THE Los Angeles Times notes that Barack Obama is not all about regime change: “Antiwar groups and other liberal activists are increasingly concerned at signs that Barack Obama’s national security team will be dominated by appointees who favored the Iraq invasion and hold hawkish views on other important foreign policy issues.… Maybe they can change? Aside from Clinton and Gates, the roster of possible Cabinet secretaries has included Sens. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) and Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.), who both voted in 2002 for the resolution authorizing President Bush to invade Iraq, though Lugar has since said he regretted it. “It’s astonishing that not one of the 23 senators or 133 House members who voted against the war is in the mix,” said Sam Husseini of...

THAT leaked list of BNP members continues to make headlines. The Sun leads with the news, “Palace pair are in BNP”. This is illustrated by a picture of not the dear old Queen Mum, but Her Majesty. Inside, the members are revealed to be HRH “storeman Paul Murray and a retired porter”. As a source tells the paper: “Although his [Murray] name is on the list he has told us that it is only on there because he was invited to a social event that he did not attend.” Also on the list is a Talk Sport Radio DJ called Rod Lucas. He says he joined up for “journalist research”. An NHS doctor, pictured peering round his front door, says he attended three BNP meetings out of “curiosity”. He denies being a racist. And vicar Rev Jon Staunton says he was a member of the BNP but cancelled...

LOTS of angry people live in Baghdad. And in case they run out of things to bomb, the local bigwigs have a cunning plan: A YEAR ago it would have been unthinkable. After all, it was a city where driving to work became a life-or-death decision and where residents were cooped in enclaves amid murder and mayhem. The soulution… But the Mayor of Baghdad has surprised everyone by announcing plans for an underground rail network that would literally carve a swathe through the city’s sectarian lines. If investors sign up, the world’s most violent capital will soon have a $US3 billion ($A4.6 billion) metro. And a shiny new target for the...

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“BNP MEMBERS LEAKED ON NET,” says the Star. Step backs from your monitor, gentle reader, lest a BNP member pokes out from the screen and hands you a leaflet. Hating The BNP - join the debate The Mirror takes up the story, saying that the list of 12,000 followers of the BNP has been published on the web. The BNP has been “EXPOSED”. Big shock indeed to learn that not all of the names of the 12,000 are serving police officers. The Mirror says that as well as coppers, the list contains the names, addresses (follow the flag pole), phone numbers of teachers, prison wardens, church dwellers, Klan members, professional skinheads, elderly men with German accents and the bus driver of the No.73 who refused to stop yesterday afternoon at 4:15. An investigation is looming…...

ON the BBC: “Is Obama black?” Yes. He is black. So let’s move on with the post-racial politics… Kimberly McClain DaCosta Harvard University wonders: One well-known African American writer, Debra Dickerson, famously objected that Obama is not of the people properly defined as “black” on the grounds that because he is not descended from slaves. Ergo, he is not black - at all. Debra… No, never heard of her. Obama is black. Idi Amin was not black. So, let’s move on… The bulk of the people protesting against references to Obama as a black man, however, grant that he is “part” black (by way of his father), but assert that because he also has a white mother it is not “accurate” to call him black. He is “in...

THE ConservativeHome image surmises British politics - Cameron or Brown? File under - it’s in pink and mauve! The battle ground is over the gay vote… Via mauvist...

PIRACY is booming. It’s the world’s growth industry. Over the newswires, Anorak learns that a Hong Kong cargo ship has been attacked by pirates in the Gulf of Aden near the Yemen coast. The good ship Delight is loaded with 36,000 tonnes of wheat. Says one UN insider: “They’ve got oil for heating and fuel, and now they’ve got wheat. If they can hijack a boat carrying the G20 leaders, they will have democracy.” This latest hijack follows the capture of Sirius Star, and the two million barrels of oil it was carrying. The Sirius Star is the size of three football fields and three times the weight of a US aircraft carrier. It is the largest ship ever seized by pirates. Sky new reports that: “This year, Somali pirates have attacked 90 ships, more than double the number in...

NOW we own a piece of history. Can you? Yes you can! Such is the demand the world over for Barack Obama gold plates, historians one and all are limited to taking away just two per visit. The sage advice is to take what’s on offer and if you do need a full setting of six plates, invite your guests to bring their own future heirlooms over. Or why not asks Obama for some of his plates. He has lots of plates and all kinds of crockery in both the White House, Camp David and his chicago mansion and is happy to redistribute.  Some key facts about the Obama Plate: * No stain sticks to these plates. Do what you like to it and it comes shining right back at yer * Coated in a terrorist proof resin, approved by Weatherman technologies * For a small renumeration, Anorak will invite...

