YOUR NEW REALITY

2009-11-22T04:35:00.002+11:00

'Black Lung' Flu Sweeps Ukraine

Considering the massive sweep of news about swine flu, and swine flu vaccines, in the mainstream media, it seems absolutely remarkable the Ukraine Pandemic Flu Outbreak has received so little coverage in the Western mainstream media.

2009-11-21T19:09:00.001+11:00

Murdoch Media Busted Stealing Story From Blog

By Darryl Mason

You may recall Rupert Murdoch, and his minions, recent spectacular fury at "plagiarist" bloggers, search engines and aggregators "stealing" Murdoch news empire's content and then republishing it on their own websites without Murdoch's permission, and without payment.

Here's a reminder of Murdoch's words :

"The aggregators and plagiarists will soon have to pay a price for the co-opting of our content. ...it will be the content creators who will pay the ultimate price and the content kleptomaniacs who triumph..."

And here's an excerpt from one of the dozens of recent 'Rupert Says You Will Pay' stories printed in The London Times, owned by Rupert Murdoch :

Rupert Murdoch opened a new front in his battle to obtain “fair compensation” for content produced by his media companies...
The move follows Mr Murdoch’s repeated calls over the past few months for content providers to charge online distributors and his insistence that media companies cannot continue to produce quality content for free. He has accused Google and other search engines of being “content kleptomaniacs” for taking other people’s content....

Movie director Edgar Wright wrote a beautiful, thoughtful ode to actor Edward Woodward on his blog earlier this week.

On Thursday, he Woodward piece had been brutally re-edited and then published on the London Times website, and also in the print edition. Without his permission. Without linking to his blog. Without payment.

The Full Story Is At The Orstrahyun

2009-11-20T23:28:00.004+11:00

Feed Your Head

By Darryl Mason

Another post where I recycle the past few weeks of Twitter posts and links and try to pass them here as fresh, original blog content. But you know better. Hope there's a few stories here you missed, or needed to be reminded of.

These are from the first few weeks of November :

80-90% of all US combat troops have been withdrawn from Iraq since Barack Obama made this promise in Nov. 2007 - http://tinyurl.com/ylle5rv

Murdoch's War On Blogger "Plagiarists" http://tinyurl.com/ylr59hs Shuts down YouTube chans embedding shameful FoxNews clips

Ahh, a new Slayer album & coincidentally new neighbours. They appear to be Slayer fans, they're waving their arms about, shaking their fists.

4500 dead US soldiers later, Fox News Bill O'Reilly announced today "I was wrong about Iraq." He faces no consquences for what he did.

It's not exactly a huge conspiracy, or even a secret (is it?), that bullet & bomb makers supply both sides - http://tinyurl.com/ybb3rhe

It's on quite news weeks like this u realise there are more journos in Australiia than there are news stories worth reporting.

According to my 11 y.o. nephew, Gen Z males learn about love n sex mostly from The Family Guy, which is hilarious, but also kinda terrifying.

No wonder Gen Z are already hooked on vid games, the TV they get dealt out is so box-tickingly PC shit.

Nephew interrupts ABC Breakfast to put on morning cable shows - Suite LIfe On Deck, Wizards Of Waverly Place. Terrible, terrible, terrible

237 Millionaires In US Congress - http://tinyurl.com/ydyxnxe

Obama "Terminates" Airborne Laser, Future Combat Systems http://tinyurl.com/y8gkb93 hammers "no-bid contracts that make contractors rich"

Kurt Russell auditions for the role of Han Solo - http://tinyurl.com/yclu5q5 - awkward.

Obama: Defence Projects With $300 Billion In 'Overruns' Are "An Affront To The American People And To Our Troops" http://tinyurl.com/y8gkb93

Investigative journalist frees men wrongly jailed for murder, commits suicide - http://tinyurl.com/y8bge3f

RT @MaxMurrayANovel "I've worked like a cunt since 16. What have I got to show for it? Fuck all, nothing. All gone on booze n drugs n rock bands."

The original Psycho is pretty much shit today, and not much chop at all without the sawing, shrieking strings on the soundtrack.

Murdoch Journalists Who Claim "Global Warming Is A Scam" Are Too Cowardly To Mention Murdoch Is A "Scam" Profiteer http://tinyurl.com/yks2sab

Look at this vid - http://tinyurl.com/yjlgft3 Murdoch execs seeded global warming fearmongery into The Simpsons, they admit it.

