---

Christmas may be coming early for Cold War nostalgiacs. Look who is bringing it. The flea who changed coats, but he still believes that he is still running the KGB ... Russia's Putin Calls U.S. Policy Dictatorial
One wonders what some Putin fans will be saying in 20 years time?
Set up and run by spooks in 1985, his party, the MLPN, had its own newspaper, De Kapitalist, written and edited by the secret service. As well as Mr. Boeve playing Chris Petersen, the secretary-general, it had a chairman (another fraud) and a Central Foundation stacked with secret agents. To add authenticity, the party let Mr. Wartena and a handful of other true believers join its otherwise nonexistent ranks, telling them that they were part of a network of underground cells. . . .
"I totally wasted 12 years of my life," says Paul Wartena, an ex-MLPN member who was so dedicated to the cause he used to donate 20% of his salary to the fake party. He says he "had some doubts now and then" about the MLPN but stayed loyal because "I was very naive and Mr. Boeve was such a good actor Irony of Surreal Reality

Eye on Politics & Law Lords: Two Becoming One Flesh: Marriage As a Sexual and Economic Union
As time marches inexorably on, human society...evolves.
So philosophized Judge William L. Downing in striking down the state of Washington's Defense of Marriage Act in August, ruling that same- sex couples have a right to marry. Extending marriage to people of the same sex may be the final frontier and the logical conclusion of this evolution. Writing in The Boston Globe, Virginia Postrel argued that social institutions such as marriage are themselves "the result of an evolutionary process"; gay marriage, as such, represents another promising "experiment in living" contributing to forward evolution. Ellen Goodman concluded that the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court's ruling that homosexuals have a right to marry "may be as evolutionary as it is historic," adding, "The evolution of gay rights and marriage laws now merge into the definition of marriage written by the Massachusetts court.
• Engels refused to see modern monogamous marriage as superior or good [In Australia it's current account deficits and property prices. But Britain keeps its voters fixated with sex, sleaze and more sex. The situation is this: he had an affair with a married woman and fathered her child. When she decided to remain with her husband Mr Blunkett reacted like a teenage girl who finds the object of her desires wrapped around somebody else at the school bus shelter ]
• · You know that things are going wrong for Kofi Annan when his defenders have to resort to writing tendentious apologies. The fundamental problem with Traub's argument is that Oil-For-Food existed for the purpose of enforcing sanctions imposed by the Security Council as a whole. It was not a program whose goals could be chosen according to taste! James Traub of the Los Angeles Times believes that the United States is out to lynch the UN using the Oil-for-Food scandal as a pretext
• · · President George W Bush called for a ‘full and open’ accounting of the UN oil-for-food programme on Thursday but would not say whether he thought UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan should resign
• · · · Armenia’s government begins to crack in a dispute that highlights the role of wealth in making a political career A Crack Emerges
• · · · · People Must Have More to Live for Than to Die For At last, a new generation is taking to politics [Can organized faith be explained by supply and demand? They think so]
• · · · · · Wow -- what a breakthrough in political analysis! If only history hadn't happened, John Kerry would be president! If the Republicans had hired better burglars in 1972, Spiro Agnew would have become President in 1976...