Slashdot Mirror
Surface-To-Air Missiles At London Olympics
First time accepted submitter TheGift73 writes "I have to admit, when I first read about this I thought it was a hoax, but unfortunately it's true. The UK government is considering placing surface-to-air missiles on residential buildings in London for the duration of the London Olympics. From the article: 'The Ministry of Defence is considering placing surface-to-air missiles on residential flats during the Olympics.
An east London estate, where 700 people live, has received leaflets saying a "Higher Velocity Missile system" could be placed on a water tower.
A spokesman said the MoD had not yet decided whether to deploy ground based air defence systems during the event.'"
n/t
This is just getting ridiculous.
I heard this on the radio this morning, along with a heap of upset residents!
Those Poms will complain about anything.
I'd be wrapped to have a missile array on my roof!
London missile defense
...why we bother having the Olympics. We should all just have a big war instead. The winner gets a gold medal.
...fly into Charles de Gaulle and drive.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
"UK government uses civilian residents as human shields to protect their missile sites".
It'll make the terrorists think twice before blowing up those flats to eliminate the SAM batteries.
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
IOC needs to protect its copyrights somehow.
Who's taking odds as to the possibility that these fancy little toys will end up inflicting enough casualties to cover a front-page photo spread through either accident or malice, in a situation where just leaving them out of the picture would have gone fine?
This has been a farce from day 1, starting with the chronically underestimated budget for the whole thing, and the unfounded, misguided claims that it would be profitable for the country and spark unprecedented 'urban renewal', as well as a renaissance in sports for everyone in the country as people became inspired.
As each and every one of these things has been debunked, the fanatics and toadies have continued to shout them, just louder. The level of denial here is incredible. The best one I've heard so far was putting the lie to the idea that it would get the population back into sports. Studies have shown that this doesn't happen in host countries, for the olympics, the commonwealth games or whatever the event. When faced with this the organisers just repeated their feelgood bunk about how inspirational the whole thing was, despite having just been shown unequivocally that the opposite is true.
So now surface to air missiles? Well I suppose a gathering that big could be a target. I know what londoners will be saying though, the same as they said from the start (when I was living there) - "We never wanted them in the first place".
I mean, we DO have to protect Airstrip 1, after all.
... are in an ultralight air craft.
That's one advertisement you will not see during this year's olymics!
120 characters ought to be enough for anyone
Sorry, but what kind of attack are they expecting where air-to-air missiles won't be sufficient?
The war on terror has now reach the stage where governments involved provide weaponry for a strike, in situ.
the problem is the UK SAM systems are basically Rapiers.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapier_%28missile%29
They were built in the 60's and entered service beginning 1970. They are known for missing target and getting IFF confused shooting down friendly aircraft e.g. http://www.mod.uk/NR/rdonlyres/EF248AAE-5B25-4CB4-BE90-EE096980354B/0/boi_loss_gazellexx377.pdf
They cant be deployed too far away because they basically suck. to have any chance at all they need to be stuck to the target. why they still use em is anyones guess.
Isn't that the claim, US and other NATO countries' media makes every time a victim of their invasion tries to place any air defenses in their cities?
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
No no, for the Olympics they'll be using... wait for it... wait for it... Javelins!
Science is all about firing a drunk pig out of a cannon just to see what happens.
anything to keep away unwanted... photographers! ;^)
Well, the Internet Generation just hasn't really grasped just how horrific the Battle of Britain was.
But hey, those bunkers are only what, 70 years old? Some blood, sweat, toil and tears will get those spit spot in a jiffy.
Keep calm and buy our officially licensed London 2012 merchandise!
Clay pigeon shooting with Surface-to-air missiles. You can't miss!
London Calling.
I have mod points and I am not afraid to use them.
Oh course the states did it as well.
Operation Dark Shield.
I have mod points and I am not afraid to use them.
... when Daleks invade. Again.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
The winter games in 2002 in SLC had unprecedented military participation. There were radar and missile emplacements all over the foothills and there were troops all over the place including Apache helicopters and F-16's patrolling the skies during the days major events. The SLC international airport was off limits entirely to unscheduled flights and the military was authorized to shoot down any plane violating SLC airspace.
