waging war. In 1898 the explosion of the USS Maine in Havana Harbor propelled the American people into the Spanish-American War, much as 9/11 propelled us into invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq a century later.” Captain May
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The Olympic stage supports such a false-flag…
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http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2136795/Olympic-ring-steel-SIX-missile-sites-protect-Games–Cameron-finger-trigger.html
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We are witnessing an aberrant accretion of military hardware in the Persian Gulf including a British nuclear submarine.
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{http://rt.com/usa/news/war-sub-drone-iran-066/}
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Thanks to a number of brave colleagues who have provided intelligence. All that remains is to achieve excellent public awareness.
Children in East London will lose two weeks’ schooling. What about that Mr Gove? OK with you?
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-18824674
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I can’t find a link but I heard on a news summary that day centres for the elderly nearby will be shut for the duration of both games because of road congestion. Home visits would be made in emergencies. How nice for the old people stuck in their homes and not seeing a soul for weeks on end. ie 27th July – 12th August and then 29th August – 9th Sept.
Interesting timing:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/terrorism-in-the-uk/9396360/MI6-chief-Sir-John-Sawers-We-foiled-Iranian-nuclear-weapons-bid.html
Uzbek in the UK, I was born in 1963. I formed an impression about “Russia”. Looking back, it was a child’s impression formed from mainstream media propaganda, reinforced by my mother. I “knew” what “Russia” was like. It was always cold, the Sun never shone, and people were poor because the state spent all its money on missiles. Housing was damp and crumbling, everyone was perpetually unhappy and no one dared speak or act out of line. Everyone was forced to wear similar clothing and no individuality was tolerated. No one ever dared to laugh. No one there knew anything true, because their media lied to them consistently. Everyone wished to escape, but they were imprisoned in their country. I’ve never put this description into words before; it was a set of vague feelings formed in childhood, and in words it looks ridiculous.
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In my 20s I started to think that the mainstream media was propagandist and I deliberately eliminated it from my life. I wouldn’t have a television in my home and I never bought a newspaper. I deliberately ignored anything remotely political.
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In about 1990, I met some people at a friend’s home. They obviously weren’t English. We chatted and laughed and exchanged stories. Some things seemed odd; at home, they had gone to the swimming pool most days, but in the UK it was too expensive. Apparently, their municipal swimming pool was free to use, and so was their telephone system. There was also municipal childcare. I couldn’t imagine where they could be from, so I asked. They were Russians.
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What? Suddenly, my childhood impressions were confronted with reality. These people with complete personalities were at odds with my impression of the downtrodden victims of Communism, and in some ways they were richer than us in the UK. The “Iron Fist of Communism” hadn’t destroyed their humanity and turned them into subservient “workers”. They were visiting the UK, not escaping from Russia. They had just lived within a different system, with a different set of advantages and disadvantages which they had learned to cope with, much as I had learned to live with unemployment, insecurity of housing and commercial exploitation.
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What a stupid, pointless ideological battle. Maybe, in a more enlightened future, humans will learn that progress is a matter of finding the good features in all the different ideologies, and combining them as best we can.
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So the USSR offered free housing and there was no homelessness. Shout it from the rooftops, Uzbek, along with the injustices and oppressions of the Soviet system, because I, for one, would never have guessed if you hadn’t mentioned it.
Kingfelix, interesting article. The article presents no evidence to account for the vast difference between Sir John Sawers’ allegations and the assessments of the CIA, NSA and IAEA, just the usual “secret intelligence”.
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The exaggeration of the Iranian “threat” is only made possible by the legacy of the Cold War and Mutually Assured Destruction. Estimates I’ve seen of potential Iranian nuclear weapons capability range from one to six nuclear devices. These would be atomic bombs, like the ones used on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, weapons that rely on fission, not fusion, “A bombs”, not “H bombs”, with yields in the kilo-tonne range, not the mega-tonne range. Nasty, but by modern standards, puny.
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So what even if Iran did build six such nukes? What could they possibly hope to use them for apart from a defensive deterrent? Any offensive use of such weapons would invite a counter-attack with thermonuclear hydrogen warheads, each one five hundred times as powerful. Iran would risk comprehensive devastation.
Clark
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Soviet system like any other systems (even slavery) had its good and bad points.
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Yes, as I mentioned housing was free, given by the state for indefinite tenancy to every Soviet family. There was as I said a waiting list. Families with many children, disabled or war veterans were given priority and the rest waited for around 3-6 years to get hold of the keys to (in most cases) newly built apartments. Yes, it was good, as was that fact that unemployment was not only non-existent but (as I previously mentioned) administrative offence.
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BUT free housing was financed by the fact that state kept the absolutely major share of the revenue. Soviet citizens were paid in average 140 (in 1970th) and 180 rubles per months (in 1980th) and 1 ruble was officially equal to 1 USD. There was extreme corruption amongst those who had power or/and access to the state resources. No matter what one did, the maximum salary (usually paid to Professors in military research centres or government officials) was around 500 rubles per months (including premiums). On the top of it government officials obviously abused their power for self enrichment. Systems of justice, higher education, even/especially free housing allocation was the most corrupt.
