WASHED AND READY TO EAT

I've always held that truth is stranger than fiction and spend rather too much time on social networks posting links to stories which demonstrate the point. The news, however, that the Nazis planned to train dogs to speak takes us to a brand new level of wtf. The so-called 'Woofen SS' has been uncovered by a British academic, trawling through archive journals in Germany. Essentially, a contingent of fascist Fidos was trained to imitate human speech - a little like the mutt on That's Life in the 1970s who was able to say 'sausages'. According to reports, the specially-trained canines were taught to tap out messages with their paws and converse about poetry and political matters. I'm not sure we needed any more evidence about just how barking mad the Nazis were, but this is definitely one to file away for future reference. Are you a talking hound with something to say about this story? If so, please use the comments button below.

Difficult to know whether to laugh or cry over the proposal from the Taliban for a joint commission with NATO to investigate civilian deaths in Afghanistan. Would this be the same Taliban which recently stoned a couple to death for alleged adultery? The same bunch of fundamentalist extremists who deny education to girls, stop people listening to music and who previously acted as minders for Osama bin Laden? Unbelievably, The Guardian reports that the cynical propaganda ploy is actually being taken seriously by the western military forces in the region. What a pathetic and contemptible concession. Perhaps we should have teamed up with the Nazis in World War II to see whether we'd bombed some of their cities a little bit too hard? When will we ever learn? We get nowhere by appeasing people who have a complete disregard for human rights. If we don't think we can beat the Taliban and want to concede defeat, by all means let's bring our troops home. But let's not shame ours...