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I wanted to get the source for the "dark night of fascism is always descending in the United States and yet lands only in Europe," so I tracked it down to Tom Wolfe's "The Intelligent Coed's Guide to America," republished in Mauve Gloves & Madmen, Clutter & Vine (1976). In the process, I found a more extended discussion that struck me as worth repeating. Here's the relevant excerpt, from pp. 115-17 of the hardcover edition; it reports on a panel discussion at Princeton in 1965, in which the participants included Paul Krassner, editor of The Realist magazine, Günter Grass, and Wolfe:

The next thing I knew, the discussion was onto the subject of fascism in America. Everybody was talking about police repression and the anxiety and paranoia as good folks waited for the knock on the door and the descent of the knout on the nape of the neck. I couldn't make any sense out of it. . . . This was the mid-1960's. . . . [T]he folks were running wilder and freer than any people in history. For that matter, Krassner himself, in one of the strokes of exuberance for which he was well known, was soon to publish a slight hoax: an account of how Lyndon Johnson was so overjoyed about becoming President that he had buggered a wound in the neck of John F. Kennedy on Air Force One as Kennedy's body was being flown back from Dallas. Krassner presented this as a suppressed chapter from William Manchester's book Death of a President. Johnson, of course, was still President when it came out. Yet the merciless gestapo dragnet missed Krassner, who cleverly hid out onstage at Princeton on Saturday nights. . . .

Support [for Wolfe's view that fascism wasn't coming to America] came from a quarter I hadn't counted on. It was Grass, speaking in English.

"For the past hour, I have my eyes fixed on the doors here," he said. "You talk about fascism and police repression. In Germany when I was a student, they come through those doors long ago. Here they must be very slow."

Grass was enjoying himself for the first time all evening. He was not simply saying, "You really don't have so much to worry about." He was indulging his sense of the absurd. He was saying: "You American intellectuals -- you want so desperately to feel besieged and persecuted!"

He sounded like Jean-François Revel, a French socialist writer who talks about one of the great unexplained phenomena of modern astronomy: namely, that the dark night of fascism is always descending in the United States and yet lands only in Europe.

I credit you that you didn't decend into the fever swamps.

"I tell you, freedom and human rights in America are doomed," bin Laden said as the U.S. war on terrorism raged in Afghanistan. "The U.S. government will lead the American people in -- and the West in general -- into an unbearable hell and a choking life." linky [cnn.com]

I take that as meaning Bin Laden was confident in his ultimate victory, which is to either turn the US into a Muslim nation governed by Islamic Sharia law, or to destroy it. It is spelled out in Bin Laden's Letter to America:

Q2) As for the second question that we want to answer: What are we calling you to, and what do we want from you?

(1) The first thing that we are calling you to is Islam.

Convert to Islam.

2) The second thing we call you to, is to stop your oppression,

Assuming global warming is true (a point I will neither defend nor oppose), the money spent on preventing global warming is a waste. The full implementation of the Kyoto treaty will result in a decrease in global warming by 0.07C. That's right, less than a tenth of a degree Celcius, with all the economic and humanitarian harm that Kyoto would impose. And that harm is real: the EU nations are already trying to figure out how to not do Kyoto while still claiming some kind of adherence to the treaty because the economic consequences are disastrous. That, and they're not meeting the requirements.

Our money is far, far better spent learning to cope with a warmer planet, assuming again that things are getting warmer and staying warmer. Frankly, the technological advances on our planet are going to decrease greenhouse gas emissions without any kind of treaty or government mandate. The rising cost of energy (of all kinds) will lead, quite naturally, to processes that consume less energy, thereby reducing the side-effects like CO2 production. And we mustn't forget that it is industrial processes that create products that consume less energy, like the newly popular compact fluorescent bulbs.

Get you facts right.

Personally, I find it hilarious and ironic. The USA played a part in the attempted Venezulean coup in 2002. The documentary The Revolution Will Not Be Televised covers it rather well and is well worth a viewing.

Then we have regime change in Iraq! Frankly, I find the paranoid fear that another country is attempting influence US elections quite worrysome. It's almost like the US has developed some sort of collective paranoid psychosis.

