Cameron’s favourite dictatorship, Bahrain, has jailed human rights activist Nabeel Rajab for three months for tweeting that pro-regime demonstrators were being paid. Total silence from western governments. Meanwhile two pro-democracy demonstrators have been shot dead in Saudi Arabia. More total silence from western governments. At the same time, those governments want us to believe that the massive arms shipments being sent by Saudi Arabia to promote a Syrian civil war are in support of democracy. Even the mianstream media appear to have worked out there is a problem with this narrative.
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http://stopwar.org.uk/index.php/action-a-events/national-events/1658-july-14-protest-at-bahrain-embassy-in-london-2pm-in-solidarity-withbahraini-prisoners
and more details here on Facebook including a film showing.
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http://www.facebook.com/events/318853868192710/
There was a nasty moment when it looked as if Bahreini fat cats’ human rights to suck wealth from desperate immigrant labour might be endangered, but happily for freedomanddemocracy, the bolshie malcontents are being suppressed by Their Royal Highnesses…
http://www.opendemocracy.net/hasan-tariq-alhasan/bahrain-bids-its-economic-reform-farewell
“Cameron’s favourite dictatorship, Bahrain”
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How can you say that!!!, he has so many. Don’t like to disagree with you Craig, but I think his “favourite” is the UK one.
Michael Dixon the director of the National History Museum has taken the arms manufacturers’ shilling. Here he attempts and fails to defend his decision. CAAT have run a high powered campaign against which sadly failed.
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http://www.nhm.ac.uk/natureplus/blogs/feedback-michaeldixon/2012/05/18/hiring-the-museum-for-private-events?fromGateway=true#comments
SHAME ON ALL OF THESE.
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The current Trustees of the Natural History Museum are:
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Mr Oliver Stocken – Chairman
Daniel Alexander QC
Professor Sir Roy Anderson FRS FMedSci
Louise Charlton
Professor David Drewry
Professor Christopher Gilligan
Professor Alexander Halliday FRS
Mr Ian J Henderson CBE BSc FRICS
Professor Sir John Holman
Dr Derek Langslow CBE (also Audit Committee member)
Professor Georgina Mace CBE FRS
Sir David Omand GCB (also Audit Committee member)
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http://www.nhm.ac.uk/about-us/corporate-information/museum-governance/board-of-trustees/index.html
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The Museum has a history with this sort of thing. They allowed Veoilia to hire their space for a reception and also collaborated with Ahava on research.
{http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/natural-history-museum-attacked-over-links-to-illegal-israeli-company-6290705.html}
Agent Cameron’s favourite dictatorship, Bahrain also imposed *martial law* last year in Bahrain to crush the uprisings.
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It seems to me a mild form, or a discrete *martial law’ has been imposed during the Olympic Games.
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That assertion is easily poo-poo’d until one considers how deputy commissioner Hayman misled us in his statement on the the murder of Jean Charles de Menezes. He was later dismissed on unrelated charges.
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I also do not forget it was the SAS caught in 2005 dressing up as Arabs and shooting Iraqi police dead…
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The case for mixing SAS troops with the police and other counter-terrorism forces has been strengthened after the car carrying Prince Charles and Camilla was ambushed by protesters last year.
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Mr Hayman who investigated 7/7 now works for the media.
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Says it all, really.
Lord Haddon Cave caves in to higher authorities.
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Residents and Protesters 0 Military Industrial Complex 1
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London 2012: Missile tenants lose legal ruling R
esidents want an injunction preventing the siting of the missiles
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Are Olympic missiles just for show?
Missile tenants ‘fear terrorism’
Olympics missiles sites confirmed
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Residents have lost their High Court battle to prevent surface-to-air missiles being stationed on the roof of their tower block during the Olympics.
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/..
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-18778723#
Yates of the Yard is there in Bahrain too, replacing the other corrupt bastard Ian Henderson the head torturer. Meanwhile back at the land of “freedomfreedomfreedomdemocracydemocracydemocracy all you want” (s0 long as it is of certain brand), none are even hinting at the bizarre change of guard in the royal palaces of the pederast sheiks whom very well know they are not wanted, nor needed, neither tolerated by their suppressed and oppressed population.
Mary, I heard today from someone that most of the residents in Fred Wigg Tower are muslims. Does anyone have any info on that?
