Britain is set to host the Olympics in July 2012 but the plans by the Ministry of Defence to use residential flats to station their military materiel is already causing fear among property owners.

Block flats in East London have been identified and found to be very ideal for covering the air space where the Olympics stadium is located from any terrorist air threats and the 700 residents living here have already received leaflet notices from the authorities to this effect.

 The Defence Ministry has made it clear that the weapons will be put on top of the houses and they will only be fired as a last resort. Most importantly, the weapons will be stationed on the rooftops of the flats for as long as two months from now, supported by a 24 hour police and military presence.

The biggest fears being expressed by residents is the possibility of their neighbourhood being targeted by terrorists, thereby putting their lives in danger. Many say the decision to use their high rise residential buildings was arrived at arbitrarily without consulting the residents and owners of the property.  

There is also the question of whether or not, the private owners of the property will be compensated for having such high velocity weapons placed atop their buildings. The Ministry of Defence insists a final decision has not been taken, but that a number of sites have been identified, including the flats near Bow in East London, for a robust air security plan during the Olympics which is due to take place in July.

Munich Massacre

            September 5th, 1972, a day that will never be forgotten by many Israelis for years to come. 11 Israeli athletes were left dead, one German officer was shot, and only five of the eight terrorist were killed. What happen to lead to this horrific event and what actually happen on this bloody day?

            The Olympics were well under way as they entered the second week. The mood was high and everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves. The security itself on the housing grounds was perfectly lessened in order for the athletes and residents to feel less under surveillance and more free.

            This absence of security worried Israeli’s head Shmeul Lalkin. With Israel’s new found independence he was worried for his athletes especially since they were in the country which had persecuted them by the hundreds of thousands only 30 years previous. They Olympic committee had placed the Israel athletes in an isolated corner close to that gate leaving them very open for attack. Although the German police assured Israel participants they would have more security, none was ever provided. Even after repeated attempts to move houses they were ultimately refused and forced to stay at the edge of the town.

            The ironic part about all of this was that they had pre-planned scenarios of terrorist attacks. They had 26 total and number 21 accurately depicted the Palestinians attack on the Israel athletes. No one listened to the 21st plan though because it would interfere with the laxed atmosphere Germany was trying to promote. In any case security was kept minimal and what happen next would always leave a scar on the Olympic games.

            The time was 4:30 in the morning one September 5th, 1972. Everyone was sound asleep after a long day of Olympic games. With the quietly sneaking on to the premises were eight heavily armed Palestinian terrorist. With great agility and strength they hopped the six-foot fence surrounding the village. Although many people saw them it was not unusual for athletes around the camp to hop the fence instead of walking all the way to the entrance. With weapons hidden in their “athletic” bags they made it uninterrupted to the Israeli rooms.

            Stolen keys in hand the men enter the two apartments housing the Israel athletes. Although they made it all this way without a commotion when they opened the door they awoke the nearly 300lb wresting referee Yossef Gutfreund. With all of his force he slammed his body against the door in order to allow his fellow teammates escape out the back. All the while he is yelling “Hevre tisalku!” or “guys get out of here!”

            The chaos began as wrestling coach Moshe Weinberg attacked the kidnappers as the other athletes tried to escape. With a mighty blow he knocked one terrorist completely unconscious and stabbed another with a fruit knife. He was soon shot to death.

            Soon after, the terrorist had rounded up all their hostages and by 9:30 they had announced that they were indeed Palestinian and demanded the release of 200 Arab prisoners. 

            The Germans were now in a bind. Do they negotiate with these terrorist who later revealed they were part of a break away radical terrorist group called the PLO.  The police and the PLO came to plan where a Boeing 727 would take the terrorist and the Israeli’s to Cairo. Everything seemed to be going in the favor of these radical terrorists. What they did not know though was that the German police force was setting up a ambush at the airfield where the plan was going to pick them up.

            When the head of Mossad from Israel arrived to finalize the plan he was astonished at the lack of military personnel and lights at the airfield in order to capture these trained terrorist. In his words “the Germans were useless. Useless, all the way.”