We see a lot of air traffic being that Hill Airforce base is close and Fort Williams is where the Apaches train but I've never seen so many military air craft all over the place.
If this is true...
Has anyone stopped to consider that if it came to situation that required ground to air missiles, by putting the launchers on residential buildings they have just made civilian homes prime targets...
Really? They are considering this?
I guess they fear that having the Olympics will make London a target for terrorists.
I guess somebody will have to explain it to the terrorists that they had best wait for the show to begin. Otherwise they might continue bombing busses and subway stations in the meantime and not have any anybody left to fly planes over the Olympic site come late July and August.
A curious Olympic Games. The only winning move is not to play
"You call it a new way of thinking; I call it regression to ignorance!" -- Operation Ivy
I thought that we invaded Iraq to make us safer. I thought the war in Afghanistan would make us safer. They told us that all this war, imprisonment without trial, assassination, torture, mass surveillance, nude scans and enhanced pat downs would make us safer.
And yet now, after more than ten years of this, we've reached the stage that we're considering placing surface to fucking air missiles on top of people's houses in the middle of London.
What the hell happened? Are we losing this 'war on terror'?
Because the current missiles on your roof are too slow?
That the more you think about it, the stupider it seems. What if someone steals one? What if someone sets one off?
What a great advertisement for spending your tourist dollars
somewhere else.
The winter Olympics are better anyway.
"You'll get nothing, and you'll like it!"
maybe sports are a way to channel certain instincts without the massive damage of war
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
PULL! Should also make Discus and interesting event.
I would totally request keeping it after the olympics if it was on my house. That or wrap a huuuuge air conditioning chassis around it and then when they come back and are like "hmmm, guess we didn't put one here like the notes say" then tada, SAM on my roof, bitches lol.
So in 2016 does this mean Rio de Janeiro's gonna have to one-up the Brits? Maybe have a few tactical nukes on standby as a deterrent?
Most people on Slashdot are fucking idiots.
Sounds like a perfect way to get London to blow up citizens. Terrorists take the gold.
dunno whats worse, the "civil" country preparing for attack, or the animal group of religious wackjobs that might be planning it... either way its fucking sad
For the past Olympic games, the hosting country just made do with fireworks....
To step up to actual missiles, now that is going to take a lot of effort to top for future hosting countries !!
Arming the missiles with nuclear warheads will be an even better terrorist deterrent.
I hope they don't over look the plans and funds to remove them after the Olympics are over. After all, once they're in place they could in theory help prevent an asteroid strike. Might as well leave them there just in case.
They had AA in place for the Athens Olypmics. They were clearly visible out beyond the outfield wall at the Softball and Baseball fields. This type of thing:
http://farm7.staticflickr.com/6203/6074130550_928b676ecc_z.jpg
Although that was in an open, unpopulated area. Placing them on a residential complex is obviously a step up though.
They'd be a perfect offense on a civilian crowd. Why wait for real terrorists to strike when you can just facilitate them or even just stage it yourself.
"This just in, terrorists have taken command of two flat-top SAR missile platforms and are raining missiles all over London. MI5 has been granted emergency powers to arrest and detain indefinitely without charge" etc.
War as we knew it was obsolete
Nothing could beat complete denial
- Emily Haines
Just shoot down the incoming planes from all the other countries.
Ok, if someone were to attack London with a heavily armed bomber or attack aircraft these would be invaluable.
If someone were to fly a small, unarmed plane on a suicide mission, these might cause more damage than the attack (as many other posters have pointed out).
If someone were to fly a very small, slow, remotely guided (or pre-programmed) drone and a large, surposonic anti-aircraft missile tipped with a massive high explosive warhead was used to shoot it down, it would almost certainly cause much more damage than the drone could. Especially since the drone will likely be flying at "treetop" level (or below!) which means the missile will not be exploding high in the atmosphere but literally in the streets. (Actually, again as other posters have pointed out, missiles will likely be useless against such threats; it is unclear if they could even lock on or track such small targets against the ground clutter).
Maybe shoulder mounted SAMs are in order. In that case, do you want them up on a water tower or apartment building where they'd be firing DOWN? (Probably best to put them at the venue itself).
