This video is quite shocking, if only for revealing the extent of things.

The speakers are John Howard, then PM of Australia, and Stephen Harper, now PM of Canada. As you can see, within 2 days of each other, they give identical speeches to their respective parliaments, both calling for their countries to join the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Let it be known that any coincidence theorists commenting on this post shall be hereby laughed at - and maybe also detained indefinitely in our secret prisons - for propounding their silly views. (Incidentally, synchronicity theorists will not be laughed at, although I think in this case, the conspiracists have it).

The other day, we noticed a new link to us on our wordpress admin page. It was, disappointingly, merely someone hotlinking to a picture we were hosting (and thus using up our bandwidth). This was especially annoying as the site in question was ‘American Papist’, which apparently has had over 1,300,000 hits. Understandably, we felt aggrieved and left a polite comment asking the webmaster, a certain Thomas Peters, to kindly refrain from his hotlinking.

Sadly, this did not seem to have the intended effect.

At this point, we decided to investigate Thomas’ website somewhat, and - I am sad to say - he let us down again. Besides linking to vendors of ‘The Pope’s Cologne’  and ‘Papist Hoodies’, Thomas also seems to enjoy attacking feminists, Democrats, liberals and others for their pro-choice (or ‘culture of death’) views, equating foetuses with ‘persons’, and even criticising other Catholics for their ‘flat-out dissent from and opposition to Church teaching’, and/or being ‘un-Catholic’.

And his attempts at news programming are fairly amusing. Did you know, for example, that MSN’s online clipart gallery contains NO images of God? That’s right, none. It’s run by atheists.

Now, before I reveal what happened next, (the punchline, if you will), let me preface it by saying that I don’t have any problems with religious belief. It’s a basic assumption of this website that such issues are matters of personal judgment, and that dogmatic atheistic beliefs are no more justified than dogmatically theistic beliefs. Clearly, many Christians are admirable and thoughtful human beings, whatever Richard Dawkins says to the contrary.

However, if you are going to dogmatically base your beliefs solely on the pontifications of one extremely powerful man, who wears a dress but says gay marriage is immoral, who is conveniently deemed by his own organisation to be entirely infallible, and whose job consists in the main of promulgating dogmas supposedly derived from divine revelations… and you then go on to criticise others for not believing the same, to the extent that you feel you have the authority to decide what other people should do with their lives and bodies, (not to mention hotlinking to our website), then you fully deserve this…

Forgive us Father…

So, remember kids, hotlinking is a sin.

Here’s your daily dose of propaganda, kids: Dangerous and depraved: paedophiles unite with terrorists online. This is one of the worst examples of Rupert Murdoch’s ‘journalism’ I’ve seen - I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.

Yes, two of the best excuses for the erosion of civil liberties are now apparently colluding online to ‘exchange operational secrets’. It’s now even been discovered (by an unnamed and unbiased ‘anti-terror source’) that terrorists and paedophiles are psychologically similar. They’re both ‘obsessive’, ‘paranoid’ (surely they should be paranoid?) and - this is the best one - they spend a lot of time ‘going to the mosque or going off to internet cafés’. That’s an actual quote, I’m afraid.

Never trust an ‘anti-terror source’ with your psychological well-being.

Not only are the terrorists and paedophiles in league with one another, apparently they’re often one and the same. The article proudly declares that ‘The link might have remained unknown but for the case of a Muslim preacher from the East End of London [Abdul Makim Khalisadar]’. Right. Except that they then admit that Khalisadar was never convicted of anything relating to terrorism or paedophilia. (He was a convicted rapist though, so hey, they’re all the same right?) All through the article ‘terror suspects’ are treated as if equatable with convicted terrorists.

We then get the incredible claim that terrorists actually communicate through child porn. Yes, Al-Qaeda have decided to encode pornographic images of children, possibly the most illegal, graphic and conspicuous medium thinkable, with secret messages as a mode of ‘clandestine communication’. I’m not making this up (although I suspect the Times is).

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“Taught from infancy that beauty is woman’s sceptre, the mind shapes itself to the body, and roaming round its gilt cage, only seeks to adorn its prison.” - Mary Wollstonecraft

For those that have not had the pleasure of watching the ‘Winx Club’ - It’s a children’s TV show in which six fairies (and some small pixie things) tackle evil whilst still managing to look good. Originally an Italian animation series which began in 2004, Winx is now somewhat of a worldwide phenomenon that appears on over 100 children’s channels. It has spawned a myriad of merchandising ventures. Recently, a feature film was made and there are plans for another series and film to be released soon. It was originally conceived of by Iginio Straffi, who also happens to have created the production company responsible for Winx (Rainbow S.p.A) and made himself the CEO.

What is my beef with the cute little characters? As a feminist (and a human being), I see that gender role socialisation is an issue which harms both of the sexes. It’s unnecessary, it’s harmful, it’s unacceptable. The Winx Club, with their tiny clothes and tiny little brains seem to epitomise the message of children’s television about what it means to have a vagina. All of the elements are there, and conveniently encapsulated within the one minute opening sequence. I can’t hide my surprise that not only this level of sexism is still acceptable to the public, but we are letting thousands upon thousands of children view and internalise something which inherently aims to box them in.

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Well, we did say we’d try to promote alternative viewpoints. I’m more than a little incredulous towards this one, but it did at least make me consider where my incredulity was coming from.

Anatoly Fomenko’s series of books History: Fiction or Science proposes that all pre-16th century history, as we’re taught it, is completely false. He argues that no methods of dating (such as carbon-14) are accurate enough to reliably date items in the timeframe of human history; instead he relies upon statistical and astronomical methods. His conclusions? That all human civilisation, all buildings and artefacts, date back only as far as 800 AD. Ancient history is a mixture of lies, fiction and misinterpretations of primary sources. Oh, and Jesus was a Byzantine emperor who lived in the eleventh century (his name was Andronikos).

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Well, not really. But how’s this for a case of life imitating art?

The man in FBI custody is now believed to be a German con-man named Christian Karl Gerhartsreiter. He’d earlier passed himself off as a member of the Rockefeller oil dynasty.

Acquaintances described him as a ‘charming intellectual with rarefied interests, a distinguished pedigree and a privileged air’.

He’s arrested on suspicion of kidnapping his daughter, which clearly isn’t funny. But damnit, all the rest of it is. And, just in case the FBI haven’t worked this one out yet: Clark Rockefeller = Christian Gerhartsreiter = Keyser Söze = Verbal Kint = Kevin Spacey. So, y’know, watch out Kev.