As the new year dawns, and we look at the state of our world and its human population, we find little cause for hope for the future. Wars, rumors of wars and suffering on an ever increasing scale seem to be the order of the day. The blame, of course, lies squarely with ourselves, the civilian population, not so much for anything we are doing but rather for what we, collectively, are not doing. Our political leaders are, naturally enough, very happy with this state of affairs, having invested long years and much effort in placating and anesthetizing the 'little people' via toxic propaganda and toxic food. But have they, the supposed creme de la creme of human society, been a little too successful?

If their main reason for getting up and going to 'work' in the morning (or early afternoon) was to wage silent political (and often military) wars to safeguard their own ascendancy against the threat of an irate multitude of awakened plebs, what will they do now that that threat has been neutralized? Where will all that self-righteous, narcissistic rage go? If we look to the animal kingdom (which is a rather good place to look for an analogy in this case) we find that in similar situations, predatory animals tend to turn on each other.

Hope springs eternal, as they say, but perhaps not in the way we expect.

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Fighting breaks out in parliament hall in Kiev, Ukraine, after eggs were thrown at the podium during a debate on a Russian-Ukrainian agreement to extend the presence of the Russian Black Sea Fleet in Ukraine until 2042.
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Taking one for the boss in the Ukraine. A precision strike and wonderful 'eggxample' of eloquent political debate.
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News that the farcical tenure of Silvio Berlusconi would not be coming to an end was met with uproar and a karate chop or two by Italian politicians in December
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Mixed-gender antics in Argentinia's parliament in November when Graciela Camano launched a pre-emptive 'up-side the head' slap on Carlos Kunkel over the latter being rather obnoxious.
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Round two in the Ukrainian parliament - Dec. 2010. Here we can see the evolution of warfare where some of the alpha males learned to use furniture as rudimentary weapons.
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Nigeria June 2010 - elected (maybe) representatives of the African nation learned quickly from their US and British colonial masters that violence is always the answer!
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The 'nos' have it, it seems, in this lively debate in the Turkish parliament.
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July 2010, Taiwan: Politicians decide to simplify things by declaring that whoever reached the top of the human pyramid would be accepted as the new President.