Archive for the ‘Politics’ Category
2009
“BERLIN – A court has ordered psychiatric care for a man who staged a short-lived protest before Barack Obama’s speech in Berlin during his campaign for the U.S. presidency. The 41-year-old German man drove through barricades around Berlin’s Victory Column the day before Obama was to speak in July 2008 and poured red paint from his car.
The Berlin state court says the man was protesting “injustice and poverty in the world” and is not guilty of any offenses for the reason of mental illness. The court says its ruling Tuesday that the man suffers from manic depression. He was remanded to a psychiatric institute for care.”
via yahoo.com
“Dr. John Holdren, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy—better known as the “science czar”—has been a longtime prophet of environmental catastrophes. Never discouraged but never right.
And thanks to resourceful bloggers, you can read excerpts from a hard-to-find book co-authored by Holdren in the late 1970s, called Ecoscience: Population, Resources, Environment, online. In it, you will find the czar wading into some unpleasant talk about mass sterilizations and abortions.
It’s not surprising. Holdren spent the ’70s boogying down to the vibes of an imaginary population catastrophe and global cooling. He also participated in the famous wager between scientist Paul Ehrlich, the now-discredited Population Bomb theorist (and co-author of Ecoscience), and economist Julian Simon, who believed human ingenuity would overcome demand.”
via reason.com
“Jacqui Smith has admitted she was not up to being Home Secretary – and should have been given some proper training before she was handed the job.
Ms Smith, who is likely to be remembered for claiming expenses for a porn film watched by her husband, said any success she had was down to luck rather than skill. She added: ‘When I became Home Secretary I’d never run a major organisation. I hope I did a good job but if I did it was more by luck than by any kind of development of skills. I think we should have been better trained.I think there should have been more induction.’
When asked by Total Politics magazine if she had worried she was not up to the job, she replied: ‘Every single time I was appointed to a ministerial job I thought that. I didn’t sleep for a week in 1999 when I got my ministerial job.’”
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