CRIME
An Appeals Justices Council on Tuesday approved the extradition of two Greek men wanted in connection with the ambush murders of five body guards in the centre of Cyprus' Agia Napa holiday district on June 23. The appeals justices' decided to grant the request by Cypriot authorities means that the two men stand trial in Cyprus for killing three Cypriot nationals and two Romanian nationals, employed as body guards by a Cypriot businessman.
The two suspects are a 29-year-old local that police say has links with self-styled "anti-establishment" groups and a 41-year-old linked to past drug-dealing cases.
Sources said the 29-year-old, who Cypriot authorities claim carried out the shootings of the five victims, agreed to his extradition. The 41-year-old, by contrast, objected to his extradition on the grounds that there is outstanding legal action against him before Greek courts. (AMNA)
Read more about this story here -Greek Anarchists Arrested For Cyprus Mafia-Style Killings
CONSPIRACY, GEOPOLITICS, NEW WORLD ORDER
An astounding report prepared by the Ministry of Finance for President Putin today estimates that up to $35 Trillion in assets owned by what are estimated to be the 10 million individuals classified as “global elites” has been lost to global tax havens over fears that President Barack Obama is about to “shatter” the United States “permanent war economy” that has been in place since 1944.
The amount of this staggering elite money hoard, which dwarfs the entire United States economy (the world’s largest) was confirmed by the Tax Justice Network (TJN) whose spokesman, John Christensen, told London’s Guardian News Service yesterday:
“In total, 10 million individuals around the world hold assets offshore; but almost half of the minimum estimate of $21tn – $9.8tn – is owned by just 92,000 people. And that does not include the non-financial assets – art, yachts, mansions in Kensington – that many of the world's movers and shakers like to use as homes for their immense riches.”
The CEO of General Electric and vice-chairman of the War Production Board, Charles Edward Wilson (1886-1972) warned at the close of World War II that the US must not return to a civilian economy, but must keep to a “permanent war economy” thus creating the Military-Industrial Complex (MIC) (aka. “The Iron Triangle”) whereby the collusion between militarism and war profiteering became manifest as a permanently subsidized industry.
Between the years of 1944-1961 the power of this Military-Industrial Complex had became so great that President Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890-1961) in his last address to the American people on 17 January 1961 warned:
“In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.”
Upon taking over the leadership of the United States from Eisenhower in 1961, President John F. Kennedy (1917-1963) waged a relentless battle against the Military-Industrial Complex refusing to invade Cuba during the Bay of Pigs debacle, refusing to start nuclear war during the Cuban Missile Crisis (even though his military advisors were demanding it), stopped atmospheric nuclear testing and had began the process to withdraw troops from Vietnam.
Upon Kennedy’s assassination in 1963 his successor President Lyndon B. Johnson (1908-1973) fully embraced the Military-Industrial Complex guaranteeing the survival of the “permanent war economy”.
Even worse, under Johnson’s Defense Secretary, Robert Strange McNamara (1916-2009) the way the Military-Industrial Complex operated in the “permanent war economy” was changed.
Within the Pentagon that McNamara ruled when Johnson assumed the Presidency, civilian and uniformed officials were in conflict about the procedures for how to determine the costs of weapons to be contracted for manufacturing. On the one side, led by an industrial engineer, the idea was to base costs on the formulation of alternative designs and production methods—a competitive approach that promoted economic growth.
The other side proposed generating costs based on what was previously spent. For the Pentagon, this meant following the “cost-plus” system used during World War II, also known as cost maximizing. In other words, “contractors could take the previous cost of making a product for the Pentagon and simply add on an agreed-upon profit margin.”
McNamara opted for the second option. The result was that by 1980, the cost of producing major weapons systems had grown at an annual rate of 20 percent, meaning, that by 1996, the cost of the B-2 bomber exceeded the value of its weight in gold.
So damaging to the US has their “permanent war economy” become that in March of 2003, New York City put out a request for a proposal to spend between $3 and $4 billion to replace subway cars. Not a single US company bid on the proposal—in part because the nation no longer had the tools it needed to build its own subway trains. It was calculated that if this manufacturing work were done in the United States, it would have generated, directly and indirectly, about 32,000 jobs.
Not being understood by the American people is that the operation of a “permanent war economy” makes President Obama the Chief Executive Officer of the United States Military-Industrial Complex controlling the largest single block of capital resources the world has ever known and that has spent this year alone nearly $1.5 Trillion.