There seems to be a blackout in the media about the Saudi government’s handling of the demonstrations there.
Executive Order Grants Authority to Seize Private Communications Facilities
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“The White House has released a new Executive Order seeking to ensure the continuity of government communications during a national emergency. The Executive Order grants new powers to the Department of Homeland Security, including the ability to collect certain public communications information. Under the Executive Order the White House has also granted the Department the authority to seize private facilities when necessary, effectively shutting down or limiting civilian communications.
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In 2011, Congress considered similar provisions in cybersecurity legislation, which would have allowed the government to disconnect communications traffic in times of national security. Following public protest, congress abandoned the proposal.
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http://epic.org/2012/07/executive-order-grants-authori.html
MeBully?
“Mary, I heard today from someone that most of the residents in Fred Wigg Tower are muslims. Does anyone have any info on that?”
What is the relavence of your comment about muslims? And who was the somebody that you quote?
Another Troll in our midst.
Craig, please blog on the military presence for the olympics. Missiles etc..
@ Mark Golding,
I believe that across the globe there is an awakening about what power structures in the world do and how they do it. The telecommunications revolution has brought this awareness about on a massive and unprecedented scale. Governments can’t lie as easily as they used to. Well they still can lie – but not as effectively and/or unquestioningly as before.
The powers that be, such as in the US, sensing the implications of the unrepayable and unsustainable deficit; loss of domestic jobs; and, US governmental commitment to annual increases in military budgetary expenditures – regardless of domestic expenditure needs – must signal to those within the military-industrial complex who think and analyse and prepare polices, that there is a crisis in process.
Having looked briefly at the Executive Order – section 1 says it all:-
“EXECUTIVE ORDER
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ASSIGNMENT OF NATIONAL SECURITY AND
EMERGENCY PREPAREDNESS COMMUNICATIONS FUNCTIONS
By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, it is hereby ordered as follows:
Section 1. Policy. The Federal Government must have the ability to communicate at all times and under all circumstances to carry out its most critical and time sensitive missions. Survivable, resilient, enduring, and effective communications, both domestic and international, are essential to enable the executive branch to communicate within itself and with: the legislative and judicial branches; State, local, territorial, and tribal governments; private sector entities; and the public, allies, and other nations. Such communications must be possible under all circumstances to ensure national security, effectively manage emergencies, and improve national resilience. The views of all levels of government, the private and nonprofit sectors, and the public must inform the development of national security and emergency preparedness (NS/EP) communications policies, programs, and capabilities.”
As it says:-
“Such communications must be possible under all circumstances to ensure national security,…”
and thus – “national security” will in practical terms be to ensure that those who are communicating and organising most effectively, in ways that the government ( read – “Executive Branch” ) are cut off from so doing in a time of crisis. Power needs to remain in control. So – what’s the difference now with what China does?
Hillary Clinton provides an answer, and she is correct :-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LyjnEm8DZkI
Information, from a US governmental perspective, is more about winning a global propaganda war and domestically manufacturing consensus, as much as it is about either disseminating distorted facts – or – putting a spin on the facts to serve one’s end ( ask Rupert Murdoch – he will tell you how it is done).
We are witnessing in the West a black out ( sometimes partial – sometimes total) on the reportage of levels and types of dissent in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Yemen because Western moneyed interests are served by the status quo in those countries and it is not in Western interests to promote “democracy” there. In any country with a “free press” one would have thought that many dispatches would appear daily in the mainstream media to explain and expose what is truly happening in those countries. But – not so – “freedom of the press” is a selective phrase –and – it thus chooses what it will and will not “freely” report –and – which country and/or countries it chooses regularly to report on.
Now – Screw Wikileaks. And even worse – horror! – hell! – there is this ex-Ambassador over there in the UK who publishes all kinds of subversive views on his snitch blog – and he has a growing audience. Can’t have that kind of “alternative” heard freely out there. Such commentators might be dangerous for the preservation of “democracy”. Why – just look at the trouble he stirred with his blabber about Uzbekistan. Shameful!
P.S. I spoke once with an old US CIA hand from Radio Free Europe. It was an eye opener. One observation of his sunk in with me – and he said that they ( the US) did not fabricate back then in the “cold war” era, but in a professional manner made interpretation of facts in accordance with US foreign policy. He contrasted that approach with what the Soviet bloc had done. This observation was made at a time when Bush 11 was in office. He went on to say that a big difference between his time and now(then) was that in the new era there was a loss of professionalism in the US.
