Poll : 30 Million Brits Believe US Uses Area 51 To Investigate ETs

But Reptilian Overlords Popularity Fading In UK



This poll of Top Ten UK Conspiracy Theories was taken to promote the new X-Files movie, 'Cheer Up Mulder You Miserable Bastard', but the results of which secret truths Brits believe are hiding behind the headlines are still interesting, unless you are a secret shape-shifting lizard hiding out in No. 10 or Buckingham Palace. Where's the love?

1) Area 51 exists to investigate aliens (48%)

2) 9/11 was orchestrated by the US government (38%)

3) Apollo landing was a hoax (35%)

4) Diana and Dodi were murdered (32%)

5) The Illuminati secret society and masons are trying to take over the world (25%)

6) Scientologists rule Hollywood (17% )

7) Barcodes are really intended to control people (7%)

8) Microsoft sends messages via Wingdings (6%)

9) US let Pearl Harbour happen (5%)

10) The world is run by dinosaur-like reptiles (3%)

Actually, the fact that so few Brits believe in shape-shifting humanoid lizards slithering through the halls of British power is probably exactly what the lizards want - low profile and all that, while they undertake their nefarious plots against humanity.

And as a Mason by name, all I will say about Number 5 is that the whole idea is completely ridiculous and life will be easier for all of you useless eaters if you don't put up too much of a fight when we send the alien lizards to drain the blood of your children and pets.

UPDATE : The Scotsman has more details from the X-Files movie promotional poll results :

The survey also found that 61 per cent believe in aliens, 52 per cent think ghosts exist and 21 per cent believe in monsters.

It also revealed that 59 per cent believe they are psychic.

It would be far more fascinating to know how many Brits believe in all the 'conspiracies' in that Top 10, and also believe in ghosts, monsters and that they're psychic.


UPDATE : Why should it be a surprise that supposedly a few million Brits believe there was foreknowledge of the Pearl Harbour attacks?

The Honolulu Advertiser seemed to know what was coming, a week before 'The Day That Will Live In Infamy' became an horrific reality and destroyed the then majority American view that the country had no business getting involved in World War 2. The banner across the top of the November 30, 1941 front page reads 'Japanese May Strike Over Weekend' :

It's Pig Man!

And you thought Kramer on Seinfeld running through a hospital screaming about "The Pig Man!" was a big joke. Well, laugh no more.



To be accurate, it's actually a piglet born with a simian-like face. But not everyone wants to see it killed for being a mutant, or dumped into a jar of alcohol for future study. One little boy doesn't care how brutally ugly this monkey-piglet is, he's found a new friend :

“Our son likes to play with it, and he stopped us from getting rid of it. He even feeds it milk,” said Mr Feng’s wife.

It's a big day for bizarre-looking mutant creatures in the media.

US Spends $2 Billion A Year In War On Car Bombs



Former CIA agent, Robert Baer, explains how the car bomb has become the deadliest weapon of all in modern warfare :

What happened in that summer of 1983 in Beirut has come back to haunt us in Iraq and Afghanistan. In their decades of civil war, the Lebanese, an inventive people, refined the weapon and became the best car-bombers in the world. The bombs that go off every day in Baghdad, the very concept of the suicide driver, were developed on the streets of Beirut.

The Lebanese raided the shelves of RadioShack and turned everyday electrical items – from mobile phones and electronic garage-door openers to model-aircraft control panels – into remotely controlled detonation triggers for car bombs. The Lebanese added gas canisters to boost the blast wave – a technique used in the attempted attack in July 2007 at Glasgow airport.

The threat from car bombs now spans the globe. Anywhere and anyone, a government building, an airport, could be a target. From Downing Street to the White House, governments are turning their offices into fortresses – and waiting for the next attack.

The Lebanese did not invent the car bomb; that honour goes to the Americans. The world’s first car bomb, a horse-and-car bomb, exploded on Wall Street on September 16, 1920, killing 38 people. But the Lebanese made car bombs a lot more lethal. When they planted them, it was to make the pavements run with blood. Everyone did it: the Christians, the Palestinians, Hezbollah and the Israelis.

For three decades Lebanon has been a research laboratory for car bombers. The same signature car-bomb techniques turned up in Baghdad soon after the 2003 US invasion. A lot of Lebanese car bombers just drove across the border into Syria and on to Baghdad.

Somewhat belatedly, the US military is spending £2.1 billion a year on secret programmes run by a military task force, JIEDDO (the Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organisation), to counter the car bomb.

But even JIEDDO’s deputy director, Brigadier-General Anthony Tata, admits: “A car is a commercial entity. You go buy a car, find some old 155mm shells and you’ve got yourself a car bomb.”

More on the shocking history of the Car Bomb from Mike Davis here, who goes into the sort of detail that Robert Baer either doesn't know, doesn't believe, or doesn't want to acknowledge is true.

And some more detail, from Davis, on that 1920 Wall Street attack :

On a warm September day in 1920, a few months after the arrest of his comrades Sacco and Vanzetti, a vengeful Italian anarchist named Mario Buda parked his horse-drawn wagon near the corner of Wall and Broad Streets, directly across from J. P. Morgan Company. He nonchalantly climbed down and disappeared, unnoticed, into the lunchtime crowd. A few blocks away, a startled postal worker found strange leaflets warning: "Free the Political Prisoners or it will be Sure Death for All of You!" They were signed: "American Anarchist Fighters." The bells of nearby Trinity Church began to toll at noon. When they stopped, the wagon -- packed with dynamite and iron slugs -- exploded in a fireball of shrapnel.

"The horse and wagon were blown to bits," writes Paul Avrich, the celebrated historian of American anarchism who uncovered the true story. "Glass showered down from office windows, and awnings twelve stories above the street burst into flames. People fled in terror as a great cloud of dust enveloped the area. In Morgan's offices, Thomas Joyce of the securities department fell dead on his desk amid a rubble of plaster and walls. Outside scores of bodies littered the streets."

Buda was undoubtedly disappointed when he learned that J.P. Morgan himself was not among the 40 dead and more than 200 wounded -- the great robber baron was away in Scotland at his hunting lodge. Nonetheless, a poor immigrant with some stolen dynamite, a pile of scrap metal, and an old horse had managed to bring unprecedented terror to the inner sanctum of American capitalism.

