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OUT OF CONTROLIN CONTROL

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Syrian Cartoonist Ali Farzat pg 4

David Cameron on Benefits pg 6

Saudi Arabia at the Olympics pg 10

Suicide in Court pg 14

The Queen’s accounts pg 16

Higgs Boson pg 20

Immigrants or Expats? pg 22

Protest over Russian Wikipedia pg 26

China’s unique menu pg 28

Make the sun shine for the Olympics pg 30

Del Boy schemes in Tesco pg 34

21.06.12

25.06.12

27.06.12

30.06.12

02.07.12

04.07.12

09.07.12

10.07.12

12.07.12

18.07.12

17.08.12

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CONTENTS

21.06.12

25.06.12

27.06.12

30.06.12

02.07.12

04.07.12

09.07.12

10.07.12

12.07.12

18.07.12

17.08.12

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Often in some regimes cartoons and cartoonists are the only one’s getting the truth out and need they international support - as was the case recently with an Iranian cartoonists who was sentenced to lashes - but following an international outcry by fellow cartoonists and others the sentence was rightly withdrawn.

I can respect a man like Farzat who suffered as he did and then went back to doing what he was punished for indefiance of the government that did it. Some of the responses have shown, there are people who don’t care about anything else, but seeing the US/UK/NATO removed from the world stage and allowing China/Russia to rule all aspects of the world. What is it about

“They broke my hands to stop me drawing Assad”

China and Russia running the world and controlling all economic resources and global policies that appeals to these people I will never understand. To not allow someone freedom of speech whatever country they live in is ridiculous, to not just ban them, but to harm them to make them stop is completely out of order. No one in the UK can understand how and why these people fear the government.

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“Assad’s Syria is the burial ground of talent”

Masked gunmen dragged a Syrian cartoonist from his car before dawn, beat him severely and broke both his hands as a warning to stop drawing after he compared Syria’s president to Moammar Gadhafi

SYRIAN CARTOONIST

ALI FARZAT ATTACKED

BY ASSAD’S SECRET POLICE

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Unemployment benefits could be cut for people who fail to get work over long period of time, under Conservative plans to change the welfare system

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“culture of entitlement” has to be addressed to boost economy

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It’s the ‘something for nothing’ culture, people believe they deserve a house, fully paid bills, with sky, broadband and any other luxury they desire for not working a single day in their life, I am all for supporting those in need, but the system needs to work more efficiently for those who take advantage. The government should provide a very basic standard of living for those refusing to work, maybe then they will have the motivation to get up and earn a living.

Many suggested back in the 1970s that benefits should be capped - it was impossible to get anyone to listen then. Since then the bill has rocketed and the tax payer is now paying a second generation to do nothing. It’s shameful! A revision of ‘entitlements’ must be done as soon as possible with stringent tests and tougher penalties for fraudsters.

It is absolutely right that we rethink

LONG TERM UNIMPLOYED ‘COULD HAVE BENEFITS CUT’

benefits, it is also right that those that simply refuse work or play the system are stopped. But we also have to be very careful how this is done. Simply taking away some ones ability to live will cause hardship followed by civil unrest. We don’t want to create a group in society with nothing to lose. That would be catastrophic.

I think Cameron knows these cuts wont happen, he is showboating for the backbenchers in his party. To cut benefits you would need to create jobs, have good a good education system, encourage firms to invest in areas or relocate people to areas which are already densely populated. That will cost 10 times what we pay in welfare.

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Family with 15 children:

£700 a week

Free rent

£1,023 council tax

£7,176 child benefit

£22,828 child tax credit

£1,920 free school dinners

£3,900 jobseekers allowance

£36,847 a year = earning a gross

salary of £51,500

Average UK salary: £21,320

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Saudi embassy statement reveals country’s Olympic commitee will oversee participation of women athletes who can qualify

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Saudi Olympic committee president, said he was “not endorsing” female participation in London as part of the official delegation.

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The fury directed at Saudi’s female competitors is cruel and vitriolic, but their inclusion in an Olympic team is a victory in itself. Saudi Arabia do not believe in what the Olympics is all about. If the athlete from Greece wasn’t allowed to compete as she tweeted something racist, Saudi Arabia shouldn’t be allowed to compete for being sexist. Sexism is always over looked and seen as a less serious issue than racism which is unfair.

Saudi’s were “clearly breaking the spirit of the Olympic charter’s pledge to equality” with their attitude to women in sport and the Games

SAUDI ARABIA TO ALLOW WOMEN TO COMPETE IN 2012 OLYMPICS

It’s nice when you see Islam/an Islamic country described as ultraconservative. Muslims in Western countries tend, in the majority of cases, to identify with the political left in those countries, the reason being that they are a minority and at odds with the “establishment”.

They are brave, brilliant women and hopefully this is a step in the right direction.

