The world’s oldest recorded joke has been traced back to 1900 BC and suggests toilet humour was as popular with the ancients as it is today, British academics say.
The joke is a saying of the Sumerians, who lived in what is now southern Iraq, and goes:
“Something which has never occurred since time immemorial; a young woman did not fart in her husband’s lap.”
It heads the world’s Oldest Top 10 joke list published by the University of Wolverhampton.
A 1600 BC gag about a pharaoh, said to be King Snofru, comes second. “How do you entertain a bored pharaoh? You sail a boatload of young women dressed only in fishing nets down the Nile and urge the pharaoh to go catch a fish.”
The oldest British joke dates back to the 10th century and reveals the bawdy face of the Anglo-Saxons. “What hangs at a man’s thigh and wants to poke the hole that it’s often poked before? A key.”
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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%)
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.
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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.
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.”
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.
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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.
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.”
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No for those like Oliver Stone something more must be done. Something over the top. Something insulting. Something that has never happened to a sitting President in any medium. Oliver Stone feels that now is the time to make up a movie about President Bush, while he is in office.
Why can’t Oliver Stone give up his citizenship, move to France (or Russia, or Iran), and make whatever slanted version of history he wants. I’m sure the Taliban, Al Quida and a few other “see an American, kill an American” hate groups will be more than happy to pack theaters for his biased derogatory slime on film.
Obviously I have a problem with the upcoming film W. My problem is not so much political as it is decency. I don’t care that Oliver Stone has a political agenda the size of the Empire State Building. I don’t care, as much, that he is seeking to portray historical fact in a manner more akin to a scifi movie about they year 300,000 A.D. I don’t care that he is going to get about as many people in the audience (stateside) as there are members of Moveon.org – I’m sure they will all go see it 2x.
What I care about is the power and prestige of the American Presidency and thus America. America is the President on an international level, whether we love or hate any particular President. And Oliver Stone is so obsessed with his personal hate that he doesn’t seem to care what damage he does. He seems willing to do anything to place a(nother) blemish on President Bush, even if it means hurting every American and every American President to come.
This film, a supposed biography of President Bush – that seems to be focused squarely on the past according to the trailer - looks dumb. What may be even more dumb is that it was greenlighted by a Hollywood studio, and that actors of ability have taken several prominent roles.
Josh Brolin, Elizabeth Banks, Ioann Gruffudd, Ellen, Burstyn, should all be embarrassed that they would do this to an American President. I really thing that James Cromwell, Richard Dreyfuss, and Scott Glenn should have known better. I mean they couldn’t wait until President Bush finished his term of office?
And as for Jeffery Wright and Thandie Newton I am at a loss. Do they believe that a movie built upon diminishing the office of the President of the United States is going to help their careers or in any way highlight African Americans (who are routinely seen and expected to be Democrats only) in a positive light? Colin Powell and Condelezza Rice have succeeded in becoming exceptional political figures, a fact that did not exist in any other Presidency before President Bush. And Wright and Newton believe that a film that insults America is the best way to immortalize these 2 accomplished, educated, Black figures? I think they deserve far better.
I will show this movie trailer clip. Because I do believe in Freedom of Speech and artistic expression. But I in no way suggest that anyone should see this film. I in no way support any actor’s portrayal in this film. I denounce what Oliver Stone has done, and am angry at Thandie Newton and Jeffery Wright.
Could I be wrong about the film? Until it is released sure, and it is mathematically probable that I can fly, piss on the sun and put it out, and/or suddenly have a stroke and thus believe that Code Pink and San Francisco know what they are doing. But back in the real world, Oliver Stone is doing a wretched thing.
Imagine if someone did a hatchet job on President Clinton and Hillary back when he was in office while doing Ms. Lewinsky with a cigar; the Democrats and Hollywood would be raging and the nation embarrassed. How is this different?
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.
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.”
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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 :
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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.
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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 is little more than re-branding, and fresh 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.
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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?
“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.
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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.
“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.
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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.
