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Politics : WAR on Terror. Will it engulf the Entire Middle East? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: GUSTAVE JAEGER who wrote (18546)	12/20/2006 11:23:23 AM
From: DeplorableIrredeemableRedneck	Respond to of 32591

JFK is living in Tijuana with Monroe. Discuss Joe Joseph The Times December 20, 2006 Is any theory so daft that you can't hold a conference on it timesonline.co.uk The great thing about holding an international scholarly conference is that it lends a subject credibility. It shows that a topic is important enough for delegates from around the world to make time in their busy schedules to fly club-class to a five-star hotel in a balmy climate to attend as much as 40 minutes’ worth of high-level scholarly lecturing a day before retiring to discuss the important scholarly issue in greater detail with a fellow conference attendee; possibly an attendee of the opposite sex, who feels so overcome by the balmy climate that they prefer to discuss the scholarly issue while naked. In the hotel spa’s hot-tub. Then all the delegates return to their homes with a new and wide-ranging appreciation of tax-deductible expenses, a conference keyfob souvenir and a deep tan. This kind of academic focus certainly lends a topic a gravity it might otherwise struggle to attain. Say you happened to find it spooky the way that — when Donald Trump is boarding his personal helicopter in the US series of The Apprentice, and is standing right underneath the rotating blades — his hair doesn’t move at all, as if it might be made from the same material that Nasa uses to protect the exteriors of spacecraft from melting on re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere. Now, if you happened to mention this curiosity over lunch in your staff canteen, your colleagues might snigger and move on to bigger issues; such as whether Lindsay Lohan's mother will be buying her some knickers for Christmas to spare her daughter from looking like she’s dashed to a nightclub straight from a visit to her gynaecologist, having forgotten to get fully redressed first. But look what happens if you treat the same subject with great respect, by holding a conference on this issue entitled, Is Donald Trump’s Hairspray Usage the Primary Threat to the Ozone Layer? Then climatologists and environmental campaigners would fly across the world to attend this important scholarly conference — even if there were no alternative but to hold it in St Lucia in February. That’s why it was so heartening to see that a footnote-of-a-subject such as the Holocaust has finally just been given the respect it deserves by being made the focus of a scientific and scholarly conference in Iran. The conference was addressed last week by the country’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who wonders if the notion that the Nazis killed six million Jews during the Second World War in concentration camps might not be as fanciful as the idea that anyone considering cosmetic work has ever asked David Gest for the name of his plastic surgeon. The conference was so intellectually uplifting that this week 40 European and American research institutes announced that they will be suspending contacts with the think-tank that hosted the Holocaust-denying pow-wow — no doubt pleasing Iran no end. Indeed, the conference was such a triumph in Tehran’s eyes that it has now launched a full season of international symposia so that scholars might finally have the opportunity to douse many other crazy conspiracy theories that have been circulating for far too long. The conference programme starts as soon as next month with: Kennedy — Is JFK Really Dead?: Speculation never stops about who killed President Kennedy as he drove through Dallas in 1963. Was it the FBI? Was it the CIA? The army, maybe? This symposium will note how the Warren Commission’s conclusion that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone was rightly believed by only 19 per cent of Americans. Why? Because the other 81 per cent knew in their water that the pieces just didn’t fit. In truth, JFK never died. He and Marilyn Monroe (you really believed that Monroe took an overdose? What a sap!) ran off together to Tijuana, where they hustled a precarious living entering JFK and Marilyn Monroe prize lookalike contests. Naturally, the couple drew great amusement from Oliver Stone’s film, JFK, which came out 15 years ago, making a point ever since of greeting any surprising comment that the other might make with the phrase: “Stone me!” In February, book your seats (they’re already selling out fast) for Americans on the Moon? Don’t Make Us Laugh! This conference will expose how America never reached the Moon in 1969 but faked the Apollo 11 landing to try to trump the Soviet Union in the space race. In fact, Neil Armstrong had large springs glued to the bottom of his boots to make him look like he was bouncing weightlessly in what was actually the Nevada desert. Squint hard at the footage and you can even see the neon lights of Caesar’s Palace casino twinkling in the background, with the marquee announcing the very start of Cher’s farewell tour, now in its fourth decade. There will be a companion seminar confirming that the Moon is made of Stilton cheese, which is mined in barrel shapes so that when you can’t stand eating any more of it after Christmas you just roll it down the street until it falls of the edge of the Earth (yes, of course the Earth is flat. But the conference on all that is pencilled in for September). In March there follows: Rudolf Hess — Spandau, Schmandau!: Hitler’s deputy never flew, in 1941, to Scotland and into a life of captivity. He moved to Caracas and tried to camouflage his past by telling people he was nicknamed “Rudey” on account of his habit of abusively hissing the word ¡Cojones! at everyone he met. He invented the “lean, mean grilling machine” but lost the prototype to George Foreman in a fist fight. The rest of the year in Tehran promises more exciting conferences. April: Tom Cruise — America’s Next Basketball King? May: George Bush Has an Exit Strategy. Really! Delegates to any of these these conferences will find the experience so rewarding that, offered the chance to attend another, they would not hesitate before definitely saying no.