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All in all soviet system collapsed. Not because of the pressure from outside, or because of the rise of nationalism in republics (that followed after USSR collapsed) but because the UNwritten agreement between the soviet state and soviet citizens was broken and state failed to provide all these free goodies for which soviet citizens agreed to tolerate many of soviet states wrong doings.
Further to my own questions, could the answer be political rather than military? If Iran developed nuclear weapons, would they have a good claim to a seat on the UN Security Council?
“Can you spot Mrs May in this large gathering of the CFoI?
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http://www2.cfoi.co.uk/Events/PastEvents/”
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Yes, well. This is going to be very embarrassing for Mrs May, isn’t it, Mary?
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I see the fragrant Chloe Smith further down the page on the new MP trip to familiarise themselves with the Israeli position. She’ll clearly be horrified too.
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Oh look! There’s Boris in Edgeware doing his not Ken impression:
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{http://www2.cfoi.co.uk/Events/PastEvents/}
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No chance of Boris winning an election if that comes out, is there Mary? He’ll surely be cast into oblivion now.
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Keep up the good work exposing all these secretive rascals, saying one thing and ummm errr doing the same thing too.
@komodo
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A good contribution.
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Along the same lines, ‘China’ as a nation is regularly demonized in the US media, and now we have the ‘pivot to Asia’…
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Yet, a single visit to the Taiwan National Palace Museum, to see the masses of Chinese tourist parties is a great experience. And what is seen? Just a large selection of human beings who resemble nothing so much as your regular *American* tourists, same clothes, same labels, same aspirations, to see some of the world, to take their families on an adventure. The intention is clearly to join the party re: consumerism, to aspire to the Rolex watch, the Mercedes car, the nice house with the big screen TV. A threat to the environment, perhaps, but not any sort of threat to capitalism itself. For all its faults, at least the PRC will talk economic inequality and seek to build solutions into its planning, whereas gazing across the Atlantic (or the UK) reveals societies where a sliver of the wealthy and privileged prefer to efface inequality behind talk of ‘rewarding the job creators’ or through demonising the poor, etc.
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It’s no less depressing for the fact that we all know it, we all see through it.
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Governments have got their populations sliced and diced and ignorant and afraid. We say it all the time here on Craig’s blog. Fear and ignorance is money in the bank for these tiny sectional interests that seek to control reality for the masses.
Uzbek, you wrote: “…soviet system collapsed. Not because of the pressure from outside…but because the UNwritten agreement between the soviet state and soviet citizens was broken and state failed to provide all these free goodies..”
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But my impression is that the USSR’s financial failure WAS due to pressure from outside, at least partly. Trade embargoes crippled Soviet export capabilities, and the Cold War arms race placed a huge financial burden upon the USSR, whereas for capitalism, it just made the rich corporations richer.
Herbie, this seems to be getting a bit personal with you. Nearly all your comments seem to be critical of Mary. If you wish to engage Mary in discussion, I suggest non-rhetorical questions and counter-evidence rather than personal slights.
Clark
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Arms race was a choice of soviet government. Following Nuclear deterrence theory there was no need to produce more and more nuclear warheads if critical amount needed for retaliation was produced. In the end USSR ended up with 30% more warheads than US. There was no need or benefit to soviet citizens to keep 250.000 military personnel in GDR (East Germany) and further 100.000 in other eastern European states. There was no need to spend almost 15% of GDP for foreign aid to keep revolutionary movements (that often terrorised its population) alive.
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Trade embargoes were not very much effective as most of the hard currency revenues came from raw materials exports, oil, gas, metals. These were exported at large without significant reductions. Oil price hike of 1970th was one of the major reasons that kept USSR afloat for another 12-15 years.
The Mad Men really are here.
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13 July 2012 Last updated at 15:54
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London 2012: RAF has ‘lethal force option’
The RAF showed off some of its hardware at a press event on Friday
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Games security ‘not compromised’
Are Olympic missiles just for show?
Olympics missiles sites confirmed
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The RAF will use “lethal force” if the Olympics are threatened, the Games air security commander has said.
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Speaking at RAF Northolt in north-west London, Air Vice-Marshal Stuart Atha said a plane could be shot down as a last resort in a “worst-case scenario”.
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Asked who would give the order, he said: “The highest level of government makes that decision.”
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A series of airspace restrictions around London and south-east England are set to be enforced after midnight.
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Typhoon jets and Sea King helicopters are being deployed to RAF Northolt.
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The prohibited zone will be about 30 miles wide and does not affect commercial aircraft, which fly in established air traffic corridors.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-18823653
UzbekUK
I have actually been on Soviet era housing estates, in St Petersburg, Moscow, Tashkent, Gdansk, Warsaw and Katowice. A few other places also. They are grim. As were similar estates in the UK – which were well-motivated.