To be noted is that this combination of [economic, political, and military] powers in the same hands has been a feature of statist societies—communist, fascist, and others—where individual rights cannot constrain central rule.
Unlike any US President since Kennedy, however, Obama has been the first American leader since 1963 to take “tentative” steps against the Military-Industrial Complex with this report further stating that upon his reelection he will begin an “all-out assault” to reclaim his economy for civilian use instead of war.
In our previous report, “US Military Reveals Coup Plan To Topple Obama”, we noted how Obama was building up his countries internal police forces to include the militarization of nearly every local police force in the United States, a move, this report suggests, he has undertaken so he, unlike Kennedy, will be prepared when his own military forces turn against him.
To which side the American people will back as this titanic internal struggle intensifies this report doesn’t say. But, and critical to note, as the wealthiest US investors were warned on 9 July to prepare for a “fundamental geopolitical shift”, it would only seem prudent that the masses of other Americans follow their lead.
Sorcha Faal
WhatDoesItMean
OFFBEAT NEWS
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| credit proto-thema |
An interesting, tacky and downright ridiculous offbeat news story made headlines this weekend in the Proto Thema newspaper. Why bother with a prison break if Greek prisoners can live in luxury, bask in the sun, and cook up a couple of ribs all in the comfort of the prison grounds in Korydallos? Well now they can, since the staff at Korydallos prison built a swimming pool, a garden, a little zoo farm and a BBQ (?), Proto Thema said that the pool is really a reservoir of water for the animals, but then again its 4 meters wide and 8 meters long (so we don't know if we really believe that)! And what's more, along the side of the pool a stone BBQ has been erected (so that the prison guards can enjoy Tsiknopempti and other such holidays)! Immortal Greek spirit indeed... but if taxpayers money is being spent on guards who BBQ... then hese mesa!
OPINION FORUM
With the recent speculation, in some quarters, suggesting that the Greek military might step in, I decided to look back and find out how the last Greek military coup came about and, as I was interested myself, and presuming others might be also, write a brief history. However, each time I looked for a starting point, an historical moment which needed little explanation of itself, I was driven further back in time. 20th Century Greek political history is so complicated, that I came to the conclusion that it could only be understood by someone who actually lived through it, so little sense it made to me. Nevertheless, never one to be put off writing on a topic I am, hitherto, completely ignorant of, I have stitched together a very brief overview of Greece’s history over the last century.
To understand modern Greece one must understand it’s ancient history and it’s Geography. The Golden era of ancient Greece was rarely Pan Hellenic, with the legendary exception of King Menelaus’ expedition and siege of Troy, the brief cooperation during the war against King Xerxes of Persia, and perhaps Alexander the Great’s domination of what is now Greece, it has predominantly been the glorious histories of city states. And it’s geography is crucial, it has always been thought to stand as the boundary between East and West, whether you consider the ‘East’ to be Persia, the Ottoman Empire, or Communist eastern Europe it is best to understand that Greece’s eastern frontiers have never been an impassable barrier, infact Greece’s porous frontiers have ebbed and flowed with fickle fate and capricious fortune. As a consequence Greece is one of the most polarised nations on the planet.
Eleftherios Venizelos
It must seem to many Greeks reviewing their own history that the First World War actually began in Oct 1912, almost 100 years ago in the reign of King George I. Greece was then being led by a young Cretan politician called Eleftherios Venizelos who had become Prime Minister in 0ct 1910 after a military coup in 1909. Crete was then part of the Ottoman Empire, as was Macedonia at that time, Venizelos had caught the attention and imagination of the military by declaring union with Greece.
By the Spring of 1912, Venizelos had helped form the ‘Balken League’, a series of bilateral treaties between Greece, Serbia, Montenegro, and Bulgaria and in October 1912 they declared war on the Ottoman Empire. After striking decisively, led by the Crown Prince Constantine, at the Ottomans in Macedonia (modern north east Greece) and then Epirus (modern north west Greece) the combined Greek army and navy looked to the Ottoman ruled islands in the Aegean and Ionian seas.
In March 1913 King George I was assasinated by an anarchist and King Constantine I, war hero, succeeded to the throne.
King Constantine I
The war with the Ottomans was concluded in June 1913 but soon after hostilities broke out between Greece and her former allies over the partition of Macedonia.When this too was concluded in August of that year Greece had gained southern Epirus, the southern half of Macedonia (including Thessaloniki), Crete and the Aegean islands, except for the Dodecanese, under Italian occupation, These gains nearly doubled Greece’s area and population.