Actually we do have a written Bill of Rights. We also have courts which are capable of overruling Parliament, as happened recently with control orders. There was also a recent instance, although I can't recall details, in which a court construed an Act as meaning the opposite of its plain reading. However, it's rare for legislation to be struck down except on the grounds of incompatibility with the Human Rights Act.

Will they have batteries that last more than 12 months? If not, I'm not interested.

http://money.guardian.co.uk/consumernews/story/0,, 1783814,00.html

Google has recently registered a Political Action Committee.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,1930008,00. html

So we will see how they react to it. The claim is that it is for advocating the free distribution of information so it will be interesting to see if they intervene and if they do, how they intervene.

There is some bizarre behaviour in France -- a weird mix of distrust of government, yet 3/4 of students want to be civil servants for some reason....

You need a licence if you have any kit that is *capable* of receiving a TV broadcast signal,

This is a myth that TVL allow to propergate. They used to have an entry on their website saying that's you don't need to to watch offair DVDs/VHS.

I suugest you read the relevent laws, but you can also look at the mostly-accurate guardian article here

You need a licence irrespective if you want to watch live television. If you have equipment capable of receiving TV signals and its tuned in you will are required to pay. If you only watch DVDs at home then you are not required to pay. However TV Licensing (TVL) will expect your television not to display BBC1 or any other channels when they come round and turn it on and may question why you have an aerial on the roof. "If you watch live TV on any device, you need to be covered by a valid licence," it says.

That's because we're so bloody used to it from our own government. Cameras going up everywhere, constant attempts to introduce an ID card scheme, fingerprints and DNA samples held of people questioned and released without charge, airport passenger information forwarded to US authorities, numberplate recognition cameras on all the motorways, plans to satellite track cars for the road tax... The list is vast. I often wonder if there's some sort of competition between the Bush administration and Tony Blair to see who can come up with the most outrageous destruction of their citizens liberty and privacy, and get away with it.

Believe me, I'm a brit, and I'm horrified by this. I just moved next door to Yeovil, and there's no WAY I'm going for a drink and/or meal there if it means I have to be fingerprinted first. The idea is offensive. This private company holding my fingerprints and personal details, who knows who has access to that data. No. Way. I fully intend to let my next-door council know this, that they've lost my custom in all possible ways. By snail mail.

What happens when it goes national? I'll stop going to the pub for a quiet drink, which will also probably mean giving up half my friends. A good chat over a pint is a British institution, but I'm going to have to give up my fingerprints and ID to do it? Goodbye to the pub then. No doubt it's lowered drink-related crime, they've all moved to pubs in the rest of the area - or worse, drink at home and beat up their families. They did say domestic violence had risen, so they've displaced rowdy drinkers who could be arrested and stopped in public, to domestic violence at home, where there's no witnesses and no cops on speed-dial. That's so much better.

Some of the national press reported on this when it was a dinky little scheme in a provincial town far away from anywhere. I wonder what the Daily Mail and The Sun will make of this now it's going national? Getting fingerprinted to have a pint? This will hopefully be as popular as road tax and ID cards, i.e. vehemently opposed by many.

Here's the story from when Yeovil first started the scheme in May, with other places showing an interest if it succeeded. It's been claimed it has, so it's no surprise it may go national under *this* ID-card loving, camera installin' , secret-shipper-of-US-terror-suspects, privacy invadin' government.

In October 2003, Indian Air Chief S. Krishnaswamy stated that India had started development of an operations command station for an eventual space platform for nuclear weapons.[10] However, he retracted the statement within days, under pressure from India's civilian leaders.[11] India: Military Programs

According to a senior U.S. Air Force official, Brazil is one of a group of countries "seriously involved in using space assets for military purposes."[1] Indeed, when Brazil became a member of the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR) in 1995, it was allowed to keep its space launch program, despite the potential for military applications.[2] Brazil: Military Programs

Japan's Liberal Democratic Party has drafted a bill to allow Japan's into space. The calls for the military to venture into space within the parameters of self-defense rights. That would be a drastic change from the current civilian-based limitations that Japan has placed on space ventures. Japanese Military Going Into Space

(Q2) As for the second question that we want to answer: What are we calling you to, and what do we want from you?

(1) The first thing that we are calling you to is Islam.

(2) The second thing we call you to, is to stop your oppression, lies, immorality and debauchery that has spread among you.

