GRIMLY FIENDISH

Demonstrations' to be banned during Olympics' http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/polit...cs-6265121.html Ministers ponder tough new powers to prevent Occupy-style protests interfering with Games Ministers are planning legal action to restrict public protests during the Olympics, amid fears that Britain could be disrupted by lengthy and high-profile demonstrations. The Home Office is so concerned about the impact of the stalemate over the Occupy London (OLSX) encampment outside St Paul's Cathedral that officials have been ordered to produce plans for avoiding a similar conflict during the Games next summer. Ministers' plans, based on the measures put in place to remove long-term protesters from outside Parliament, includes identifying "exclusion zones" around key locations, and fast-tracking the removal of protests that do not have the blessing of the authorities. It would permit police to move in and disperse encampments quickly, in line with last week's clearance of the Occupy Wall Street camp in New York. Protesters and legal experts condemned the moves as an assault on the right to peaceful protest. An OLSX spokeswoman, Naomi Colvin, said: "If the Government wants to do something that will restrict the right of peaceful protest, it will be in serious trouble. The coalition appears to be abandoning any attempt to behave like a democratic government." Police have been given enhanced powers to act against protests at the Olympics since the Games were awarded to London six years ago, including the right to enter private homes and seize political posters. However, the St Paul's protest and the difficulties resolving the ensuing row raised further concerns about potential threats to the Games. A senior Home Office source said the department had drawn up a series of proposals, largely based on the Police Reform and Social Responsibility Act 2011, that pave the way for the removal of protests and encampments in Parliament Square. The responsibility for taking legal action against protests and encampments would be transferred from landowners to public authorities. "The threat from protests was always a danger during planning for the Olympics, but the St Paul's protest has shoved it up the agenda," the source said. "It is not just embarrassing, it can be a threat to security." Colin Hay, professor of political analysis at Sheffield University, said the measures were in line with often controversial pre-Olympic preparations seen elsewhere. He added: "There is nothing better designed to prompt a wave of peaceful protest than the prospect of legislation designed to limit the opportunities for such protest." Dame Vivienne Westwood yesterday rallied the anti-capitalist protesters outside St Paul's with a demand for young people to step off the "consumer treadmill" and "get a life". In a speech at the encampment, the fashion designer said: "You have to have culture to get a life. You have to have perspective to have [a reasoned] opinion." --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Seriously..? Are we living in f**king China now...?? Just wait and see if this legislation wont be used to curb strike action and Republican demos against the celebrations of the Jubilee.... In fact, who's to say that it will even end when the Olympics does... This is a dangerous precedent, and I cant but help think of the words of John F Kennedy.... "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible, will make violent revolution inevitable..." So, if it does all kick off next year, the Government has absolutely no one to blame but themselves...

From the clips I've seen, I'm actually prepared to accept it as a comedy to be honest... :lol: :lol:

Having seen both trailers, and judging purely by those, Snow White and the Huntsman looks likely to rip Mirror Mirror a new one... "..Huntsman" Definitely has more edge to it... But, at the moment, I'm really enjoying the series Grimm. A quite cool post-modernist take on the fairy tales...

I would agree with that tbh.. I loathed Berlusconi, but he was really just a buffoon to be honest, the bigger danger is now apparent....

Well, Italy is the third largest economy in Europe... So, quite a lot of power, Berlusconi was virtually like an Emperor....

Politicians have always been sitting in someone's pocket, but now it seems to me that the take-over is going "overground" and going into the final phase.. The IMF, World Bank, etc, have trialled their SAPs (Structural Adjustment Plans) in Less Developed Countries in Africa, Asia, Latin America, etc, for the past several decades, and now it's the turn of European countries to lose control of their economic destiny and sovereignty.. They'll be after Ireland, Spain and Portugal next.... This was always the plan...