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FORMER WALL ST. TRADER

TAKES PILLS MOMENTS

AFTER BEING CONVICTED

Marin faced 16 years in prison as the charge of committing arson in an occupied structure holds the same sentence as second-degree murder in Arizona

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The death of a former investment banker who

collapsed in an Arizona courtroom, minutes after a jury found him guilty of torching his Phoenix estate, appears to have

been a suicide.

He made it tougher to fail keeping up the guise of being successful. The ego is attached to all kinds of ridiculous illusions. So what if people laugh if you go broke and bankrupt; they probably never cared one way or another. I’ll just file this away to remind myself not to go nuts when I’m free falling.

Just more class warfare bashing. “He was rich, so I’m glad he decided to kill himself.” We are headed down a slippery slope with this kind of attitude, and the bottom of the hill will not be pretty. Its not about him being filthy rich that normal people find appalling. He left his family willingly, forever, because he couldn’t handle being less

than filthy rich. His family didn’t matter to him, that’s what normal people find disgusting. It’s sad when anyone dies, it just how decided he was that this was his end and that he couldn’t live with what he had done.

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£6.1M official travel bill

£460,387 middle east and africa tour

£81,000 saudi arabia 6 day tour

£89,915 visit to china, malaysia and thailand

£10M staff wages

£51,410 north america tour

£10,470 northolt to belfast overnight stay

£29,946 bangkok flight

£900,000 on 13 royal train journeys

£38,016 overnight regional tour

£19,583 aberdeen to london trip

£800,000 on garden parties

£10,000 for 72 other journeys

£400,000 spent on wine and spirits

£300,000 roayl stationary

The royal family costs every man, woman and

child in the UK 52p per year

The costs, detailed in Buckingham Palace accounts, show the Queen’s official expenditure increased last year by £200,000 on the previous year to £32.3M

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QUEEN’S ACCOUNT REVEALS £6.1M

TRAVEL BILL FOR ROYAL FAMILY

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Official expenditure rose £200,000 to £32.3m, including almost £500,000 for Prince Charles’s tour of Middle East and Africa

“It beggars belief that it costs the taxpayer more to send Charles

to east London than it does to send the prime

minister to Afghanistan”

Such an increase at a time when the rest of the country is facing cuts (or loss of jobs, etc.) is quite obscene. It’s clear that they are making no effort reducing their expenditure which shows how totally out of touch they are.

We need to remember, they could clear the national debt (not deficit but the entire accumulated debt) and they would still have some palaces and castles left over.

It just shows how they are in this for themselves and we are just here to fund them and show deference. I was a royalist but seeing how they behave over the last few years have now moved to think that it is time for this country to say goodbye to the idea

of a royal family. Let them get proper jobs and fund themselves (after all, they own enough in the way of estates and land they should be able to live in luxury without any public funding).

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“I am astounded at the amazing speed with which these results have emerged. They are a testament to the expertise of the researchers and the elaborate technologies in place”

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July 4, 2012 was a very very big day indeed. But we must not forget that this is really just a beginning. There are still many challenges ahead. One of them is the reconciliation between Higgs Boson and String. As well, we now have to build mathematical models using the new-found properties of the Higgs. It is likely they have to change the equations a little and check them out experimentally using the equipment at CERN.

I cannot help but smiling a little knowing that scientists are now one step closer to come up with the Theory of Everything, a unified theory of the cosmos that Einstein had tried to wrestle with but did not succeed in finding a satisfactory result.

“I never expected this to happen in my lifetime and shall be asking my family to put some champagne in the fridge,” said Dr Peter Higgs recently. Likewise, we may just be surprised

There comes a time in a scientist’s life when the weight of evidence can no longer be ignored. That moment came today for physicists at Cern, near Geneva, home of the Large Hadron Collider

HIGGS BOSON: IT’S

UNOFFICIAL! CERN

SCIENTISTS DISCOVER

MISSING PARTICLE

again that a first version of the Theory of Everthing would happen during our lifetime.

Whilst I’m a big fan of particle physics, it should be pointed out that they haven’t actually found the Higgs boson. They seem to have found a new particle and are trying to figure-out what it is but the media hype surrounding this is unbelievable and has blurred the truth of what they have found.

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The West live abroad and see themselves as expats

rather than immigrants – but immigrants in the UK & USA

don’t get that choice

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In France, the term immigré has negative connotations, almost always indicating either a clandestine or a Magrebhi. In Greece, being a metanastis is as good as being unwanted cargo from Africa. The term expatriate is a stamp of superiority and is reserved for those who have the right passport – and look the part.

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THE BRITISH ABROAD:

EXPATS NOT IMMIGRANTS

There is a huge difference between an expat and an immigrant and I think people get angry and confused beofre actually understanding it. An expat is someone who lives off their assets and doesn’t earn in the country of residence, immigrants earn in the country of residents. I suspect many British expats are immigrants but many aren’t.

Don’t Spanish expats cost the country of their residence money? One of the points of the EU is freedom of movement and access to services no matter which member state you are in and I think this article is overlooking this.