(a) We call you to be a people of manners, principles, honour, and purity; to reject the immoral acts of fornication, homosexuality, intoxicants, gambling's, and trading with interest.

We call you to all of this that you may be freed from that which you have become caught up in; that you may be freed from the deceptive lies that you are a great nation, that your leaders spread amongst you to conceal from you the despicable state to which you have reached.

(b) It is saddening to tell you that you are the worst civilization witnessed by the history of mankind:

(i) You are the nation who, rather than ruling by the Shariah of Allah in its Constitution and Laws, choose to invent your own laws as you will and desire. You separate religion from your policies, contradicting the pure nature which affirms Absolute Authority to the Lord and your Creator. You flee from the embarrassing question posed to you: How is it possible for Allah the Almighty to create His creation, grant them power over all the creatures and land, grant them all the amenities of life, and then deny them that which they are most in need of: knowledge of the laws which govern their lives?

(4) We also advise you to stop supporting Israel, and to end your support of the Indians in Kashmir, the Russians against the Chechens and to also cease supporting the Manila Government against the Muslims in Southern Philippines.

If you fail to respond to all these conditions, then prepare for fight with the Islamic Nation. The Nation of Monotheism, that puts complete trust on Allah and fears none other than Him. ....

The Islamic Nation that was able to dismiss and destroy the previous evil Empires like yourself; the Nation that rejects your attacks, wishes to remove your evils, and is prepared to fight you. You are well aware that the Islamic Nation, from the very core of its soul, despises your haughtiness and arrogance.

If the Americans refuse to listen to our advice and the goodness, guidance and righteousness that we call them to, then be aware that you will lose this Crusade Bush began, just like the other previous Crusades in which you were humiliated by the hands of the Mujahideen, fleeing to your home in great silence and disgrace. If the Americans do not respond, then their fate will be that of the Soviets who fled from Afghanistan to deal with their military defeat, political breakup, ideological downfall, and economic bankruptcy.

And if we're just going to throw web pages at each other, then how about this one discussing the increase in alcoholism in the UK.

MDMA? Was abuse of it ever that widespread, compared to say heroin, ecstasy and cocaine? Can't say I've heard about it in years, even though I tend to read The Guardian and don't allow tabloid rubbish papers into my house. But while we're discussing the increase in drug abuse, have a look at this article supporting my statement.

Since you're obviously so good at Googling for articles, how about looking for stats on "Slashdot readers with their heads obviously stuck up their backsides"... because I know of at least one.

From TFA:
"He carried out the report for men's satellite TV channel Bravo."

Because when you're airing reruns of Xena: Warrior Princess, Knight Rider and Starsky & Hutch, you're emminently qualified to commission someone to peer ten thousand years into the future. /eyeroll

Two painfully obvious facts reveal this article for the utter crock it is. First, studies have shown that there is no correlation between attractiveness and intelligence (http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/ j.1467-6494.1995.tb00799.x). In fact, I think there are even some studies showing the opposite, i.e. that attractive people sometimes tend to be less intelligent, presumably because they can literally "get by on their looks" more often. Second, less intelligent people tend to be poor; poor people have more children than rich people; the more children you have, the greater the chances one of them will be a freak genius, or just incredibly. The sheer number of "rags to riches" stories out there, "I was the youngest child in a family of 12, and I became a millionaire!", etc., should tell you that genetics is only part of the story. And once you're rich, there's a pretty strong tendency for people to turn a blind eye to that fact that you're a hideous abomination. Just look at Donald Trump!

Some cities, such as Reykjavik, already use hydrogen to power buses. But Iceland gets some electricity and over 80% of its heating and hot water from geothermal energy sources, and can produce the hydrogen emission-free. Other countries need to find ways to produce the hydrogen sustainably.

The Himalayan country of Bhutan only started recieving television in 1999. This was followed by a drastic increase in crime (including murder) in the tiny nation. It would be interesting to see if there's also an increase in autism, as this study would suggest.

There was a case of that in the UK, an architect was bribing officials - one of the reasons they managed to "get him" was that he recorded all his bribes and used them for tax deductions.

