Nobel Prize winner Al Gore is also a warmonger:

The trouble is that Gore's preferred policies will lead to a poorer, energy starved world. Far better, one might think, to tackle malaria, sea level rise, drought, hunger, and so on directly rather than by tinkering with the chemical composition of the atmosphere. As Indur Goklany has shown, we can do this for a fraction of the cost.

Gore should buy war offsets.

When I heard this, I assumed it was for inventing the Internet, finding the Love Canal, and his marriage being the basis of the movie Love Story.

This makes me feel physically ill.
I can't respect anyone that is so completely
hypocritical. If he lived a green life and preached what he does I'd have a lot more respect.

Paco in the comments on Tim Blair's blog has a nice parody of the presentation speech in which Gore's prize is for not winning the 2000 election.

It's simply proof that Gore has pictures of the Peace Prize Committee humping a goat. He keeps it next to his picture of the Academy Awards Members, doing likewise.

Gore, Arafat .. it's a Discordian plot, I tell you.

Gorethulhu fthagn!

HE bloodshed in Afghanistan has reached levels not seen since the 2001 invasion as anger at bungling by an ineffective Government in Kabul and its foreign backers stokes support for the Taliban and other extremist groups.

The death of Trooper David Pearce underlines the rising dangers for Australia's 1000 soldiers in Afghanistan, most of them deployed in the Taliban's southern heartland -- a region some of Canberra's NATO allies consider too dangerous to fight in.

"This place can only go up or down, and it's going down fast, which is something the international community simply will not understand," said a security analyst who has been working in and out of Afghanistan for 30 years.

Almost six years after the hardline Islamist Taliban were ousted, their insurgency is gaining strength, fuelled by resentment at NATO bombing of civilians, billions of dollars of wasted aid, a lack of jobs and record crops of opium, the raw material for heroin.

Cogito ergo sum... but can this be? As a thinking person I can find little connection between a prestigious global prize for peace and the issue of global warming.

Can someone explain to me how climate change be identified as a topic for which peace negotiations are necessary when no war has been fought over it?

How did the media miss these negotiations? Are we living in parallel worlds?

Well...global warming means more warm-water ports in Russia, and the melting arctic ice cap means a more direct route for invading North America - wait, I forgot the Cold War was over...

Let's try this...warmer temperatures means more agriculture at higher latitudes, which means more corn for biofuel - wait, that can't be it, but more business for Evil Big Agribusiness companies Monsanto and Archer Daniels Midland has to have some sort of drawback...

British colonel hails turnaround on Taliban
9 hours ago

LONDON (AFP) — A British battalion achieved an "astonishing" turnaround in the fight against the Taliban, their commanding officer said Saturday ahead of their return from Afghanistan.

Lieutenant Colonel Stuart Carver, in charge of the 1st Battalion the Royal Anglian Regiment, said Taliban rebels had been "beaten back and dislodged from their comfort zones" over the past six months.

The 600-strong battalion recruited from eastern England, nicknamed "The Vikings", had helped Afghans in the troubled southern Helmand province "return to a more normal pattern of life," Carver said.

The soldiers return to Britain on Tuesday after a gruelling six-month tour of duty which saw them push Taliban militia out of traditional heartlands, allowing reconstruction and development to take place.

"We return with an extraordinary tale to tell," Carver wrote in a letter to the Eastern Daily Press regional newspaper.

"When we arrived in March many commentators were claiming the war was already lost -- but the change in the nature of operations over the six months has been astonishing.

"The Taliban have been beaten back and dislodged from their comfort zones in the Green Zone of the River Helmand because the Vikings have taken a determined fight to the enemy.

"In doing so, we have been involved in some of the most ferocious close quarter combat the British Army has experienced for decades in extremely challenging terrain and temperatures that exceeded 50 degrees (Celsius, 122 degrees Fahrenheit) at their peak.

"The real measurement of success, however, has not been the numeric destruction of our foe but the embryonic beginning of reconstruction projects and the return to a more normal pattern of life, particularly in the vital town of Sangin."

He added: "Our advances have not been without cost. Nine Vikings have died during the tour and a further 57 have been wounded in battle."

A total of 82 British soldiers have died in Afghanistan since the start of US-led military action in late 2001 to oust the Taliban, the country's hardline Islamist former rulers.

Most of Britain's soldiers are based in Helmand, where Taliban insurgents are said to be teamed up with foreign fighters from Al-Qaeda and opium producers helping to finance the insurgency.

Britain has around 7,000 troops in Afghanistan -- the second-highest after the United States to the United Nations-sanctioned, NATO-led International Security Assistance Force.

The figure is set to rise to around 7,800 by the end of the year.