if anyone doubts what happens when rulers get too much power...

reporters in Turkmenistan can not mention the height of President Saparmurat Niyazov (thought to be 153 cms, just over 5 feet)

neither can they mention that he wears a toupee (men are forbidden to have long hair or beards in Turkmenistan)

President Niyazov renamed the calendar months after his family - what vanity!

all watches and clocks in Turkmenisatn must have a portrait of the President printed on the dial-face

Mr Niyazov thinks opera and ballet are unnecessary - so he banned them

Wikipedia page on Turkmenistan

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"The invasion of Iraq I believe will turn out to be the greatest strategic disaster in U.S. history." - Lt. General William Odom (ret)
- former director, America's National Security Agency
- former US Assistant Chief of Staff for Intelligence

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Of the 18,000 US servicemen killed or wounded in Iraq, 94% have been killed or wounded since the fall of Baghdad in 2003

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Bush and Cheney's bid for legal right to torture fails

maybe there is hope for the world after all...

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better that Stonehenge had never been built than one leg of a millipede be injured in its construction

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"we are all threatened by terror" - US national security adviser

the only terror threat i have nightmares about
is being abducted and tortured by the CIA

to paraphrase Ian Dury "there ain't half some evil bastards"

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Bushspeak - "America will help the Iraqis"
interpretation - "we'll take the oil and kill anyone who tries to stop us"

80% of Iraqis are strongly opposed to the presence of US troops

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Nov 2002 - US missile destroys Aljazeera Afghanistan office
Apr 2003 - US bomb destroys Aljazeera Iraq office
Apr 2004 - Bush tells Blair he wants to destroy Aljazeera Qatar office

Nov 2005 - Bush talks about freedom of the press

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when the most powerful country in the world locks people up indefinitely without trial in secret prisons and its leader demands the right to invade anywhere and torture anyone in the world, and says "you're either with us or against us", then it's pretty obvious that civilisation has peaked and we're sliding backwards into ignorance and barbarism, and the sooner the human race exterminates itself the better off the universe will be

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if the US is going to jail people for life for having fantasies about killing George Bush they'll be locking up more than half the world's population

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to break the law is illegal
it is not necessarily immoral

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White House wants to legalise CIA torture of non-Americans

"It is a man's own mind, not his enemy or foe, that lures him to evil ways."

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5% of the world's population use a quarter of the world's oil supply
and there's people still wondering why they invaded Iraq!

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press freedom? - the UK is ranked 24th - the US is ranked 44th

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when Tony Blair talks about plans for "radical reform",
he means returning to the policies of Margaret Thatcher

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"Individuals are presumed innocent in the American legal system."

says the man who imprisons people without trial in Guantanamo

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Dylan's lyrics were seeds that crystallised the thoughts of a generation

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what is an occupied country?

there are approx 100 American military bases in the UK
there are no UK military bases in America

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guilty until shot dead

UK Crown Prosecution Service confirms new policing policy

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a pandemic reducing the human population by 99% would be good news for the 500,000+ species that humans will kill off during the next 50 years

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