The Greeks managed briefly to stay out of WW1 but in 1915 the western allies offered Cyprus in exchange for help against the Ottomans, Prime Minister Venizelos was in favour but the German educated King Constantine I, brother-in-law to Kaiser Wilhelm, insisted on neutrality. Venizelos resigned, was re-elected, invited the western forces onto Greek soil, was fired by the King and then, following another military coup in Thessaloniki, formed a separate government which governed over all the territory taken in the last couple of years.
The western allies ignored the neutrality of the ‘Old Greece’ which King Constantine still ostensibly ruled. Royalist supporters rioted against the Venizelos supporters in Athens. When King Constantine’s cousin Tsar Nicholas was removed by the Bolsheviks, Russian protection was removed and he was forced to flee, without ever abdicating, along with most of his family. In June 1917 Venizelos theoretically then led a united Greece and officially joined WW1, he saw to it that Alexander, King Constantine’s second son, was crowned king but the country was now completely polarised between the royalists and the republican Venizelos supporters, the ‘National Schism’.
‘King’ Alexander
At the conclusion of WW1, Venizelos secured, as reward, Western Thrace, Eastern Thrace, and a zone around Smyrna, but not Cyprus. On his return from these relatively successful negotiations Venizelos was almost assasinated by former royalist army officers. Venizelos then lost the elections in 1920 which was then followed by a referendum, following the ‘sudden’ death of ‘King’ Alexander, which saw the return of King Constantine I from exile. Venizelos prudently left the country
Meanwhile, in Turkey, a nationalist movement led by Mustafa Kemal was growing in popularity and fought to restore some of the territory lost to Greece. Following King Constantine’s return, Greece lost the support of the main European mediterranean powers, France and Italy, and by 1922 had been defeated by Turkey. In the Treaty that followed Turkey gained back Smyrna, Eastern Thrace and the islands Imbros and Tenedos. Both countries agreed a compulsory population exchange in which 1.5 million Christians and 0.5 million Muslims were forcibly to moved.
The humiliating defeat and the economic deprivation, in part caused by a 25% increase in population due to refugees, exacerbated the difficult political situation and Army officers, who supported Venizelos, brought about yet another military coup, forcing King Constantine to abdicate in favour of his eldest son King George II in Sept 1923. A counter Royalist coup failed and in elections the Liberals won by a landslide [monarchist parties abstained] and on 25 March 1924, the Second Hellenic Republic was proclaimed, ratified by plebiscite a month later.
King George II
This democratic republic was weak and prone to interference from the military who had become the main beneficiaries of the upheavals over the previous decade. In June 1925, General Pangalos launched a military coup, and ruled as a dictator for a year until a counter-coup by another General Kondylis unseated him and restored the Republic.
In 1928 Venizelos returned from his self imposed exile and returned to government in new elections. The Great Depression hit an already poor Greece hard, and this period marks the rise of the Communist Party of Greece. Venizelos defaulted on Greek sovereign debt in 1932 and lost elections being replaced by a monarchist coalition.Eleftherios Venizelos returned to exile where he died soon after. Two pro-Venizelos military coup attempts followed and failed before in 1935 the a successful monarchist coup, led by Georgios Kondylis, abolished the republic and restored the monarchy under King Geoge II.
Ioannis Metaxas
King George II dismissed Kondylis, and in 1936 new elections followed. The result was a hung parliament with the Greek Communists holding the balance of power. Ioannis Metaxas, a former royalist general, with the king’s permission dissolved parliament and modeled Greece on Italy’s strong fascist state, as himself as leader.
When World War Two broke out Greece remained neutral but in 1940 it was attacked by Italy. The Greeks drove the Italians back but Hitler came to Mussolini’s rescue and over ran the country. By this stage Metaxas had died. King George escaped first to Crete and then to Egypt.
I’m not going to go into too much detail about the Nazi occupation of Greece, needless to say it was bloody awful. However, it is important to note that while the monarchy ‘ruled’ in exile, the communist led National Liberation Front (EAM) were the largest resistance group fighting the Germans.
After an ‘agreement’ between Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin which left Greece as a British sphere of influence, and despite the fact that the communists were in control of most of the country, a government of national unity, under British backed George Papandreou came to power. However, following disagreement the six communist EAM minister in that government resigned. Demonstrations turned to violence and then all out civil war which lasted until 1949, when the communists were defeated with the support of Great Britain and the USA. The civil war resulted in 100,000 deaths.