IAN Leslie loosk at how the UK media handles Obama and all that post-racial politics. There aren’t even any Jews: Here’s the thing: race isn’t about genetics. At least it’s about a whole lot more than that. Being black or white is about how people see you - and what they call you.  Obama is black because society says he’s black. He’s black to white racists. And he’s black to every black child growing up in America. If that seems arbitrary, then, duh, that’s the problem. Some people come off arbitrarily worse than others. And that’s it. Unless you’re:  Yasmin Alibhai-Brown - she claims it would an insult to Obama’s mother to call him black. Is his mother blind? Rod Liddle: The notion persisted that despite spending ten...

MICHELLE Obama is a hero for womankind. And here’s Germaine Greer, she of the “fuck-me shoes” to tell us all about Michelle: The one sour note to resound through the jubilation at the election of Barack Obama was an undercurrent of fear and loathing of the dress Michelle Obama wore on election night. The dress? One blogger complained that she could hardly listen to Obama’s speech “for fear of that dress”; another accused its Cuban-American designer of duping his hapless client into wrapping herself in the Cuban revolutionary flag. It was: …all black with an eye-burning red panel that splattered itself down the front like a geometrical haemorrhage, held in by a criss-cross sash of black. The red extended upwards almost to the neckline, and downwards to mid-thigh,...

IN the article “Change You Can Conceive In” Newsweek’s Jessica Bennett seeks to discover what babies were conceived at the moment of Barack Obama’s election victory. She’s looking for the Obama baby boomers. Of course, Obama was only elected a few days ago, and what with gestation and all, pregnancies have yet to be bedded down. In any case, he best line appears at the article’s start: The theory is almost too perfect to be true. Barack Obama, the son of politically progressive parents, was born Aug. 4, 1961—almost nine months to the day after John F. Kennedy was elected to the White House. Is it possible Obama was conceived on that historic night? Hey, hone, let’s try the political progressive position. It’s bit like the missionary of old but we get to talk all the way...

BARACK Obama’s first address to the world. His lips are moving. And to his left we see the green lizard. Ah, yes, dear reader, a lizard. David Icke was right. Lizards are controlling the world…and never so blatantly… I’m Tyrone Rex, and I endorse this...

HATS off to Gordon Brown who is half way to fulfilling his pledge to end boom and bust. Boom is well and truly over. And once we are all poor, bust will only be a historical relative, an arcane term of yesteryear. So to the White House, where Gordon is at table to discuss matters of great import: when George Bush goes, will he be the most unpopular leader in the world? The talk turns to the economic crisis,. With dinner keeping their tongue sharp and loose with beverages that cost almost $500 a bottle. The G-20 summit kicks off with “Fruitwood-smoked Quail,” “Thyme-roasted Rack of Lamb,” and “Tomato, Fennel and Eggplant Fondue Chanterelle Jus.” All washed down the gizzard with doses of Shafer Cabernet “Hillside Select” 2003, a wine that sells at...

GEORGE Bush is nearly out. You’ll miss him when’s he’s gone. And there’s a book coming: Bush memoirs? Publishers are underwhelmed “If I were advising President Bush, given how the public feels about him right now, I think patience would probably be something that I would encourage,” says Paul Bogaards, executive director of publicity for Alfred A. Knopf. Yeah, losers don’t sell books: Sarah Palin’s failure set to reap her $7m book deal Literary agents are queueing up to sign her to a book deal that could earn her up to $7m… “Every publisher and a lot of literary agents have been going after her,” added Jeff Klein of Folio Literary management....

BARACK Obama’s campaign headquarters in Lake City, Florida. has posted a victory sign in its window. The legend reads: “To God be the glory. Great things he has done. Obama. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done.” The power and the...

NOW Obama is our president elect, the rosy-fingered dawn of a new era in world affairs is upon us. The world is changed forever. Now a goat farmer in Kenya can say that he can be whatever he wants. An Hawaiian can be King. A small child whose name ends in vowel can have hope. A half-white man can be cheered by Black Panthers. And now it comes to pass that Obama can be at all places at all times. Thanks to the internets, Obama can truly be the world president. As the Huffington Post reports: President-elect Obama’s office gave the media a new way to present him as Franklin Roosevelt 2.0 by announcing Friday that it will be posting weekly addresses - fireside chats for the web generation - on YouTube. A weekly address for the world as part of the “digital, transparent presidency”....