His Wall Street bomb was the culmination of a half-century of anarchist fantasies about avenging angels made of dynamite; but it was also an invention, like Charles Babbage's Difference Engine, far ahead of the imagination of its time. Only after the barbarism of strategic bombing had become commonplace, and when air forces routinely pursued insurgents into the labyrinths of poor cities, would the truly radical potential of Buda's "infernal machine" be fully realized.

Buda's wagon was, in essence, the prototype car bomb: the first use of an inconspicuous vehicle, anonymous in almost any urban setting, to transport large quantities of high explosive into precise range of a high-value target.

It was not replicated, as far as I have been able to determine, until January 12, 1947 when the Stern Gang drove a truckload of explosives into a British police station in Haifa, Palestine, killing 4 and injuring 140. The Stern Gang (a pro-fascist splinter group led by Avraham Stern that broke away from the right-wing Zionist paramilitary Irgun) would soon use truck and car bombs to kill Palestinians as well: a creative atrocity immediately reciprocated by British deserters fighting on the side of Palestinian nationalists.

Warning : Reading Too Much Bill O'Reilly Could Make You Want To Gun Down Innocent People

That's the inherent danger in spewing venom and hatred against imaginary or overhyped 'Enemies Of America' for the sake of book sales and television entertainment, some people may take you far too seriously.

From Raw Story :

Jim Adkisson, the 58 year old man being held in a Knoxville, Tennessee jail on murder charges stemming from a shooting during a children's musical at the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church on Sunday, is said to have had a array of right-wing political books in his home, along with brass knuckles, empty shotgun shell boxes, and a handgun discovered by police who searched his home.

"Adkisson targeted the church...because of its liberal teachings and his belief that all liberals should be killed because they were ruining the country, and that he felt that the Democrats had tied his country's hands in the war on terror and they had ruined every institution in America with the aid of media outlets.'

"Inside the house, officers found 'Liberalism is a Mental Health Disorder' by radio talk show host Michael Savage, 'Let Freedom Ring' by talk show host Sean Hannity, and 'The O'Reilly Factor,' by television talk show host Bill O'Reilly."

Condi Rice To Students : Don't Choose A Career, Take The Time To Dream

If the Bush presidency had not so utterly poisoned the image, and reputation, of Condoleezza Rice, and if her involvement in the War On Iraq had not led to so much misery and bloodshed, she may well have been challenging Barack Obama for the White House in 2012.

Perhaps she still will.

An interesting, and insightful, speech from the US Secretary of State delivered to students in Australia during a one day stopover :

I'd only have one suggestion, (to young people) which is when you go to college, don't try to determine what job you're going to have when you get out. Try to determine what your passion is. Try to figure out what it is you really love to do.

Finding your passion is the most important thing that you can do. My passion turned out to be the study of the Soviet Union. The first time I heard the Russian language, it was like falling in love.

Don't worry if it's something that seems a little odd because there is no reason that a black woman from Birmingham, Alabama, should have been interested in the Soviet Union. I just was. Don't let anybody define for you what you should be interested in. Your horizons should be limitless at this point. You have to find that special combination of what you're good at doing and what you love to do. And when you find that combination life is going to work out.

I'm not a great believer in five-year plans. I'm a great believer in finding what you love to do and doing it well. And life does have a way of working out.

So when you go off to school, explore, have an opportunity to look at everything that's before you, and then you may be surprised; something may choose you rather than the other way around.

Just don't let anybody put limits on it because you're a woman or because you are from some particular ethnic group or because you're Aboriginal or whatever you are. What you want to be and who you're going to be is really up to you.

Sometimes what you're doing is you're laying groundwork and foundations and building relationships that may not come to fruition for many years to come. When I look at people around the world who no longer live in tyranny, whether it's in struggling places such as Afghanistan or Iraq, or in eastern Europe, where they finally are liberated from communism, it's heartening to know that countries like Australia and the US have stood with people like that so that they no longer have to live in tyranny. Nobody should have to live in a dictatorship, nobody.

I try very hard to give other people the benefit of the doubt. I'm black and I'm female. And I've been black and female all my life, so when I walk into a room, I try not to think, is that person looking at me strangely because I'm black and female? I think the first thing is, try not to think too much about whether the challenges are coming at you because of gender or race. It's true that there are still prejudices against minorities and women. Most often people will underestimate your capabilities. The best way to deal with that is, be tough, be prepared to take on whatever questions come at you. And you'll find that sooner or later, it won't matter that much.

You can read a longer version of Rice's speech here.

"Who Do You Think You Are? A Kennedy? You're A Bush. Act Like One."

I truly believe those who think the upcoming Oliver Stone biopic of George W. Bush will be a polemic of hate and bile against the president are going to be very, very disappointed indeed.

Oliver Stone is one of the great American film-makers, and his new film 'W.' shows all the signs of being something remarkable : a movie about a sitting president that is not afraid to tell the truth about the good and the bad of the 'fortunate son'.

Here's the first trailer for 'W', due in cinemas in October :

War Dead Americans





The above two images are from a remarkable photo essay in the New York Times on American war casualties through the decades, and how the Pentagon granted total access and freedom to photographers in the Vietnam War, and introduced a numbing, draconiism for the Iraq War.

How are we to understand the truth, and consequences, of war when the reality is denied to us who aren't there doing the fighting, and the killing?

Of course, that is exactly the point of censoring news photographers in the war zone.

Ask yourself this : when was the last time you saw a dead American soldier or a dead Iraqi civilian in your city newspaper, or on the evening news?

It's not about respect for the dead, it's about sustaining the lie that war is anything but bloody, horrific and gruesome. And deadly.

After Bush : Who Will 'Liberals' Have To Hate?

Nick Cohen in the UK Guardian argues that the world post-Bush will still be a violent, brutal, fearful and confusing place, and that 'liberals' will miss their long-hated, easy target of derision :

Obama is riding the crest of the global wave of relief that Bush is leaving. A wave that is about to break. It doesn't know it, but the liberal-left in Europe and North America has been lucky to have Bush.

By building him up into a great Satan, the oil man who invades countries to seize their reserves and the Christian who orders bloody crusades, they have hidden the totalitarian threats of our age from themselves and anyone who listens to them. Bush allowed them to explain away radical Islam as an understandable, even legitimate, response to the hypocrisies and iniquities of American policy. Even those in the European elites who do not buy the full 'America has it coming' package believe that Bush is a cowboy who doesn't understand that the postmodern way to end conflict is to compromise rather than fight.