Yes, except minus any actual air defenses.
Hyper-Velocity Missile System, not "Higher". An evolved variant of Shorts Starstreak.
Source: me, as the factory in Castlereagh where they are built by the Shorts division of Thales is just down the road from my house.
Beats what they had at Beijing 2008:
http://www.treehugger.com/cars/beijings-olympic-security-forces-drive-segways.html
They are starstreaks. I know that high velocity missile sounds great for PR, but that is not their primary name.
They are basically the british counterpart of the American FIM-92 Stinger man portable air defense system. (MANPADS)
Just like the stinger, it can be shoulder launched or vehicle mounted.
Both use a delayed impact fuze where they first penetrate the target, and then detonate a small explosive charge (roughly 15 to 20 oz.)
Now where we run into trouble is the guidance. The modern stinger system uses a relatively advance heat seeking guidance for the missile. Excellent for reliably disabling virtually any aircraft as it specifically targets heat sources, ie engines, and attempts to impact with them. The starstreak however is a beam riding missile. Beam riding is great in that you are going to bextremely hard pressed to produce an effective countermeasure, but it is terrible because it not only requires line of sight from the operator to the target for the entire flight, but also heavily relies upon the user to keep the aircraft painted with the laser. This is one of the reasons they need something like a water tower, otherwise an aircaft at low altitude is effectively immune due to the LoS restrictions on the missiles. This also means that the missile will impact whatever is painted by the user, which is likely to be the fuselage. For a helicopter, or fighter aircraft, this matters little as any significant damage is probably going to ground them, but if you were a terrorist in something like a 737, it is going to do very little to the aircraft, almost certainly nowhere near enough to stop it from colliding with its intended target.
So I don't know what films they have been watching to suggest otherwise, but these aren't going to do anything except piss off residents.
I live near the proposed site on a council estate [that's a 'project' for US folks]. The missiles are going onto the roof of a yuppie-style gated community [a bad habit that we seem to have imported from the US, incidentally]. So, at least, they can point the missiles downwards and use them on the feckless poor who can be troublesome at any time. In main ha,ha it's this class of people that want to be protected from absolutely everything, they've got their wish.
More seriously, no-one asked us about the Olympics, no-one I know wants them and they're just a huge taxpayer funded sponsorship of some of the worst companies in the world. Last thing, we've actually lost viable playing fields [you know, like, for 'sport' played by 'people'] to Olympic car parks. Bah!
On y va, qui mal y pense!
Recall that F/A 18 that hit an apartment complex in Virginia Beach? No one died. If the plane hit a packed sports arena, that would be a different story entirely.
Came up with an Olympic event only a British Aristocrat could afford to practice regularly
It's for show right? Who the hell cares? As it is with most military hardware, it's designed to be scary. Something to make the enemy hesitate even a second. If it's presence stops something it has effectively done it's job correct? So let's all bitch and moan and complain about decisions being made way over our head, when who's to say if those decisions are actually wrong?
According to the Guardian in November last year SAMs have been deployed since 1996 at the Olympics.
First they give away aircraft carriers and ground the Harriers, next they replace the current SAMs. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_rocket
... will they be removing them after the Olympics, or will they stay as a matter of 'public safety'?
Everyone will feel so much safer surrounded by missiles.
(that's meant sarcastically)
Anyone intending harm has a problem smuggling weapons - nice of the British government to solve that problem for them. Now all they have to do is either infiltrate or take over one of those posts and there is a *definite* problem.
I'm not sure this is such a good idea..
brought to from the home of the Great Bard, Will "2B || !2B" Shakespeare.
Exactly. If you google "starstreak" you will find that the missiles can also be used to attack ground targets like say, the Olympic stadium.
I have lost faith in my country's military.
Not because we deploy SAM's to protect a major event. No. I sort of expect that at the moment, to be honest, and it's no worse than all the SAM's that are probably around and we *don't* know about.
I've lost faith BECAUSE WE TELL PEOPLE ABOUT IT ON THE NEWS.
Hell, we've even given the locations away, just about.
You're a military. Act like one. That means you protect us and keep the "how" a secret except to the people to whom you're directly accountable (and, no, I don't expect a military to be DIRECTLY accountable to the general public because that's just silly).
