10 Strangest Defense Mechanisms In Nature

We are all aware of the fight or flight principle in biology, where an animal responds to a threat by facing the enemy or fleeing from it. There are some fascinating ways that nature deals with these threats. This list will show the ten animals (plus a bonus entry) with the weirdest defense mechanisms.

10

Flying Fish

There are many creatures with the power of flight but this feature is generally not attributed to fish. Flying fish are able to jump out of the water and fly or glide for long distances. This is used as a defense mechanism to escape from predators.
The flying fish has a streamlined, torpedo-shaped body which helps it gain enough energy to break through the surface of the water. To get out of the water, the fish swims at speeds of up to 37 miles (60 km) per hour. The fish’s pectoral fins have evolved into large wings which allows the fish to become airborne. Once it is out of the water, it can fly for up to 656 feet (200 meters), using its tail fin as a sort of propeller. In 2008 in Japan, a flying fish was observed gliding for a record 45 seconds.

9

Hagfish

The Hagfish is an ancient organism that has existed for 300 million years and is the only animal with a skull and no vertebrae. When disturbed, it expels a disgusting, slimy substance at predators. As it mixes with water, the slime expands and there can be up to 5 gallons (20 liters) produced. This creates a distraction as the attacker tries to get out of the mess. It also creates a knot in its body and this, along with the slime, allows the Hagfish to escape the clutches of a predator. The slime can choke fish as it accumulates in the gills. The Hagfish has been known to slime sharks as shown in the video above. Skip to 1.30 minutes in for the best reaction.
The tiny threads that make up the Hagfish’s slime are ten times stronger than nylon and this is of great interest scientists, who believe it can be used to make clothes.

8

Potato Beetle

The Potato beetle has developed a strange way to avoid being eaten by larger insects. The larvae cover themselves in their own feces. The dung is poisonous and the foul smell wards off predators.
The beetle eats from the nightshade plant and it reuses the toxic substances produced by this in its feces. This defense is called a fecal shield. Feces is guided onto the beetles’ backs through a series of muscle contractions in the abdomen and over time, it forms the shield.

7

Boxer Crab

When it detects a significant threat, the Boxer crab will pack a powerful punch using sea anemones attached to its claws. They look like pom-poms, but they can be deadly to other sea creatures and they have a strong sting. The crab waves his claws around when disturbed, to ward off danger.
There is a mutual agreement with the two organisms as they both benefit from the arrangement. The boxer crab gains an awesome defense mechanism that would put most other animals to shame, and the anemone becomes mobile and is able to obtain more food. The crab also uses sponges and corals in place of the anemone.

6

Eurasian Roller

Similar to the Potato beetle, the Eurasian roller’s offspring will cover themselves in their own body fluid to avoid becoming food for a hungry animal. This time however, it is vomit that forms the shield. The vomit-covered baby birds look and smell horrible so they are less likely to be eaten. The parents will smell the vomit too and they quickly fly back to the nest to ward off the threat, which is usually a bird of prey or snake. This is the only bird observed to use vomit as a form of communication.

5

Sea Cucumber

Nature’s most disgusting defense mechanism is that of the sea cucumber. Once disturbed, it will eject its sticky intestines and other organs out of the anus, at the attacker; entangling it. This dazzles and distracts the enemy. In some species, the intestines are poisonous, containing a toxic chemical called holothurin. The sea cucumber’s body contracts violently to squeeze out the insides.
The creature doesn’t seem to mind this process, and the organs are restored quickly. It takes about six weeks for the missing body parts to be regenerated.

4

Turkey Vulture

When the Turkey vulture is approached by a hungry predator, it will regurgitate the entire contents of its stomach. This is used as either an offering of food or to make the predators flee. The vomit of the vulture is utterly disgusting, and the smell completely puts off most predators. The vulture can then run away at a quicker pace as it is a lot lighter. Although, by this point, a lot of predators would have gone already. Some starving animals will actually resort to eating the vomit, even though it is very acidic and can burn. [http://vulturesociety.homestead.com/TVFacts.html]

3

Japetella heathi Octopus

This octopus is found in the oceans at depths of 1,900–3,200 feet (600–1000 meters). The Japetella heathi octopus has had to adapt to evade two types of deadly predators—those that hunt by looking for silhouettes created by the lighter waters above, and those which use their own light from bioluminescence. To avoid creating a silhouette, the octopus is almost completely transparent, except from its eyes and guts. However, these have become reflective, reducing their shadow. This allows light to pass through the creature, reducing its visibility to predators.
However, this is a disadvantage against predators with bioluminescence, such as the angler fish, as the octopus would reflect the light, allowing the fish to easily locate it. To avoid becoming food for the angler fish, when the octopus detects their light, it activates skin pigments. These pigments allow the octopus to change its color to red in less than a second, greatly reducing its reflectivity. This effectively makes the octopus invisible to angler fish and other headlight fish. When the threat is gone, and the light is no longer present, Japetella heathi reverts to transparency.