HEADLINE of the week: “Saudi Arabia to lead UN talks on religious tolerance.” And how not to tolerate it in the land where the one-eyed woman is queen? Notes the International Herald Tribune: Saudi Arabia, which deploys a special police force to ensure that only one narrow sect of Islam predominates in the kingdom, is sponsoring a discussion at the United Nations on religious tolerance starting Wednesday. More than a dozen world leaders are expected to attend, including President George W. Bush, Prime Minister Gordon Brown of Britain and the Saudi monarch, King Abdullah, making a rare appearance at the UN headquarters. Says one Saudi escapee: “It’s like apartheid South Africa having a conference at the UN on racial harmony,” said Ali Al-Ahmed, a Shiite Muslim...

HAS anyone ever seen Will Smith and Barack Obama in the same place at the same time? Spotter:...

THE cancer-stricken Lockerbie bomber failed in his bid to be freed on bail today. Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi applied for interim release from jail pending the outcome of an appeal against conviction. But judges at the Court of Criminal Appeal rejected the application from his defence team today. The 56-year-old former Libyan intelligence agent had been diagnosed with prostate cancer and the disease had spread to other parts of his...

DID you know that the average human breathes twice as fast when watching Al Gore’s film An Inconvenient Truth? At some of the film’s racier bits, when Al uses his pointer, say, 28 per cent of viewers are panting. Happily, we can report that while panting increases your carbon emissions, it also keeps you cool. And this is no good because the world is getting colder: The oceans have been cooling since 2003. There are growing fears of a coming freeze worse than the ice age. For the second straight year that Earth is, in fact, cooling… not warming. And while the US freezes, Barack Obama loosk for his new climate tsar. Who will control Tony Blair’s weather machine? Why it’s Al Gore, who might care to equip his boat with some ice-breaking...

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MICHAEL Gove, the Wind In The Willows’ extra who went it alone, is the Conservative Party’s schools spokesman. Gove is using his Telegraph column to consider all things Obama. Gove salutes the Daily Kos, “a place of very articulate, widely dispersed and highly motivated activists”. That’s the place where they speak Obami, or Obarmy, and praise the Obamessiah, spam internet polls, spread bigotry and smear the opposition with lies. Hurrah! And then, Gove allies the Conservatives with Obama: The Opposition in this country have an advantage, like the Democrats in America, in that we are the principal vehicle for change, and the liveliest, most engaged and passionate voices on the internet are arrayed, broadly, on our side against the establishment. Yeah. Yaaaaay! The non-elitist...

AFTER so much kissing and hugging and waving and kissing and smiling and hugging, Barack Obama “finally “called Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. ABC Live, in New Delhi, salutes the coming together of leaders, what Obama termed a “very important partnership”. A new American leaders brings with him a chance to be made like the old American leaders. This means calling him Hitler and watching him on the phone… Obama: Plus ca change…...

WHAT news of former Welsh Assembly bigwig and badger watcher Ron Davis? Many supposed that when Davis pulled into picnic area to watch badgers with a fell enthusiast, he would quit politics to front the BBC’s late-night Badger Watch show. Sat in a feathered wigwam with Bill Oddie, Davis would be heard panting with excitement over the sound of rustling and foraging vermin. What it more, having been robbed on Clapham Common, while looking for badgers and a way home, Davis was cruelly overlooked for the Crimewatch gig. His is a a career of missed opportunity. It turns out that Davis became head of the Valleys Race Equality Council, which seeks equality between all ethnic and indigenous badgers. The Star says locals should be called not British, but Welsh, Scots, Irish, Asian and Chinese....

Via Peston (again.) This phrase did make me chuckle… Bankers detest their transmogrification into the welfare dependents of our post-bubble age, and they are desperate to pay taxpayers back Mervyn tries to help - cartoon. Gordon’s new golden rule -......

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BARACK Obama Watch: Wenger’s Wonder, Michelle’s Liz Hurley And John Major… ARSENE WENGER, manger of Arsenal football club on why he is sticking with his policy of picking youth over experience: “You have Barack Obama in the States, that if one of the countries where if you have the quality, you will make it.” Surely Obama is too old for Arsenal? Although Osama bin Laden is a fan of the Gunners, and finding him will help the tyro keep his promise… “What made everybody happy in his election was that nobody knows what Obama’s ideas are, but the system has brought someone to the top just because they have the quality and nothing else. I think that is right.” Obama favours a fluid system, with an equal distribution of the ball… SARAH VINE: The Times writer looks at...