How to justify continuing a war going nowhere and the pointless 'sacrifice' of UK soldiers. Simple: confine the troops to barracks and use 'risk-free' unmanned drones to kill Afghans.

Oldfield's jailing comes as part of long series of heavy sentences for UK protesters, which are clearly intended to deter anyone thinking of exercise their democratic right to protest.

David Cameron wants to celebrate World War I, but as Harry Patch, last British survivor of the trenches who died three years ago, put it, the first world war was "nothing better than legalised mass murder".

The CIA drone campaign kills innocent civilians and terrorises communities and the UK government is allowing companies based in the UK to profit from the US’ deadly activities.

The British government may be complicit in unlawful drone bombings, which in Pakistan alone since 2004 have killed up to an estimated 3,337 people, among them hundreds of civilians.

William Hague takes time out from waging a lost war in Afghanistan and calling for more foreign intervenion in Syria to say we should be relaxed about the horrors of the British Empire.

Who will be watching the drone operaters as they watch us? Who will be responsible for monitoring this huge extension of the surviellance state and vilation of our civil rights?

The Bahraini kingdom is an integral part of the Sunni Arab Gulf dictatorships that are central to safeguarding British and American imperialist interests in the region.

Close to 200 Critical Mass cyclists were arrested protesting over the elite Olympics lanes, to be used only by VIPs moving effortlessly between Park Lane hotels and the games venues.

No BBC journalist has so much as drawn a connection between the British occupation of Afghanistan and the installation of such a high level of security for the Olympics.

UK personnel controlled armed drones in Libya last year – despite the repeated government insistence that the UK has only ever operated armed drones in Afghanistan.

That a Saturday night in central London, the Olympic Games or any other public space can come to look as if it was a militarised zone must disquiet more than the usual civil liberties campaigners.

The Olympics, as with sport in general, holds up a mirror to society and what is being played out in London reflects a legacy of the war on terror and deregulation of unbridled corporate power.

"They will add anything to security. If they are going to be used they will explode over some of the most densely populated areas in London."

According to Armed Forces Day, the UK army is "busy working around the world promoting peace" rather than fighting losing wars, slaughtering thousands, in other people's countries.

This architecturally crass pavilion is like the nervously loud voice of someone trying to shout down opposition, forgetting the thousands of victims of the carpet bombing of German cities.