Greece joined NATO in 1952. The period through the 1950s and 1960s could be characterised as democratic though right of centre parties had control, with heavy American influence. Rising economic growth from a very low starting point, due to manufacturing, shipping, and tourism. On 9th July 1961 his government and the Europeans signed the protocols of Greece’s Treaty of Association with the European Economic Community (EEC) and in November 1962 the association treaty came into effect and envisaged the country’s full membership at the EEC by 1984, after the gradual elimination of all Greek tariffs on EEC imports.
In 1964 King George I died and King Constantine II took the throne.
King Constantine II
In 1965, after so many years of conservative rule, elections saw centrist/liberal Georgios Papandreou (Sr) become Prime Minister. King Constantine II dismissed him that same year but after failing for two years to for a conservative coalition was forced to call new elections for May 1967. It looked increasingly likely that Georgios Papandreou would win and form a new government with the Democratic Left (thought by the right to be a proxy for the Greek Communist Party which had been banned)
There was yet another military coup just a few weeks before the scheduled elections, almost certainly at the behest of the King. The King didn’t bargain on what kind of people he had urged to take power, they refused to be his puppets and in December of that year King Constatine II attempted a ‘royal coup’ to seize power from the military junta, he failed and never returned to Greece as King.
The Greek Military Junta
The EEC financial aid package as well as the protocol of accession were suspended during the 1967–74 junta years and Greece was expelled from the EEC.
Under the junta torture was a deliberate practice carried out both by the Security Police and the Greek Military Police.
Examples of the types of torture commonly used included:
Beating the soles of people’s feet with sticks and pieces of metal pipe.
Sexual torture such as shoving objects into people’s vagina/anus and twisting them violently, or hoses shoved into the anus and forcing water in at high pressure.
Choking people and shoving rags soaked in urine and excrement down their throats
Ripping out hair from the head and pubic regions.
Jumping on people’s stomachs
Pulling out toenails and fingernails
In 1973 another attempted military coup by the Greek Navy failed. In 1974 the Military Junta was overthrown, democracy restored, and the monarchy abolished.
Since then Greece has been democratic, it joined the European Community on 1st January 1981, and the Eurozone on January 1st 1999.
The rest everyone should be familiar with.
Greece is still politically polarised, the ‘National Schism’ still exists and has be seen regularly on the streets of Athens over the last couple of years.
I think this short history demonstrates that a Greek military coup can not be totally ruled out but I would caution that such a coup would not only mean that Greece would have to withdraw from the Eurozone, which is likely anyway, but, because of the rules of membership, also the EU, and personally I don’t think that Greece under any form of government could claw it’s way back in isolation and the Greek military understand this.
And for this reason, I don’t think it will happen.
theneedleblog
CONSPIRACY, NEW WORLD ORDER, OPINION POLLS
INTRODUCTION As the Cold War ended, following juridical investigations into mysteriousacts of terrorism in Italy, Italian Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti was forcedto confirm in August 1990 that a secret army existed in Italy and other countriesacross Western Europe that were part of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization(NATO). Coordinated by the unorthodox warfare section of NATO, the secretarmy had been set up by the US secret service Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)and the British Secret Intelligence Service (MI6 or SIS) after the end of theSecond World War to fight Communism in Western Europe. The clandestine network, which after the revelations of the Italian Prime Minister was researched by judges, parliamentarians, academics and investigative journalists across Europe, is now understood to have been code-named ‘Gladio’ (the sword) in Italy,while in other countries the network operated under different names including’Absalon’ in Denmark, ‘ROC’ in Norway and ‘SDRA8′ in Belgium. In each country the military secret service operated the anti-Communist army within the state in closecollaboration with the CIA or the MI6 unknown to parliaments and populations.In each country, leading members of the executive, including Prime Ministers,Presidents, Interior Ministers and Defence Ministers, were involved in the daniele ganser – nato’s secret armies – operation gladio and terrorism in western europe conspiracy, while the ‘Allied Clandestine Committee’ (ACC), sometimes also euphemistically called the ‘Allied Co-ordination Committee’ and the ‘Clandestine Planning Committee’ (CPC), less conspicuously at times also called ‘Coordination and Planning Committee’ of NATO’s Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe(SHAPE), coordinated the networks on the international level. The last confirmed secret meeting of ACC with representatives of European secret services took place on October 24, 1990 in Brussels.As the details of the operation emerged, the press concluded that the ‘story seems straight from the pages of a political thriller’. The secret armies were equipped by the CIA and the MI6 with machine guns, explosives, munitions andhigh-tech communication equipment hidden in arms caches in forests, meadow sand underground bunkers across Western Europe. Leading officers of the secretnetwork trained together with the US Green Berets Special Forces in the United States of America and the British SAS Special Forces in England. Recruitedamong strictly anti-Communist segments of the society the secret Gladio soldiers.