In January, Bush will be history, leaving liberals all alone in a frightening world. Little else will change. Radical Islam will still authorise murder without limit, Iran will still want the bomb and the autocracies of China and Russia will still be growing in wealth and confidence. All those who argued that the 'root cause' of the Bush administration lay behind the terror will find that the terror still flourishes when the root cause has retired.

Fair enough, but why does Cohen erroneously assume that only 'liberals' have a problem with Bush? There's tens of millions of die-hard Republicans in the United States right now who hold their leader in utter contempt, if only because he has so gratuitously damaged the conservative brand. An elderly librarian was removed by police from a John McCain function because she dared to hold up a sign that read "McCain = Bush".

Cohen doesn't seem to understand that there will be a massive global shift in the way the rest of the world views the United States when Bush and Cheney leave the White House. The most globally unpopular US president in history's departure will allow the world to breathe a sigh of relief, should 2009 begin without a greater conflict having broken out in the Middle East over Iran's nuclear energy ambitions.

Obama, should he win the presidency, will have a rare opportunity to undo some of the damage BushCo. has done, even if most of it will be not much more than re-branding, and fresh Compassionate Peaceful New America marketing.

Cohen presumes, all too easily, that the United States, and most of the rest of the world, post-Bush will simply be business as usual.

And since when is respectful, careful negotiation nothing but compromise? War is too damaging, too expensive, far too 20th century to sustain in a globalised, more connected 21st century world.

We can, and will, learn to live without it.

US Intelligence, Scotland Yard Claim "No Bomb" Involved In Qantas Mid-Air Explosion Before Investigation Begins



One week after a Qantas 747 was searched for six hours by FBI agents at Los Angeles International Airport after a bomb threat, an explosion tears a hole in the floor and side of a Qantas jet mid-flight.

But even before Australian aviation investigators reached the downed airliner, in Manila, US intelligence officers and Scotland Yard were hitting favoured media sources to deny a bomb in the baggage hold was responsible.

How could they be so sure, so soon, when some experts are already tipping a bomb explosion as the most likely explanation for the stunning incident?

Go Here For The Full Story

9/11 Pennsylvania 'Crash' Story Shot Down

It's on the record now in a Guantanamo Bay military trial. Here's military prosecutor Timothy Stone :

"If they hadn't shot down the fourth plane it would've hit the dome," Stone, a Navy officer, said in his opening remarks, repeating Bin Laden's deputy's claim.

Former US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld agrees with Osama Bin Laden's deputy :



Early (local) news reporting on the morning of 9/11 clearly described and showed scenes of wreckage scattered for miles around crash site.

Long Feared Monkey Uprising Quelled By Offer Of Fresh Fruit

Robot/Monkey Anti-Human Coalition Feared



By Darryl Mason

Nature's War On Humans has suddenly shifted into pants-dampening new territory with the news that monkeys are taking our guns from us. Monkeys have clearly learned they will need to arm themselves to see victory in their revolution against us Uprights.

Obviously I was wrong to live only in fear of the Sentient Robot Uprising while seething helplessly at the rising death toll from Nature's War On Humans. Something far worse than those two distinct battlefronts could easily shift into reality : an anti-human coalition between monkeys and robots.

We must now stop all interaction between robots and monkeys before the robots begin pointing out just how vulnerable and ripe for overthrow we humans actually are. We must not allow robots to build secret training camps to transform those monkeys already showing anti-human tendencies into even more lethal insurgents.

How pissed off do you think monkeys are going to be when they find out just how many of their kind are held captive by humans in zoos all over the world? We don't make them smoke cigars and ride bicycles much anymore, but there are still tens of thousands of their poo-throwing brothers and sisters behind bars all over this planet, incarcerated almost solely for the pleasure and amusement of humans.

What happens when robot UAVs start dropping cases of AK-47s into monkey enclosures? It only takes one smart monkey in a zoo to pick up a machine gun and start laying waste to humans before the rest realise what those noisy black sticks can do and arm themselves as well.

We have no choice but to ramp up both our War On Nature and the War On Smart Robots.

It's only a matter of time before the robots begin secret monkey-clone breeding programs, through which they will brain-chip entire armies of anti-human simians so they can be controlled remotely through wi-fi networks. Robots won't fight the war if they can get mind-controlled monkeys to do it for them.

Here's how the mainstream media reported yet another public manifestation of the monkey insurgency side of Nature's War On Humans :

A chimp in Japan escaped the sweltering confines of his cage, and a zookeeper with a tranquilizer gun proved no match for this feisty animal.

The chimp pounced on the ledge, grabbing the barrel of the zookeeper's tranquilizer gun and snatching it away, leaving the poor human defenseless.

...all it took to subdue the chimp was the promise of banana.

However, subduing revolutionary monkeys with fresh fruit will only work for so long.

The robots will obviously sell their anti-human coalition plans to the monkeys by promising to transform the human population into banana farmers for the victorious monkeys once the war is over.

Nature lost control of us, a long time ago. We can win the monkeys over to our side with the temptations and luxuries of non-jungle (and non-zoo) living, including electric blankets, toilet paper, free porn and frappuccinos.

The War On Nature Must Be Fought, And It Must Be Won

Pro-War, Anti-Pedestrian

Lots of city-commuting car drivers hate pedestrians, but very few do anything about it.

Pro-war, right wing, anti-pedestrian godfather of American punditry, and enthusiastic outer of CIA agents, Robert Novak finally did.

Novak, 2001 :

"I really hate jaywalkers. I despise them. Since I don't run the country, all I can do is yell at 'em. The other option is to run 'em over..."

Yes, run them over. And then drive away. Novak, today :

...David Bono was on his usual bike commute to work....when he witnessed the accident.

..."a black Corvette convertible with top closed plows into the guy. The guy is sort of splayed into the windshield.”

Bono said that the pedestrian, who was crossing the street on a "Walk" signal and was in the crosswalk, rolled off the windshield and that Novak then made a right into the service lane of K Street.

He said he chased Novak half a block...finally caught up with him and then put his bike in front of the car to block it and called 911.

Bono said that throughout, Novak "keeps trying to get away. He keeps trying to go.”

Now Novak will be going after cyclists as well.

"It Cannot Be Harmed By Normal Weapons"



Here's a photo waiting to go on a black metal album cover. Firefighter David M Konyndyk claims he captured this wonderfully chilling demonic image at a blaze in Oregon in 2007,

He's convinced. It's a fire demon. Definitely a horned beast of the Nagual realm.

Go here for the full image.