2

Iberian Ribbed Newt

In a previous list, we featured a frog that can break its bones through its skin. However, the Iberian ribbed newt takes this to a whole other level. This creature is found on the Iberian Peninsula and Morocco. When under threat, the newt will push its ribs through the skin, out of tubercles on the side of its body. These ribs act as weapons to ward off attackers. Despite the rupturing of skin, the process causes no pain to the newt.
In order to do this, it moves its ribs away from the spine, increasing their angle by up to fifty degrees. The skin is stretched and the bones rip through. At the same time, a poisonous substance is secreted through pores on the skin. The spiky ribs puncture the attacker’s skin and then the poison enters. This can even cause death. The newt’s defense proves to be very effective.

1

Malaysian Exploding Ant

Although the Iberian ribbed newt is unaffected by its defense mechanism, the same cannot be said about the Malaysian exploding ant. The ant defends the colony from attackers by blowing itself up. Two large glands full of a poisonous chemical are located all across the ant’s body and when attacked, it will violently contract its muscles. This causes the fluid-filled glands to burst, releasing the sticky, poisonous substance from the head at the target. This substance not only entangles the attackers, but also causes extreme irritation and corrosion. This restrains the creature and can kill.

+

Wood Frog

This frog has the ability to come back to life after being completely frozen with no brain or heart activity. This strange adaptation acts as a defense against the extreme cold.
During winter, when its core temperature drops too far below the regulatory limit, the wood frog’s brain instructs its liver to produce huge amounts of glucose which acts as a sort of antifreeze. This prevents ice crystals becoming too large, therefore stopping cells and blood vessels becoming ruptured.
The frog can remain in this frozen state for weeks on end until a change in temperature allows it to thaw. The heart muscles, which have been protected by a huge build-up of glucose, suddenly burst into life by rubbing together. This generates an electric charge and gives the heart a burst of energy which allows it to start pumping again. The blood then starts flowing throughout the frog’s body and after a few minutes, it is back to normal. This incredible adaptation allows the frog to survive in extreme environments such as northern Canada and Alaska.

Student Expelled from Covenant University for Watching Pòrnograph

 A former student of Covenant University, Ota, Ogun state has taken the institution to court, challenging his illegal expulsion for allegedly watching Pòrnography and secular music on his laptop.
The student, Vwamhi Longji Felix, in his 24-paragraph affidavit to support his claim, stated that before he was expelled his parents had spent not less than N10 million on his school fees and other expenses. He was a 400 level student of Communication Technology reportedly expelled on 23rd November 2012, following a night raid by the Student Affairs’ Unit of the institution. This was followed by his appearance before the school’s disciplinary panel which recommended his expulsion.
Vanguard reports that at the resumed hearing of the matter yesterday, the prosecuting counsel Segun Fatoki, told the court that Felix was allegedly expelled without an opportunity of a proper hearing or viewing the evidence in accordance with the standard practice as guaranteed by the constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria 1999. He also claimed that his expulsion was a violation of Section 44 of Chapter 4 of the student Handbook of the Covenant University.
However, the school in its counter affidavit stated that in the school hand book it was noted that students are not allowed to be in possession of unholy films and home video or circular music tapes, either stored or directly in the computer or listen through the use of computer radio or any other electronic device when on campus during an academic session.
Also, the school claimed that it is an offence that will attract punishment of expulsion for any student who indulges himself or herself in public display of or be in possession of Pòrnographic films or photographs, exploring or viewing Pòrnographic websites on the internet.
Vanguard reports that after listening to both parties, Justice Mobolaji Ojo of Ogun State High Court said they should allow every individual to grow life that they need to live adding that if at age 15 to 17 they don’t live that life, they would live it when they are 30 to 35 because of too much rules. “A youth must live like a youth and an adolescent must live like an adolescent. If all of the traits of a youth are not allowed to be exhibited at the right time, it would be done at the wrong time,” Vanguard quoted him as saying.
The case was adjourned till March 27, 2013