Rupert Murdoch quotes on climate change crisis, why carbon neutrality is good for his business - http://tinyurl.com/yjgu87j

Twitter Lists make it so much easier for the data miners out there. Do you really need to create lists of family members and co-workers?

Blair's Law RIP : 2002 - 2009 http://tinyurl.com/ylb7lcr Tubeynets fame can be so fickle, so fleeting.

Winter Olympics, Summer Olympics....what about the Fkd & Bombd Olympics for drug users and steroid abusers? I'd watch that.

So Tony Blair converted to Catholicism for nothing? Brussels outcry puts Blair presidency in doubt... http://tinyurl.com/ykqwzfk

UK Drugs Chief : Alcohol, Tobacco More Harmful Than Cannabis, LSD, Ecstasy http://tinyurl.com/yfrny7q another crap cannabis photo.

RT @MaxMurrayANovel "He's like a pot junkie the way he hooks in every night. He's always fidgety. i think he's getting The Spiders."

The Larry David/Seinfeld reunion is a big pile of crap. Ooh, edgy, he pisses on a Jesus painting. Let's see him piss on a portrait of Obama.

Man has heart attack, collapses, cattle dog jumps on his chest until he wakes up. Good Dog! http://tinyurl.com/yg6u9lh

Keanu Reeves has to come clean on his time traveling to the 17th century http://tinyurl.com/yzedfat Unless he hasn't started time jumping yet....

Metallica's James Hetfield proud his music used to torture prisoners at Gitmo http://tinyurl.com/6ckecy - get back on the piss, dickhead

Four decades on and the CIA is still a major player (http://tinyurl.com/yjlbj7m) in the global heroin trade -http://bit.ly/25W1WI

If you have to pay your enemies to stop killing you, and they accept, you've lost the fuckking war. It's that simple.

Major Space War Success. Revenge attacks for recent Moon bombing foiled by US Space Force (USSF) http://bit.ly/16JucE

I told you the MSM would move onto covering conspiracy theories as real news. Public appetite for conspiracy is huge: http://tinyurl.com/yf7ecwj

Imagine what it'd be like if tens of thousands were dying, and twittering as they exited.

Fox News chairman Roger Ailes "If I put on some goddamn liberal, I might as well get the dumbest fuck I can find!" http://tinyurl.com/yj6f4k3

"The term conspiracy theory is a conspiracy against ideas or evidence outside the mainstream oft-repeated lies" http://tinyurl.com/yjmckce

Reality nailed. RT @zombiemao: If religion is the opium of the masses, foxnews is the crystal meth.

British police adopt FBI's COINTELPRO pre-crime surveillance tactics http://tinyurl.com/yzltdg2 background on COINTELPRO -http://tinyurl.com/bpbkt

If They Mean 'Flame' As In People Who're On Fire After Being Bombed, Then Yes, Dick Cheney Deserves This Award http://tinyurl.com/yz6qjty

Rejected alt. titles for Mad Max4 : Fury Road // Mad Max: Rage Street, Mad Max: Anger Drive, Mad Max: Ferocity Lane, Mad Max: Disgruntled Alley

Jesus in Ikea http://tinyurl.com/yfmwmrd All images of Jesus (in tacos, ashtrays, grilled cheese) made up of many little Jesus images. Fact.

RT @DMasonIn2018: 'White' chocolate n 'Imperial Leather' products were banned in 2012 for racism n celebrating 20th century imperialism.

War On Terror bcame War On Extremists in 2007, under Bush. Now it's The War On Domestic Extremists - http://tinyurl.com/yzltdg2

'Gen. X' author @DougCoupland on petty theft : "I still can’t believe people pay for pens.Talk about the world’s most shopliftable item."

The best of the Ask Paul McCartney - #askpaul - thread http://tinyurl.com/yhxaod3 He could do a book answering these qs.