A somewhat scholary take on fire demon lore :

Fire-demons are associated with destruction and typically are summoned by the forces of evil. Their power comes from the depths of the earth and the energy of the sun; they love the day and fiery caverns. Driven by avarice for power and death, thev are among the most fearsome of demons. The favored guardsmen of Kadaena, most were banished forever during the Final Conflict. But some were actually imprisoned within deep caverins, unable to return to their planes and yet unslain. They await the unwary who might free them and find death as a reward.

Typical Fire-demons reach about 13’ in height and are large, cunning creatures. Most are armed with Fire-weapons (e.g., a sword of flame), great two-hand arms that they wield in one hand. Their thick, smooth hide is both enchanted and resilient, and cannot be harmed by normal weapons. When they immolate, they deliver Heat criticals to every victim within range of their flaming bodies.

I'd imagine we've been seeing beasts and demons in fire, and creating stories about them, since well before we turned fire into the tool that first raised us above other animals.

Massive fires sweeping into our hunting grounds millions of years ago, consuming our food supplies and those of us who couldn't run fast enough, might have perceived as something living, an awesome savagery, attacking and killing us.

How impressive it must have then been when we learned to capture fire, to control it, make it ourselves, and contain it in a ring of rocks for cooking, warmth and protection. We still saw the fire demons and beasts in the flames, but we had mastered some control of their ability to destroy us.

Stoned Britain

Some stunning drug caning stats for the UK through 2007 :

3.7 million adults used illicit drugs last year - 1.8m aged under 24 years old

2.8 million used cannabis - 1.5m under 24

1.2 million took a class A drug last year - 560,000 under 24

900,000 used cocaine powder - 425,000 under 24

625,000 used ecstasy - 310,000 under 24

500,000 used amyl nitrate (poppers)

476,000 used amphetamines

154,000 used tranquillisers

87,000 used LSD

69,000 used glues

65,000 used crack cocaine

46,000 used heroin

41,000 used methadone

Throw in corner shop rivers of cheap imported booze, legal low dose pharmacy opiates like Nurofen Plus, billions of prescription anti-depressants, uppers, downers and all-rounders, and you've got one seriously fucking high country. As the British economy tanks, drug use of all kinds will presumably soar.

An ecstasy user rages against the quality of the local merchandise :

Britain....currently has the worst drugs in the world, in terms of quality, cleanliness and the user's ability to measure them and be able to judge their tolerance to them. Because we're an island, and because of terrorism and security, people here are becoming acclimatised to bad-quality drugs. If you believe that people go through behavioural phases, moving through periods of taking drugs and growing out of them, then the real concern should be the decreasing quality of what those people - and the poor, especially - are taking.

A 15 year old hash smoker from Swansea dreams of his simple, perfect evening and perfect girl:

What I'd seriously like is to be online on MySpace, be on PlayStation 2, and have a smoke halfway through homework, with a dressing gown across the bottom of the door and really knowing no one's going to be in the house for two hours. That and being on the ramps (skateboarding) where there's someone with smokes and jokes. And girls. My picture of paradise is a girl on the ramps - no lamer, she's always busting it out - who sort of gets she's sexy but doesn't. She has Air Insurgents [trainers] and has the moves and has her own little stash of hash. Everyone I hang around with wants the girl like that.

"Loads of" lawyers in England are hitting the skag, apparently :

I work perfectly on smack. I'm not drinking at lunch, like others in my office. When you've got heroin you don't need alcohol. The only difference is you can't get it 24 hours in Tesco. I know one lawyer who's been on smack for 18 years. One clerk I knew died last year, but that's because the stuff that came through was great after he'd been having stuff for weeks that was 15 per cent, you understand? He was a good worker, good with papers like me.

Television sells the surreal, the halucinogenic :

The Virgin Atlantic ad on TV - it's very spacey and John Hannah's in it - is like a commercial for the hallucinogenic side of ketamine, to me. There's drug imagery everywhere. You flick through the channels on TV and see lots of people who are obviously on drugs - middle-aged presenters, politicians, the lot - who sniff when the camera's not on them. I've been told as a fact that drugs are allowed and encouraged on one of the reality shows. It's edited out.

A 22 year old crack freak in London gets the surveillance society to work in his favour :

I don't sell bones - that's crack - or skunk or coke or speed. What I do is sell cooking herbs [passed off as drugs] to get money to go and buy bones for myself. I feel no guilt, none. If I don't rip them off someone else will.

I've been in Camden this week. The CCTV helps me rip people off. I say, 'Don't open it [the wrap], move... the camera is turning, go...'

Longer versions of these dark, desperate, sometimes funny portraits of drug-addled Brits can be read here.

Iran? They're Not So Evil Now

Nuclear energy negotiations between the United States, the EU and Iran officially begin in Geneva.

Two months ago, President George W. Bush declared that negotiating with Iran over its nuclear energy program was like having a friendly chit-chat with Nazis at the start of World War 2 :

While delivering an address before the Israeli parliament commemorating the 60th anniversary of Israel, President Bush said that Sen. Barack Obama and Democrats favor a policy of appeasement toward terrorists. CNN reports that Bush was comparing Obama to “other U.S. leaders back in the run-up to World War II who appeased the Nazis.”

In his speech, Bush said, “As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: ‘Lord, if only I could have talked to Hitler, all of this might have been avoided.’ We have an obligation to call this what it is – the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history.”

Hmm, tough words. That's why he left it up to Condi Rice to deliver the new platform of appeasement :

In a surprising development in the tense American-Iranian relationship, the US announced this week that it would send a high-level State Department official to attend talks with Iranian nuclear negotiators in Switzerland over the weekend. This unexpected policy turn comes after a tense, saber rattling summer during which the US, Israel, and Iran have traded threats, staged war games, and tested weapons.

It's only like appeasing Nazis and hi-fiving terrorists when everybody else wants to do it, and it makes sense.

Russia is doing big oil and gas business with Iran now, and has been clear that an attack on Iran is an attack on a Russian ally. After Chechnya, Russia is not going to allow Iran's more extreme Islamists to load up on nuclear weapons. The US and Israel already know this fact. Russia is on the rise and it should be no surprise they want to protect their multi-billion dollar investments in Iran.

Bush appears to have been suddenly told, since May anyway, that Iran is a no go. He still has to deal with Afghanistan, let alone Iraq, and Russia knows just how much harder the war in Afghanistan is certain to become.

UPDATE : First the long overdue diplomacy, then the re-opening of the US embassy in
Tehran:

The US plans to establish a diplomatic presence in Tehran for the first time in 30 years as part of a remarkable turnaround in policy by President George Bush.