10 Ways Facebook Makes You Smarter

By the time you finish reading this paragraph, almost 300,000 people around the world will have written a new Facebook status. That’s insane. Even more insane is the fact that another 800 million people are going to go on to read those statuses. Since ninety-six percent of Listverse’s demographic is human, we can safely assume that most of you use Facebook, at least every now and then. Well, congratulations! Believe it or not, all that time playing Bubble Dash Saga and watching Gangnam parodies is making you smarter. Here’s how:

10

More Friends . . . More Brains

Reason: More Facebook Friends Increases Working Intelligence
Right off the bat, it turns out that the more friends you have, the smarter you’re going to be. Specifically, people who have more friends on Facebook tend to have more developed brain matter in the amygdala. The amygdala is a section of the brain associated with emotional responses that ties in with memory function, like remembering faces and names.
In the interests of transparency, the researchers who gathered the data aren’t actually sure whether having more Facebook friends leads to an increase in density in that region—or if people who have a larger amygdala are just more likely to have more social contacts. But there’s an easy way to find out—Prof. Geraint Rees, who published the study, would like to track a group of Facebook users over a longer period of time to pinpoint whether their brain structures are actually changing based on their friend network. For now, the safest thing to do would probably be to send friend requests to everyone your girlfriend knows—you just can’t take chances with your brain.

9

Improved Memory

Reason: Facebook Improves Your Memory
One of the side effects of having a large number of friends is that now you need to keep up with them all. In real life you probably have a few dozen acquaintances—co-workers, classmates, drinking buddies—and maybe half a dozen close friends that you see often. But on Facebook the average person has over 200 friends—much more than most people do in real life. Scottish researcher Dr. Tracy Alloway believes that simply keeping track of those people can considerably increase your working memory over time.
This is separate from the previous item because it’s a phenomenon that affects everybody—not just people with thousands of friends. Basically, as long as your friend list on Facebook is larger than what you would consider your average real-life network, your brain will need to work harder to effectively process that increase in social contacts. In the words of Dr. Alloway, it’s “engaging your brain and improving nerve connections,” which is just a boring way of saying it gives you memory superpowers.

8

Rewired Brain

Reason: Social Interaction Rewires Your Brain
Interacting with others to solve problems isn’t a human-exclusive ability—but researchers believe that we do it a whole heck of a lot more than any other animal, and that might be one of the reasons we’ve evolved bigger brains. It’s something that’s still happening, too. A team of researchers at the Dublin Trinity College simulated the neural pathways of two people who had to decide whether to work together to overcome a challenge or work individually. They found that cooperation forced the brain to create new pathways as it factored in what the other person would do. The brain grew and changed to allow room for more potential outcomes.
According to Luke McNally, the head researcher, this is something your brain does any time you’re interacting with people. Not just on Facebook of course, but by golly it’s heading in that direction—a separate study looked at the social behavior of young adults from thirteen different countries, and found that over forty percent would rather interact online than in real life.

7

Positive Emotions

Reason: Positive Emotions Make You More Creative
There are a lot of negative things that can be said about Facebook, but the act of keeping in touch with friends and family has an overwhelmingly positive influence. Even small amounts of positive reinforcement have been shown to develop a broader style of thinking, and researchers discovered that individuals who were shown a film about something positive were able to perform better on word association and visual processing tests.
Another experiment worked with physicians who were given positive imagery before being asked to diagnose a case of liver disease. The physicians who went into the case in a good mood came to their result more quickly, showed more creative reasoning, and were better at integrating the case information.

6

Cute Animals

Reason: Cute Animals Help You Concentrate
Facebook is built on a foundation of kitten bricks and puppy mortar, and there’s probably a much better way to say that. The point being, it’s nearly impossible to sign onto Facebook without being cuddlepunched in the heart by an adorable picture of a tiny kitten in a teacup, or a puppy and a kitten napping together, or any fluffy combination of the two. And that’s okay, because a study from Japan’s Hiroshima University shows that pictures of cute animals help you concentrate and perform tasks more effectively.
The study divided students into groups: one group played the game Operation, and another group was told to find a specific number in a long sequence of numbers. Additionally, some people were shown pictures of baby animals, some were shown pictures of adult animals, and others were shown pictures of food.
The results: students who viewed the kitten and puppy pictures performed forty-four percent better than when they didn’t look at anything. The other groups—the ones who saw pictures of food and adult animals—didn’t change their performance levels at all.