Sorry – should have read:-
” in ways that the government ( read – “Executive Branch” ) disapprove of are cut off from so doing in a time of crisis.”
I have a view about these wars that the US is promoting and pursing in the Middle East, and General Wesley Clark sums it up this way:-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ARihMrxdjU
My point at the time of the US/NATO attacks against Libya, was not the blind support of its leader. Rather, the real point is about the abuse of global power and the violation of sovereignty and the rule of international law. Take those away and we truly have arrived at the point of the rule of the “international law of the jungle.”
My comments then, were:-
http://allafrica.com/stories/201109230886.html
And my comments now about Syria would be of similar ilk.
Surely Hillary Clinton would understand my point of view ( chuckle).
Yes Doug Scorbie. I did not respond to the obvious racist plant. I was finding out a little more last night about this decision hy Judge Hadron Collider (as he is being referred to on some blogs!) aka Haddon Cave. He is a scion of a Hong Kong family, one member of which, Sir Philip Haddon Cave, presumably his father, was Financial Secretary there in the 80s when Jardine Mathieson and Shire ruled the place.
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Haddon Cave was called to bar in HK in 1980 and presumably knows nothing of deprivation living as he does in a leafy enclave in Surrey where his wife, also legal, is active in local affairs (what sort of lamp posts should we have to fit in with our village? etc etc) and who is a governor of a posh girls’ school, The Royal School for Girls Haslemere. Grayshott where the Haddon Caves live is in Hunt’s constituency but that is by the way.
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Whereas the residents who live in the 16 storey tower block, the Fred Wigg Tower, look to Ascham Homes for the management of their homes. (www.aschamhomes.org.uk/) Ascham Homes Ltd was set up in May 2003 as an Arms Length Management Organisation (ALMO) , voted for by council residents of Waltham Forest. I bet the residents had little or no choice in the matter. I like the term ‘arms length management’. Says it all.
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In December there was a serious fire at the tower. Their solicitor, Mr Howe, said:’there was “real fear” in Fred Wigg Tower over tenants being forced to share their block with missiles. The fear was exacerbated by the fact that last December residents, including children and disabled, were evacuated “down a narrow and difficult smoke-filled staircase” in the middle of the night after a fire broke out in the block.’
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/judge-rejects-bid-to-stop-olympic-rooftop-missiles-7932339.html
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Many residents were temporarily rehoused and whilst away, there was a crime spree and because the management did not secure the building, many of the homes were burgled.
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{http://www.standard.co.uk/newsheadlines/17-rescued-from-tower-block-blaze-6377998.html}
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{http://www.guardian-series.co.uk/news/9554216.LEYTONSTONE__Crime_spree_at_fire_hit_tower_block/}
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There is a worry that the foundations have been compromised by the fire.
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Another blogger writes ‘Charles Haddon-Cave QC, is an interesting choice: he was a barrister specialising in cases about shipping and aviation, and is the former chairman of the Air Law Group Committee of the Royal Aeronautical Society (i.e. at a sufficient level of generality, we can say that he is someone who is unlikely to be made anxious by the thought of proximity to military technology).
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There are many really nasty comments on sites such as Yahoo News about immigrants in the Waltham Forest borough and any who live in the tower. Let them burn etc. What a horrible country we are living in.
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PS I found this redeeming fact about the judge. He walked along some of the length of the Thames with Lord Phillips to raise money for a legal aid charity.
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My reply now to MeBully? – We are ALL God’s children and we are ALL sisters and brothers. Have some compassion.
In my post above, Shire should read Swire
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A page from the Glasgow Herald dated 22 March 1984
Traders who Wield a Wide-ranging Influence
http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=2507&dat=19840322&id=_sBAAAAAIBAJ&sjid=2qUMAAAAIBAJ&pg=1582,4979596
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Sir Philip Haddon Cave was an obvious help to Governor Youde in the Hong Kong boom economy at the time.
People will remember how the Iraqi Sassoon family punmped opium into China with the help of Jardine Mathieson and others. {http://2ndlook.wordpress.com/2011/06/09/the-war-on-drugs-a-2ndlook/}
And it’s not just Bahrain and Saudi Arabia we need to censure. Not since October of last year has anything been heard of the Malyshevs who were deported to Karimov’s nasty dictatorship of Uzbekistan where they bypassed normal entry procedures, were spirited off by Uzbekistani Secret Services, and, apart from a monitored telephone call, there has been no news since. Now Norway intends to do the same to a human rights campaigner against the despicable regime.
