Politicans and world leaders making news and in the news, and spouting hot air
“More than 40 German deputies on Tuesday proposed that the voting age be lowered to birth to give children a say in the country’s political future, the parliamentary press service said…They proposed that parents be allowed to vote for their offspring, until such time that the children felt they were ready to cast ballots themselves“.
At, say, 18..?
Posted: 9th, July 2008 | In: Politicians | Comments (2)
BARONESS Manningham-Buller on 42-days:
“On a matter of principle, I cannot support 42 days’ pre-charge detention…. I don’t see on a practical basis, as well as a principle one, that these proposals are in anyway workable”
– Baroness Manningham-Buller, the former Head of MI5 making her maiden speech in the Lords yesterday.
Lady Manningham-Buller also said it was essential there was a “balance between the right to life”, “the fact that there is no such thing as complete security” and “the importance of our hard-won civil liberties”.
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Posted: 9th, July 2008 | In: Politicians | Comment (1)
MICHAEL Prysner is asn Iraq war veteran and the Party for Socialism and Liberation’s congressional candidate in Florida’s 22nd District:
We grew bitter as we ate a Thanksgiving dinner of macaroni and stale bread as the president smiled for photos in Baghdad holding a giant fake turkey.
He would rather have had the plastic turkey?
Posted: 9th, July 2008 | In: Politicians | Comment
THE EU is watching you:
The Telecoms Package (Paquet Telecom) is a review of European telecoms law. Ordinarily, it would deal with network infrastructure and universal service and other purely telecoms matters. However, buried within it, deep in the detail, are important legal changes that relate to enforcement of copyright. These changes are a threat to civil liberties and risk undermining the entire structure of Internet, jeopardising businesses and cultural diversity.
The bottom line is that changes to telecoms regulations are needed before EU member states can bring in the so-called “3 strikes” measures – also known as “graduated response” – of which France is leading the way, but other governments, notably the UK, are considering whether to follow. A swathe of amendments have been incorporated at the instigation of entertainment industry lobbying. These amendments are aimed at bringing an end to free downloading. They also bring with them the risk of an unchecked corporate censorship of the Internet, with a host of unanswered questions relating to the legal oversight and administration.
The Telecoms Package is currently in the committee stages of the European Parliament, with a plenary vote due on 1st or 2nd September. This does not leave much time for public debate, and it reminds me of the rushed passage of the data retention directive (see Data Retention on this site). It is, if you like, regulation by stealth.
Wrong.
Posted: 9th, July 2008 | In: Politicians | Comment (1)
ON the blog:
David Davis doesn’t want a real debate on the Orwellian State – he wants a controlled one that’s only on his terms with safe people like Tony Benn and Bob Geldof.
Posted: 9th, July 2008 | In: Politicians | Comment
CHINA and Asia would vote for Barack Obama, says the Asia Society.
During the Asia Society’s 36th Annual Williamsburg Conference in April in Bali, Indonesia, we asked policy leaders from across Asia which US presidential candidate is most favorably viewed in their part of the world. A large number of respondents said Barack Obama was the most popular, and the Indonesian respondents in particular talked about the significance of Senator Obama’s early childhood in the country.
China believes in democracy?
Posted: 8th, July 2008 | In: Politicians | Comment
IN the Province:
Orangemen in Larne have staged a protest outside Council buildings after the Council failed to erect (and pay for) red, white and blue bunting in the town. The DUP Mayor, Bobby McKee, cited equality laws as the reason why Larne Council has failed to erect the bunting.
Do people still say ‘Jimmy Jimmy’? Jimmy Jimmy…
Posted: 8th, July 2008 | In: Politicians | Comment
FROM Benedict Btogan’s blog:
Thank you to Jonathan Levy at Sky News for spotting this about the PM’s plane. It belongs to the guy who used to run Hooters Air, the transport wing of the adult restaurant chain. He’s got the full story here. (I think we’ve taken this story as far as we can…)
Posted: 8th, July 2008 | In: Politicians | Comment
JOHN McCain tries humour, possibly:
Posted: 8th, July 2008 | In: Politicians | Comment
GRAVY?
European parliamentarians have been enjoying their first ride aboard their very own train. The high-speed Thalys train has launched a new, direct service from Brussels to the French city of Strasbourg exclusively for MEPs.