5

Writing Skills

Reason: Facebook Reinforces Writing Skills
There’s a crowd of people somewhere who will swear that every generation is getting dumber. With our newfangled Twitters and mobile phones, the bar for intelligent language is dropping like crazy and our youth are taking the brunt of it. But the truth is, there’s a good chance the current generation is writing more—and better—than just about any generation for the past fifty years, and it’s due to websites like Facebook.
In 2001, Stanford University began what they call the Stanford Study of Writing. Over the course of the study, they found that students who wrote on Facebook fairly often were actually better writers because of it. The reason is that the students learned how to adapt their writing style to fit a certain situation. Samples of writing from Facebook, emails, and school papers all had a subtle difference in tone even though they came from the same person. The effect on the brain is similar to switching back and forth between languages.

4

Reading

Reason: Facebook Forces You To Read
Shooting off the previous entry, there’s no denying that Facebook is, above all, a text-based website. While it may not seem like most of the posts offer anything valuable, the very fact that you read them affects your brain in thousands of different ways. A recent study asked participants to read a book while undergoing an fMRI brain scan. They were told to read with two different mindsets—first as if they were reading for fun, and second as if they were analyzing the book.
They found that the two different styles of reading caused blood to flow into different areas of the brain, triggering separate mental functions. Similarly, the sheer variety of types of posts on Facebook forces our brains to process them in different ways—we use different areas of our brains to read about how our co-worker made a chicken casserole versus reading a link to a political news story.
And it gets crazier: Facebook also develops selective reading skills. When you scan through the news feed, your brain is picking out words and phrases, sorting them, and focusing your attention on the most interesting pieces of information.

3

Developed Reasoning

Reason: Arguments Develop Your Logical Reasoning
Let’s be serious here for a second—the real purpose of Facebook (and the internet in general) is to make it easier to argue with anybody you want—and your brain absolutely loves it. Behavioral researchers are suggesting that the concept of arguing—of proving your own viewpoint to be superior over another’s—is one of the foundations of human intelligence. And the mental process of developing an argument is like jumping jacks for your brain.
One of the ideas of argumentation theory is that arguing forces you to think abstractly in order to develop a logical, persuasive dialogue. You’re not only using your memory to recall the right words—you’re taking another step by shaping the context of those words to match your argument.
And while arguing in real life eventually breaks down into “You’re an idiot.” No, you’re an idiot,” the mere fact that you have time to think through your argument online makes you more likely to plan it out and follow through—all of which requires reasoning skills and critical thinking.

2

Crystallized Intelligence

Reason: Facebook Is A Pool Of Crystallized Intelligence
Cultural intelligence, political intelligence, social intelligence—none of those really have anything to do with the mechanical way your brain works. But they do mesh together into a general understanding of the world, something known as crystallized intelligence. Humans are believed to have two types of intelligence: fluid and crystallized. Fluid is your ability to solve problems and use logic. Crystallized is your store of knowledge, like your vocabulary, your knowledge of history and current events, etc.
Think back, where was the first time you heard about or watched the Kony 2012 video a few months ago? For many of you, it was on Facebook. Where do you get updates about your favorite band, or find out about new government legislation, or find sports scores? Whether or not you use Facebook, the site as a whole is a pool of information and knowledge. Some pieces your brain filters out, other pieces are stored away for later. There are other places to find that information, but Facebook is a drip feed of constant and ever-changing knowledge, if you choose to look at it that way.

1

Critical Thinking

Reason: Facebook Games Boost Critical Thinking And Creativity
The problem with video games is that responsible people think they’re stupid. No employer will hire you if you list “1,300 hours of gameplay logged on Call of Duty” as one of your qualifications, because for some reason an adult playing video games is taboo, like shouting “Voldemort,” at wizarding school. But we all do it, because there’s no other way to account for the 48.7 million people who play ChefVille each month, not to mention the hundreds of other Facebook games.
But don’t worry—it might be one of the best things for your brain. Studies are showing that playing video games—especially puzzle-type games—teaches you to solve problems creatively by creating a scenario that chemically rewards your brain for critical thinking.
Games like Biotronic and BeJewled develop spacial reasoning and pattern recognition, while games like FarmVille and CityVille help attention span and goal management by creating a long-term environment that reflects your earlier decisions. Everything that creates a challenge strengthens your brain by forcing it to work out something new and unexpected. So log on and go craft mines or something, I don’t know. You’re the genius. But before you do: like the naijavigilance Facebook page and double your chances of getting smarter!