The Treasury said that yes, that is correct - bribes are tax deductable if they have the correct reciepts.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,393135, 00.html - Looks like even if a Tax officer finds the bribe, they are not allowed to inform the police.

I'd suggest that whatever sexual activity takes place between consenting adults (or solo, given that this is Slashdot) is their own business.

Given the range of human behavior, I don't think I can totally agree with that. There need to be some limits.

These were voluntary acts, but I think most people would say they never should have happened. (Not for the squeamish)

Cannibalism trial told of suspected new cases

3 charged in castrations in Haywood 'dungeon'

Did you think countries of religious fundamentalism were restricted to poor 3rd world countries?

No, we just thought they were restricted to America.

Boom-cha! Thank-you, I'll be here all night.

Some of the passports were stolen, as reported by the FBI earlier: http://www.guardian.co.uk/september11/story/0,1120 9,601550,00.html

What exactly would you saction?

Two articles with mostly opposing viewpoints on the sanctions-by-any-other-name that have been in place for about a year now:

Price of a broken deal
The Squeeze on North Korea

Now, sexual orientation used a reason not to hire someone would be considered as discriminatory however if other information was posted

could cost someone a potential job.

Libya's biological weapons programme too has suffered from similar mismanagement and lack of funds, say sources; at best succeeding in producing munitions boobytrapped with human faeces that can be fatal if it enters the blood stream.

Oh, like you Brits have it easier WRT British libel laws. Bah! Freedom of Speech indeed!

I...

I...

I fart in your general direction!!!

Yeah, the rational explanation is that the US does its job stopping or slowing that nuke proliferation, except when it's Bush's job.

2000: Rumsfeld is a Director on the board of ABB when it wins a $200M contract to supply N Korea with nuke reactors, though he denies knowledge of it
2002: Bush names N Korea part of the "Axis of Evil"
2002: Bush gives N Korea $95M for stopping its nuke programme, but then waived the inspections , claiming secret "national security" reasons
2005: Bush violates 6-way deal with N Korea to abandon it's nuke programme by freezing N Korean financial connections and branding it a criminal state
2006: N Korea detonates a nuke weapon

Because N Korea with nuke missiles drives demand for the Star Wars budgets Bush has always prioritized higher than any other military policy. Bush puts a Star Wars scientist in charge of NASA, chokes NASA from its peaceful projects while telling Americans he's putting a man on Mars, goads N Korea into testing nukes while waiving inspections on nuke plants Rumsfeld sold them.

You want to talk about Iran's nuke program, we can talk about Nixon and the Shah. It's going to look at least as ugly.

You're talking to the wrong person with that kind of "Bush didn't cause the hurricane, so he's not to blame for Katrina" spin cycle - partly because I lived in New Orleans for years, and I know Bush didn't care about Black people for years before he denied he knew the levees would break.

Bush's job is to protect the US by managing the complex systems in which we're the central player. He consistently screws them up, usually to his corporate cronies' benefit, almost always to his political power benefit, and always at our expense.

This time he's helped produce a crazy nuke tyrant allied with China. Nice job, Bushie.

Previously there have been some trial balloons by the Airforce (see http://www.guardian.co.uk/space/article/0,14493,13 45460,00.html and http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/technology /higher_ground_040222.html) who really wanted to add "space warfare" to their portfolio, and now it's been enshrined in national policy.

Ensuring US superiority in space ... that's what the new policy boils down to.

I just wonder what the Russians, the Chinese, the Indians the Brazilians, the Japanese, and the Europeans are going to think of it. Will they agree to US space superiority or might they perhaps start space weaponisation programs of their own?

And what about the cost? Could it be that in the long run it will cost the US less to secure its national interests by aiming for parity and a reasonable deterrent instead of starting yet another arms race in search of superiority? I wonder.

I'll say one thing for the current administration ... if there is even a remote chance of turning a conflict on interest into a real conflict they can be relied on to identify it and steer that way.

Bullshit. Any scientists who could make a case against climate change have no problem getting funding.

Royal Society tells Exxon: stop funding climate change denial
In a letter earlier this month to Esso, the UK arm of ExxonMobil, the Royal Society cites its own survey which found that ExxonMobil last year distributed $2.9m to 39 groups that the society says misrepresent the science of climate change.

