mostly nuggets

blessed britons

Let me summarise the British government's contribution to the genocide in Rwanda. Britain used its diplomatic weight to reduce severely a UN force that, according to military officers on the ground, could have prevented the killings. It then helped ensure the delay of other plans for interventiuon, which sent a green light to the murderers in Rwanda to continue. Britain also refused to provide the capability for other states to intervene... Throughout, Britain helped ensure that the UN did not use the word 'genocide' so the UN would not act, using diplomatic pressure on others to ensure this did not happen. British officials went out of their way to promote these policies and rebuffed personal pleas to stop the killings from the UN Secretary General and the commander of the UN force.

mad world

If a bank makes a loan, nothing is lent, for the simple reason that there is nothing of substance to lend, The bank simply makes what it terms a 'loan' against the amount of money deposited with it at that time. This is all done with the utmost ease. The bank has simply to agree that a person may take out a loan of, say, £5,000. The person taking out the loan can then spend £5,000 and hey presto! £5,000 of new number-money has been created. It is as simple as that! No one with a bank account is sent a letter telling them that the money in their account is 'temporarily unavailable, because it has been lent to someone else', because it hasn't. None of the original accounts in the bank has been touched, reduced or affected in the slightest way... but £5,000 of new spending power has been created; £5,000 of new number-money enters the economy at the stroke of a bank manager's pen...

— Michael Rowbotham

The Grip of Death

two thousand radioactive tons

Submitted by antarchi on December 2, 2007 - 16:17.

Radioactive fallout from DU apparently blew far and wide. Following the initial U.S. bombardment of Iraq in 2003, DU particles traveled 2,400 miles to Great Britain in about a week, where atmospheric radiation quadrupled.
But it is in the Middle East, predominantly Iraq, where the bulk of the radioactive waste has been dumped.
In the early Nineties, the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority warned that 50 tons of dust from DU explosions could claim a half million lives from cancer by year 2000. Not 50 tons, but an estimated two thousand radioactive tons have been fired off in the Middle East, suggesting the possibility over time of an even higher death toll.