It means you don't DO press releases at all, certainly not ones that describe in some detail the exact location and hardware you intend to deploy. You're a bloody military. Even as misinformation this is TOO public and, as the news reaction has shown, too scary to tell the little people. You have self-created a whole new "terror" to scare them with, probably to justify your budget.
There's already a no-fly zone over the Olympics. The people assume that's enforced somehow in the event of dumb, copycat airplane hijacking that might be aimed at the stadium. They "know" you have something to deal with it (though the majority would assume jets of some kind) but they DON'T need to have it splashed over the news to scare them even more in a time when terrorism is already getting FAR TOO MUCH PRESS. Terrorists create terror. That's their intention. Give them press and they can do it. Take the press away and they're just some nutters with a bomb (which is perceived as entirely less a threat to the average man).
What you say is that the military "has taken steps to insure safety", "has deployed a number of strategic units to combat X", "will enforce a no-fly zone" or even "doesn't discuss arrangements made for reasons of national security".
There's no security in obscurity (as I'm sure some geek will point it), but there is a way to induce panic and TERROR in the general population by shouting your mouth off in order to "justify" your budget. Because now, if there is a terrorist attack using that method - you're going to need to do it at EVERY public event. And if there's a terrorist attack of another kind, it will be "Why didn't you see it?", "Why did you waste money on that when the threat was elsewhere?", etc. And if there is no terrorist attack, you just created one by putting a SAM on top of a tower block and broadcasting about it.
But if you'd have kept to the "official party line" of the military since God-knows-when, there'd be no panic, no problem, and you could do your job without having to have PR people comb every detail of what you say first.
Theres a nice little checklist over at the 360 blog for systems and network administrators ahead of the London Olympics. Stuff you need to plan for, what will probably go wrong, how to keep your computers and networks running etc, see: Olympic Preparedness Checklist.
The enemy will fly a copter full of engineers your base and takel over it. Build AA and anti personel torrents quickly.
Have we learnt nothing from C&C?
I work in the Canary Wharf estate, which in the past, has been subject of terrorist attacks, and is quite close to the Olympic site. We also are near several hundred thousand dirt-poor, angry, and possibly radicalized Third World muslims, as part of the Olympics bid was the idea of spending billions to do up one of the poorest and most squalid pockets of the Western World.
Recently, my company tried to buy insurance, and half the insurers we approached simply refused to insure us outright because of the risks. You know you have an issue when you can't buy insurance.
Personally, I couldn't give a damn about the missiles (although they will look cool, and remind our bearded friends that they're not completely unopposed). What I AM concerned about, is contingency planning for things like Mumbai-style gun attacks (which could be devastating in a crowded place like where I work), bomb attacks, mass poisonings, or some other display of general Islamist asshattery. I'm not sure how we can get that reassurance that the planning has been done though.
http://www.blowe.org.uk/ has probably the best information on this story as they have scanned the official leaflet for the residents explaining the decision to place a surface to air missile system on the flats. The faq is particularly informative.
Those leaflets will almost certainly be worth money as a unique limited edition souvenir from the 2012 Olympics.
Blarney Quality Restaurant, Plants
Back in July 2001, the G8 in Genoa (which became infamous for the incidents between the police and the protesters) had an early controversy when SAMs (I think it was the Spada system with Aspide missiles) were placed at the airport to prevent against air attacks. Also, the port hosted a couple of destroyers with the very similar Albatross system (same munition) during the meeting.
This was discussed in the local newspaper, with some people criticizing the deployment and others making fun of it. Two months later there was 9/11. I wonder if those people reconsidered; probably they pretended to forget.
Ander
@=
Iraq did not make the world any less safe than it was before and it might have been a wash over all, how it turns out depends wholly on the new Iraqi government. The childish jabs at Iraq/Bush etc are stale, try another angle. Now for the screw karma because I am so tired of lame shit.
Modern technology has simply given the irrational the means to reach out and touch anyone. Modern technology does more to make the future less safe than more safe. Simply put, the terrorists/freedom fighters/etc now have more means to coordinate, more information at their disposal, and the ability to more easily recruit and disseminate their ideals than ever before.