Major General Albert Stubbledine, highest ranking US military officer.to dispute official story of 9/11 http://tinyurl.com/yjto7lv (page 3)

Today, Fox News (Nation) promotes Tea Party Express 2 : "Are You On It?" http://tinyurl.co/ygwsmej

The 'E-solated' - 10 Million Brits Don't Have Internet Or Computer Access http://tinyurl.com/ylf6ky4

"Racist" Pentagon At War On Obama White House - http://tinyurl.com/ylfxvvl

I left a Oujia board on the coffee table for five hours and left the house, and nothing unusual happened. At all. #verynormalactivity

According to CurseBird, @MaxMurrayANovel - "swears like an Enthusiastic Porn Star". Max would be proud. http://tinyurl.com/ykgdned

Wikipedia appears to have deleted its page dedicated to 'real conspiracies' http://tinyurl.com/yg2pw4k - Conspiracy!

Afghan Blonde Hash Set To Flood Australian Cannabis Market In 2010 : http://bit.ly/X4Ild

The "Not The Nazis" Party Float Idea Of White Riots Against The "Ethnic Classes" In Britain : http://tinyurl.com/yl5uq4y

"I Can Assure You There Are No Experiments Taking Place On This Base" - 1975 parody on US germ warfare research -http://tinyurl.com/yle6y3a

It's 2:10am and I cannot hear any muffled screaming coming from inside the walls. #verynormalactivity

It's 2:08am and the light in the hall has not turned on by itself. #verynormalactivity

Best. ABC. News. Headline. Ever - Undead Lurch Through Brisbane - http://tinyurl.com/yjwyx5u

Fox News : 24/7 Obama Fearmongery, With News Breaks - http://tinyurl.com/yhovdao

Just noticed NYTimes used "he tweeted" in a recent story. Isn't that like saying "he wroted"? Should it be "he twote"?

A friend told me he overheard two 18-20 year old women talking in a bar Sat. night. One cracked a joke, the other smiled and said "Lol".

"Global Warming Denier" Andrew Bolt draws wave of Holocaust denier comments aftr IDing Robert Manne as Jewish - http://tinyurl.com/yl5uq4y

I'm on Twitter here :

@DarrylMason

2009-11-20T09:19:00.005+11:00

NASA Turn Crowd Sourced Mars Map Making Into A 'Video Game'

If this opportunity was presented to me when I was about 10, I would have tried to drop out of school to spend all waking hours exploring Mars.

You can play it like a game, count craters for points, or you can ignore the game elements and help align maps and note details on the areas you explore.

A downright brilliant idea.

Go Here To Join The NASA Virtual Exploration Of Mars Mission

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2009-11-19T23:44:00.003+11:00

Magical Obama Of Doomsday

Here's the URL for Fox News story on Obama visiting China's Great Wall :

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/11/18/magical-obama-tours-chinas-great-wall/

'Magical Obama', eh?

And here's how the photo of Obama at the Great Wall was categorised :

http://www.foxnews.com/static/managed/img/Politics/111809_owall_doomsday_604x341.jpg

O(bama)Wall Doomsday?

While you might instantly think Fox News hypes 'Obama Is Doom' propaganda even in URLs and jpg file names, 'doomsday' appears to be a weird codeword choice for image sizes.

But Magical Obama?

(via Reddit)

2009-11-19T17:04:00.001+11:00

2009-11-19T15:00:00.001+11:00

A brilliant chart detailing cannabis use in the US, lost tax revenue and the costs of prohibition, from SloshSpot :

(click to enlarge)

More On This Here

2009-11-18T23:51:00.002+11:00

"This Is America, Man"

Even if you haven't seen even one of the 60 episodes of the HBO TV series The Wire, this is still a downright entertaining compilation of the 100 Best Quotes from the five seasons of the Baltimore police, local government bureacracy and drug-dealing drama :

It's interesting to see so many claim The Wire is the first TV Novel, meaning it is not just a series of episodes, but a flowing, weaving narrative, closer to a novel in structure than normal TV shows. Have they never heard of the TV novel Roots, from 1977?

The Godfather movies were also re-edited for TV in 1977, and the story was screened in chronological order. It was called The Godfather Saga : A Novel For TV.

2009-11-18T17:00:00.002+11:00

Obowma Strikes Again!

Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs looks at this photo of President Barack Obama greeting Japanese emperor Akihito....

....and wonders if Obama is now purposely trying to fuck with the minds of American conservatives :

I have to wonder if Obama was deliberately yanking the right’s chain; he must have known they’d freak out, after all of the silliness over his bow to Saudi King Abdullah.

