There are few people in this world who would defend Gaddafi as a sane and viable leader of Libya; but I think there would be even less that would see the logic in the U.S selling guns to someone as psychotic as him and then parading about as world police.

It's the equivalent of a sheriff giving an outlaw a six-shooter and then acting surprised when he starts popping off the town folk. 

The second one U.S plane gets shot down by one U.S surface-to-air missile, all the military big wigs should get together and make a decision once and for all - "we have to stop shooting at tyrants we've given guns to".

What do you think about Libya? What do you think about the obvious contradictions in U.S foreign policy and how do you think they should be addressed? Tell us and remember...Disqus!  . . read more

Yesterday was yet another sad day in the life of Pakistan, with the assassination of Shahbaz Bhatti - allegedly, over his opposition to Pakistan’s blasphemy law.

First Punjabi Governor Salman Taseer, whose progressiveness, forethought and idealism could only be heard about after his death, was gunned down because of his opposition to the law. Now another moderate has suffered the same fate, standing up for reason.

We see hope in Pakistan.

But the country doesn’t know how to protect those that can pull it out of the dark.

Pakistan should hang its head in shame.

And America should seriously reconsider if their government is good for anything.  . . read more

Since the days of Alexander the Great, binge drinking has been a very popular past time - leading to him apparently killing a friend and burning down Persepolis while drunk.

Those are some Great shoes to fill.

Yet, governments, schools and the media have repeatedly tried to teach us of binge drinking's dangers. 

Dartmouth University has taken the lead, instigating a new nationwide policy to curb heavy drinking by their students.

Pour me another glass.

Binge drinking is defined as "the consumption of five or more drinks in a row by men — or four or more drinks in a row by women — at least once in the previous 2 weeks. Heavy binge drinking includes three or more such episodes in 2 weeks."

Seems I don't know anyone who isn't a heavy binge drinker.

Do you think this definition should be changed or should we change people's attitudes? Or should you follow HPD's no fools guide to drinking a lot but not dying?  . . read more

Today it has been announced that LimeWire will be forced to pay $105mil to the music industry; effectively ending them as a destroyer of copyright, file sharing and children's morals.

A statement by the U.S government says "that they are pleased with the result and are happy to add one more to the tally of pirates killed in the last month". 

Dr. Peter Cancion-Ladrón from Durham University has come out and said that like al-Qaeda, this may only represent the death of a figurehead and that musical piracy is like a hydra - cut a head off and another will quickly grow in its place.

George W. Bush was shaken at hearing this news and asked "so, how many heads does terrorism have now?" 

Have you been a LimeWire user? Will this shut-down affect your piracy? Tell us and remember...Disqus!  . . read more

I was 13 on September 11th 2001, I can remember waking up on September 12th in Australia opening the newspaper and seeing that the US had been attacked. The sense of shock and surprise was palpable; my parents and teachers tried to calm me down but the strongest memory I have of the day is absolute and paralysing fear.

I went to school like normal and it was all I could think about, it was all anyone was talking about and it over-shadowed everything. The strongest memory I have is playing football and having a bolt of fear that Australia was about to be attacked and the sky was about to be filled with mushroom clouds.

What was interesting looking back on that day was the enormous gulf in reality that existed between my fear and the threat, a gulf which has often appeared in the rhetoric used and the actions made against terrorism in the intervening ten years. What is also interesting to me has been the amount of idiotic people that appeared during the day; a woman was interviewed by an Australian news channel and I clearly remember her saying that it was shocking that 200,000 people had died during the attacks. The interviewer stepped in and said something along the lines of ‘well I think the figures will be a lot lower than that but there have been a lot of deaths’.

Looking back, while humorous, it does point to the fact that terrorism, as a lot of issues in the world, has suffered from a Chinese whisper like warping of fact and fiction until the myth becomes the modus operandi. What is also interesting about terrorism is its similarity to the perception people had of an impending nuclear winter during the Cold War. In the late 40s and early 50s people were terrified of the Soviets launching Nukes and they built bomb shelters and horded supplies accordingly. 20 or 30 years later, the threat hadn’t really changed, yet who was hiding in their bunkers?

The reality was that there were still thousands of nuclear weapons (often a lot more powerful than the ones in early decades of the Cold War) sitting in the USSR and US and we had to rely on soldiers not having itchy trigger fingers or a Dr Strangelove styled miscommunication for the bombs not to be released. What really changed was the perception of the threat; people learned to live with it and the crazy paranoia dropped off.

Terrorism is the same, a FedEx bomb plot was foiled a couple of months ago and it made the news for a grand total of about two days, compare that to the British shoe bomber- who was also foiled- but was on the news for weeks leading to reviews of security procedures and to the now annoying process of having to take off your shoes before you walk through metal detectors at airports.

So my prediction for 2011 is that terrorism will slip further into the background of political and public thought and as long as plots continue to be tripped up the inexorable decline of interest will continue. Yet, while we may have learned to live with it, I’m sure that on 11/09/11 (reverse dates in the US) I wont be the only one looking at planes flying around, and bracing myself every time they pass the skyline. I’m sure I wont be the only one sitting on a bus or a train thinking back ten years and feeling the same fear that once paralysed me.  . . read more

With U.S politics and political institutions proving themselves stagnant and almost impervious to change, there remains a sure-fire solution to redirect the country to a better future.

Totally lose a total war.

Look at Germany; the country was almost completely annihilated after WWII and it had to rebuild its national philosophy and most of its national institutions from scratch.

It grew rapidly and has out-paced the UK economically every decade since.

Why?

The UK was complacent and philosophically set in fine-tuning. 

A similar phenomenon is gripping the U.S; for too long have national creeds and philosophies gone untested and for too long have failed ideas been unchanged because they've sort of worked so far.

The biggest question for the U.S then is who should it provoke into a war it wants to lose?   . . read more

In the aftermath of Osama's death, is the central christian belief of forgiveness an appropriate attitude to take? Or is there some actions beyond forgiveness? Tell us and remember...Disqus!   . . read more