These include the International Policy Network, a thinktank with its HQ in London, and the George C Marshall Institute, which is based in Washington DC. In 2004, the institute jointly published a report with the UK group the Scientific Alliance which claimed that global temperature rises were not related to rising carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere.

As for reputation, if you can disprove a popular theory, you get noticed, published and funded. You'll certainly get attacked in turn, but if you've got the facts, you'll prevail. But of course, they don't argue in the scientific journals, they go to the media which "reports the controversy", playing the same game as the tobacco companies did for decades in denying the health risks of smoking; as the creationists do now.

There is no validated theory connecting quantum and macro level activity, either, but that doesn't mean it isn't connected

There is no need for such a theory because quantum mechanics applies in macroscopic situations as well.You can easily show that for systems where the scales are macroscopic the quantum equations reduce to their classical counterparts (mathematically, you just take the limit of h --> 0). I suggest you look at Ehrenfest's theorem, which gives back the newton's laws.

There is no theory that definitively explains how a "big bang" could come about

Actually, there is. It's called inflation, and is generally accepted as describing what actually happened in the early universe.

And then there's the whole "politically correct" factor; there is no question that speaking against the climate change faction is not any way to get funding, to get published, or even to get invited to a party.

Why is it I always see this argument brought up? Do you really think that oil companies and republican think tanks aren't paying as well universities? That the only way to make a living as a climate scientist is to tow some kind of party line? That there's some secret pact among 2000 scientists to lie about climate chage? To what end? For what reason? What do they have to gain? They could make a lot more playing for the other side.

And is there no news-paper for the upper crust intellectual class (or classes) ? I've heard of folks who get their news-papers ironed for them - but I always thought that this was to make the all the picures of nude ladies look really smooth; thus inspiring the upper-class (or classes) to regenerate themselves. But perhaps I'm wrong about this.

Ahh, an American, and one clearly well versed in gritty British documentaries.

I'm surprised you don't know that the paper for intellectual class is The Guardian.

And at the other end of the political spectrum we have the Socialist worker (the only paper with a tractor on page 3) and the Gruniaad - long famed for it's accomplished typesetting.

The last refuge of modern sexists is the claim that even if men and women have the same average scores, men have a greater variance and therefore are more likely to produce the very top level mathematicians and scientists. For an example of the debate see Pinker vs. Spelke, or one could also read Dr. Elizabeth Spelke's papers including Sex differences in intrinsic aptitude for mathematics and science: A critical review.

Christina Sormani has a web page explaining why Penny Smith is likely to have solved the Millenium Problem on the Navier-Stokes equation. Smith's paper is the culmination of a lifetime of research similar to how Wiles' proof of Fermat's Last Theorem was a logical outcome of his previous research. This is not someone coming from out of nowhere providing a proof that has nothing to do with his or her prior specialty.

The debate is now over. Penny Smith has shown that there is in fact no variance between men and women that predisposes men to have the very top mathematicians. In fact the proof that environment trumps genetics has been demonstrated in the United States over the past decades: males born in the United States have been judged by government and industry to not be good enough in top-level mathematics which is why so much talent has to be imported from other countries. The United States is probably going to follow the path of the United Kingdom where cultural factors are causing boys mathematical achievement in school to collapse relative to that of girls.

Neocon, Zionist... the important thing is the "o", which stands for Joooos!

Seriously, though, look at some of this stuff:
Neoconservatism as a Jewish movement

The thesis presented here is that neoconservatism is indeed a Jewish intellectual and political movement.

The neoconservative Jews' thirst for Iraqi blood began years before 9-11, of course, as did their determination to find a justification for spilling it.

Tam Dalyell's belief that a 'cabal' of neoconservative Jews controls Bush is gaining currency in liberal circles

Who are the neoconservatives? The first generation were ex-liberals, socialists, and Trotskyites, boat-people from the McGovern revolution who rafted over to the GOP at the end of conservatism's long march to power with Ronald Reagan in 1980.

A neoconservative, wrote Kevin Phillips back then, is more likely to be a magazine editor than a bricklayer. Today, he or she is more likely to be a resident scholar at a public policy institute such as the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) or one of its clones like the Center for Security Policy or the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA). As one wag writes, a neocon is more familiar with the inside of a think tank than an Abrams tank.