What price the new democracy? Goldman Sachs conquers Europe http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business...expires_in=6763 While ordinary people fret about austerity and jobs, the eurozone's corridors of power have been undergoing a remarkable transformation The ascension of Mario Monti to the Italian prime ministership is remarkable for more reasons than it is possible to count. By replacing the scandal-surfing Silvio Berlusconi, Italy has dislodged the undislodgeable. By imposing rule by unelected technocrats, it has suspended the normal rules of democracy, and maybe democracy itself. And by putting a senior adviser at Goldman Sachs in charge of a Western nation, it has taken to new heights the political power of an investment bank that you might have thought was prohibitively politically toxic. This is the most remarkable thing of all: a giant leap forward for, or perhaps even the successful culmination of, the Goldman Sachs Project. It is not just Mr Monti. The European Central Bank, another crucial player in the sovereign debt drama, is under ex-Goldman management, and the investment bank's alumni hold sway in the corridors of power in almost every European nation, as they have done in the US throughout the financial crisis. Until Wednesday, the International Monetary Fund's European division was also run by a Goldman man, Antonio Borges, who just resigned for personal reasons. Even before the upheaval in Italy, there was no sign of Goldman Sachs living down its nickname as "the Vampire Squid", and now that its tentacles reach to the top of the eurozone, sceptical voices are raising questions over its influence. The political decisions taken in the coming weeks will determine if the eurozone can and will pay its debts – and Goldman's interests are intricately tied up with the answer to that question. Simon Johnson, the former International Monetary Fund economist, in his book 13 Bankers, argued that Goldman Sachs and the other large banks had become so close to government in the run-up to the financial crisis that the US was effectively an oligarchy. At least European politicians aren't "bought and paid for" by corporations, as in the US, he says. "Instead what you have in Europe is a shared world-view among the policy elite and the bankers, a shared set of goals and mutual reinforcement of illusions." This is The Goldman Sachs Project. Put simply, it is to hug governments close. Every business wants to advance its interests with the regulators that can stymie them and the politicians who can give them a tax break, but this is no mere lobbying effort. Goldman is there to provide advice for governments and to provide financing, to send its people into public service and to dangle lucrative jobs in front of people coming out of government. The Project is to create such a deep exchange of people and ideas and money that it is impossible to tell the difference between the public interest and the Goldman Sachs interest. Mr Monti is one of Italy's most eminent economists, and he spent most of his career in academia and thinktankery, but it was when Mr Berlusconi appointed him to the European Commission in 1995 that Goldman Sachs started to get interested in him. First as commissioner for the internal market, and then especially as commissioner for competition, he has made decisions that could make or break the takeover and merger deals that Goldman's bankers were working on or providing the funding for. Mr Monti also later chaired the Italian Treasury's committee on the banking and financial system, which set the country's financial policies. With these connections, it was natural for Goldman to invite him to join its board of international advisers. The bank's two dozen-strong international advisers act as informal lobbyists for its interests with the politicians that regulate its work. Other advisers include Otmar Issing who, as a board member of the German Bundesbank and then the European Central Bank, was one of the architects of the euro. Perhaps the most prominent ex-politician inside the bank is Peter Sutherland, Attorney General of Ireland in the 1980s and another former EU Competition Commissioner. He is now non-executive chairman of Goldman's UK-based broker-dealer arm, Goldman Sachs International, and until its collapse and nationalisation he was also a non-executive director of Royal Bank of Scotland. He has been a prominent voice within Ireland on its bailout by the EU, arguing that the terms of emergency loans should be eased, so as not to exacerbate the country's financial woes. The EU agreed to cut Ireland's interest rate this summer. Picking up well-connected policymakers on their way out of government is only one half of the Project, sending Goldman alumni into government is the other half. Like Mr Monti, Mario Draghi, who took over as President of the ECB on 1 November, has been in and out of government and in and out of Goldman. He was a member