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So Senator Obama has gone overseas to visit Iraq for the first time in years. His first trip to that nation was done with little fanfare and lasted less than 48 hours. This time he will spend another 48 hours in the company of 3 broadcast news agencies, dozens of reporters, and supplied with help by reportedly 300 foreign policy advisors.
Now tell me this isn’t a farce.
It’s a whirlwind tour of the Middle East with enough press corps to equate to several fire teams, not counting the hordes of military soldiers that will be flanking the whole group. But the question is can Senator Obama learn anything new? Can he find out any first-hand information about where Iraq stands and what America should do in the near future?
Well in truth neither candidate has a great position on Iraq. And as noted by a recent USAToday editorial
At the same time, it’s equally difficult to imagine a President Obama insisting on an inflexible withdrawal timetable if that means squandering security gains won with great American sacrifice. Though Obama has repeatedly insisted on a timetable, he has pointedly not said that every U.S. troop will be gone when the timetable ends. In fact, he has promised to leave a “residual force” of undefined size in Iraq, and carefully left himself an escape hatch in case the situation worsens. “You’ve got to make sure the country doesn’t collapse,” he says.”
So what are the realities of the situation then?
Well for Senator Obama I would think they include the following:
Senator Obama is the Democratic Party line. His votes are not only partisan, they are the extreme left of his party. Thus he was a strong backer of the comments by Harry Reid
Of course Harry Reid was wrong. The surge has worked as anyone with eyes can see. And now Senator Obama has to find a way to tactfully state the Reid and Pelosi were off their rockers. But he can’t say this in a way that agrees with General Petreaus (an enemy of strong Obama supporter MoveOn.org – which would make them enemies of the U.S. government no?) or the Republican Party, or Senator McCain who has visited Iraq 6 times and actually has a frame of reference on the events there.
Senator Obama must avoid making it seem like his trip is a polispeak ploy. It’s obvious to everyone that this trip is not a Congressional fact finding trip but a means to allay the fact that he has no international presence or experience. Senator Obama is spending 1 week to create the impression that he is knowledgeable of international facts, and Presidential in the manner that he acquires them.
His whole goal is to gain votes on the backs of soldiers that are following the orders of the Commander-n-Chief. Thus by standing near a soldier in Iraq or Afghanistan he looks Presidential.
Of course if the trip looks like the blatant posturing it is, then he will get a negative backlash. You can’t look Presidential standing on the bodies of American soldiers. You are obviously spinning polispeak when insurgents act up as you proclaim them defeated and our job done.
Thirdly Obama wants to impress Europe. Both because of the fact that so many Americans have roots in Europe and that our economy is directly tied with the fate of those nations.
The point of the outdoor rally is that the senator wants to speak directly to our allies and to the people of Europe and the people of the world and it would be inconsistent to do that and try to limit the attendance for that event. There’s a great deal of interest in his visit. We want to accommodate that interest.”
In fact this is a campaign speech. He is campaigning for the support of world leaders and corporations – who would then lend support to him and hopefully impress centrist Americans that would otherwise avoid his liberal policies.
If this is not a speech about American politics, what the hell is he going to say? He may not frame the speech in terms of McCain, but he will in terms of America and so it’s just another stump speech. Take out the polispeak and that’s all it is, but if his campaign makes it any more obvious it will backfire.
Will this all work? Well it depends. If you are of the mind of say Pete Hegseth maybe not
Overall I have one overriding thought, this is political candy meant to do one thing – elect Senator Obama. There is almost nothing Senator Obama can learn with the media following him like puppies and the speed at which he is traveling. He isn’t there to learn anything substantive (lest he have an opinion that does not fall in line with Democratic Party lines, or worse contradict his far-left campaign speeches – more than he already has), he is there to look good. In the words of Fernando
“It’s better to look good than to feel good.”
And damn if Senator Obama isn’t being made to look good. But I wonder if all the bluster will lead to an Obama Presidency, and if it does will we be able to say this quote afterwards
“I hope when you are my age, you’ll be able to say - as I have been able to say: We lived in freedom. Our lives were a statement, not an apology.” Ronald Reagan
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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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.”
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.
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.
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.
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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.
“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.
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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.
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Microsoft sends messages via Wingdings (6%)