I find it a wind up when people belly ache about the burden of the cost of immigrants while their country benefits from other countries services their compatriots. It all evens out in the end.

The British living abroad see themselves as expats rather than immigrants – but immigrants in the UK don’t get that choice

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RUSSIAN WIKIPEDIA IN

SHUTDOWN PROTEST

OVER INTERNET

CENSORSHIP

Proposed law could boost government control over the internet amid a crackdown on those opposed to President Vladimir Putin

People say that the UK, USA or other western liberal democracy are just as bad. It’s not. I’m really not a fan of Cameron and the tories, but I’d choose them over Putin and his thugs anyday. In Russia things are much, much worse than here. Critical journalists are killed. Protestors are held for months without trial. Elections are blatantly rigged. Ordinary people have to bribe police to avoid harrasment. And now, it seems that the ruling party is pushing to restrict access to information via the web, and thus hobble any opposition. Totalitarianism isn’t over yet, in fact it’s growing.

Let’s say the current British government passed a law which allowed them, among other things, to close down the websites of the Labour Party, any other parties they didn’t like the look of, environmental groups, charities in the social sphere, anti corruption bloggers, political discussion forums, etc without any judicial recourse. It’s not “pretty much exactly the same thing” at all.

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“Users who opened the site saw the Wikipedia logo crossed out with a stark black rectangle, and the words “imagine a world without free knowledge” written in block letters underneath.”

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POLICE TRY TO SAVE

WILDLIFE ON CHINA’S

MENU

A popular saying has it that people here will eat anything with four legs except a chair, anything that flies except a plane and anything in the water except a boat.

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As some rare wildlife species approach extinction, conservation groups are working to change China’s appetite for exotic animals

“Authorities need to strengthen border inspections further, adding he had heard of people simply walking across the border with crocodiles in boxes on their backs”

Saving wildlife by banning their sale/consumption is stupid and just lead to more illegal trade and lower the standards the animals are kept in. Problems like this must be solved through capitalism allowing (licensed) sellers to sell but at a high minimum price to squeeze out demand and make harder to get such goods.

It is so sad, and more than anything just sick. It is ridiculous to kill animals of any kind that are especially on the brink of becoming endangered/extinct, and the only reason I’d find that to be ‘reasonable’ or ‘okay’ is if the population of the species has so widely developed that the population is too large, or if the species mortally wounds people frequently.

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With the British weather threatening to put a dampener on the Olympic games, why doesn’t the government just make the sun shine?

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The Chinese government seeded clouds ahead of the 2008 Olympics opening ceremony to create a downpour elsewhere and keep the stadium dry

Cloud seeding has been on the increase even in the US since 2005. Thailand has been doing it for 50 years. They have got very good at it which is just as well since drought was a serious problem and a lot of people would have died if this was not avaliable. Thailand is now the largest exporter of rice in the world, thanks, in no small way, to their efforts in this field. I believe using it for a good cause to stop famine and drought in

Some believe there is something vaguely sinister about the idea of tinkering with the weather

third world countries should continue, but not just for our convinience. It is not good to tamper with nature unless absolutely necessary as we are still unsure of the side effects. The chemicals vary but mostly dry ice (carbon dioxide) and silver iodide. Silver iodide is also found in table salt. I don’t think weshould knock cloud seeding, it should just be used less.

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WHY WON’T THE UK

MAKE THE SUN SHINE

FOR THE OLYMPICS?

“In our case we would be trying to make it rain in Reading or Slough rather than London”

Boris Johnson - “We like a spot of precipitation. It intensifies the pleasure of the sun. Made us what we are”

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Supermarkets are selling bottled tap water to millions of unsuspecting customers.Bottles of Tesco ‘Everyday Value Still Water’ and Asda ‘Smartprice Still Water’ are sitting on shelves alongside big brands of mineral water such as Evian and Perrier

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ASDA & TESCO ARE SELLING

TAP WATER AS BOTTLED

WATER

“It echoes one of the best-loved episodes of the BBC’s Only Fools and Horses, featuring David Jason as the entrepreneurial Del Boy, of Trotters Independent Traders”

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“First Del Boy tried it with Peckham

Spring, then Coca-Cola with Dasani water, and

now Tesco”

I’ve bought this water from ASDA before and I just assumed it was some form of filtered tap water. All it says is “Still Water” it doesn’t say “Spring Water” or anything of the sort. If you’re going to be stupid enough to assume something is a product that it’s not even claiming to be, then that’s your own fault. This article is all based on people assumptions of what they thought it was. I thought 17p for two litres wasn’t bad considering the convenience they offer on camping trips or just something to have in the boot of your car for emergencies. After all, they have to bottle it, transport it, pay the staff, pay the bills...people seem to think all that

comes for free. The asda water is fine I buy it all the time it is far cleaner than tap water if you see what goes on when water repairs are carried out you would never drink tap water again. It’s all down to opinion.

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