For Greece, the operation notes that
To prevent a communist-led Greek resistance from taking power after the end of World War Two, British prime minister, Winston Churchill ordered a secret army to be created in Greece in late 1944. It became known variously as the Greek Mountain Brigade, the Hellenic Raiding Force, or Lochos Oreinon Katadromon,(with its Greek acronym LOK). In order to guarantee its members were staunchly anti-communist, LOK commander, Field Marshall Alexander Papagos excluded,“almost all men with views ranging from moderately conservative to left wing.”
When Greece joined NATO in 1952, LOK, under the command of Papagos,was firmly integrated into the European stay-behind network. The CIA and LOK reconfirmed on March 25, 1955 their mutual cooperation in a secret document signed by United States General Trascott for the CIA, and Konstantin Dovas, chief of staff of the Greek military.
British journalist Peter Murtagh found,
The Raiding Force doubled as the Greek arm of the clandestine pan-European guerrilla network set up in the 1950s by NATO and the CIA which was controlled from NATO headquarters in Brussels by the Allied Coordination Committee.
He also relates,
The idea behind the network was that it would operate as a stay-behind force after a Soviet invasion of Europe. It would co-ordinate guerrilla activities between Soviet occupied countries and liaise with governments in exile.
In addition to preparing for a Soviet invasion, the CIA instructed LOK to prevent a leftist coup. According to former CIA agent Philipp Agee, The Greek-American CIA officer recruited several groups of Greek citizens for what the CIA called ‘a nucleus for rallying a citizen army against the threat of a leftist coup’… Each of the several groups was trained and equipped to act as an autonomous guerrilla unit, capable of mobilizing and carrying on guerrilla warfare with minimal or no outside direction.
In Greece, as in all countries of Western Europe, the stay-behind was equipped with light weapons hidden in arms caches. Agee maintains, These guerrilla groups were armed with automatic weapons, as well as small mountain mortars. The weapons were stored in several places. Most of the military supplies were cached in the ground and in caves. Each member of these paramilitary groups knew where
GANSER The Whitehead Journal of Diplomacy and International Relations such cached weaponry was hidden, in order to be able to mobilize himself to a designated spot, without orders.
Agee, who was sharply criticized in the United States for having revealed sensitiveinformation, insisted,
Paramilitary groups, directed by CIA officers, operated in the sixties throughout Europe[and he stressed that] perhaps no activity of the CIA could be as clearly linked to the possibility of internal subversion.
There is a possibility the LOK was directly involved in the Greek military coupd’état on April 20, 1967, which took place one month before the scheduled nationalelections for which opinion polls predicted an overwhelming victory of the left-leaning Center Union of George and Andreas Papandreou.
Based on a NATO-designed response to a communist insurgency, the so-called Prometheus plan, the LOK under the command of paratrooper Lieutenant Colonel Costas Aslanides,took control of the Greek Defense Ministry. In the darkness of the night, tanks with flashlights rolled into Athens and under the command of Brigadier General SylianosPattakos gained control over communication centers, the parliament, the royal palace,and according to detailed lists, arrested over 10,000 people. Many of those arrested were later tortured. Phillips Talbot, the Unitd States ambassador in Athens, disapproved of the operation and complained to the CIA chief of station in Athens, Jack Maury,that the coup represented, “a rape of democracy,” to which Maury answered, “How can you rape a whore?”
Those arrested and imprisoned by the military in 1967 included Andreas Papandreou and his father George. After years of exile in Canada and Sweden, Andreas Papandreou returned to Greece, won the 1981 election for prime minister,and formed the first socialist government of Greek’s post–war history. According tohis own testimony, he discovered the existence of the secret NATO army, then codenamed “Red Sheepskin,” as acting prime minister in 1984 and had given orders to dissolve it. Papandreou’s defense minister, Nikos Kouris confirmed he believed the secret deal with the CIA represented an “unacceptable pact.”