            As the Palestinian terrorist the majority of the German police abandon their position leaving five snipes to take on eight heavily armed men. At 10:40 the group of terrorist and the hostages landed on the airfield. Realizing it was a trap the terrorist took defensive positions and began a firefight with the German snipers. Bullets began to fly everywhere; the airfield became a small battlefield. The Germans had no idea what to do. An hour into this fight the Germans were finally able to get heavily armored cars on to the airfield but amidst all the chaos they shot some of their own men. The armored cars brought enough fear to the terrorist that one of them reached for a grenade and tossed it into the helicopter filled with the Israeli’s. Igniting the fuel tanks the helicopter exploded killing all inside. The survivors on the other helicopter were quickly shot. The screams from the athletes brought terror to the Germans across the airfield. Eleven Israelis, five Palestinians and one German police officer died during the Munich tragedy.

            This event had such an impact on the world who had soon come to realize that terrorism was not confined to just the Middle East. In many ways this was like the 9/11 of the 1970’s. In the months and years following the Israelis special forces carried out operation “wrath of God” in order to get revenge on the Palestine terrorist. 

            The roman takeover in the second century BC changed the games in an immense way.  The romans called them ludi, or games, while the Greek had called them agones, or competitions.  The change in the word alone showed the Roman’s contempt for the games (Encyclopædia Britannica). Another difference between the Greeks and the Romans were the reason they held the Olympics.  The Greeks held them for the athletes so they could compete, the Romans held them for the public (Encyclopædia Britannica).  They used them as entertainment and to keep the people from revolting (Encyclopædia Britannica).  They were then not taken seriously at all once Emperor Nero competed in the chariot race, fell off, and then declared himself the winner (Encyclopædia Britannica).  In AD 400 emperor Theodosius eliminated the festival because of the pagan roots in the festival (Encyclopædia Britannica).

The original reason that the laws were in place was because it was a religious belief that Sunday should be the day of rest, and that people should not be working on a Sunday. However, as times changed, and as the religious beliefs of the UK have become a little less prominent in society, shops have been allowed to open for a maximum of a few hours on a Sunday. It is the opinion of many that if shops open at all then they’re already going against the religious rules, so it would make no difference whether they opened all day or not. The government was simply trying to appease those who did not want shops to open by making it so that they were open for a short while but there were still a number of “special rules” for a Sunday.

If more places were allowed to operate longer hours, not just during the olympics but full time, then this could only mean good things for our economy. If we had more time to shop, then we would spend more money. If we were able to take on more staff in our retail stores, this would mean that a higher number of people had more money to spend in the shops which would directly pump it back into the economy that needs protecting so badly.

However, it is important that some kind of rules are put into place to stop people from overworking themselves. It is important that everybody gets at least one day off work each week, otherwise their general health would suffer as they would be tired and wouldn’t get to spend enough time with their family as they would like to. In addition to this, extra pay benefits should be given to those who do choose to work at the weekend, as this is normally a time when children are off school and those who work in an office are not at work, so anybody who chooses to work on a Sunday would be away from their family. 

It seems like a rule such as this is overdue. People don’t like travelling on a Sunday because of transport changes, and this means that the shops that are open don’t get as much trade as they should because there is little transport to physically get people to the shops themselves. If this law changes for the Olympics, then I for one am hoping that it is something that can change for good, for the benefit of the United Kingdom as a whole. 

It’s a brand new year, 2012 is the year of the Olympics, in China it’s the year of the animal zodiac the Dragon. That means that this should be a pretty good year with wealth, luck and new beginnings.

How are you spending your new year? Take a different attitude to life and live it to its fullest.

For me I’m going to try and join new things such as Twitter. I joined it a few years ago but found it boring and ridiculous. But now I’ve rejoined and will start tweeting my blogs and other random things that may just pop into my head!

Look out for me my name is Charsie007 (see any resemblance with my user names?!) and follow me if you like.

I will be carrying on with my little puzzles so look out for them as well.

Image via CrunchBase

No, there was no Abhinav Bindra then. When a man begins his journey the first person he interacts is with his parents and relatives. Then he slowly but steadily goes outside the cukoon of his new world and steps into what funnily may be called a big,bad world. In the material world there are seldom any friends as all try to go on the top of another.

Success for a student means to do good in studies and in activities of school. After passing from school a person enters into a broader horizon of life. He goes to college. In college he enteracts with various types of people. Academaic interests still remains one of his major agenda but the meaning of success changes. He interacts with the opposite sex and develops a liking for them.

Espiacally in today’s world he realises that having or not having a boyfriend or girlfreind becomes a status-issue. Success, then for him becomes to be a hero among his peer -group. Then he enters the work-field. Slowly the amount of his friends becomes more and more less. He marries and develops a bonding with his family namely wife ,relatives and his children.