The service is an effort to silence growing discontent over the ‘travelling circus’, which involves the entire European Parliament uprooting to the Alsacian capital for its monthly plenary session at a cost of 200 million euros a year…
Gravy!
Posted: 8th, July 2008 | In: Money, Politicians | Comment
THE China Daily has “30 reasons to watch the Beijing Games” – once the smog clears, naturally.
Want to know why you should watch? (Picture: Beau Bo D’Or Website)
12. “English, English”
A 170-page Chinese Menu in English Version is seen as exemplary of one success of the English-speaking campaign throughout the city.
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Posted: 8th, July 2008 | In: Back pages, Politicians | Comments (4)
WELL…
On that miraculous Saturday, therefore, when the Vulcan took to the skies again – there was perhaps only one regret – that the bomb bay was not filled with ordnance, with the destination Brussels via Westminster.
Posted: 8th, July 2008 | In: Politicians | Comment
HARRY REID says:
Posted: 8th, July 2008 | In: Politicians | Comment
THE Associated Press Reports in “Old guy vs change: McCain, Obama images take shape”, how people responds to hearing the name of the US Presidential agonists.
Ask people to blurt out their first words about the two presidential candidates and one in five say “change” or “outsider” for Barack Obama and “old” for John McCain, according to an Associated Press-Yahoo! News poll released Monday. Those are not only the top responses for each man but the ones used most often since January, when fewer than one in 10 volunteered those descriptions.
The AP doesn’t tell us the other words associated with the men, but Anorak has learnt they may include the words:
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Posted: 8th, July 2008 | In: Politicians | Comment
TO the G8 summit where the Mirror says the G stands for “GREED”.
The Sun goes for “G* AND ATE”, printing the full menu, as Anorak has here.
The Sun has the full 19 dishes on offer, while the Mirror has 18 dishes, shying away from the “Salt-grilled bighand and thornyhead with vinegary water pepper sauce” due to the lack of ketchup.
(Picture: Beau Bo D’Or Website)
The Mirror shows the great and good sat before empty plates, licked clean as Gordon Brown, stood at one end of the table with a look of tight-lipped prudence demands.
But what if you can’t eat your dinner all up? What if your eyes are bigger than your tum-tum? Germany’s Angela Merkel look up the challenge, so too Brown, but Japan’s Prime Minister Fukuda is slender and his wife, the fragrant Kiyoko, is positively frail.
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Posted: 8th, July 2008 | In: Politicians | Comment
GORDON Brown wants us to eat our meat all up and forget about having pudding.
Gordon Brown wants us to drive at the most fuel efficient speeds at all times – 56mph for most mums on the school run.
Gordon Brown wants us to look straight into the camera, no smiling, fringes, or teeth.
Gordon Brown wants us to remain in a small dimly lit room for 42 days, living only on air, bread and water, while contemplating how wasteful we have become.
To view the actual G8 summit menu read on:
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Posted: 7th, July 2008 | In: Politicians | Comments (4)
SHAHID Malik is Britain’s first ever Muslim minister. Says he in the Independent:
“I think most people would agree that if you ask Muslims today what do they feel like, they feel like the Jews of Europe,” he said. “I don’t mean to equate that with the Holocaust but in the way that it was legitimate almost – and still is in some parts – to target Jews, many Muslims would say that we feel the exact same way.
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Posted: 7th, July 2008 | In: Broadsheets, Politicians | Comments (3)
Gadaffi Duck:
Gadafy – (as used by the Guardian and the Irish Times)
Gaddafi – (probably the most common, as used by most newspapers and this website)
Gadaffi – (as used by the Financial Times)
Ghadaffy – (as used by London’s Evening Standard, although not for long)
Gadhafi – (as used by the Wall Street Journal)
Kadafi – (as used by the Los Angeles Times)
Kaddafi – (as used by Newsweek)
Qaddafi – (as used by the New York Times, the International Herald Tribune, the Economist and the New Yorker)
Quakers. Kwakers…
Posted: 7th, July 2008 | In: Broadsheets, Politicians, Tabloids | Comment
“BRITAIN declares war on food waste,” announces the Independent.
How do you fight yesterday’s tuna casserole? If you imprison food, it will only turn nasty and attack you by biological means. Perhaps the old ways of sticking the wrongdoer in the stocks and pelting it with rotten fruit would work, or only exacerbate the problem?