10 Famous Quotes Everyone Gets Wrong

10“There’s a Sucker Born Every Minute”

Perhaps one of the greatest scam artists to ever walk this Earth was P.T Barnum. He made his entire livelihood by ripping people off. So, it’s no surprise that people seem to remember the above quote as something he said. However, as tricky as he was, Barnum was never that pretentious.
The true story is actually quite a bit deeper. In 1869, a man names David Hannum was exhibitoning a giant statue and charging people to come see it. Wanting in on some of that dough, Barnum offered to buy it for almost twice its worth. Hannum turned him down, so Barnum decided to take things into his own hands.
He built a cheap replica and told the press that he had bought the real statue and that Hannum’s was fake. Immediately, people flocked to see Barnum’s replica and Hannum, defeated, uttered the quote before suing the pants off Barnum.

9

“Israel Must Be Wiped Off the Map”

Ask any Fox news pundit why Iran is evil, and they’ll tell you how Iran wants Israel powdered into ash. After all, Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad did say that Israel must be wiped off the map. That very quote is one of the reasons the UN is preventing Iran from developing a nuclear program. Except, the crazy thing is that no one has ever said that.
It all comes from a poorly translated quote in an old New York Times article. Quickly, Persian speaking journalists tracked down the original quote and revealed that while Iran did want Israel to “collapse”, they didn’t want them annihilated.

8

“Let Them Eat Cake”

Let’s say you’re a history teacher, and you need to somehow show your students that the French hierarchy hated the peasant class. Why, you pull out this quote! What better way to show how callous Marie Antoinette was about her own starving people.
The story goes that she uttered this when she was informed that the rebellion had invaded the Bastille, and that it could no longer be ignored. The thing is, she never actually said that.  It came from a book by Rousseau written when Queen Marie was about seven years old.

7

“Nice Guys Finish Last”

You’ve probably heard this quote in countless romantic comedies about how nice guys somehow are handicapped by their niceness.
Leo Durocher, a successful baseball player, is often times given credit for this quote. Though he initially denied saying it, Durocher eventually gave in and named his autobiography after it.

6

“Everything That Will Be Invented, Has Been Invented” 

Apparently, in the 1800s, Charles Duell of the US Patent Office used this quote in regard to all innovation.
Duell never said this, and in fact was completely against this type of thinking. In his 1899 annual Patent Office report, he quotes President William McKinley: “Our future progress and prosperity depend upon our ability to equal, if not surpass, other nations in the enlargement and advance of science, industry and commerce. To invention we must turn as one of the most powerful aids to the accomplishment of such a result.”

5

“I Only Regret That I Have But One Life to Lose For My Country”

Nathan Hale was one of nations’ first spies. He is known for being captured by the British and saying this quote just before he was hanged. His quote is repeated by American soldiers all over the world.
In reality, Hale never said that line before he died. While no one knows exactly what he did say, witnesses report it being given with “great composure and resolution.”
5 years later, a paper misquoted Hale, and used testimony from his sister—who wasn’t there when he was executed—to verify. Since then, it’s been repeated in history sources regarding Hale.

4

“The Death of One Man is a Tragedy, The Death of Millions is a Statistic”

For a long time, the earliest appearance of this line was in a New York Times article about Stalin.
However, upon further digging, researchers found that the line actually came from a story about a fictional police state that was supposed to satirize the Soviet Union, which may be the reason everyone believed Stalin could say such a thing.

3

“Elementary, My Dear Watson!”

More than anything, Holmes is remembered for his ability to deduce things out of thin air. “Elementary, my dear Watson” is his best quote embodying that.
However, if you scan the books or even ctrl-f their PDFs, you won’t find one mention of the line. That’s because it was never written in the books and seems to have gained widespread popularity from the 1929 movie The Return of Sherlock Holmes. Everyone just seems to have forgotten where it came from.