Used to be they were pretty much regionally confined. Now they can span the globe is small cells and still have some semblance of order. Yes police forces around the world have the same and more resources but they are swamped under a dearth of information that they have to sort out and sort NOW.
So yes we need to protect high profile targets, that is both people and events which attract people. When a attache case can kill a few, a dozen, or hundreds, its hard to not imagine the possibility of it being done. When it has already been proven that airplanes of any sort and size, manned or not, are a weapon in the right hands you have to take that previously ludicrous level of action to protect from it.
Hell I am amazed they don't erect a wall with razor wire around the whole thing and then strip people before they enter. Even then...
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Can you just imagine what the world would be like, if western governments such as USA and UK would engage in wars that mostly affect the civilian population and that UN would call illegal wars? Wars, that leave hundreds of thousands of civilians dead, wounded or homeless... Yes, I understand it's difficult to imagine even that but now imagine that the wars would have support from about half the population of those western countries...
I know that sounds disgusting and if something like that were to actually occur, I could see why immigrants from the affected countries would be somewhat hostile against those western countries and even consider the civilian population to be acceptable target. Nothing like that has happened, however, so that kind of attitude should be out of question!
Isn't that the claim, US and other NATO countries' media makes every time a victim of their invasion tries to place any air defenses in their cities?
By cities you mean in schools, mosques and hospitals, of course, and by "victim of their invasion" I assume you mean whatever gang of thugs tortured and murdered their rivals, and tortured and murdered anyone who is remotely moderate or peaceful and is holding their population hostage through periodic acts of terror. Ever wondered why there are no peaceful Palestinians? It's because Nobel Peace Prize Winner Yassar Arafat tortured and murdered them, and when he died, Hamas murdered any left over.
At any rate, last I checked, the UK and other NATO countries have well defined military facilities that someone could attack.
Can you just imagine what the world would be like, if western governments such as USA and UK would engage in wars that mostly affect the civilian population and that UN would call illegal wars? Wars, that leave hundreds of thousands of civilians dead, wounded or homeless... Yes, I understand it's difficult to imagine even that but now imagine that the wars would have support from about half the population of those western countries...
I know that sounds disgusting and if something like that were to actually occur, I could see why immigrants from the affected countries would be somewhat hostile against those western countries and even consider the civilian population to be acceptable target. Nothing like that has happened, however, so that kind of attitude should be out of question!
That is pretty much irrelevant to whether or not we should defend against terrorism in the Olympics. No change in policy is likely to affect terrorists preparing for the Olympics. Actually in the UK the majority were against invading Iraq, but Blair went in anyway.
As usual always deflecting and comparing Israel to other human rights abusers and war mongeres or occupiers. Now who would you like to compare to Israel when it comes to bombing a civilian population into submission (2006 Lebanon, 2009 Gaza) using american made F16s and weapons bought by the american tax payer? What about massacres? If you don't believe google "israeli massacres" and you'll find details on about 60 of them!
This video explains it all very clear: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Db_mi_f869c
Australia basically lucked out in having the last truly successful Olympics. Since then computers, the internet and the drive for participation over sucked in by marketing passivity is taking over.
Whiny, it's not lying it's acting product promoting, athletes and their lawyers, as just so yesterday, last millennium in fact. Olympic gold medal winners are promoting crappier and crappier products, it's getting so bad, using the reduces the appearance value of a product rather than enhancing it.
I stopped taking the Olympics seriously when McDonalds became a sponsor.
OK, that's not true, I stopped taking the Olympics seriously when Roy and HG got involved.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
This is a wonderful idea. It's so important to protect uneducated athletes and the wealthy VIPs who can afford to come watch them in stadium. It's much better to disable incoming hostile 747s filled with fuel and have them crash and burn in densely-populated residential neighborhoods where only ordinary hard-working lower and middle-class citizens will be burned to death.
No, no... you've got it all wrong--
When /THEY/ do it, they're aggressors and the civilians in those buildings are effectively hostages who really don't want to be involved or have weapons placed on their homes...
When /WE/ do it, we're just defending ourselves and those people living and working nearby... after all, the SAM's won't be a TARGET, they'll be the DEFENSE!