The Guardian has learned that an announcement will be made in the next month to establish a US interests section - a halfway house to setting up a full embassy. The move will see US diplomats stationed in the country.

The news of the shift by Bush who has pursued a hawkish approach to Iran throughout his tenure comes at a critical time in US-Iranian relations. After weeks that have seen tensions rise with Israel conducting war games and Tehran carrying out long-range missile tests, a thaw appears to be under way.

The likely next prime minister of Israel is still in favour of hitting Iranian civilian nuclear energy workers, and their families, with missiles :

Israel cannot let Iran get to the point of nuclearization," Mofaz said. "All options are on the table. If there won't be a choice other than a nuclear Iran or a military option, it's clear what our decision has to be."

As the minister in charge of Israel's strategic dialogue with the United States on Iran, he will head to Washington later this month for a meeting with key officials...

"The strategy against Iran has not changed and it will continue to be led by the United States," Mofaz said.

Mo obviously didn't get the Condi Rice memo.

Anti-War Is Anti-American : Peace Activists Added To US Terror Watch List

Of course this was the intention from day one of the Patriot Act. Americans against the Iraq War were never going to be allowed to do what they did during the Vietnam War era. Anti-war is now anti-government. Pro-peace is now suspected terrorist.

Also included in the 46 pages of documents,...is an account of an activist's name being entered into a federally funded database designed to share information among state, local and federal law-enforcement agencies on terrorist and drug trafficking suspects.

The activist was identified as Max Obuszewski. His "primary crime" was entered into the database as "terrorism - anti govern(ment)." His "secondary crime" was listed as "terrorism - anti-war protestors."

....information about the protesters and their activities was sent to seven agencies, including the National Security Agency and an unnamed military intelligence official.

Who did you really think was going to go on a Terror Watch List? The people who actually make war into a reality?

UPDATE : An important, very valid question - So how many terrorists have been caught or stopped from unleashing terror by the implementation of Terror Watch List, now one million Americans strong? Answer? None.

Paul Craig Roberts explains :

"Members of Congress, nuns, war heroes and other 'suspicious characters,' with names like Robert Johnson and Gary Smith, have become trapped in the Kafkaesque clutches of this list, with little hope of escape," said Caroline Fredrickson, director of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office.

Do you really believe there are one million terrorists and nothing has blown up in the US since September 11, 2001 (assuming you believe the government's account of that episode)?

How can there possibly be 1,000,000 terrorists and America still be in one piece? If there were 1,000,000 terrorists, America would be in ruins. According to the Bush Regime's line, it only took a handful of terrorists to destroy America's tallest skyscrapers and a section of the Pentagon and to send the President of the United States scurrying to a hiding place.

The "watch list" has not apprehended a single terrorist, but thousands of American citizens have been inconvenienced and arrested.

What the "watch list" or "no-fly list" is doing is training Americans to submit to warrantless searches, to abandon their constitutional rights, and to submit to humiliation by thugs and bullies. A Gestapo is being trained to have no qualms about searching and intimidating fellow citizens, using any excuse to delay or arrest them. Americans are being taught to use arbitrary power and to submit to arbitrary power. In the false name of "safety from terrorists," Americans are being made the least safe people on earth.

Police State USA is steadily taking shape.

A government loses its mandate to rule when it no longer trusts the people it is supposed to be governing.

Like Hope, Obama Now Floats

There ain't nothing wrong with getting some religious imagery associated with your presidency. You ain't saying you is good or such, but hey, this halo thing plays big with the masses.



But Obama is leaping past this tired old halo business, and is performing miracles of levitation instead. He's going straight for The Awesome :



Maybe there is something in this Obama = Messiah thing after all.

Captured casually floating and reaching up to the heavens (or a basketball ring) is surely a better way to be seen by the American public than hanging portraits of Osama Bin Laden, and burning American flags, in the West Wing :



The United States will need a new president who can perform miracles. The thrill of having a president who can hover a few feet off the ground, however, will wear off quickly, and desperate Americans living the cold, dark side of free market capitalism, will be demanding less floating and more flowing of the fish and loaves.

Of course, the miracle of ultra-fast food will have to be updated to capture these times.

If Obama can turn up at a Krispy Kreme and turn on endless cream-filled donuts to feed the hungry hordes, and the morbidly obese, he's got the election in the bag.

Pilots In Nevada Kill People In Middle East Via Video Game

Video games are used to teach new potential new recruits how to kill in the mall recruiting offices, so it's no surprise to learn that once they've signed up, they kill people in reality via a joystick :

From a desert outpost northwest of Las Vegas, elite fighter pilots journey to a war zone in Afghanistan, some 7,500 miles away.

It might be the world's longest commute, except that these armchair pilots at Creech Air Force Base in Nevada never leave the air-conditioned comfort of their command center.

Air Force pilots are employing remotely controlled fighter-bomber aircraft -- known in military parlance as unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs -- to fly combat missions over Afghanistan, hunting for insurgents bent on undermining Afghan President Hamid Karzai's fragile government.

This is the future of aerial combat.

This is the future of mass slaughter from the sky.

Sitting in a virtual cockpit is not as exciting as flying a fighter jet, but unmanned attack-plane pilots can enjoy a normal workday schedule -- more or less.

"Seeing bad guys on the screen and watching them possibly get dispatched, and then going down to the Taco Bell for lunch, it's kind of surreal," says Captain Matt Dean.

When you don't even have to leave your armchair to kill people in foreign lands, it makes the act of raining down terror so much easier.

The first serious killer flying robot was the 'drone' called Predator. It could carry two Hellfire missiles. But that's so 20021 Now they've got 'The Reaper :

The Reaper can carry the same bomb load as an F-16 fighter plane, but its pilots are not put in harm's way.

And now for some confirmation that the so-called unarmed spy planes used for almost a decade were in fact armed :

The Air Force once employed jerry-rigged missiles strapped to unmanned spy planes. Now military commanders see remotely piloted aircraft as the model for the way future wars will be fought.

Reaper pilots so far this year have launched 64 missiles and dropped seven 500-pound bombs in Afghanistan.

The success of this new concept of aerial power has created a huge demand for the aircraft.

In the war zones and, of course, in the homeland.

A remarkable puff piece of dehumanised terror techno fetishing, in this new age of Death From Above, even for CNN.

UnMockable

American television comedians are afraid to make fun of Barack Obama.

