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.
please forgive my pestering, but the failure of ourselves to help ourselves when we are confronted with these leviathan machinations, is palpable.
Nobody has cut our heads arms or legs off, we can think and act differently. Are we really saying that party politics has such a hold over us that we are paralysed, incapable of engaging in another tried and tested avenue? Its called KETTS INDEPENDENT ALLIANCE, not shouting, just determined to wake you up.
Sitting in front of computers commenting all ady long gives one a fat arse and carpel tunnel syndrom. Creating a chapter of Ketts Independents, doing something your youngsters want to do locally, or an activity that fills a mandate voters long waited for under the parties kosh, then that will be a better way to spend you time. And once more, everyone is welcome to copy, join or help.
http://www.edp24.co.uk/news/politics/rallying_call_to_norfolk_at_launch_of_new_independents_party_1_1446290
You should be getting a couple of F-15’s about now, Nevermind.
“Sitting in front of computers commenting all ady long gives one a fat arse and carpel tunnel syndrom.”
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Dead right, Nevermind! I can testify to that, but in my case it’s RSI, not carpal tunnel syndrome. I’m on Twitter, passing on links, rather then commenting very much.
By the way, I’ve passed on your link on Twitter. I have quite a few UK ‘followers’.
Sorry, me again. My previous comment just reminded me: I generally RT Craig’s new posts when he makes them. But a Twitter button on top of every new post would be exceedingly handy. There was one on Nevermind’s link’s page. (It’s very easy to get the code from Twitter and include it – I had one on my own blog.)
@Nuid, that’s a good idea. I’ll see if we can include it in the next tranche of work on the blog 🙂
What’s the big deal about linking to the Olympics website?
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You can point out that the whole thing is a grotesque dystopian corporate tax dodge without needing to link to their site.
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It’s not like there is any doubt about which Olympics you mean.
Everything’s going as
plannedanticipated:https://twitter.com/KerronClement?tw_i=224799147960709120&tw_e=screenname&tw_p=tweetembed
Four hours from Heathrow to Stratford? Using privileged lanes? Is this a record?
Thanks for that Nuid, everything helps, and I’m a twitter nonentity, just can’t say things in haiku alone. why is this 140 character limit mandatory?
I’m just writing some simple policy and see if I can’t get some local meetings organised soon.
Thanks for all the support ladies and gentlemen.
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http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120713/12025919694/olympic-level-ridiculousness-you-cant-link-to-olympics-website-if-you-say-something-mean-about-them.shtml#c60
One way of reducing the competition for the home team –
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/olympics/9403023/London-2012-Olympics-American-and-Australian-team-buses-get-lost-from-Heathrow-to-Olympic-Park.html
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Who has the popcorn concession?
Here’s a rather long story by Peter “Brokep” Sunde, the former media spokesperson of The Pirate Bay. It seems highly relevant to the attempts to extradite Julian Assange to Sweden:
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http://falkvinge.net/2012/07/06/aftermath-of-the-pirate-bay-trial-peter-sundes-plea-in-his-own-words/
I do like the highest-rated comment on the Daily Mail article linked to by Komodo:
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What is extraordinary about the London Olympics is the extent to which unrestrained greed has blighted our national character. Everything from inflated ticket prices, profiteering landlords, outrageous food and drink prices, the exploitation of the unemployed under the guise of ‘work experience’ and now the extraction of ‘rent’ from the cleaners in order to claw back the minimum wage they will eventually earn shows this nation up for what is now is – a nation of disgusting selfish, profiteering spivs.
–James, Lancashire.
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The national mood seems to be dead against the Olympics. I wonder, with such grotesque corporate greed on display during a period of economic crisis, and with the world’s attention shortly to be focused on London, whether this might be the perfect time to harness the near-universal revulsion against said disgusting, selfish, profiteering spivs and make 2012 the first occupied Olympics? Beats sitting around here all day.
Britain has exposed an element within her heirachy that can only be assessed by other States as coarse, cruel, ferocious, heartless, ignorant, inhumane and monstrous considering agent Cameron has authorised a new draft resolution against the Syrian government that can be enforced by military action under Chaper 7 of the UN Charter.
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States that uphold the decision to veto this resolution have been told that this action would mean a refusal by Britain to extend the mandate of the UN observer monitoring mission.
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When considering this legal action I suggest one should keep in mind the following facts:
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1. Based on a small number of field investigations, Human Rights Watch in their report, ‘Unacknowledged Deaths’ have agreed that NATO bombing hit sites where, ‘satellite imagery taken before the strikes.. revealed no signs of military presence that would have rendered the areas struck as lawful military targets.’