of the World Bank and managing director of the Italian Treasury before spending three years as managing director of Goldman Sachs International between 2002 and 2005 – only to return to government as president of the Italian central bank. Mr Draghi has been dogged by controversy over the accounting tricks conducted by Italy and other nations on the eurozone periphery as they tried to squeeze into the single currency a decade ago. By using complex derivatives, Italy and Greece were able to slim down the apparent size of their government debt, which euro rules mandated shouldn't be above 60 per cent of the size of the economy. And the brains behind several of those derivatives were the men and women of Goldman Sachs. The bank's traders created a number of financial deals that allowed Greece to raise money to cut its budget deficit immediately, in return for repayments over time. In one deal, Goldman channelled $1bn of funding to the Greek government in 2002 in a transaction called a cross-currency swap. On the other side of the deal, working in the National Bank of Greece, was Petros Christodoulou, who had begun his career at Goldman, and who has been promoted now to head the office managing government Greek debt. Lucas Papademos, now installed as Prime Minister in Greece's unity government, was a technocrat running the Central Bank of Greece at the time. Goldman says that the debt reduction achieved by the swaps was negligible in relation to euro rules, but it expressed some regrets over the deals. Gerald Corrigan, a Goldman partner who came to the bank after running the New York branch of the US Federal Reserve, told a UK parliamentary hearing last year: "It is clear with hindsight that the standards of transparency could have been and probably should have been higher." When the issue was raised at confirmation hearings in the European Parliament for his job at the ECB, Mr Draghi says he wasn't involved in the swaps deals either at the Treasury or at Goldman. It has proved impossible to hold the line on Greece, which under the latest EU proposals is effectively going to default on its debt by asking creditors to take a "voluntary" haircut of 50 per cent on its bonds, but the current consensus in the eurozone is that the creditors of bigger nations like Italy and Spain must be paid in full. These creditors, of course, are the continent's big banks, and it is their health that is the primary concern of policymakers. The combination of austerity measures imposed by the new technocratic governments in Athens and Rome and the leaders of other eurozone countries, such as Ireland, and rescue funds from the IMF and the largely German-backed European Financial Stability Facility, can all be traced to this consensus. "My former colleagues at the IMF are running around trying to justify bailouts of €1.5trn-€4trn, but what does that mean?" says Simon Johnson. "It means bailing out the creditors 100 per cent. It is another bank bailout, like in 2008: The mechanism is different, in that this is happening at the sovereign level not the bank level, but the rationale is the same." So certain is the financial elite that the banks will be bailed out, that some are placing bet-the-company wagers on just such an outcome. Jon Corzine, a former chief executive of Goldman Sachs, returned to Wall Street last year after almost a decade in politics and took control of a historic firm called MF Global. He placed a $6bn bet with the firm's money that Italian government bonds will not default. When the bet was revealed last month, clients and trading partners decided it was too risky to do business with MF Global and the firm collapsed within days. It was one of the ten biggest bankruptcies in US history. The grave danger is that, if Italy stops paying its debts, creditor banks could be made insolvent. Goldman Sachs, which has written over $2trn of insurance, including an undisclosed amount on eurozone countries' debt, would not escape unharmed, especially if some of the $2trn of insurance it has purchased on that insurance turns out to be with a bank that has gone under. No bank – and especially not the Vampire Squid – can easily untangle its tentacles from the tentacles of its peers. This is the rationale for the bailouts and the austerity, the reason we are getting more Goldman, not less. The alternative is a second financial crisis, a second economic collapse. Shared illusions, perhaps? Who would dare test it? --------------------------------------------------------------------- While the idiots in the Tabloid press and the likes of the EDL murmer about "immagrunts" or "muslims", the biggest threat to European democracy and the sovereignty of individual European countries has been quietly positioning itself in a hostile take-over of the very fabric of our democracy... Ladies and Gentlemen - I give you the Goldman Sachs Banksters and the New Technocrats.... The biggest threat to Europe since Adolf Hitler....