In particular, white TV comedy hosts tread carefully around Obama's racial background, upbringing, his drug use confessions, his religious beliefs, his intense followers who whisper the word 'Messiah'...

Maureen Dowd asks if Bar-ama is the UnMockable, and if the American presidential campaign is suffering from a "irony deficiency."

Many of the late-night comics and their writers — nearly all white — now admit to The New York Times’s Bill Carter that because of race and because there is nothing “buffoonish” about Obama — and because many in their audiences are intoxicated by him and resistant to seeing him skewered — he has not been flayed by the sort of ridicule that diminished Dukakis, Gore and Kerry.

“There’s a weird reverse racism going on,” Jimmy Kimmel said.

So desperate are American comedians to find acceptable jokes to make about Barama, the next US president's campaign has reacted sympathetically, according to comedian Andy Borowitz, and released a list of utterly unoffensive-to-all jokes they can use instead. Here's one :

“A traveling salesman knocks on the door of a farmhouse, and much to his surprise, Barack Obama answers the door. The salesman says, ‘I was expecting the farmer’s daughter.’ Barack Obama replies, ‘She’s not here. The farm was foreclosed on because of subprime loans that are making a mockery of the American dream.’ ”

Here's a word you don't want associated with you when you're running for American
president :

"Prissy."

Writes Dowd :

(Obama is) already in danger of seeming too prissy about food — a perception heightened when The Wall Street Journal reported that the planners for Obama’s convention have hired the first-ever Director of Greening, the environmental activist Andrea Robinson. She in turn hired an Official Carbon Adviser to “measure the greenhouse-gas emissions of every placard, every plane trip, every appetizer prepared and every coffee cup tossed.”

No fun there.

Surfing Lava

Hawaiian pro surfer CJ Kanuha takes a board to within 20 feet of flowing lava. Incredible photos by his friend Kirk Kea Aeder at a safer distance, in a helicopter.





More photos here.

Where's The Piano?

This is about as close as we get to watching a miracle, in these intensely cynical days.

Little is known about this blind five year old's history. She was adopted into a family with no music ability whatsoever. She found a piano and began to play.



Her hands never stop touching the keys, always playing, the music flows from her fingers effortlessly.

It will be fascinating to learn in years to come what role genetic memory (memory strands of past generations ingrained into our DNA) plays in the talents of such extraordinary child prodigies.

Get Off Our Backs!

It's not just you. People everywhere are feeling the infuriating crush of heavily regulated society, of ten speed limit signs every block you drive, of warnings to never smoke, don't drink too much, watch what you eat, don't put your rubbish out wrong, don't drive so fast, don't walk so slow, don't buy this because some poor people somewhere may suffer as a result, turn off the lights, turn down the heat, empty your pockets, take off your shoes, sit down and shut up.

Top Gear's Jeremy Clarkson wonders what has happened to all the mavericks and rule breakers in his homeland :

We like people who like to laugh, to have fun, to break the rules once in a while.

Trouble is, it’s hard to find people like that any more . . .

Imagine if we had someone like Winston Churchill in power today. A smoker. A drinker. A man given to Herculean bouts of depression. Under a hailstorm of criticism he wouldn’t last a week.

There’s a constant bombardment for me to sit up straight, eat my greens, comb my hair. It drives me mad. Honestly.

I fear for our future. I worry that bad behaviour is being erased from society, and that unless the trend can be reversed somehow we’ll all have to go through life on the Planet Stepford, a rictus grin masking the boiling turmoil of desperation inside. I yearn sometimes when I encounter a neatly stacked pyramid of tins of beans to push it over. Don’t you? Wouldn’t it break the monotony of having to drive at 30mph and eating a wholefood fair-trade sandwich at your desk.

And comes up with a solution in his pitch for the most shocking, confrontational and outrageous show on TV. Which will, of course, never be made :

Recently Annie Robinson and I dreamt up a TV show that would serve as an antidote to the endless parade of hectoring and finger-wagging programmes we get today. Instead of running down the street after a cowboy builder who’d charged an old lady a million quid to build a fireplace, we would go after the victims.

It was to be called Sucker and it would celebrate the ingenious while pointing the finger and howling with laughter at the stupid, the gullible and the fat. Never has the nation needed such a show more.

A TV show where you are encouraged to laugh your face off at those who have been screwed over, a triumph of the cunning over the not-so-bright.

Now what would that do to modern society? Something very interesting, no doubt.

Art By Ron Cobb.

Happy Time For World

Feeling happy? Much of the rest of the world is, according to this story :

Data from national surveys conducted between 1981 and 2006...showed that happiness was on the rise in 40 out of 52 countries.

World Values Surveys have asked, for the past 26 years, more than 350,000 people how happy they are.

Among the 52 countries for which long-term comparative data were available, India, Ireland, Mexico, Puerto Rico and South Korea showed steep upticks in happiness last year, while the happiness quotient in 14 other countries, including nine in Europe, also rose, but less sharply.

Those 14 countries are Argentina, Canada, China, Denmark, Finland, France, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Poland, South Africa, Spain and Sweden.

In the United States, Switzerland and Norway, happiness was stagnant, but all three countries were still in the top 20 of 97 nations, representing 90 percent of the world's population, that were ranked in order for happiness.

Denmark ranked at the top of that list and Zimbabwe at the bottom.

"Happiness and life satisfaction rise steeply as one moves from subsistence-level poverty to a modest level of economic security and then levels off," the study says.

"Among the richest societies, further increases in income are only weakly linked with higher levels of subjective well-being," it says.

One of the keys to a country's general happiness is real democracy and tolerance.

Nature's War On Humans : Nature Kills 150,000 Of Us In 400 'Attacks' This Year

Don't call them 'natural disasters'. Call them what they are : Gaia-directed terror attacks, on humans, by her brutal forces of nature.

We're at war here, people.

Nature wants to kill us for what we've done to this planet. There's no reason to pretend otherwise, anymore. Nature wants to wants to take away our freedoms and air-conditioners, it wants to change our way of life, it wants to change the mass consumerist values that formed and shaped our modern societies.

Nature has had enough of us, that much is now clear, and has decided to fight back against humans. This is why YNR enthusiastically endorses the War On Nature. Nobody's going to tell us what we can and can't cover with concrete.

A few days ago, we looked at how the toll of Nature's War On Us compared to human murder rates, suicide rates and war-related massacres and assorted slaughters.

The conclusion was reached that Nature's War On Humans was failing, as the Human War On Humans had killed many, many tens of millions more in the past four or five decades than Nature has taken out with hurricanes, tsunamis and mantle-cracking earthquakes.