 The same person who was a forerunner of his dreams slowly becomes a faciliter of his children. True it’s not possible for anyone of us to become Abhinav Bindra or Bijendra Singh but if we want we all can surely become successful provided we live our life to the fullest and do not harm anyone,in the sametime donot allow anyone to harm us.

Today I realise that success is a relative concept. People may be very successful in professional life but in personal life he may be a failure.Success means different things to different  people . A person unable to earn two square meals a day visualises success as something like a better meal where as a millionaire even after earning a lot may think that why his friend’s car is bigger than his or his neighbour’s girlfriend is  sexier than his. Success again as I say is a multidimensional concept as we all run after it but it changes in accordance to the various stages of life. For a student success means good grades and a good aura of friends. But that same child after growing up  will find success in his girlfriend’s arms. After finishing education he visualises success in job  but there too the concept of success is multidimensional as for some achieving more and more is success where as for others success means living a meaningful life with family and friends.When a person marries he finds happiness in family life. There too there are many hindrances as domestic violence and lack of harmony between the spouses . After retirement a man finds success in the well being of his children and grand children.

Again a question that keeps perturbing me is that can a sage be called successful ? Different people have different answers to it. According to some may be yes as he has dedicated his life for others and finds peace and joy in helping others. To others he is nothing but a weird fool as he is not concerned about material success. All these discussions lead us to the point that success is a very confusing word  and varies from age to age,people to people and generation to generation. Thus in a unique way each individual who does his duty well and lives a functional life is successful.

After a standout career at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he was a member of the Tar Heels’ National Championship team in 1982, Jordan joined the NBA’sChicago Bulls in 1984. He quickly emerged as a league star, entertaining crowds with his prolific scoring. His leaping ability, illustrated by performing slam dunks from the free throw line in slam dunk contests, earned him the nicknames “Air Jordan” and “His Airness“. He also gained a reputation for being one of the best defensive players in basketball. In1991, he won his first NBA championship with the Bulls, and followed that achievement with titles in 1992 and 1993, securing a “three-peat”. Although Jordan abruptly retired from basketball at the beginning of the 1993–94 NBA season to pursue a career in baseball, he rejoined the Bulls in 1995 and led them to three additional championships (1996, 1997, and1998) as well as an NBA-record 72 regular-season wins in the 1995–96 NBA season. Jordan retired for a second time in 1999, but returned for two more NBA seasons from 2001 to 2003 as a member of the Washington Wizards.

Jordan’s individual accolades and accomplishments include five MVP awards, ten All-NBA First Team designations, nine All-Defensive First Team honors, fourteen NBA All-Star Game appearances, three All-Star Game MVP awards, ten scoring titles, three steals titles, six NBA Finals MVP awards, and the 1988 NBA Defensive Player of the Year Award. He holds the NBA records for highest career regular season scoring average (30.12 points per game) and highest career playoff scoring average (33.45 points per game). In 1999, he was named the greatest North American athlete of the 20th century by ESPN, and was second to Babe Ruth on the Associated Press’s list of athletes of the century. He was elected to the Basketball Hall of Fame on April 6, 2009 and was inducted on September 11, 2009.

Jordan is also noted for his product endorsements. He fueled the success of Nike’s Air Jordan sneakers, which were introduced in 1985 and remain popular today. Jordan also starred in the 1996 feature film Space Jam as himself. He is the majority owner and head of basketball operations for the NBA’s Charlotte Bobcats; he recently won a bidding war to buy controlling interest in the team from founding owner Robert L. Johnson.

Image via steventan.org

China’s streets are not clean at all, whereas America just has this clean feeling attached to it.  There is litter everywhere, and city roads can be cracked or broken.  Everywhere you go, you will find cigarette butts on the ground, and soda bottles are scattered all over the place.

Image via pisqa.com

China’s cities are polluted.  Many people smoke, and it is pretty unhealthy environment.  Smog producing factories are everywhere, and the air is sometimes hard to breathe.  China has done a great job cleaning up the air since the ‘08 Olympic Games, but there is still a lot of work to do.

Image via blogs.wsj.com

Chinese kids are not as educated when it comes to personal health.  Have I mentioned smoking?  It’s a widespread problem, and something definitely needs to be done.  Drugs, such as opium, are somewhat more prevalent in China than in America (though it’s getting better).   Dental health is also lagging behind.

