The Ancient Olympic Games were a series of competitions held between representatives of several city-states and kingdoms from Ancient Greece, which featured mainly athletic but also combat and chariot racing events. A truce operated during the Games, an opportunity to stop wars and solve conflicts.

Criticisms of the strategy to place Star Wars-style missiles to intercept planes or helicopters attempting to attack the games include suggestions that such strategy would make the chosen buildings targets for terrorism; that blowing up an incoming helicopter would produce such mechanical and chemical debris from both the attacker and the missile as to become itself a risk to those on the ground; the question of deciding what is a hostile plane (a few years back a passenger plane flying over the UK with communications problems was nearly downed by the military) and people wondering if having missiles on your rooftop invalidates your home insurance.

The security bill has been going through the roof and it is being passed on to Londoners, most of whom have not been able to get tickets to see the Games and will bear the brunt of disrupted travelling as well as heavy handed security (described by some as a “police state”). Pensioners in a number of London boroughs are staging protests refusing to pay the Olympic levy stating they are prepared to go to jail for it.

**What is the best Security Strategy?**

“If you want Peace prepare for War” wrote 5th Century Vegetius in a kind of Roman military manual. This dogma has been used since then to escalate conflict and the arms race, creating huge profits for arms dealers with no evidence of Peace anywhere to be seen.

“If you want Peace, prepare for Peace” wrote Joseph Rotblat, a signatory of the Russell–Einstein Manifesto and secretary general of the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs from its founding until 1973. In conjunction with the Pugwash Conferences, he received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1995 for their efforts towards nuclear disarmament. And by the way, surface-to-air missiles will be completely useless if someone decides to bring a dirty bomb into the capital. They only need to go and pick up the radioactive waste reported today in [The Guardian]( http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/may/02/radioactive-waste-contaminating-uk-sites): “Hundreds of sites across England and Wales could be contaminated with radioactive waste from old military bases and factories, according to a new government report.”

What is the meaning of **“preparing for Peace?”** Here are a few tips
• Do not occupy foreign countries, they get rather angry about it
• Reduce your weapons budget and fund health, education and welfare
• Fund properly international health, education and development targets
• Do not let your banks squeeze the economies of poorer countries
• Do not demonise races, religions or lifestyles
• Create s culture of Reconciliation by forming a task force to approach conflict through Nonviolence
• Get rid of your Nuclear Weapons. They are immoral, unaffordable and useless. They also motivate other people to want to have them
• Use these savings to stop the cuts, there is more than enough to get out of the economic crisis
• Stop lying to the public