2

“I Invented the internet”

For some reason, a lot of people seem to believe that Al Gore invented the internet. In fact, the internet was created over the course of a few decades by a number of programmers from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (or DARPA) and the CIA.
While Gore played a role in fostering the development of technology that eventually became the internet, he’s never claimed that he grabbed a hammer and a soldering iron and personally “invented the internet.”

1

“I Disapprove of What You Say, But I Will Defend to the Death Your Right to Say It”

History teachers love to say that Voltaire famously wrote this in one of his books. But if you asked them which book, they’d probably scratch their heads and mumble something about continuing with the lesson.
The truth is, while this quote is certainly the most recognizable of Voltaire’s and the whole idea of free speech, Voltaire never said it. Instead it can be found in a book called Friends of Voltaire which is about Voltaire’s ideas and philosophy.
In that book, Evelyn Beatrice Hall says that everything Voltaire stood for can be summed up in one poignant sentence, and then she said the above quote. For some reason, people took this to mean that Voltaire himself had said it. Unless Voltaire was a twenty century historian, we’re going to pass on that one.
Mohammed Shariff once said “be the change Obama wishes to see in the world”.

10 Ways the Government Is Killing You (u s version)

Along with bankers, Bronies and the cast of Jersey Shore, politicians are among the most reviled people on Earth. When they’re not busy cheating taxpayers, they’re either making racist comments or making daily policy decisions so deranged they may indirectly kill us all. I’m talking conspiracy-theory stuff like:

10

Civilian Experimentation

If there’s one thing you don’t associate with American values, its human experimentation. Yet throughout the 20th century, the government targeted civilians with some of the nastiest stuff imaginable.
Chief among these was Operation Midnight Climax, a taxpayer-funded idea that was as porn-filled as it sounds. After setting up brothels in New York City and San Francisco, the CIA hired prostitutes to dose clients with LSD while they watched from behind two-way mirrors. Less amusing was a US-operation in the 1940s to infect hundreds of Guatemalan citizens with syphilis; an operation they then topped by plunging the whole country into civil war. Perhaps least amusing of all was an Army-funded study into the effects of Agent Orange on prisoners which was tested by injecting them with some 400 times the safe amount. The CIA now claims those days to be behind them, but ask yourself: would you really trust the owner of a San Francisco acid-brothel to tell the truth?

9

Support for Terrorism

It’s a conspiracy cliché that the US funds terrorism. Everyone from LSD munching hippies to earnest college kids into Noam Chomsky will agree on this one. Sadly, they happen to be right.
Take the messy case of MEK/MKO. In the ’70s they were a Marxist revolutionary group who attacked American diplomats working in Iran. In the ’80s they killed dozens in bomb attacks, supported the Iranian Islamic revolution and later aligned themselves with Saddam Hussein. They were blacklisted in 1997 and, in the run up to Gulf War II, cited by the Whitehouse as evidence of Iraq sheltering terrorists. When the dust settled, we took one look at these terrorists and decided to start paying them to kill Iranians. Despite being an insane cult, we’ve now even removed them from the terror list, because there’s no way that could bite us in the ass. Not like it did with, say, Saddam Hussein.

8

Increased Inequality

We’ve known for years that inequality can be bad for society. It spreads illness, discontent and trashes social mobility. Yet politicians keep voting in measures that will increase it.
Seventy percent of the US economy is based on middle class spending. Take away that peg and the whole thing comes crashing down. And that’s what’s happening: since the 1970s, middle class spending power has dropped, while rates of unemployment have skyrocketed. Most families are now estimated to be three paychecks from destitution, a depressing figure in more ways than one—it’s estimated that our unequal society is slowing potential economic expansion by up to a third. Coupled with the lowest social mobility of any developed country and we’re essentially condemning ourselves to less prosperity and damaging social divisions, all so a handful of billionaires can rebrand themselves as multi-billionaires.

7

Kidnapping and Assassination

As a citizen of your country, you probably expect certain rights: freedom of speech, the right to worship as you please and the right to not be murdered by a government kill-squad.
Anwar Al-Awlaki was a US citizen who vocally-supported terror groups, posted videos on radical websites and should definitely have been chucked in jail with a bar of soap around shower time. Instead, a targeted government drone killed him without any of that silly due process. Then you have people like Jamal al-Harith, a British citizen who was tortured in Guantanamo despite his only connection to the Taliban being that they had also tortured him; or the Staten Island salesman who got six years for practicing his first amendment right to watch an anti-US TV channel. Since freedom of speech legally includes advocating violence against the government his arrest was technically illegal, and therefore terrifying.