That would be this bow :

Yes, American conservatives much prefer a president to deal with the Saudis like this :

Just one of the charming comments at Hot Air :

Someone needs to give this half white half wit a swift kick in his boney black ass and remind him that Americans, especially Presidents of the United States, bow to no man, woman or beast!

But what about thechildren? Will America's enemies be emboldened and the country shamed if the president bows to mere children?

UPDATE : The majority of Americans have no problem with their president bowing to a Japanese emperor :

Respondents were asked: "When the president of the United States is traveling overseas, do you think it is appropriate for him to bow to a foreign leader if that is the country's custom or is it never appropriate for the president to bow to another leader?"

The numbers: Appropriate 67%, Never appropriate 26%. Even a majority of Republican respondents were okay with the bow, by a 53%-40% margin. Democrats weigh in at 84%-9%, and independents 62%-30%.

More Here

Okay Obowma, You Can Stop Now

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2009-11-18T02:33:00.004+11:00

Australian Senator Claims Church Of Scientology Covering Up "Coerced Abortions, Embezzlement, Physical Violence, Blackmail"

By Darryl Mason

Australian Senator Nick Xenophon today, under parliamentary privilege :

Scientology is not a religious organisation. It is a criminal organisation that hides behind its so-called religious beliefs.

What you believe does not mean you are not accountable for how you behave.

The letters received by me which were written by former followers in Australia contains extensive allegations of crimes and abuses that are truly shocking. Crimes against them and crimes they say they were coerced into committing.

There are allegations of false imprisonment, coerced abortions and embezzlement of church funds; of physical violence and intimidation, blackmail and the widespread and deliberate abuse of information obtained by the organisation.
What we are seeing is a worldwide pattern of abuse and criminality. On the body of evidence, this is not happening by accident, it is happening by design.
These victims of Scientology claim it is an abusive, manipulative, violent and criminal organisation, and that criminality is condoned at the highest levels.

The Church Of Scientology quickly released a two page statement. Note the precise use of emotional trigger words throughout the statement :

"Senator Xenophon is obviously being pressured by former members who use hate speech..."

"Senator Xenophon's attempts to marginalise Scientologists....is fascistic and violates freedom of speech..."

"former members are notoriously unreliable as witnesses"

"this is a propaganda campaign that would suit a totalitarian regime, not Australia"

Will the Church of Scientology dare to accuse the Australian senator of Xenuphobia?

The Full Story Is Here

2009-11-18T00:20:00.005+11:00

How To Jump Out Of A Plane Without A Parachute And Survive

Parachutes. How 20th century :

Flying in a wing suit is said to be about as close to the feeling of being a bird as you can get. But the still indispensable parachute gets in the way, it's too big, too heavy.

Apparently, most fliers come to the conclusion after their first wing suit jumps that the parachute simply has to go.

New Scientist explains how, in a few years, wing suit fliers will get their dream :

Just before touchdown, parachutists and hang-gliders execute a manoeuvre called a flare: raising the craft's nose to maximise lift from its wings while cutting its speed. Larger aircraft and many birds also flare when landing. Von Egidy is developing a suit she calls the Integrated Glide and Landing System (IGALS) that will allow fliers to do the same. It aims to achieve two things, the first being a much flatter glide angle.

Normal wingsuits have a glide ratio of about 2.5:1- the pilot travels 2.5 metres horizontally for every metre of fall. Von Egidy claims she can achieve 4:1 or better by increasing the suit's wingspan, stabilising the aerofoil and changing the wing's shape.

The most innovative part of the design, though, is that it allows the pilot to drop out of the wing just before landing and hang beneath it, rather like a hang-glider pilot does, making it easier to flare without losing control.

This is the key to achieving the second aim: to slow "smoothly and dramatically" just before touchdown, so that the pilot ends up flying slowly enough to simply run off the excess speed, as in a parachute landing. Von Egidy, who is revealing the concept behind the suit for the first time here, claims it has "proved totally viable" in scale-model tests.

The Full Story Is Here

2009-11-17T17:29:00.002+11:00

And they said spending months learning to speak Klingon was an idiotic waste of time. Ha!