In any case, they're not part of the "religious right" (or even the "big business conservatives"). They aren't conservatives at all (but neither, imo, is GWB). Now I must go rinse my eyeballs, but I hope this explains where the "codeword for 'Jews'" bit comes from...it isn't imagined, although I'm not quite sure what it has to do with Clinton.

The BBC's current "politeness" has everything to do with them getting blamed by the Hutton report:

http://www.the-hutton-inquiry.org.uk/

That was widely viewed as being at the very least badly focused if not actually inaccurate in its conclusions. It cost the BBC the top two people running the corporation; since then there hasn't seemed to be the willingness to go out on a limb to make accusations that can lead to serious investigation. Other broadcasters (Channel 4, even occasionally Sky) did a job that was as good as the BBC before - now they're much more willing to raise issues.

For more of this angle on the Hutton report, here's some humour from Guardian readers:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/hutton/story/0,,1146756, 00.html

What's wrong is that the premises make it a waste of money.

"software that would let the government monitor negative opinions of the United States or its leaders in newspapers and other publications overseas.

Such a 'sentiment analysis' is intended to identify potential threats to the nation"

Intelligence gathering is wasted if the audience doesn't know the difference between negative opinions and threats.

It's also creepy if the people running it have been known to drop bombs on news outlet offices, allegedly plan to bomb a TV station's headquarteres, launch an air strike on their office and kill their bureau chief, and shell a Reuters office with a tank.

Global warming trivial? You must work for the tobacco industry. :=)

recycling etc - well they do as much as they need to maintain a good public image, but they don't have any reputation for being particularly good or bad in that regard.

Actually, tesco have recently been announcing themselves as envrionmentally friendly, with biodegradable bags and power from renewables such as wind, solar, etc.

or Tesco Antivirus (£10), which is designed to keep your PC free of malware.

Here is one article. And another article from a right wing perspective, and yet another article from the left side of the aisle. Then there's this and this and this, too.

Any more objections?

Oh and about their prisoner harvesting?
http://www.american.edu/TED/prisonorgans.htm
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?story Id=1125056
http://educate-yourself.org/cn/harvestingorgansinc hina30mar06.shtml
http://www.guardian.co.uk/china/story/0,,1756808,0 0.html
http://www.rense.com/general10/org.htm

Thank you very much and have a nice day.

Agreed. Also my worry is that if you slip up and fill it in wrong, they won't accept it as a mistake due to their long-winded procedure, instead you face strip-search, arrest, being taken to a detention facility and locked up before finally being sent home, as happened to one UK journalist ( http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,123108 9,00.html ).

Many conspiracy theorists point to FEMA's preliminary report, which said there was relatively light damage to WTC 7 prior to its collapse. With the benefit of more time and resources, NIST researchers now support the working hypothesis that WTC 7 was far more compromised by falling debris than the FEMA report indicated. "The most important thing we found was that there was, in fact, physical damage to the south face of building 7," NIST's Sunder tells PM. "On about a third of the face to the center and to the bottom--approximately 10 stories--about 25 percent of the depth of the building was scooped out." NIST also discovered previously undocumented damage to WTC 7's upper stories and its southwest corner.

NIST investigators believe a combination of intense fire and severe structural damage contributed to the collapse, though assigning the exact proportion requires more research. But NIST's analysis suggests the fall of WTC 7 was an example of "progressive collapse," a process in which the failure of parts of a structure ultimately creates strains that cause the entire building to come down. Videos of the fall of WTC 7 show cracks, or "kinks," in the building's facade just before the two penthouses disappeared into the structure, one after the other. The entire building fell in on itself, with the slumping east side of the structure pulling down the west side in a diagonal collapse.

According to NIST, there was one primary reason for the building's failure: In an unusual design, the columns near the visible kinks were carrying exceptionally large loads, roughly 2000 sq. ft. of floor area for each floor. "What our preliminary analysis has shown is that if you take out just one column on one of the lower floors," Sunder notes, "it could cause a vertical progression of collapse so that the entire section comes down."

I highly recommend the rest of the web article, or the book Debunking 9/11 Myths - Why conspiracy theories can't stand up to the facts, by Popular Mechanics.