Please get it straight. /sarcasm
How about "Ministry of Peace"? Orwell,. (good Englishman that he was), is spinning in his sleeve, or laughing up his grave, or something like that.
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
There is a difference between semi-permanent missile defense structures in an aggressive country that knows it might be attacked, and temporary missile launchers installed just in case a threat might emerge out of thin air. Also, it only matters if the enemy cares about not blowing up civilians. The aggressive country would purposely install defense hardware near civilian locations so that when the other aggressive country disables that hardware, the first country can cry about how evil the second country is for blowing up civilians.
So if the UK defense dept thought that they were at risk for a military invasion, then yes, they would be assholes for installing military hardware in residential areas. You don't put targets on your civilians. But that's not what these are for. They are for mitigating the damage should a hijacked aircraft stray into the protected airspace. I am sure that they have designed landing and takeoff patterns for the nearby airports such that it will be obvious when an aircraft is or is not pointed in the right direction.
If you need surface to air missiles to protect the general public in an *entertainment* event then you need to cancel such event?
Somebody in the HP has been up late with the heroin pipe.
What crazy, stupid idiot would think to send an air-force attack on London?
If they're worried about drones, they're still stupid. There are drones, now, that can dodge SAMs. And who would send a horde of drones? They would get shot down within twenty minutes of appearing on radar. They'd have to fly in over flocks of birds to avoid being detected and they'd still be detected.
And again nobody in the world is thinking of sending an air force over London, at least not any air force that could be reached by SAMs. If somebody wanted to do real horrible damage they'd fly over with one of these new high-altitude spy planes and drop a payload from up high. Even that's sort of a stupid idea, there are probably going to be one or two high altitude radars flying at all times if the fact that rooftops will be reinforced with missile racks is any sign.
Considering that these missiles are totally useless as a defense of any kind (due to the fact that there's no imaginable threat that they could be used against) I imagine it's a psychological operation and not against some imperceptible enemy but against the common person.
"Stratigraphically the origin of agriculture and thermonuclear destruction will appear essentially simultaneous" -- Lee
We are seriously getting our knickers in a twist over the fact that the UK goverment along with the miltary considering the placement of defensive SAM sites in order to cover the games in the event that an aircraft is hijacked and used to crash into one of the many stadiums.
Are we seriously at the point where we'll get outraged at this but heavens forbid we decide not to do such a thing and something does happen, we'll all be screaming for blood at how nieve the government was for not installing a SAM site in parks and the like to make it less of a target.
You know there's a phrase I've heard since I was a boy and it rings true here.
You can't please everybody.
Something like "right up your fucking mother's cunt"?
"Stratigraphically the origin of agriculture and thermonuclear destruction will appear essentially simultaneous" -- Lee
The Olympics was invented to let people from different countries to compete in sports instead of fighting each other in real wars.
The War on Terror was invented after 9/11 to let people stand strong against terrorists and not fear.
This incident just proved we completely lost on these two fronts.
You might have to worry about single person aircraft, but those don't really do all that much damage. We had some jackass fly one into an IRS building a few years ago and I think he was the only one who died. Sure, crashing one into the crowd might result in 40-50 deaths, but you probably have more people than that die in London from paper cuts on an average day (Ooh, maybe a single person aircraft could drop sharp paper leaflets... Better not tell the terrorists about THAT...) It's much more likely that you'll accidentally shoot down a traffic helicopter than any legitimate threat, and have a flaming ball of burning traffic helicopter crash into the streets of London.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Your 747 will be accidentally shot down before landing at Heathrow. Yeah, that won't cause a problem. I suggest no one attend the Olympics. For security purposes, of course.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
Firing (mach 3.5)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mRIjwK8yuTY
Firing from a helicopter:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8sB4UEfELr4&feature=related
Mounted with a tracking system:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A0B8x3jpV18&feature=related
A slightly more general look:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6QRjtk7QuE0&feature=related
This is all just my personal opinion.
It's very important that if a highjacked airliner is detected, it's shot down over a housing estate full of poor people instead of causing any harm to those important people who can run pretty fast and throw things a bit further than some other people who throw things.
I really miss this tag for stories like this one.
Now terrorists don't have to get their own missiles, they just highjack the ones on top of the buildings, or just blow them up...