In 1990, the socialist opposition called for a parliamentary investigation into the secret army and its alleged link to terrorism and the 1967 coup d’état. Publicorder minister Yannis Vassiliadis declared that there was no need to investigate such“fantasies” as, Sheepskin was one of 50 NATO plans which foresaw that when a country was occupied by an enemy there should be an organised resistance. It foresaw arms caches and officers
Read more by clicking here - scribd article
And check out the Wikipedia reference to Gladio - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Gladio
SPORTS
After Clarkson’s somewhat superficial piece about Olympics ‘belly-achers’ in the Times – well below his normal standards, and having an air of being rushed out to a brief – it might be useful to point up what we naysayers are bitching about: in terms of everything from the ‘Olympic ideal’ and a ‘people’s event’ right the way through to the slapdash planning – and commercialisation in the very worst sense of that word.
In the same issue of the newspaper whose Board formerly included Murdochs R and J (but doesn’t any longer) sits an exclusive interview with Newscorp commercial partner, Commons liar and tax avoider Jeremy *unt, who of course says it’s all tickerty-boo and dandy, on account of him being such a philanthropic Culcha Sektree. So let’s look at some of the figures undermining that claim to the point of complete subsidence:
1. Boris’s VIP lanes. I was walking along Southampton Row this afternoon, inspecting the disappeared bus lane and Rings-branded Zil lane that leads into Holborn – one of the main ‘going home’ thoroughfares for central London workers heading south over the river Thames. It is so obviously going to be gridlocked throughout the waking hours, I would urge all of you affected by this to take a camp-bed into the office tomorrow…or go on holiday.
Now we all want a smooth-running Olympics (if only) but note this stat: there will be slightly in excess of 50,000 VIPs at the London Games. That is almost twice the number – 28,000 – who attended the Beijing event. The total capacity of the Olympic Stadium is, I understand, 83,000. All those of us unable to find any ordinary UK citizen with a ticket to anything beyond synchronised wellie-throwing in Watford now know where all the tickets went…and why we need so many lanes for the incrowd who think putting the shot is something to do with eating grouse. The distinguished sports journalist Hugh Mcillvaney described this today as “a destructive assertion of privilege”.
2. Sponsorship, and the fascist insistence on only sponsored clothing/footwear being allowed anywhere within sight of 10,000 cameras. TV rights alone for this Olympics stand at £700million. Brand cops have been harassing everyone from shopkeepers to T-shirt wearers for weeks, and will be patrolling in profusion throughout the events. These are not exactly ‘amateur’ Olympic Games, are they?
3. But that’s more than can be said for the security and spectator transport arrangements. Lord Coe said three times – with increasing irritation – on Radio 4 last Thursday that “Games security has not been compromised”. But Danny Boyle begs to disagree, via The Slog’s continuing proximity to those around the opening ceremony’s director.
“That is simply a lie,” he tells my Mole, “the fact is that we’ve had to cut out 30 minutes [the BMX sequence] as a direct consequence of G4S staff either being unavailable or incompetent when it comes to checking spectator security”.
As a result, a late start to the £27m proceedings was deemed “a certainty” – and thus the lucky ticket-holders would’ve missed having public transport home. Sources close to the participants suggest that a cool £3.4m has thus been completely wasted, and large chunks of previously rehearsed manoeuvres dumped. I nearly wrote ‘unceremoniously’.
And Mossad would also beg to disagree about security being as tight as ever: they have drafted in (and demanded access for) some 150 extra agents inside the Olympic village. An attack by Iran-trained Muslim converts is deemed ‘a serious likelihood’. I shudder to think how the appointment of Mohammed Bari to the Locog Board is going to play if such an attack were to materialise. And the mind boggles at the consequences of it being proved that Lord Green’s HSBC laundered the money that bankrolled the attack.
So listen up: let’s just all stop being such bloody whingers and killjoys and wreckers of this great ‘sporting’ event, and instead get behind the spirit of it all.
Openin’ ceremony tickets, anyone? Only five times face value. Get your openin’ ceremony bent VIP tickets ‘ere….
THE SLOG
ECONOMIC OUTLOOK
The NGO "Greece Debt Free" has already managed to buy 2.5 billion euro of Greek debt during its first month in existence, According to news reports, the online platform that was set up by ship owner Peter Nomikos to help relieve Greece's debt burden is taking good advantage of the very low prices for which Greek bonds are
currently trading and buying back the Greek debt.
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