Pope Benedict XVI has cancelled a planned visit to a prestigious Italian university after a protest by academics and students attacked his views on Galileo, the Vatican confirmed Tuesday. 

The pope had been due to give a speech at La Sapienza university in Rome Thursday to open its academic year. 

Romney wins in Michigan primary ….. 

Republican Mitt Romney has won the US state of Michigan's presidential primary, beating Senator John McCain. 

Giving a victory speech to jubilant supporters as the results came in, Mr Romney said the win marked 'the beginning of a comeback'. 

 It's taken me a day to realise how bogus the "Filipino Monkey" saga truly is.  I now believe that using the story has been a "safety hatch," an trustworthy escape from a failed attempt at starting a new war. 

Vainly, I'd arrived at the connection due to my  name (the story only really came to Australia yesterday), but was far from disappointed to find that many bloggers have made the connection between Monkey and the Tonkin incident.  For those who don't know, the Gulf Of Tonkin was the location of a confrontation that was used as vindication for starting the Vietnam war, and it's now widely believed that the event was faked.

We'd better start at the battlefront.  Here's a taste from Fox News:

-------------------------------------------- 

from the Washington Post .... 

from The Evening Standard (London) ….. 

There is something unedifying about Tony Blair's joining of investment bank JPMorgan and I don't just mean on the part of the former Prime Minister. 

the emperor ….. 

US President George Bush stepped up his war of words with Iran today, calling Tehran the world's leading state sponsor of terrorism in the keynote speech of his tour of the Middle East and the Gulf. 

Some nights I wonder how much of his visions Dick Cheney revealed to Howand and his cabinet. I'm still impressed how quickly after assuming power in '97, the year of Cheney's secondmost recent vist here (and the formative year of Halliburton Australia), the Australian space legislation was altered to fast-track plans for Woomera, and still wonder if the intended purpose was to use Kistler rockets to send troops into the middle east?

The American president came to the Middle East in an attempt to deliver peace.

Instead, George W. Bush's visit to the Holy Land has only deepened the divide between the Israelis and Palestinians. 

When James Cojanis heard the first rumblings of Armageddon, he was sitting in his San Jose home with the radio tuned to a popular Christian show called The Prophecy Club. Featured that day was a charismatic Texas oilman named Harold "Hayseed" Stephens.

Hundreds of British non-Muslims have been recruited by al-Qaeda to wage war against the West, senior security sources warned last night. 

As many as 1,500 white Britons are believed to have converted to Islam for the purpose of funding, planning and carrying out surprise terror attacks inside the UK, according to one MI5 source. 

The event staged in Adelaide was a quiet one.  Very quiet. 20-odd protesters, a dozen-odd journos, and I doubt many of them would've been there if not for the presence of Terry Hicks.  There was a heckler, a large bikie with an axe to grind about his previous "wrongful arrest" who started shouting and interjecting as soon as Terry took the mike.  Terry handled him well, coming down from the Parliament House steps to talk with him, for a good twenty minutes, the cameras clicking away while the other orators addressed empty air.  This, of course, was the only thing the local paper got around to reporting.

The reason the United States gave for invading Afghanistan in October 2001 was "to destroy the infrastructure of al-Qaeda, the perpetrators of 9/11".  

The women of Rawa say this is false.  

How to Build a Homeland Security Campus in Seven Steps ….. 

Free speech zones. Taser guns. Hidden cameras. Data mining. A new security curriculum. Private security contractors... Welcome to the new homeland security campus. 

This morning brings the remarkable news that Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair has gone to work as a part time consultant for the huge JP Morgan investment bank, at a salary estimated at a million dollars a year.