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2009-11-17T00:22:00.002+11:00

This hideous piece of 'merman' fakery was donated to the British Museum by royalty :

It was donated by HRH Prince Arthur of Connaught (1883 – 1938), grandson of Queen Victoria, and was said to have been 'caught' in Japan during the eighteenth century.
This 'merman' is made up of the dried parts of a monkey, with a fish tail, and is probably mounted together on a wood support or core.

More Here

2009-11-16T23:53:00.003+11:00

A Very Nazi Christmas

Der Speigel has a photo gallery explaining how the Third Reich tried to take the Christ out of Christmas. Two examples :

2009-11-16T22:41:00.004+11:00

British writer Will Self, on drugs :

"I admire them from afar. I think the heavier hallucinogens are amazing. The problem with our society is there aren't enough positive drug rituals. I said this to the Archbishop of Canterbury the other night – the Church of England should introduce some sort of ecstasy communion."

More Will Self Here

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2009-11-15T01:58:00.005+11:00

Power To The Meeple

You can say "Meep!" like this :

Or you can say "Meep!" like this :

You can say "Meep!" however you damn well please. Unless you're a student at Boston's Danvers High School.

Principal Thomas Murray has banned students from saying the word "Meep!" or wearing any item of clothing displaying the word "Meep!" He robocalled parents :

"Please be advised that any student who has the letters 'meep' on their clothing or uses the words verbally will face suspension from school...the police are monitoring this situation as well."

It appears some students may have been using "Meep!" as a form of psychological torture.

....students were using the word to taunt a specific teacher.

"Some kids would say it constantly," said student Kyle Sullivan.

"They would just walk by and just yell meep," said Allen.

Parents of students at the school are now trying to stop their children from communicating with each other using this already absurdly notorious four letter word.

WBZ reporter Christina Hager tried to contact

"principal Murray....the school commitee, the town administrator, and the superintendent of schools for comments, but all have refused."

A New York attorney heard about this surreal hilariously bizarre word ban and e-mailed the school's principal and administrators a message. The message?

"Meep"

They went a little crazy :

Yesterday I received a reply email from Assistant Principal Mark Strout, which said (in full) "Your E-mail has been forwarded to the Danvers Police Department."

Meep is an interesting word, not only because its childhood ingrained associations with Road Runner and Beaker.

According to the Urban Dictionary, 'Meep' has no clear meaning at all, which makes it a perfect word to be repeated endlessly, ceaselessly, by school students who want to fuck with their teachers' minds, and to drive parents and at least one school principal a bit bonkers as they try to stop the kids from saying "Meep!", all the while fearing the word has a secret meaning, or many meanings, sinister meanings, to the students who use it.

Urban Dictionary :

1. An exclamation akin to 'ouch' or 'uh oh..'
2. Filling in the blanks where other (rude) words would go.
3. A greeting! I personally say meep instead of Hello...
4. A random expression of happiness used to fill gaps in conversation.

Perhaps the principal of Danvers High is still a bit stressed about the last time his school hit the headlines :

More than 1,000 students were held in a Danvers High School gymnasium for more than two hours this morning after police locked down the school in response to threatening messages found on a bathroom wall, police and school officials said.
The school was dismissed without incident at 1 p.m., nearly an hour early and more than two hours after classroom evacuations began.
A group of local law enforcers who are part of the School Threat Assessment and Response System swept the building with dog units after two threatening messages, one on a wall and one in a stall, were found in a boys’ bathroom about 9:15 a.m.

The police would not give the Boston.com any details on what the "threatening messages" actually said.

Has the word "Meep" been freaking out this principal for more than a month?

UPDATE : US ABC News supplies a bit of background to how the meeping began :

Bob Thompson, a pop culture professor at Syracuse University, said he first heard students meep about a year ago during a class screening of a television show.
"Something happened and one of them said 'Meep,'" he said. "And then they all started doing it."
The meeps, he said, came from all of the students in the class in rapid-fire succession. When he asked them what that meant, they said it didn't really mean anything.
"It's almost like they look at you like it's a silly question," he said.

It was a silly question.

Danver school principal Thomas Murray told the Salem News :

"It has nothing to do with the word. It has to do with the conduct of the students. We wouldn't just ban a word just to ban a word."

I'm still betting the "threatening messages" that saw 1000 students confined to the gymnasium at the school in October contained the word 'Meep'.