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2. Considering the aftermath of the NATO bombing I quote from Seumas Milne writing in the Guardian who said, ‘Seven months on from Muammar Gaddafi’s butchering in the ruins of Sirte, the fruits of liberal intervention in Libya are now cruelly clear, and documented by the UN and human rights groups: 8,000 prisoners held without trial, rampant torture and routine deaths in detention, the ethnic cleansing of Tawerga, a town of 30,000 mainly black Libyans (already in the frame as a crime against humanity) and continuing violent persecution of sub-Saharan Africans across the country.
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Today the western-installed National Transitional Council (NTC) passes Gaddafi-style laws clamping down on freedom of speech, gives legal immunity to former rebels and disqualifies election candidates critical of the new order. So much for a British Democracy that has caused a once stable Libya to become a chaotic region where the NTC murders Black Libyans and terrorists groups are becoming armed with guns, ammunition and explosive devices pouring from Libya through porous borders with Mauritania, Algeria and Niger.
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Has Britain the authority to rewrite UN resolutions against the Syrian government after the genocide in Iraq, an illegal war that murdered so many children, maimed so many babies and orphaned so many teens?
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The British doctrine invoked and aided to end one bloody horror could become known as the doctrine that gave birth to so many others.
@Herbie
“It’s important to remind people that 20, 30 and 40 years ago there was in Britain a very open support for the Palestinian plight, even on the BBC, and in media more generally.”
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I’m in my early forties, I did not detect amongst others or have much knowledge myself of the Palestinian’s ever worsening plight, other than that a great historic wrong had been done to them, for which they were blameless, and that common prejudicial and untrue casting of them (natives of the rest of the world outside ‘blighty’) as being incorrigibly querulous and likely to fight with their shadows amongst themselves if left to their own childish feckless devices prevailed. Alongside this was the ‘plucky little Israel, land without people for a people without land, making the desert bloom’ narrative. Miners, Nelson Mandela, Poll Tax and Student Loans, looking for alternatives to or neutering dogmatic religions and the similarly absurd faith cult of bone-crushing capitalism were the burning issues of the 80s and 90s. I do not recall much open support in those times, it took the internet to shunt round the mainstream media information clots and open eyes and minds to the true nature of the Israeli regime’s viciousness, which with technological upgrades to its armoury of terror and repression worsens in its torments and the diabolical intent and end game can never again be disguised or credibly denied. We’ve nourished a monster which now devours us.
Guest, have you seen the other vile,numb-skulled, facistic comments on the Daily Fail article which probably give a better idea of how the majority of the British people think.
The winner is:
http://www.worldofkronos.com/pics/berlin1936.jpg
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More here:
{http://www.b3ta.com/challenge/olympicmascots/popular}
Do we all want it to improve are we all of the s upame ilk?
I find these one-eyed Olympic Teletubbies really creepy, swastikas or none. I know, I know, no one needs tell me about “Illuminati symbols”, I’m just saying. I just don’t see what is meant to be so good about one big eye.
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Likewise with the 2012 logo that they’re so protective about. Yes, I know some people say it’s supposed to look like “zion”. To me it seems suggestive of all the screwed up packaging that will inevitably end up littered everywhere.
O/T, but a good summary of the reporting of the latest Assad horrorshow here, from the excellent Russ Baker-
http://whowhatwhy.com/2012/07/16/syria-the-movie-monsters-and-defectors/
I don’t think that’s fair, Clanger. The comment I reproduced is by far the most recommended and you have to go down ten or so comments to find a mention of the feckless and wide-screen TVs. Of course, there is the possibility that looking down on the majority of the British people as vile, numb-skulled and fascistic allows you to feel a sense of smug superiority and perhaps you prefer it that way, but it won’t change anything. People I have spoken with whom you would expect to say all the the things you deplore have actually expressed genuine disgust at what is happening wrt the Olympics. Perhaps you would find ways to build upon that rather than merely dismissing them because they hold views which you find unpalatable.
“I believe the West is responsible for Andijan massacre (Uzbekistan) because it covered human rights abuses in Uzbekistan”. Craig Murray
watch here
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=kRgFs0ZWO60
@Nuid
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I am based in Taiwan, not particularly by choice. I don’t know how you folks in the UK managed to keep going, I admire your fortitude, but I had to give up in 2004, and since then I’ve lived in Ireland, the US, Guatemala, Mexico, and now here. On the TV, I just have Al Jazeera.
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If the Blair in South Sudan story had gone out over the wires a long time past, fine. I had not seen it, nor that D Miliband had gone out there as a guest of Blair.