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http://uncut.indexoncensorship.org/2012/07/uzbekistan-norway-jail-torture/
I should have mentioned to watch the video at the end of Michael Andersen’s article in my last post. You might see somebody you recognise.
Shamefully broadcast after most had gone to bed, last night’s excellent Channel 4 documentary, Kashmir’s Torture Trail, was a sobering account of the appalling treatment meted out to Kashmiris by the Indian security services in “the world’s largest democracy”. Interviews and evidence corroborated by human rights organizations show that victims of this almost forgotten conflict are regularly beaten, tortured, raped and murdered. Punishments for young men caught throwing stones include having their finger nails pulled out and chilli powder rubbed into the wounds. One elderly farmer accused of guiding militants through the valleys was beaten so badly that his leg had to be amputated below the knee (this was after soldiers cut chunks of flesh out of his leg and forced him to eat them). In one village, two out of every three inhabitants had been subjected to torture. Lawful demonstrations in Srinigar are limited to four protesters, social networking sites are shut down and mobile phone surveillance is used to trace and then beat “miscreants” whose only crime is to call for a free Kashmir. Some democracy.
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I urge anyone with an hour to spare to watch this harrowing but important documentary, which can be viewed on 4oD here:
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http://www.channel4.com/programmes/kashmirs-torture-trail
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and will be repeated on Channel 4+1 this Friday in what must have been the least-viewed slot available, at 3.35am.
Hurray, today is my first day without Microsoft, thanks to Clark’s immense abilities I’m now a true convert to open software and shall proudly display my Gnu sticker.
The dire situation in the ME is coming to a head, the training in the skies of Norfolk is going on daily and the corruption of news channels is in full flow.
Saudi Arabia’s inability to reform its calcified royal hierarchy, currently measured by its poor handling of democracy demo’s and the repression on free speech should make it obvious to us that this site is important to the outside.
Thanks to Courtney we can see how our own systems are slowly strangled until they conform to US restrictions.
Thanks for the warning Courtney and Mary, the internet has finally become a battle ground.
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So what about giving this blog another distinct header right under Craig’s name up top.
Call it … THE AMBASSADORS MINISTRY OF TRUTH AND REAL INFORMATION….
it has got a ring to it and should work like a red rag to a bull.
So what about giving this blog another distinct header right under Craig’s name up top.
Call it … THE AMBASSADORS MINISTRY OF TRUTH AND REAL INFORMATION….
it has got a ring to it and should work like a red rag to a bull.
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‘A good idea, son!’ Do you remember Archie Andrews? probably not old enough.
Or even the Ministry for Truth and Justice.
Nevermind, thanks for the compliment, and for not mentioning my silly mistakes that cost so much time! Here in Essex we don’t get practice flights by the Air Force; we just get formation fly-bys on days of pomp and circumstance, I think my house must be under their flight path to Buckingham Palace. Travelling to Norfolk has reminded me how steeped in militarism the UK is, with constant aerial manoeuvres over much of the country, “Airstrip One” indeed.
John Goss,
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I posted about deportation of fellow Uzbek from Norway earlier and had no reaction from the public here. I see no reaction for your posting either. Is karimov now a friend officially not only to Mr Cameron but to others on this blog?
Mark Golding
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Using as you mentioned it “civilian communications” to bring down certain regimes in North Africa it seems that US authorities are now seriously concerned with the same methods being used against their own authority in their own country.
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There are many projections of civil unrest in the US (and in the EU) with regards to declining economy and raise of poverty and social uncertainties. As it happened in the past such times are the best feeding ground for many kinds of extreme ideas on both rights and lefts.
Don’t Come To London: George Galloway’s Message to Prince Nasser of Bahrain:
A personal message from George Galloway MP to Bahrain Olympic Chief and the son of King Hamad Al Khalifa, Nasser Bin Hamad Al Khalifa: Do not come to London because you won’t enjoy it and I will chase you until you are arrested
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kdo9RtmTDd8&feature=player_embedded#!
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I admire his spirit and like the way he rolls his ‘r’s
Uzbek in the UK. Whenever you are ready to recruit people to stand up against the dictator Karimov, you will find that we are ready to support you and those who take up arms against this evil man.