2009-11-14T16:57:00.003+11:00

80-90% of America's combat troops have been withdrawn from Iraq since Barack Obama made this campaign promise in November, 2007 :

2009-11-14T02:52:00.005+11:00

Cinema Won't Let You Be The Terrorist, But Video Games Will

Cinema is finding it harder to compete with video games for the attention and dollars of youth. When you see videos like this - Modern Warfare 2 In 90 Seconds - it's easy to see why Hollywood is losing the battle.

A blockbuster video game which sees players act as terrorists and shoot up civilians has sparked calls for the Australian classification system to be cleaned up.

"When the terrorist level starts you step out of an elevator, the memorable line is one of the guys turning around to you and saying 'Remember, no Russian,'" he told ABC News Online.
"Then all of you bring your guns up and you just unleash on an entire crowd of people. There's people screaming, some people trying to put their hands up to surrender, but everybody gets mowed down. You can choose not to shoot, but you can also choose to throw grenades, kill security guards.

"You eventually come up to a balcony where you're looking down on a massive crowd of people and then you can unleash of them. Then you have to take out a SWAT team with riot shields."

Modern Warfare 2 is claimed to have sold 7 million copies in its first 24 hours of release. Something like a $500-700 million dollar one day gross, when Hollywood wets itself when a movie makes $30 million in a weekend. Tens of thousands of copies of the game are now also being downloaded every hour through hundreds of torrent sites.

With a widescreen TV and thumping surround sound, cinemas can no longer match games like this for a mind-blowing visual experience.

James Cameron's Avatar In 3D is unlikely to do much to change this reality.

2009-11-14T01:40:00.004+11:00

"I Have No Complaints"

It's 1953, and like millions of other American families, you have brought your first television. That same year, a movie is released where an alien disguised as a television blasts peoples' minds with laser beams. The walking, dishwashing, vacuuming TV set can also, freakishly, climb stairs and follow you around the house. If you're too drunk, the TV set will zap you back into sobriety. That movie was The Twonky.

This is The Twonky :

More Twonky on YouTube Here

Everyone sent to destroy the television winds up totally mind controlled chanting, "I have no complaints".

Coach explains what he thinks the Twonky might really be: "a form that would be quite safe and acceptable…I believe that the world in the future where this Twonky comes from every house, every family, has a Twonky of their own -to carry out the dictates of the super state…yes the super state…There’s one placed in every home to serve, to regulate every thought according to the dictates of the super state…He is now carrying out that function with you."

I sense a remake on the horizon....Though a monstrous, wall-filling flat screen would have trouble getting out of the house by itself, so its potential for global domination would be quite limited.

2009-11-11T16:27:00.000+11:00

Ten Years In 420 Seconds

2009-11-02T07:11:00.001+11:00

The Story Of Homermanity :

2009-11-01T08:56:00.001+11:00

A detail of (for now) unknown markings found on a stone near the ruins of an old Knight's Templar church, in Scotland. The stone is believed to date from the 12th-14th century :

The Full Story Is Here

2009-10-31T12:11:00.001+11:00

From here :

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2009-10-31T03:11:00.001+11:00

The Continuing Death Throes Of American Newspapers

Michael Rivero, of WhatReallyHappened, on why the American newspaper industry is dying :

The newspapers did it to themselves. They stood shoulder-to-shoulder with the government as it lied us all into pointless and apparently unwinnable wars of conquest against nations that had not actually done anything to deserve being attacked.

This created the phenomenon of the blogs who analyzed the news in an honest and objective way absent from the corporate media and pointed out where the obvious lies were to be found.

If the newspapers had told the TRUTH and only the TRUTH, they would still be profitable and I would happily be doing visual effects for movies. But the corporate media bartered their honor and soul for a free ride on Air Force One, got caught, and now are paying the price.

It is not up to us to regain trust in the corporate news, it is up to them to prove they are worthy of our trust.

They can start by telling the truth about Iran's non-nukes and Israel's very confirmed nuclear weapons arsenal.

Before war breaks out, that is.

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2009-10-30T15:18:00.001+11:00

Whoa!

And you thought the time travel flick Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure was fiction?

Here's a detail from a portrait painted in 1875. Familiar?

Go Here For The Full Painting

(Via Elkit on Flickr)
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