You dont have a side though, you prat... You basically came on here to this debate and pretty much said 'who cares? Let them blow each other up'. That's not "taking a side" or "making an argument", that's spamming....

At an educated guess, I'd say the tube journey from St Pancras was the biggest nightmare... :lol: :lol:

I know, so boring and obvious.. Another reason why I switched to RT.... :lol: :lol:

Naaah, he'd be more likely to don "blackface" and sing "Mamee"..... :lol: :lol:

Oh great, Thom Robb's a fecking EDL-er..... Oh, we'll make him nice and welcome here... Well, about as much as a meeting at the Simon Wiesentahl centre would make Adolf Hitler feel at home...... :lol:

:lol: :lol: Good reply....

Wasting your time Silas, I fear.. I've read a few other posts by this "Thom Robb" person on other forums... In the FIFA thread on sports forum he made some glib comment about "typical French", so got a feeling we may have another Crazy Chris.... And, OI, you, I dont always post from RT at all. I've posted from The Independent, The Guardian, The Telegraph, and occasionally Al Jazeera as well as other sources.... I've switched to RT from the BBC because I'm frankly sick of the BBC.... Funny how no one made jokes about me "working as promoter" for the Beeb when I used to put up their stuff half the time.... :P :lol: :lol:

Sepp Blatter really is an utter tool.... -_-

I have no problems whatsoever with Sharapova's screaming... Or her broad shoulders, pert womanly breasts, lovely, tall athletic figure, long legs or her beautiful long, blonde, cascading tresses.... She is f***ing GORGEOUS, and a real woman, end of story... :wub:

The dollar as a reserve currency is dead.. It just doesn't know it yet... :P The Euro is probably on the way out too..

Oi, watch it you, our you'll get a visit from the FSB.... :P :lol:

Newsflash - gold is already in play and China is buying up all the gold it can get its hands on because they see the future.. Fiat is dead as the dodo, currencies only ever have a 30 or 40 year run, and Fiat's run is coming to an end (it was in 1971 that Nixon ended the Gold Standard)... Watch Max Keiser, he's been saying for the past two or three years that gold is going to come-back, he was also warning everyone about the banking crisis in 2006... EVERTHING Keiser has predicted has come true.... the gold standard isn't the problem, it's finding the right price for gold that's the key... Ron Paul, like Max Keiser, is smart enough to see where things are heading... The other front-runners are complete idiots who just want to stick to the status quo WHICH ISN'T WORKING....

This... Thanks for replying to that unbelievably silly comment above by "Thom Robb" Silas, I honestly couldn't work up the effort last night to point out how completely wrong the poster was..... :lol:

No, I'm not kidding, Ron Paul is by FAR the best candidate as far as Republicans go, he's certainly the one who talks by far the most sense, and since when has being a "Libertarian" a dirty word..? Romney, Gingrich, Bachmann, et al, are all f***ing idiots who will just kow tow to the bankers and Israel and before you know it, we'll be entering into a bloody and ruinous war with Iran; Paul actually has a mind of his own and doesn't automatically believe the shite the IAEA says as if it's gospel.. Oh, would that be the reason why people consider him a "loony"..? Because he'll actually get shit done..... :rolleyes: Besides, this report from Russia Today (which I consider a FAR more trustworthy news source than shite like the BBC, CNN or Faux News) would seem to suggest that things are a lot closer than you think, and the mainstream US media would be comfortable with.... http://rt.com/usa/news/latest-poll-ron-paul-425/

This is an out-take from the new "Thick of It" spin-off film, isn't it....? :lol: :lol: The man's an absolute f**king idiot... :rolleyes: Ron Paul must laughing his arse off right now, he really has no competition for the Republican Party candidacy....

