The Dalai Lama is causing trouble again. The mutually suspicious but financially lucrative relationship between China and the U.S. hit a small bump in the road last week. That bump was a bald man with a permanently serene smile welded onto his Tibetan head. His Holiness the Dalai Lama was in Washington to receive a Congressional Gold Medal and to meet with George Bush. Numerous focus groups from Europe and the U.S. informed the White House that any time the President spent within the peaceful aura of the Dali Lama would help to improve his image as a war mongering fool. There only remained the problem of the Chinese… Continue Reading

Ever since British Prime Minister Tony Blair played a key role in championing President Bush’s invasion of Iraq, his popularity in Britain has been falling. The man whose drive and popularity orchestrated “New Labour’s” resurgence against the British Conservatives ten years ago now finds himself the cause of Labour electoral losses all over the country. He has even been dubbed “Bliar” by disgruntled Britons.

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“LONDON – My new neighborhood erupted into what can only be described as a bloody tribal war and it’s all my fault. After a moving into my new-shared house in East London last week, I took it upon myself to sort out the backyard. I was happily constructing some new flowerbeds, when my spade hit something hard. I hauled it up to have a look at the thing that was obstructing my rose garden.

In my hands was a fist-sized chunk of coltan, one of the most valuable minerals in the world, as it is used in all mobile phones, computers, and surgical instruments.

Dollar signs flashed before my eyes (pound signs, really, since I live in London). I began to dig up the rest of the garden to see if it was a one off. Half an hour later I was laughing hysterically, shouting at the top of my voice, “”I’m rich! I’m rich!”" The rest of my housemates came home to find me doing back flips and talking of setting up my own off shore bank account in the morning. Soon, the shimmer of wealth could be seen in my housemates’ eyes as I described the untold riches that lay in the backyard. We planned to split it five ways easily enough for every one to never need to work again.

From there, it began to deteriorate. I kick myself now for my early exuberance. All my shouting had alerted the neighbors to what was going on in the garden. One of them must have heard me talking about coltan and how we were sitting on a gold mine. In the middle of the night, the War started. A team of neighbors dug a tunnel into the garden, decapitated Arthur, my housemate who had been guarding the backyard, and made off with a sack of coltan. They left a note saying we should all leave the house if we wanted to survive the week.

Though we were all sorry about Arthur, we were not going to be scared off by a little decapitation. I personally set up a perimeter of anti-personnel mines that my mates from British Aerospace Systems lent me. (Apparently BAE produce samples for trade fairs all the time; if you want some free munitions all you have to do is ask for them). Sure enough, the next night was a bloody affair with high casualties being incurred on our invading neighbors. Helina, another housemate of mine, turned out to be a crack shot with the sniper rifle.

During a lull in the fighting we had managed to get mining production up 250 percent. We were now in a position to approach The Democratic Republic of Congo, who own 50 percent of the worlds’ coltan mines. I wanted advice on mining coltan during a major conflict. These guys should know, as the Democratic Republic of Congo has the blood of over 2 million dead on its hands in the past 6 years, making it the largest conflict since the second world war. Surprising, since it is the least reported war since CNN started reporting 24/7.

One CNN reporter went on the record (he was very drunk at the time): “”No one wants to know about this war. No one wants to feel guilty about the laptop they own or the cell phone in their pocket, Jesus! You think we report the truth? Hell no, we just report what people pay us to report (hic).”"

The Democratic Republic of Congo was very helpful, as they sent out a team of mercenaries to help us protect the mine in the back garden, as well as lots of tasty mangoes.

Last night, it all came to an end as our landlord turned up in an Apache attack helicopter. Laughing maniacally through a loud speaker, he told us to get off his property in the next thirty seconds or be prepared to catch hellfire missiles (another freebee from the most heavily subsidized company in the U.K.: British Aerospace Systems). As all landlords in London are incapable of telling the truth, he started firing on the house 10 seconds after the ultimatum. I jumped through my bedroom window and out onto the streets below, just before the house went up in smoke.

Having become totally caught up in this never ending carnage for control of the coltan mine, I have decamped to the Congo to train with the Hutu tribe and prepare for a counter strike against my landlord. After all, finders keepers losers weepers.

“

LONDON – America is too often labeled the warmonger, the aggressor, and the arms dealer. Guns and apple pie are what America is all about, after all. What some of you may not know is that Britain is also a big fan of things that go bang.

For the past couple of decades, there has only been one year when weapons and weapons systems were not our number one export. Do you remember that British band Oasis? The year they went global was the year music was Britain’s biggest export. After that little Brit-Pop blip, it has been business as usual ever since. Like all other Arms manufacturers in America, Israel, and little old Britain, business has been booming since 9/11. There is nothing like a long and contracted war that has no conceivable or definitive end to keep the arms dealers and manufacturers happy.

Even when business is this good, the British have to feel guilty about something. British Aerospace, or BAE Systems, the largest defense contractor in Britain with 14.8 Billion pounds Sterling in sales a year, has begun research into environmentally friendly missiles and ammunition. The current drive to be green has finally reached the arms manufacturers (the tea drinking British ones, anyway).

This LushForLife.com reporter, being an Englishman myself, took the opportunity to go and visit the research and development team who are at the forefront of the most stupidly ironic idea in history.

I had wanted to meet the head of the department, a Mr. Tim “Nitro” Tylor, but he was away on a shamanic retreat taking large quantities of ayahuasca. I spoke to the Chief of Operations instead who was very keen to explain his vision for the future of warfare.

”We already have plans to take the lead out of bullets and bullet casings, but we see that as just the beginning. We have a dream; we dream of a theatre of operations that is free from the smell of petrol. Free from the heavy metals and toxins that are destroying the Earth. We dream of mines that release fertilizer into the soil to prepare the ground for better crop yields after the armies of the green revolution have made the foolish unbelievers and enemies of Britain see the light and switch to biofuels. Missile casings of the future will be lined with photovoltaic cells that will power the Tomahawks of the future. The “Daisy Cutter Bomb” that has been used in Afghanistan could be fitted with daisy seeds that could replenish any cute flowers that were destroyed in the bomb blast, thereby counteracting any damage to the target countries’ carbon quota for the year.”

After laughing hysterically for about twenty minutes, I went home and had a cup of tea. I suppose this new perspective on weapons of mass destruction as eco-friendly is a step in the right direction, but then only if you lived in Never Never Land with Peter. It seems as though Britain and America will always need to prop up their economies with new weaponry, so they may as well be green about it.

Here at the LushForLife.com headquarters, we are always keen to put new technology through its paces, so we “borrowed” one of their new “Daisy cutter” bombs and dropped it on New Zealand (they never saw it coming). Sure enough, fields of beautiful daisies have sprung up over the bombsite that used to be the set for the Lord of the Rings movie.