The 9/11 attacks were a conspiracy, one planned and executed by Al Qaeda, an Islamist extremist group, international in scope, that has been attacking the United States, and many other countries*, repeatedly since the early 1990s. They took credit for the 9/11 attacks. Video has found in Afghanistan showing Bin Laden had prior knowledge of the 9/11 attacks. Muhammad Atta's "martyrdom video" has just surfaced.

Al Qaeda's goal is to reestablish the Islamic super-state combining government and religion, the Caliphate, over the entire region, and to spread Islam to control the entire world. They understand that it will take hundreds of years, but are willing to do their part. You can see this in Bin Laden's letter to America where his first two demands are to convert to Islam, and implement Sharia... if we don't, they will keep killing us.

(Q2) As for the second question that we want to answer: What are we calling you to, and what do we want from you?

(1) The first thing that we are calling you to is Islam.....
(2) The second thing we call you to, is to stop your oppression, lies, immorality and debauchery that has spread among you......

(i) You are the nation who, rather than ruling by the Shariah of Allah in its Constitution and Laws, choose to invent your own laws as you will and desire. You separate religion from your pol

Yet even FOX News is typical of the coverage on Iran. They repeat deliberate mis-interpretations of what Iranian leaders say, and the scare over "wipe Israel off the map" is no different than the one about Iran legislating a dresscode for Jews. In the former case, we had the Iranian president saying that the Zionist regime must disappear from the page of time. Since Zionism can objectively be considered similar to Apartheid in crucial respects (not the least of which are its results).

I won't condone Iran's (or Israel's) theocracy, regardless of the particular style. Their involvement with Hizballah is questionable. But they are not a bunch of complete extremists. Iran is a country where women can get an education, show their faces, drive cars, and have access to birth control (compare that to our fascist allies, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan). Iran has a limited, nascent form of democracy and a great deal of technical sophistication.

They are independant of the West and that fact lands them squarely on the "must demonize" list. Iran is targeted for dehumanization all the more for its relative modernity, which gains them moral and cultural influence that makes it difficult for the West to propagandize the Middle East.

For our "civilized" western media, railing against a Zionist regime is eagerly mis-interpreted as a genocidal rant against Jews and an entire country. AND they do this at a time when the US is floating the idea of a "preventative" war and nuclear attack on Iran. Meanwhile, in the middle of all this self-righteous hyperventilating, our leaders get carte blanche to lie and spill vast amounts of blood elsewhere.

Creative are talking rot. The pod in 'podcast' was obviously and blatantly meant to refer to the iPod. The accusation that I'd use such a clumsy acronym invites another one: stfu, kthxbye.

When asked about U.S. accusations of his "collusion" in the attacks in New York and Washington, bin Laden responded, "America has made many accusations against us and many other Muslims around the world. Its charge that we are carrying out acts of terrorism is unwarranted."

(Q2) As for the second question that we want to answer: What are we calling you to, and what do we want from you?

(1) The first thing that we are calling you to is Islam.

(a) The religion of the Unification of God; of freedom from associating partners with Him, and rejection of this; of complete love of Him, the Exalted; of complete submission to His Laws; and of the discarding of all the opinions, orders, theories and religions which contradict with the religion He sent down to His Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him). Islam is the religion of all the prophets, and makes no distinction between them - peace be upon them all.

(2) The second thing we call you to, is to stop your oppression, lies, immorality and debauchery that has spread among you.

(a) We call you to be a people of manners, principles, honour, and purity; to reject the immoral acts of fornication, homosexuality, intoxicants, gambling's, and trading with interest.....

(i) You are the nation who, rather than ruling by the Shariah of Allah in its Constitution and Laws, choose to invent your own laws as you will and desire. You separate religion from your policies, contradicting the pure nature which affirms Absolute Authority to the Lord and your Creator. You flee from the embarrassing question posed to you: How is it possible for Allah the Almighty to create His creation, grant them power over all the creatures and land, grant them all the amenities of life, and then deny them that which they are most in need of: knowledge of the laws which govern their lives?

If you fail to respond to all these conditions, then prepare for fight with the Islamic Nation. The Nation of Monotheism, that puts complete trust on Allah and fears none other than Him. The Nation which is addressed by its Quran with the words: "Do you fear them? Allah has more right that you should fear Him if you are believers. Fight against them so that Allah will punish them by your hands and disgrace them and give you victory over them and heal the breasts of believing people.

