Politicians normally don't like surprises, or having to answer tough questions off the cuff. Even Question Time is a staged routine where party leaders pretend bite back for the camera - pure Punch 'n Judy. But ITV's This Morning Show turned out to be an unlikely arena for this prime ministerial showdown...

PANIC STATIONS: PM David Cameron appeared to get the shock of life Thursday morning when a seemingly harmless character, host Philip Schofield, challenged the PM about the government's policy of denial regarding any paedophiles, past, present or future, in No.10, or anywhere else in Westminster for that matter.

Schofield is last guy you'd expect to go for the PM like this, but now thousands are Tweeting and Facebooking support for Schofield, and his 'street cred' index for 18-35′s has just shot into orbit.

The only line Schofield crossed, was to rightly challenge a public politician on a serious issue. It was a rare display of balls in the mainstream media - which has made him a sort of people's presenter. No doubt, and all too predictably, ITV will be pressured by Downing Street and Ofcom to sack Schofield for his challenge to the PM - let's see if ITV have got some of the family jewels that the BBC clearly lack. But if they cave in, ITV will have cut loose what appears to be its coolest asset in years.

Russia called for the immediate resumption of talks between Iran and the Group 5+1 (the five permanent UN Security Council members plus Germany).

Speaking to radio Voice of Russia on Thursday, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said there is no reason to postpone the talks.

Now that [we] have been cleared who has the final say in the US foreign policy, there is no reason to delay talks between the two sides, he said.

"We should take action to proceed with talks between the two sides as Tehran as well as other states know that who decides the US foreign policy," the Russian diplomat said.

Once again we invite all parties to come back to negotiating table, he said.

Late in October, EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton, who represents the world powers in talks with Tehran, said she would soon have talks with Iran's lead negotiator Saeed Jalili.

Iran and the Group 5+1 have held several rounds of talks this year.

© REUTERS/AFPMr Netanyahu, Mr Ahmadinejad and Mr Obama

Iran has claimed that the Obama administration has "completely different" views on the Islamic Republic to Israel and the US Republican Party, according to an intelligence ministry report.

The report, posted on the ministry's newly launched website vaja.ir, claimed that the Democrats had "pinned their" hopes on a diplomatic solution to the Iranian nuclear threat, and that there was "open confrontation between President Barack Obama and Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu on the issue.

It was apparently prepared before Mr Obama's re-election victory on Tuesday over Mitt Romney.

"The Republican party has a more severe confrontational approach towards Iran ... and its proposed policies are close to those of the Zionist (Israel) regime," it said according to an AFP report.

Mr Obama's "Democratic party's position is completely different" on Iran, it added.

California's Proposition 37, which would have required labeling of GMO foods, died a painful death last night. Despite polling in mid-September showing an overwhelming lead, the measure lost by 53 to 47 percent, which is relatively close considering the No side's tactics.

As I've been writing about, the opposition has waged a deceptive and ugly campaign, fueled by more than $45 million, mostly from the leading biotech, pesticide, and junk food companies. Meanwhile, the Yes side raised almost $9 million, which is not bad, but being outspent by a factor of five is tough to overcome.

While we can always expect industry to spend more, the various groups fighting GMOs for years probably could have been better coordinated. I was dismayed and confused by all the fundraising emails I received from different nonprofits on Prop 37 and wondered why they weren't pooling their resources.

But would more money and better strategy have made a difference? Given the opposition's tactics, it seems unlikely. I am not easily shocked by corporate shenanigans but the No on 37 campaign is my new poster child for propaganda and dirty tricks. It's worth recapping the most egregious examples.

Not even a full day had passed before newly reelected President Obama ordered another drone strike in Yemen. Huffington Post:

On Wednesday morning, as many Americans sifted through the voter data and exit poll numbers of President Barack Obama's reelection the night before, the Twitter feeds of close watchers of Yemen lit up with reports of another sort of presidential event: an apparent U.S. drone strike had killed several individuals in that country.

