Outstanding film, and interesting that a feature film was the medium chosen to get the message across.

There was absolutely nothing wrong with Charlton Heston's mental faculties in the interview. The reason why it's cringe-making is that the sorry old bastard hasn't got a leg to stand on and hasn't even got the decency to acknowledge the obscenity of organising rallies in Columbine and Flint in the circumstances in which they occurred.

George Orwell said it all, with his depiction of the maintenance of a state of war being necessary to shore up the system by fomenting fear and getting everyone to rally around the flag. The phrase "the military-industrial complex" sounds like the sort of thing that right-wingers would love to deride as liberal garbage if it weren't for the fact that it was popularised by a Republican ex-General and President.

A few days ago in Europe we saw another example of the US-style whipping-up of hysteria that Mike Moore describes. Somebody left a can of petrol and a couple of cylinders of gas (but no detonator or means of ignition) under a seat in the Sacré Coeur basilica. The basilica was evacuated while police disposed of it. The US station CNN whipped this up into a "breaking news" biggie, interrupting their regular programmes and providing repeated updates which told us nothing new. We switched to French TV news to find out what was going on, and get more up-to-date information, but they didn't even bother to cary the story, presumably on the basis that it was just a crank incident.