Cenk Uygur quite brilliantly shoots down Mayor Bloomberg's pathetic excuses down in flames.... Qy6h95oFQT8 Yeah, cant have these pesky First Amendment rights getting in the way of Bloomberg's clients and cronies in Wall Street ripping off the American people to the tune of billions every year can we......? C'unt.... <_< http://rt.com/usa/news/judge-verdict-occupy-york-429/ Anger and disappointment is erupting from New York City this afternoon, after a judge ruled that Occupy Wall Street protesters must discontinue camping at Manhattan’s Zuccotti Park. After hours of deliberating, a New York Supreme Court judge ruled this afternoon that protesters would be prohibited from continuing their occupation of Zuccotti Park in Manhattan. Occupy demonstrators finally became aware of the judge’s ruling hours after an afternoon deliberation — reports first suggested that the court would make its decision by 3 p.m. EST, though it was roughly 4:45 local time before the official word was revealed to the media and protesters. Rumors earlier circulated an hour earlier that protesters would be allowed to reclaim their park, but as deliberations continued, the judge finally bowed to the pressure from Mayor Michael Bloomberg and the New York Police department to close down Zuccotti from ongoing Occupy encampment. "This is probably being perceived as a significant blow to the Occupy Wall Street movement," RT's Marina Portnaya reports from New York City, where she had been covering the OWS movement for weeks, spending several hours today among the protesters. "They really genuinely believed that the judge was ultimately going to rule on their behalf and that they would be allowed back in the park with their tents, with their tarps, with their sleeping bags," she says. "They really thought that that would be ultimate conclusion, but as we found out . . . a judge delivered a final ruling against the Occupy protesters." Nearly almost 60 days since Occupy Wall Street protesters first began demonstration in Lower Manhattan, a massive police raid early this morning emptied hundreds of protesters from the Big Apple encampment. First reports from the scene suggested that cops had deployed tear gas on protesters and detained several participants in the Occupy movement, with at least four journalists, including those working for both the AP and New York Times, being arrested for covering Tuesday morning’s infiltration. Other images from the park showed cops attacking protesters on the scene. A prior decision revealed earlier in the day legally permitted protesters to return to their encampment follow this morning’s raid, but orders from Mayor Bloomberg directly in violation of the court’s orders resulted in hundreds of cops protecting the perimeter of the park and prohibiting protesters from continuing their occupation. "After it was vacated, after the raid took place and 200 were arrested," says Portnaya, the park became occupied by police officers for upwards of ten hours. "This scene literally has been turned upside down," she says, noting that the entirety of Zuccotti's perimeter had been reinforced with barricades. Marina Portnaya adds that inside the park, a new ensemble of personnel believed to be a private security firm joined forces with the NYPD to protect Zuccotti. Police did their best to black-out media from covering today’s events, not only arresting journalists from barring them from reporting on the scene, kicking them from the premises and revoking press credentials. Despite this morning’s raid, the eviction seemed to have only ignited the momentum of the Occupy movement further. Thousands gathered throughout the day outside a New York City courthouse and Zuccotti Park to offer their support for the Occupy Wall Street movement. According to this afternoon’s ruling, “Even protected speech is not equably permissible in all places at all times,” quoting Cornelius v NAACP Legal Defense & Ed. Fund, Inc., 473 US 788, 799 [1985] The judge adds that “The movements have not demonstrated that they have a First Amendment right to remain in Zuccotti Park, along with their tents, structures, generators and other installations to the exclusion of the owners’ reasonable rights and duties to maintain Zuccotti Park, or to the rights to public access of others who might wish to use the space safely.” The ruling continues that protesters will eventually be allowed back in the park but will be prohibited from continuing their 24-hour occupation, which has almost approached its 60-day mark. “The owner of Zuccotti Park has represented that, after cleaning and restoration of Zuccotti Park, it was permit the Occupy Wall Street demonstrators to reenter the Park and to resume using it, in conformity with law and with the owner’s rules.” Barely 40 minutes after the ruling was delivered, protesters were already allowed readmittance to Zuccotti Park, though are prohibited from bringing in tents, structures, generators and large bags. Across the country, similar crack-downs have occurred in recent days in other major cities, including Oakland, Albany, Rochester, Chapel Hill and Burlington. Oakland, California Mayor Jean Quan told the BBC in an interview this morning that she had participated in a conference call with around 18 other city leaders in the day before her own Police Department conducted a brutal crackdown in Oakland’s Frank Ogawa plaza. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- John F Kennedy - "When peaceful revolution is made impossible then violent revolution is inevitable"

Why, I doubt you'll actually gain any meaningful insights which would help you with your course... Hollywood is hardly known for its realistic treatments of historical figures or facts.... Similarly if you were doing a module on 12th Century Scottish History, I would hardly recommend "Braveheart" as a learning aid.... -_-

You're missing the point... Obama has been quick to denounce the violent reactions of certain STATES in the Middle East towards peaceful protestors, and yet does not denounce the STATES who are doing the same thing within the Union of which he is President.... These STATES are basically pissing on the First Amendment.. I rather think that, as President, his FIRST and primary duty should really be to ensure the Constitution is upheld by ALL the States of the Union.. No....? The First Amendment (and the Geneva Convention too in Article 20) quite clearly states that people have the lawful right to peaceful protest.. By their actions, the police chiefs and the Mayors of New York, Oakland, Portland and others are basically breaking these First Amendment and Article 20 rights.... I actually do think that this should be in the purview of the President to enforce the First Amendment... Otherwise, what f***ing use IS the Office of the President...? I say, send in the National Guard and the Feds to sort these pigs out.....