Reading on, we learn that: “The Government is to launch a campaign to stamp out Britain’s waste food mountains as part of a global effort to curb spiralling food prices.”
Food prices are not going up because of increased production and energy costs, but because you are not cleaning your plate.
Says Gordon Brown ( “If you don’t eat yer meat, you can’t have any pudding. How can you
have any pudding if you don’t eat yer meat?” – Pink Floyd: No Education; No Education; No Education):
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Posted: 7th, July 2008 | In: Broadsheets, Politicians | Comments (9)
BARACK Obama is remembering in Time magazine:
When I was a child, I lived overseas for a time with my mother. And one of my earliest memories is of her reading to me the first lines of the Declaration of Independence, explaining how its ideas applied to every American, black and white and brown alike.
That is one of his earliest memories? Believe, as the motto goes.
And then he went for a walk in Selma…
Posted: 2nd, July 2008 | In: Politicians | Comments (6)
AFTER yesterday’s shots of Mrs Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at large, Anorak has obtained evidence of exclusive rumours that the Iranian president has been trawling the web for stand ins and future First Ladies.
Game: Match the name to the picture are win a lifgetime supply of uranium:
Noel Edmonds, Cherie Blair, Anthea Turner, Cristiano Ronaldo, Vanessa Feltz, Queen Noor of Jordan, Victoria Beckham, Darth Vader, Naomi Campbell, Jerry Seinfeld, Girls Aloud, Rowan Williams…
All nuclear bombs are final…
Posted: 2nd, July 2008 | In: Photojournalism, Politicians | Comments (31)
DO we need to translate? She’s like well fit, innit?
İran Cumhurbaşkanı Mahmud Ahmedinejad’ı tanımayan yok. Ancak eşiyle ilk defa görüntülendi.
Bu ender pozu 51 yaşındaki Mahmud Ahmedinejad Tahran’da bir konferans sırasında verdi. Ancak yine de Ahmedinejad’ın eşini tanımak çok zor. Kara çarşaf içinde olan İran First Ladysi siyah bir gözlük takmış.
Ancak Ahmedinejad’ın eşinin kaç yaşında olduğu ve isminin ne olduğu da kamuoyu tarafından bilinmiyor. Bayan Ahmedinejad’ın kocası gibi mühendislik eğitimi aldığı tahmin ediliyor.
If you can translate, please do…
Posted: 1st, July 2008 | In: Politicians | Comments (14)
BARACK Obama is the Messiah…
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Posted: 1st, July 2008 | In: Photojournalism, Politicians | Comments (4)
GOOGLE marks non-Obama bloggers as spam:
Did Google use its network of online services to silence critics of Barack Obama? That was the question buzzing on a corner of the blogosphere over the last few days, after several anti-Obama bloggers were unable to update their sites, which are hosted on Google’s Blogger service.
The bloggers in question, most of them supporters of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, and all of them opposed to Senator Obama, received a notice from Google last week saying that their sites had been identified as potential “spam” blogs. “You will not be able to publish posts to your blog until we review your site and confirm that it is not a spam blog,” the Google e-mail read.
Many of the bloggers were affiliated with JustSayNoDeal.com a Web site that opposes Senator Obama. They include http://bluelyon.blogspot.com, http://comealongway.blogspot.com, http://hillaryorbust.blogspot.com and http://mccaindemocrats.blogspot.com.
In an article that appeared on Bloggasm.com, the reporter Simon Owens spoke with some of the affected bloggers, who said they believed that Google had fallen prey to a campaign by activists supporting Senator Obama. According to the bloggers, the Obama supporters had clicked on a “flag” on the anti-Obama blogs alerting Google that they were spam.
Can he fix it?
Posted: 1st, July 2008 | In: Politicians | Comment
IN China the big news is the “Zhou Tiger”, named in honour of Zhou Zhenglong, a villager in Shaanxi who claimed to have taken 71 photographs of the almost extinct South China tiger.
He received 20,000 yuan from the local forestry department for his “discovery”. Zhou also photographed a tiger’s footprint.
Who dares say China is an enemy to wildlife? The state-owned news and propaganda agency Xinhua lapped up the discovery.
The Forestry Department of northwest China’s Shaanxi Province released one image.
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Posted: 30th, June 2008 | In: Photojournalism, Politicians, Strange But True | Comment