The conclusion was reached that, with less than 3 million fatalities in natural disasters over the past few decades, Nature was clearly losing The War.

But new human fatality figures in The War suggest that Nature might have been staging something of a "surge" in attacks on humanity in 2007 and 2008 :

Natural disasters killed at least 150,000 people in the first half of this year, more than in the whole of 2004 when south-east Asia was struck by a tsunami, a top insurer said today.

The figures came from German re-insurance group Munich Re which warned that the pattern this year fitted a trend of worsening weather-driven catastrophes...

Specialists at the German group recorded about 400 natural catastrophes in the first half of 2008, with overall losses so far estimated at $US50 billion ($52.48 billion).

In 2007, a total of 960 disasters caused about $US82 billion in damage, of which $US30 billion was covered by insurance.

The first half of this year has been marked by "a large number of weather-related natural catastrophes'', the statement said.

Diplomacy will not work this time.

The War On Nature Must Be Fought, And Won, Before The Aliens Invade

Further to the thought here the other day, where it was contemplated that our ancient intergalactic brothers may come to our rescue in our growing War On Nature (she started it, she's been dumping searing lava and "gee, what do you think that is?" tidal waves on us from the moment we came down from the trees), yet another pro-Nature, anti-human propaganda movie has arrived. This time, it appears, Nature is teaming up with The Alien Threat to give us some payback.

Nature is big, very scary, and will stomp our faces back to the caves unless we submit to it. Well, that's what I got from the trailer of the re-make for The Day The Earth Stood Still.

But Nature is weak, and ripe for conquering, so weak in fact, it now needs Keanu Reeves to come to it's rescue. Earth needs aliens to deal with us.

And just as we're getting close to making some long overdue improvements to the last few wilderness areas on the planet.




In the original The Day The Earth Stood Still, earth is invaded because humans were starting to workshop the idea, "We should really get some of these nukes into space, don't you think?"

The aliens came to earth because some kind of intergalactic Security Council decided that while we confined our violence to our own planet, then whatever, let the standing monkeys brutalise each other however they like, but when we wanted to strap a nuke to a rocket headed for high orbit and beyond, well, they weren't going to put up with that. Bring on the unstoppable killer robot until we all calmed the fuck down.

This time, Nature is under threat and needs an intergalactic personal security guard, with muscle. The invasion and destruction begins because We need to be dealt with.

It will continue a prominent theme in Wall-E : that the Earth is better off without us. Sort of like Iraq is better off without Saddam.

Nature is, of course, the ultimate enemy. It always has been. Every origin myth of history features Wrathful Nature in the leading role. Floods wipe out humanity, locust plagues destroy food supplies, mountains explode and rivers boil. Nature is the perfect enemy for movies. Particularly now they can CGI water so big stormy waves really do look scary.

The Eco-Horror movie is not a new genre, but it's shaping up as a popular one in the next few years, at least for film-makers. Whether audiences have already seen enough scenes of famous city-and-landmark destruction will determine how many similarly themed movies can be wrung from the Single line pitch : Earth Has Had Enough, And Now It's Fighting Back.

And as for, "If the earth dies, you die. If you die, the earth survives."

I think they stole that from George Carlin.

UPDATE : The director of the TDTESS remake rejects the description 'Eco-Horror' :

I think that this film in some ways is an attempt to address a number of issues that are amongst the most pressing issues for the human race. The original, being a Cold War film, was addressing what was clearly the greatest threat for the human race at that time, mutual nuclear destruction, and that’s not the most pressing threat that we face now. It’s also man vs. man. We are destroying each other as well. Our country’s at war right now. There is certainly the issue being addressed in the movie of our treatment of one another on the planet. I think it’s a movie about human nature as much as anything else and how human nature is acting itself out in the world right now.

Chocolate May Become As Expensive As Caviar

There's not many good reasons to bulldoze ancient rainforests. But ensuring a steady, cheap supply of the beans that make chocolate has to be one of them.

Sadly, the cocoa bean is likely to become more rare in the coming decades as the growing lands of West Africa, which supplies most of the magic beans for world chocolate production, are rendered near useless from over production and poor farming practices.

From CNN :

"I think that in 20 years chocolate will be like caviar," says John Mason, executive director and founder of the Ghana-based Nature Conservation Research Council (NCRC).

"It will become so rare and so expensive that the average Joe just won't be able to afford it."

Yields are declining all across the cocoa plantations of West Africa, where two thirds of the world's supply is grown, as soils are degraded and the area able to support the crop retreats...

The problem is that cocoa is naturally a rainforest plant that grows in shady conditions surrounded by a high biodiversity, but recently hybrid varieties have been grown on cleared land as mono-cultures and in full sun.

Permaculture and carbon trading are tipped to come to the rescue of low-income chocolate junkies.

He's Back, But He Won't Be Kicked Around This Time

An excellent piece of art from Strk3 :


(spotted in comments at the science fiction addicts shooting gallery io9.com)

Why Richard Nixon Should Be Your Dystopian President

Earth To Humans : "I Keeeel You!"

It's probably the greatest headline of the year, maybe even of the new century. Of course, it's from Pravda :

Earth Begins To Kill People For Changing Its Climate

A UN report claims that "at least 2.5 million have been killed in natural disasters" in the past 50 years. More than 1.6 million of those slaughtered by that vengeful pagan bitch goddess have died in the past two decades.

These stats are supposed to tell us that natural disasters, particularly those that kill lots of humans, are increasing. Don't you see? Mother Earth is pissed off at how we're treating the planet and is taking out some of the trash.

Ooohhhh. We're supposed to be scared? Why?

2.5 million dead from natural disasters in four decades doesn't actually sound so bad when you compare it to how effectively and enthusiastically we kill each other, and ourselves.

About one million people kill themselves every year around the world. That's about as close as you can get to an official figure. It's probably a lot more, as two out of three human deaths are not reported, never written down officially. Suicides rates are high, and climbing steadily, but you could average out, taking in smaller population numbers four or five decades ago, that probably 30-35 or so million people have killed themselves in the same time period that Nature : The Revenge has killed a few million, tops, with earthquakes, tidal waves, volcanoes and hurricanes. We murder each other at a rate of about two to three times that of suicides.

And then there's war. How many dead (mostly civilians) from war in the past 30 to 40 years? Another 20 or so million?

A few million dead from natural disasters in four decades? Compared to probably 100 million or more from suicide, murder and war?

