The military does like to play around with vast sums of tax-payers money with little apparent gain to be sure. No matter how stupid, unethical or needless a scheme is, if it can have the word "weapon" attached to it then it's a winner with the warmongering classes.

The Berkley Sunshine Project, a watchdog organisation particularly into biological weapon investigation, recently used the Freedom of Information Act to get the great minds at the Pentagon to 'fess up to having a go at creating that most sensible, credible and mature of weapons....the Gay Bomb.

It has recently been revealed that the UK Ministry of Defence, presumably having far too much of our tax money spare to know what to do with, despite an illegal war here and there, started researching into psychic powers as weapons. And where better to source your psychic soldiers from than....the Internet. Yes indeed, apparently the MoD attempted to recruit 12 psychics that had no further qualification that advertising their services on the Internet. Nice work if you can get it.

Kids. Who wouldn't want the little darlings? They're ingenious little tykes. It's just a shame some of them put their creativity to slightly counterproductive tasks such as fashioning tasers out of all and sundry and taking them to school.

The neo-classic method of creating such a device is via a disposable camera. One you get hold of one of those it's mere hack-and-slash electric engineering to create a light-weight version of said electro-shock device. Basically you remove the camera's flash, charge it up and use the resulting bare wires to prong into whatever object you wish to zap.

Oh dear, despite usually plotting evil behind closed doors, US vice-president Dick Cheney's accidentally said something in public again. Previously famous for shooting his friends and swearing at senators, he's now pretty much confirmed something we all kind of knew.

The Bush administration endorses torture.

In an interview with Scott Hennen, one of America's many conservative radio show hosts, the following exchanges took place:

No not a mistype, we're all bored of the senseless war on drugs, so it is nice to see that the Canadian army is now fighting a war with drugs. Canada of course is famous for its high quality and relatively liberal cannabis output (for example the notorious BC Bud), but until now it was more used for medical and recreational purposes than military.

Whilst the Canadian army was fighting against the Taliban in Afghanistan they came across forests of 10-foot-tall cannabis plants. It seems that the plants are good absorbers of energy, including heat. Therefore the Taliban fighters can duck in and out of them, immune to Canadian heat-sensing technology.

Suppose the Poorhouse told you that the largest haul of bomb-making explosives ever found in someone's house in the UK was discovered recently. And not just your average backyard weaponry; we're talking rocket launchers, chemicals and even nuclear-biological suits. Scared yet?

Before you run away in panic - or wonder why it hasn't been plastered all over the international news-wires - please have a think about who you think was the owner of these things. Let us guess - a dark skinned bearded fellow with an Arabic name?

Saving the planetAnd there we were, thinking the arms trade was nothing but a "deadly, corrupt business". But no, it's time to give credit where credit's due and applaud BAE Systems for its recent corporate social responsibility.

Yes, they do still create, trade, and profit from devices made solely to brutally murder other, usually innocent civilian, human beings - but they are now developing a warm fuzzy feeling for our beautiful planet it would seem. Using the latest in R&D they are creating lead-free bullets, because the usual variety of standard firearms "can harm the environment and pose a risk to people".

A new food scare is about to hit our shores, possibly called DEP*. So far the story has largely been hushed up by the media, with the brave exception of such Reuters-rerun papers as The Scotsman.

Last Friday, whilst workers were doing their stuff to vegetables at the McCain Foods factory in Scarborough, one keen-eyed potato polisher noticed a bomb shell tip in amongst the produce. Sensibly, the police were called and the bomb squad set up a perimeter 100-meter perimeter for safety and dealt with it expertly. Dramatic yes, but a happy ending...or was it?

VP shoots republican donor shockA couple of weeks ago one of the Bush administration took their lust for shiny guns and brutal violence a little further than even usual and personally shot someone. US Vice President Dick Cheney - possibly the second most powerful man in the world - got confused between the quail he was on a hunt for, and Mr Harry Whittington, one of his pals who was also after shooting said bird.

In the words of Katharine Armstrong, the owner of the Texas ranch they were hunting on: "The covey flushed and the vice-president picked out a bird and was following it and shot. And by God, Harry was in the line of fire and got peppered pretty good".

This is not new news, but that doesn't make it worth ignoring. Some of the most powerful people in the world apparently think committing genocide is just too arduous at present; but perhaps they can make it easier in the future?

Although under-reported in the mainstream, many people may be aware of a think-tank called the Project for a New American Century (PNAC). In their words, their fundamental tenets are such that "American leadership is good both for America and for the world; and that such leadership requires military strength, diplomatic energy and commitment to moral principle."