From the Rolling Stones' Rice Krispies jingle to Bob Dylan's Victoria Secret commercial, our music idols have found it hard to turn down a big cheque.

This week is a great one for the detritus of popular music. Sir Paul McCartney's new album, Memory Almost Full, has finally been released on the Starbucks record label, Hear Music.

It's now being played to death in 10,000 stores worldwide - you can even get Macca's mug on a limited-edition Starbucks card!

To celebrate this momentous, erm, moment in the mixing of music and mammon - and of stars' readiness to sell out to the highest bidder - let's take a stroll through the rock'n'roll hall of shame and revisit the maddest and baddest rock star TV ads of all-time

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Propagandizing the Masses for War

9-11 was the catalyst the neocons needed to begin their revolution, and securing public opinion for such a war has been known for some time.

Hermann Goering, General of the third Reich said in his prison cell in Nuremberg in 1946:

Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece?

But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a communist dictatorship ... That is easy.

All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.

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Given the failure of existing human rights organizations to take issues of war and economic bullying seriously, he calls for the formation of an ‘imperialism watch’ that would focus on all the different expressions of US/Western imperialism.

Such an organization could denounce not only military invasions, but also intervention in elections, the production of new military bases, high handed economic behavior, etc.

Not unlike current human rights campaigns, it might help to produce campaigns around several of these issues at once, although, unlike the human rights groups, there would of course be no hint that intervention by the West might be a relevant last resort.   more »

Iraq has become a case study in anarchy. I don't know how George Bush sleeps at night. You'd have to be a monster to rest easy, knowing what he's done.

I'm not sure one man's sloth has ever caused so much harm. My God man, if you didn't want to be president, why did you apply for the job?

What a hideous combination of conceits Bush has. He has the ego that drives him to want to be the top man.

He has the arrogance to think that he is qualified. But he has the laziness that makes him not want to actually do the job. He has the insecurity that makes him want to cover up his faults.   more »

Democrats seek to close what has become known as the “God-gap” in 2008 and, on Monday, their three leading presidential candidates participated in an unprecedented public forum organised by left-leaning evangelicals.

Hillary Clinton disclosed that Methodist grounding sustained her through the scandal involving her husband’s infidelity, saying: “I’m not sure I would have gotten through it without my faith.”

In an empathetic moment of which Bill Clinton would have been proud, she admitted that her daily prayers were sometimes selfish – “Oh Lord, why can’t you help me lose some weight?” – which she suspected might prompt some heavenly “eye-rolling”.

John Edwards, who was brought up a Southern Baptist, used language that had the ring of authenticity. “We are all sinners,” he said. “We all fall short, which is why we have to ask for forgiveness from the Lord.”   more »