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Not sure why you are being so prickly about X-bashing. I did not read through the entire exchange and I did not single out anybody by name in my post. It was never my intention to cause anybody to become annoyed, and I am genuinely sorry if that was the net result.
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Goes Bananas
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I can understand that you may not recall what British media coverage was like in the 1980s. You would have been quite young.
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I can assure you though that many of the views expressed here would have been quite mainstream then. Disputed by those who wanted that to change certainly, but mainstream all the same – even dominant.
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If you’re really interested in what British mass media was like in this period, I’d suggest you look at the sacking of Seumas Milne’s father as DG of the BBC in 1987 and Thames Television’s loss of franchise in 1991 and the end of the World in Action series around the same time. These events were part of a rightist coup in British media and ushered in the kind of media of which you complain.
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In newspapers you need to look at how Murdoch ownership changed the press from the late 60s.
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The real coup of course was the end of the BBC.
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In the early 80s during the Falklands war, Peter Snow used to report war incidents on Newsnight giving equal weight to claims by the Argentinians and British. Kirsty Wark made her name in a very heavy hard hitting interview of Thatcher. On another occasion Thatcher was set up over the Belgrano affair. Even Paxo could be seen in N Ireland protesting on the street against governemnt censorship. Journalists in those days were doing what they thought was their job, holding power to account.
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After the coup everything changed.
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The internet is not quite yet a replacement for that sort of mass media journalism but at least we’re again having the debates that once were so common and the rightists are slowly losing much of the power they had during the 90s and noughties.
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It’s within that previous journalistic context that the plight of the Palestinians were better and more widely known then than they are today. There were many other factors of course, like organised labour, a democratic Labour party and much more civic freedom and less police powers to disrupt.
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Anyway. If you don’t believe me just ask Jenny Tonge, or Bob Fisk or indeed anyone else who was there and not unconscious.
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There’s another way of looking at all this of course, and that is that then was the inverse of now, with all that that entails. But let’s not complicate it too much.
Anapa, that trailer is well worth another posting. I really want to see the full film. Michael Andersen is a great film-maker.
The above film by Michael Andersen needs financial support in order to translate it into Russian and Uzbek. It will then be given away and distributed for free.
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To endorse what Mark Golding posted at 3.10 p.m. today.
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http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=398510003529785&set=p.398510003529785&
Herbie
Leftist, rightist, liberalist, socialist, call it right.
It is the righteous that is the cause of our woes.
What sucks the most where habe all the environmentalis
Gone
Earthlings are a disgrace.
Herbie, thanks for that perspective. It really – puts things in perspective.
Re the Olympic swindle – our youngsters (2 adults and 2 kids) have tickets for football at an out of London stadium for some kind of limp event, and have been pissed off by the fact that they have to arrive 2 hours before kick-off,bring no liquids or food with them (ie buy the mac-crap inside) and be prepared for the massive queues that will form in the event of sensible people ignoring all this and having their bags searched – thus causing resentment amongst the law-abiding others. Wonderful example of divide and rule. Doncha just love it?
Martial law US style. It has been announced that ‘US transportation officials’ are to be allowed to operate at Heathrow and at other airports in the UK for the duration. Are we now classified as another US state?
In Tel Aviv La Clinton promises Netanyahu to use ‘all elements of American power’ to stop Iran developing nuclear weapons. Here we have Sawers hyping up the threat against Iran.
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How Britain’s top spy is beating the drums for war on Iran
16 July 2012 Michael Higgs
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Iran Sawers “two years” threat may not be as startling as Tony Blair’s infamous claim that Iraq could activate weapons of mass destruction “within 45 minutes”. But its purpose is the same.
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SIR JOHN Sawers has reared his head in public for the second time since being appointed head of MI6 in 2009. Last time it was to claim that Britain has “nothing whatsoever” to do with torture.
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We know this to be untrue following the revelations over MI6’s role in ‘renditioning’ Libyan dissidents to Tripoli to be tortured, as a favour to the intelligence services there. One might hope that, having learnt from his previous mistake, this latest speech would be rather more honest.
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It was not to be.
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http://stopwar.org.uk/index.php/iran/1683-how-britains-top-spy-is-beating-the-drums-for-war-on-iran
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The case opening at the High Court today will be interesting where three elderly Kenyans are alleging torture at the hands of the British when they were taken prisoner in the Mau Mau uprising. They were told in 2011 that they had a case. 8,000 secret files have been unearthed. Oppressors usually keep good logs of their atrocities.
{http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-18856984}