Planet Earth is actually doing a pretty piss-weak job of massacring us.

That, of course, may change soon, if bird flu pandemic and global warming predictions become our horrific reality. But the real mega-millions death tolls would most likely, most realistically, result from Earth getting smashed by an asteroid only a few kilometres across.

If Earth really is killing us for destroying its climate, who gets the blame when this planet gets whacked from the reaches of deep space?

We came from the stars. Earth forgets that. We might have some interplanetary relatives who won't take kindly to our species getting slapped down by this uppity ecosphere. Don't fuck with us, Gaia, we have powerful friends.

Abandonment

There's a remarkably large audience online for photo essays of abandoned cities and towns. Why do so many enjoy seeing the results of failed human endeavour? Why are we so drawn to ghosts towns as children? Why will we drive, as adults, so far out of our way on long road journeys to see a bunch of old buildings crumbling back into the earth?

There is a sad beauty to these uninhabited mementos of former society, where people, families, once lived their lives and tried to build their dreams. The people leave, but the buildings remain, sometimes for centuries, far longer than the humans who built them, lived in them, and then abandoned them.

What is the attraction? Do these places remind us, in a positive way, of just how temporary our time here is? Do we not so much draw satisfaction from the urban decreptitude as drink strength and inspiration that where others failed, we will not, cannot, do so?

In this photo essay, there are towns abandoned due to devastated economy, war, failed industry and the invasion of nature.

These two images from the essay are the more rare and unusual, and beautiful.



From WebUrbanist :

Kolmanskop is a small town located a few miles inland from the port of Lüderitz in Namibia. Windswept sand has made its way into nearly every building in the town, which was once a diamond mining town and abandoned in 1956 as diamond demand declined and richer sources of diamonds were discovered in other areas. Its only residents are now birds, hyenas and other animals.

Cheney's Down Under Media War Spigot Pumps Terrorism On Iran

The chief foreign affairs reporter for Rupert Murdoch's The Australian newspaper enthusiastically adds his voice, or should that be Dick Cheney's voice, to the Australian end of the Murdoch world media campaign now underway for War On Iran. The reporter's name is Greg Sheridan and he and US Vice President Dick Cheney are old friends. They've known each other for 16 years.

Sheridan's got some news he wanted to share with the readers of Australia's only national newspaper, and chief distributor of shameless NeoCon propaganda :

There is...between a 30 and 40 per cent chance that the Bush administration will bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities before the end of the year.

Sheridan bases his judgement on, "two weeks of intense conversations I have had with American national security figures."

He's been on the phone to Dick Cheney's office to get his War On Iran talking points. Sheridan got the whole set :

People who know Vice-President Dick Cheney well believe he wants to strike Iran, that he has made a sober judgment that time is running out.

Cheney and Sheridan have been down this road together before, most recently with Iraq. When Cheney visited Australia to spruik War On Iran, he naturally granted his old mate Greg Sheridan an exclusive interview, where Cheney repeatedly pumped his mantras for War On Iran.

Sheridan really, really likes Dick Cheney. Shamelessly so. Some previous Sheridan Cheney gushing :

"...you never find Cheney hiding in the shadows, he's always in the bright light of the day"

There is something bracing about Cheney's unrepentant attitude generally...

(Cheney) certainly presents as the very model of sweet reason...

...in person he is avuncular, softly spoken, often deploying a little wry irony.

One of Cheney's most appealing qualities is that he tells it exactly as he sees it. There is never a trace of ambiguity in what he says...

Cheney told Sheridan back in 2007 that he believes :

...a military confrontation with Iran would be a lesser evil than an Iran with nuclear weapons.

Cheney also points out that 20 per cent of the world's oil passes through the Strait of Hormuz and is vulnerable to Iranian military action.

Yes, let's not forget the oil.

Today, even though, according to Sheridan, "Washington, all the capitals of Europe and Canberra are united in their determination to stop Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons", waiting to find out of they've actually got 'em may take too long. Remember, according to Cheney, "time is running out."

Does this sound familiar to you at all?

Sheridan knows the fallout from nuking Iranian non-nukes will shatter the global economy, even more than the War On Iraq did. He knows that almost every oil expert thinks striking Iran will see a barrel leap above $200. And at $200, millions in the West will no longer be able to afford to drive to work. And that's for starters.

So what to do? What kind of magic fantasy dust have Dick Cheney's people sprinkled inside Sheridan's mind?

Terrorism :

...the top secret intelligence committee heads of Congress have authorised $400million for covert operations in Iran. This program is designed to gather information about Iran’s nuclear facilities and support opposition, including violence, to Iran’s Government and military.

...two separate national security insiders have confirmed to me that the US has a substantial covert operations effort in Iran.

It's not so covert anymore, is it Mr Sheridan? Or perhaps that is the idea?

Figures right across the Bush administration routinely describe a nuclear-armed Iran as an existential threat to Israel. Existential here means a serious threat to Israel’s existence. Another national security figure tells me that if Israel really does regard a nuclear Iran as as existential threat, it would have no alternative but to strike.

By using the term existential threat, the Bush administration at the very least is itself legitimising the Israeli strike option.

A nuclear-armed Iran changes the world for all of us. It is the most important issue on the international agenda today.

Yeah, forget about the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, millions in the West rapidly falling into a Third World kind of poverty. Forget about the tens of billions being lost every day on world stock markets, the society-altering rise of fuel and food prices, and the creeping spread of totalitarian societies and dictatorships.

It's all about Iran's non-existent nuclear weapons.

Surely another war can only work to solve all those other crises. Right?

And what a fantastic foreign correspondent Dick Cheney's pal is. How thorough he is. Sheridan makes absolutely no mention of Russia's reaction, or plans for preventive action, to US or Israel strikes on Iran.

The fact that Russia will clearly retaliate if Iran is attacked must have completely slipped his mind.

These people are psychotic.

Watch this video (again) the next time you think you might actually be getting stupider.




The embedding has been disabled. Go here to watch the full clip.

Le Lune! Le Lune! Christ, how did this guy manage to climb onto the stool?

How does the host manage to hold himself back from shouting obscenities? The audience were no help at all. Most of them were as wrong as the contestant on just what that round floaty thing in the night sky is actually doing up there. The girlfriend wasn't exactly confident that The Moon revolved around The Earth. She took a while to nod assuredly that she knew the right answer, about the same time she appeared to realise her partner was actually a dim bulb in a vacant, dark warehouse.

(HT to Digg.com)