There was no way of being certain if the strike was indeed American, or for that matter if it was a drone strike at all, although it had all the markings of one.

"All signs (after dark, suspicions of locals, target) point to Sanhan strike being a US drone," Yemen-based freelance journalist Adam Baron wrote on Twitter.

Several other analysts concurred.

A White House spokesman did not respond to a request for comment. If it were a American strike, of course, it would have to have been authorized by Obama.

The same party wins every time. Duopoly power rules. America is a one party state with two wings. Each replicates the other. On major issues mattering most, not a dime's worth of difference separates them.

The late Gore Vidal explained it as well as anyone. Some of his best comments included:

"Apparently, a democracy is a place where numerous elections are held at great cost without issues and with interchangeable candidates."

"Any American who is prepared to run for president should automatically by definition be disqualified from ever doing so."

"By the time a man gets to be presidential material, he's been bought ten times over."

"Every four years the naive half who vote are encouraged to believe that if we can elect a really nice man or woman President everything will be all right. But it won't be."

"The genius of our ruling class is that it has kept a majority of the people from ever questioning the inequity of a system where most people drudge along, paying heavy taxes for which they get nothing in return."

"We should stop going around babbling about how we're the greatest democracy on earth."

The amount of fraud in America has reached astounding levels. On the CBS Evening News on 9-10-2001 Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld admitted that neither he nor his Comptroller Rabbi Dov Zakheim could trace the whereabouts of 2.3 trillion dollars missing from the DOD. Also on that same night persons unknown backed up a few trucks to World Trade Center Towers 4 and 5 and took about a billion dollars in gold and silver bullion from the Canadian Nova Scotia bank vault and from the COMEX metals exchange vault next door. Also on 911 all ENRON documents in the SEC offices at WTC 7 were destroyed which saved Wall Street a few billion dollars in lawsuits. Also on 911 Dr Jim Willie says Cantor Fitzgerald offices in the North Tower which had all of the documentation on the sale of 3.5 trillion dollars in fraudulent Treasury bonds was destroyed when the North Tower collapsed. He compared the deficit announced by the Treasury to the monthly sale of US Treasury bonds and found that 3.5 trillion dollars more had been sold than the Treasury needed to fund the deficit. Fortunately for the men who participated in these frauds no pesky reporters from the mainstream press have bothered to ask anyone in Washington about any of the above criminal acts.

You might remember Jim Willie as the man who said 40,000 tons of gold allocated in customer accounts had been stolen. We know that NATO also stole 144 toms of Libyan gold and 98 billion dollars in cash and securities. Now Germany and the Netherlands have been asking the Federal Reserve and the Bank of England if their gold is still there.

But we are now entering a whole new era of extreme fraud where the amounts involved have become staggering. The total Gross Domestic Product of the world is a mere 50 trillion dollars. The total level of fraud is even greater than that. That means that the bankers are going to steal everything and leave you with nothing if your assets are either pieces of paper or credit entries in a computer.

Russia's Federal Security Service has identified members of Hizb ut-Tahrir, which is officially designated a terrorist organization, in the Russian capital, the FSB said on Wednesday.

Russia designated Hizb ut-Tahrir al-Islami (Islamic Party of Liberation) a terrorist organization in 2003.

The service has established the identities of its activists and their places of residence "where documents pointing to their illegal activity may be kept," an FSB spokesman said.

Amnesty International raised concerns about the sale of British weapons to the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Saudi Arabia.

British Prime Minister David Cameron used his three-day tour to help sell 100 Typhoon jets to the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Oman.

On the first day of his controversial money-making tour to the region, the Prime Minister insisted that flogging military equipment to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates was "legitimate".

He made the remarks in Dubai where he launched a major push to sell British jets but the comments were slammed by human rights campaigners who believe that the arms sales would instigate regional rivalries and confrontations and meantime strengthen the tough stance of Arab dictatorial regimes against their nations.