Who can forget your President Clinton's immoral acts committed in the official Oval office? After that you did not even bring him to account, other than that he 'made a mistake', after which everything passed with no punishment. Is there a worse kind of event for which your name will go down in history and remembered by nations?

You're thinking _ANTARCTIC_ ice layers, not Arctic. Arctic ice is _sea ice_ and as sea ice, it melts and refreezes and it _moves_ all over the damn place.

You are right, I was thinking of Antarctic ice, sloppy of me. However, there are other ways. We can for instance find geological evidence from lake bed sediment cores.

And ice cores? The ice at the Arctic was 9 feet thick _at its thickest parts_ back in 1958. Just where are you going to get ice cores?

Greenland, for instance. I know they are not the same, but as an indicator of the climate of the area it is an indicator, right?

We can't prove that cracks that these haven't happened before, I agree, but we can prove with some pretty good evidence that the north pole hasn't gone through this amount of change recently (within a couple of hundred thousand years). Even before this latest evidence came, many scientists were warning that the north pole could disappear completely during northern hemisphere summertime before the end of this century. And this is something that hasn't happened for along time. See for instance polar bears who need sea ice to hunt for seals. They evolved probably around 200 000 years ago.

Even the Economist, who have been global warming deniers for years recently admitted that global warming was real and was going to have severe environemental and economic impact. You don't find this alarming?

Please seperate 'credibility' from 'agreeance with my own opinions / prejudice'
Read it: http://environment.guardian.co.uk/climatechange/st ory/0,,1875762,00.html

Wow.."investigative journalism". Not another opinion piece, this is good old fashioned research. The man cites his sources, you can replicate if you wish / have the time. Did he fabricate it?

Please mod parent down!

(Q2) As for the second question that we want to answer: What are we calling you to, and what do we want from you?

(1) The first thing that we are calling you to is Islam.

There should be nothing novel in this. Recently, Palestinian extremists forced two Fox News reporters to "convert" to Islam after taking them hostage. There is a long history of this.

He also wants us to jettison the Constitution and adopt Sharia law, stop drug & alcohol use, homosexuality, sexual immorality, sleeping around, adultery, charging interest on loans, etc., etc. At least it would be easy to remember the penalty for many of these infractions: death, death, death, etc.

(2) The second thing we call you to, is to stop your oppression, lies, immorality and debauchery that has spread among you.

(a) We call you to be a people of manners, principles, honour, and purity; to reject the immoral acts of fornication, homosexuality, intoxicants, gambling's, and trading with interest.

(i) You are the nation who, rather than ruling by the Shariah of Allah in its Constitution and Laws, choose to invent your own laws as you will and desire. You separate religion from your policies, contradicting the pure nature which affirms Absolute Authority to the Lord and your Creator.

(iii) You are a nation that permits the production, trading and usage of intoxicants. You also permit drugs, and only forbid the trade of them, even though your nation is the largest consumer of them.

(iv) You are a nation that permits acts of immorality, and you consider them to be pillars of personal freedom. You have continued to sink down this abyss from level to level until incest has spread amongst you, in the face of which neither your sense of honour nor your laws object.

Who can forget your President Clinton's immoral acts committed in the official Oval office? After that you did not even bring him to account, other than that he 'made a mistake', after which every

If you read the site about that solar powered boat you will see they say it can sail at 6 or 7 knots 24 hours per day as long as there is sun in the day and when there is no sun they go slower.

It is not a race so comparing it to how fast you could go with a sail powered yacht is missing the point entirely.

I totally trust your descriptions of recent events even w/o a reference to a single news piece. But then again I doubt you read any yourself, probably just got some excerpts from Kos. Try peeking out of your echo chamber once in a while.

• Situation Called Dire in West Iraq Anbar Is Lost Politically, Marine Analyst Says
• Iraq?s Anbar province a lost cause? Intelligence report pessimistic about controlling western province
• Iraqi insurgents launch wave of sectarian attacks in Kirkuk
• US intel report: Iraq's Anbar province 'politically lost'

There are quite a few articles about it in the Guardian Gamesblog. It's gonna be £180 - ouch!