6

Causing Environmental Catastrophe

Mention climate change and you’re bound to spark a vast and bitter debate. So let’s just agree that total destruction of the environment isn’t great, however you go about it.
And governments are going at it like it’s going out of fashion. First: emissions. Just about every major polluter in the world has missed their carbon targets, leading to a scenario the World Bank optimistically described as doomsday. Then you have the countries like Germany and the US which are starting to rely on biofuel—an environmentally catastrophic product that causes mass deforestation and famine in other countries. Not forgetting our reliance on fossil fuels, a policy fully-expected to lead to everything bad you can possibly imagine happening all at once. Essentially, however you look at our energy policy, we’re screwed.

5

Constant War

Since going into Afghanistan in 2001, we’ve been in a constant state of war. The Libya action, the War on Terror, Gulf War II . . . When’s it all going to end?
How about never? Late last year, the Washington Post published a report on Obama’s infamous kill list which estimated we’d be fighting for at least another decade. In the midst of withdrawing from Afghanistan we’ve found time to get involved in Mali, deploy weapons near Syria and prepare to bomb the living crap out of Iran. It’s gotten so bad that some commentators are claiming we’ve finally reached Orwell’s infamous state of perpetual war. Whether you believe that or not is another matter—nonetheless, it’s a pretty scary thought.

4

Austerity

European governments are currently trying to save us all with austerity, despite it plainly not working. This isn’t just my opinion—the IMF has specifically warned EU leaders to back off before they kill the global economy. That’s right—global economy: if Europe goes down everyone from the US to China would take a hit.
And that’s not counting austerity’s human cost: cuts in Greece have led to the rise of Golden Dawn, a fascist army-for-rent who get their kicks attacking foreigners and infiltrating the police. Portugal has seen violent riots, while Spain’s unemployment rate currently stands at just about everyone. Worst of all, it doesn’t even work. IMF figures estimate that every pound the UK cuts from its budget results in as much as £1.70 being lost—pushing us into a triple dip recession and increasing that inequality we talked about earlier.

3

Drone Strikes

On paper, drone strikes look good: a pilotless plane locates some terrorist and blows him straight to Jannah. No risk, no casualties; one dead murderer. Sounds awesome, right?
Except it’s totally counterproductive. Recent studies have estimated drone strikes kill nearly fifty times as many civilians as terrorists, including women, rescue workers and children. While that’s an awful statistic, you could argue that the ends justify the means—if the strikes weren’t boosting Al-Qaeda’s membership. According to reports, when the first drone entered Yemeni airspace, Al-Qaeda’s international wing was thought to number around 300. Now it’s over 700. This isn’t just coincidence either, the new recruits specifically cite drone casualties as their reason for joining. For every terrorist we kill when a missile hits a wedding or a mosque, we’re making dozens more; all of them just itching to blow us sky high.

2

The War on Drugs

Ever since Nixon got a bee in his bonnet about hippie kids smoking their marijuana, we’ve been fighting The War on Drugs. And it’s killing hundreds of thousands of innocent people.
In Mexico the trade that has sprung up from trafficking has made the cartels so much money not even the entire Mexican army can bring them down. In the last five years they’ve killed somewhere between 40,000 and 60,000 people, including police officers and the populations of entire towns. We’ve thrown literally everything we can at them—short of just nuking everything below Texas and calling it a day—and they’re stronger than ever. We’ve reached the point where Latin American leaders are almost begging us to change our policies and save their citizens, but what do we do? That’s right: keep on fighting a war only seven percent of Americans believe in.

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Free Access to Firearms

This is a touchy subject, so I’ll say now that it’s purely my opinion. But allowing any idiot to earn a semi-automatic weapon doesn’t make the streets any safer. Numerous studies correlating gun ownership and homicide rates show gun violence is more prevalent in countries where guns are readily available. Switzerland is one of the few places where you’re statistically safer, because anyone who buys a gun is vetted like crazy. No-one gets to just walk into a store half cut and pick up a Browning Automatic and a sack of bullets. In Australia, the ban on automatic and semi-automatic weapons was followed by a sixty percent drop in gun homicides. By allowing the whole country open access to guns specialized for killing, the government allows killing to continue—even when all the evidence points to sensible control measures. But hey, that’s justlistverse opinion