Image via Engadget

Many Chinese still have low paying jobs, especially factory workers.  China makes everything, and they have a huge underpaid labor force to work unsafe jobs.  China simply doesn’t pay as well as America.  This can even lead some to suicide.  Check out this editorial for more information on these suicides: http://www.engadget.com/2010/05/21/editorial-thoughts-on-foxconn/. 

Now, don’t get me wrong, it’s not like China is a hellhole.  For more info on an example of one, check out this article about Egypt.  China has made great progress over the past few decades, and it will continue to make strides.  However, it is clear that China’s economic progress is far superior to its progress on improving citizens’ lives.

One positive thing about nationalism is that it brings the people of a country together. This has happened on many different occasions for the good of the country and promotes national pride. It has happened recently in Canada during the most recent Olympics. Never before had the country been so alive and so close together as when they were all striving towards one goal; winning the gold medal in hockey on home ice. That final hockey game of the 2010 Winter Olympics had more television viewers than any other event in Canada’s history; about ninety-nine percent of the population was watching that game in Canada, at work, home, or somewhere else. Sport has not only brought a country together in Canada, something similar also happened in South Africa when Nelson Mandela became president. He was the President that ended the racist apartheid regime in the first democratic election in South Africa. Through his efforts he was able to break down race barriers that had formed within the country through the game of soccer. He brought the team together, made the nation proud to be South Africa after so many years of discrimination and succeeded by winning the world cup in soccer. Great things can happen when a nation comes together to experience national pride and joy by doing something that has only been dreamed of, it is important to hold onto that feeling.

Nationalism itself is not something bad, it is the people who wield it and have power to influence the people that can make it something terrible. Many dreadful and disturbing things have been done in the name of country. Many people have been killed, slaughtered, because they did not fit the description of what some felt their country should represent. Dictators with names like Hitler, Mao, and Stalin, are ones that most heavily come to mind. There are others that were not headed by a single leader but more of a renegade militia; the Rwandan genocide is a prime example of this. What happened in these countries were atrocious crimes against humanity, Hitler killed as many Jewish people as he could find, Mao killed any that weren’t of the approved religion, and Stalin killed the intellectuals and any that stood in his way in his rise to power. In two out of these three examples, none had any sort of protest from the people before it was too late, in China today Mao is still celebrated as a hero. This is when nationalism goes too far, if people give up their morals and conscience for their country, things can go very bad, very quickly, the best thing to do is speak up when your country is going too far instead of looking the other way.

Deciding what your country should do is a hefty weight on everyone’s shoulders. With today’s growing internationalism it is impossible for any country to have a solitary existence within its own borders, everyone today is connected to everyone else, what happens in the United States or any other country will have an affect on all countries in the world. Internationalism is also something that keeps growing and will continue to have a larger and larger impact on everyone’s lives and countries need to start compensating. The European Union is an excellent example with how far people have come in the last hundred years, and how much closer people are to each other. However this scares many people, they believe that they will lose their jobs to foreign workers or the government will lose its sovereignty, or the people of the world will be so homogenized that you will not be able to tell the difference between someone from Mexico and someone from Great Britain. These are valid concerns that need to be addressed. Sometimes the government of a country will make a bad decision regarding these issues and it is up to the people to correct it, if it solely up to the government and people blindly follow these things could end up happening or something even worse. The people need to work with their government to ensure the best possible future and retain their culture while still being an active participant in world affairs. 

To support your country is one thing, but people also need to become involved with world affairs and be able to stand up to their country if things are going wrong. To find a balance between yourself, your country, and the world is a difficult thing but is something that people must achieve if the world as a whole is to succeed. It is wrong to blindly follow anything; it is beyond sporting events that bring a country together that it gets dangerous; it is when people believe that others are not welcome in their country that things become threatening. Some people can become very intolerant to things they do not know about very quickly and it is the citizens’ job to make sure that the spread of such thoughts do not continue. There is also the balancing act between what should be given and what needs to be kept when it comes to world affairs. It is good for a country to help other nations in need but it should not be at the cost of the people’s livelihood. In the past, people have made grave mistakes about how to create, lead, and guide a country, but there have also been many successes; the rise of empathy and peace and understanding between people. History has a valuable lesson to offer and it should not be wasted.