I mean its very well to blog here amongst the converted, how about the Arsenal fanzine, or careful write ups on karimov’s stooge A.Usmanov on their website. I’m sure many fans don’t even know who this ex con is holding all the shares in the club.
http://arsenal-mania.com/forum/
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So much for shareholding, greed will always overrule ethics and those who let that man into the club by selling him their shares will have to lot to answer for,.
What’s the latest on the Malyshevs, have they ever been seen again, Uzbek, have you heard any news of their whereabouts?
As in the case of USSR, US empire is failing and those of us caught inside the sphere cannot see the wood for the trees. Troubling fact is, unlike the case of USSR, here in the west no one is talking about transparency and restructuring, instead there is a deliberate attempt to obfuscate and legislate to maintain the current constructs that have so patently failed and proved beyond a shadow of a doubt, these are not fit for the purpose.
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The attempts in maintenance of the existing failed structures start with the comical efforts as in case of “Jeremy Kyle show” whom harangues at the jobless: “go get a job!”, and he is constantly seeking to get the “dead beat parents” to shoulder their responsibility of providing for their offspring (an attempt in social engineering pointedly in the direction of lowering children’s care costs and benefits associated thereof that state is “lumbered” with). On the other hand lethal measures as in the case of murder of a bank of England manager, presumably to prevent the scandal of rate fixing of the banks to come to light.
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Also as in the case of the above executive order, the retrograde steps are to ensure the survival of the constructs that have so spectacularly failed, yet we find so many of the “Western Elite” and their bought and paid for proxies posing as political leadership are fixated in their belief, as ye olde apothecaries’ nostrum of leeches treatment is not working because there were too few of these leeches, hence more leeches are prescribed and more of the same money printing that is now called “quantitative easing” (Orwell’s undulating grave ought to be an indication of his rate or turn).
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The threads on this board and elsewhere are filled with anxiety of the commenter: uncertainty, fear and doubt, with the additional facet of their singular mistrust of the current arrangements which have brought the world on the brink of poverty, and war. Further, with a future that is bleak and its hopelessness is further compounded by the wrong decisions of the said “Western elite” who are trying to regain some measure of control through application of more force from within and from without the boundaries of their spheres of influence.
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The powers be, would have all of us believe; it is the credit crunch wot done it, whilst before the banksters’ heist coming to light, these were busy delivering their endless lectures on savings and living within the means of one’s budget. The fact that City accounts for approximately ten percent of the UK economy somehow does not deter the appointed apparatchiks of all of the relevant political charade from waxing lyrical about it, fact that where is the other ninety percent of the UK economy which is comprised of approximately 30 percent of the UK economy employing seventy six percent of the work force as in the Small and Micro business sector. Note not the SME (Small Medium Enterprises a cup out to massage the figures and misrepresent).
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This sector relies on custom from wage earners, and whence there are no wage earners to spend then there is no economy regardless of the lines of credit being available or not. The question is not the fucking banks not lending, the question is there are too few a jobs and far too few wage earners to kick start the economy.
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Years of attrition, and destruction of the means of production in the way of “saving the city”, and the constant measures of retaining surplus labour to keep the wages depressed have resulted in the most spectacular fuck up that is now being addressed with the same polices on steroids.
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However the fact that large enterprises and multi millionaires and billionaires will care to furnish job opportunities for the “job seekers” (“workers awaiting jobs”, taken from the Chinese communist dictionary and Anglophied). Although this line of thinking has proven to be flawed and failed in practice (trickle down economy, the millions/billions earned by the hedge fund managers and banksters were carefully husbanded and never sprang a leak), yet the same bunch is insistent; give it time and more of the same will work. Hence the secondary and concurrent course of these scoundrels in getting ready to suppress and oppress the masses through “legal” and legislated constructs.
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Fact that these days even for street busking there is a need for a license to be obtained from the relevant local authority (new revenue streams of the authorities under squeeze from central government) and the plethora of the health and safety regulations and environmental regulations and any other regulation that is not as yet thought of but soon will be enacted against ordinary punters intent on earning a living in a jobless world.
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Hence it should come as no surprise that missiles are set amidst the residential areas and army is pulled out to man the Olympics. These are rehearsals for the coming show down, between the population and their masters.