Enough is Enough, already!
Let's put all the $$$ into building Schools & Hospitals in developing nations, instead of into the construction of very high end sports stadiums, that are now deemed to need extreme military weapons, in the midst of urban sprawl, for the Games' protection,
We;ve had (in past) player murders; what next, deaths & injuries in surrounding communities, due to bits of metal falling from the sky, eg, after ground to air missles knock down their targets?!?
Let's stop while we're ahead.
its just a glorified egg and spoon race. For some reason this justifies almost 10 billion pounds of taxpayer money being pumped into getting the thing organised. This is one thing I would not regret seeing privatised.
Speak for yourself.
The people who a) think the government doesn't do enough and b) believe in the bugaboo of terrorism, (assuming you mean "enough" in reference to so-called "terrorist" events), are the idiots.
The rest of us know that the psychopathic elements of the government are just trying to crank up the fear factor in the populace through artificial means.
Terrorists would be celebrating now.
They have achieved their ultimate mission which is to spread the terror.
And british govt just made it clear.
So you are some Imperialistic nation, with an aristocracy, which had a rebellion a long time ago, in which colony states wanted independence, and now you host games, where each region sends representatives to compete in games...
Those are Surface to Air Missiles! Those are the Anti-Poision Barry System.
Though I am sort of assuming (haven't read the books) that the whole thing is alluding to the US war of independence, if what would happen if they lost... (Even the number of colonies is the same, combine that with the royal silly makeup etc...).
The biathlon already features rifles.
About 20 years ago, Tim Downs chronicled the obscure Olympic event "Heptathluge" in his comic strip "Downstown", in which the participants used machine guns mounted in luges.
The use of surface-to-air missiles is just a step forward in athletic prowess, almost as exciting as curling.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
And what if someone invaded your home based on lies, killed a hundred thousand people, and made hundreds of thousands more refugees? There was a population equivalent of 911 every week in Iraq. For years some Iraqi women were in mourning robes, because by the time came to remove them someone else in their family was killed.
What would *you* do in their place?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2012/apr/30/snipers-patrol-skies-london-olympics
"Military snipers are to be deployed in helicopters during the London Olympics and if required will shoot pilots of low-flying aircraft that might be involved in terrorist attacks, it emerged on Monday. "
we should off had them in the riot's last year.
And there's a term for noting such "differences": rationalizing hypocrisy, as few countries have been as consistently aggressive over the last 100 years as Britain and the United States.
Here's a map showing London City airport and the Excel centre. The Excel centre will be hosting a number of events:
http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?saddr=London+City+Airport&daddr=Excel+Centre&hl=en&ll=51.506499,0.036221&spn=0.015332,0.033689&sll=51.506552,0.036736&sspn=0.015332,0.033689&geocode=FUDnEQMdnLgAACGXIwusGd58DA%3BFYL1EQMdZ2QAACFvpN_R5J6N5ylDamBrc6jYRzEwRZWyLa4OEw&dirflg=w&mra=ltm&t=m&z=15
Aircraft already fly over that event location on a very regular basis. How will missiles stop me crashing a plane there? All I have to do is start my descent a few hundred metres early.
Fixed your Islamophobic BS for you.
I was thinking about about things related to competition and the personal/group development of participants
stuff related to money works too.
maybe it's a lesser of two evils way to handle those human instincts, maybe it's even a positive when done right.
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
So your sarcasm just swung back and hit you upside the back of the head, Jethro Gibbs style.
Rule 117. Don't mock fate.
They wanted to change our way of life, for the worse, and they did. And have done it quite efficiently, with little ( relative ) resources.
Congrats.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Relax folks...the missles are part of a new handicap system for the skeet shooting events.
IOC took pitty on poor island nations who lack sufficient population from which to draw a talented pool of shooters. In order to increase participation countries with less than 100k population would automatically qualify for the "SAM" handicap.
How's about this for a defence - a referendum to agree to not respond to terrorist acts. If it happens, it happens.
maybe sports are a way to channel certain instincts without the massive damage of war
That's what Freud thought.
Better to be despised for too anxious apprehensions, than ruined by too confident a security. --Edmund Burke