politics

Bachmann

by

Christopher Hitchens pens his thoughts on Bachmann … here are a couple of extracts …

That was actually three dripping custard pies, rather than just the one, with which Rep. Michele Bachmann assailed her own face by bragging to Fox News about her small-town Iowa roots …

… boasted by the sturdy small town of her girlhood, she went on to claim that “John Wayne was from Waterloo, Iowa …It was his namesake John Wayne Gacy, serial rapist and killer of 33 teenage boys and young men, who spent time in Waterloo…

Read more

(UK Libel Reform Campaign) – A message from Simon Singh & Ben Goldacre

by

Dear Libel Reform Supporter,

Last week, we gave evidence to the Parliamentary Scrutiny Committee examining the draft defamation bill. We sat alongside Philip Campbell (editor of Nature) and Fiona Godlee (editor of the British Medical Journal) and explained how English libel law currently hinders free speech in science and medicine and we outlined how the law could be reformed.

You can watch our evidence online here:

http://www.badscience.net/2011/06/nerds-at-the-parliamentary-committee-on-the-draft-defamation-bill/ (our session starts at 17.40)

Read more

Is Sara Palin Nuts – what do you think?

by

“Sara Palin is Nuts” – Many of us have know it for quite some time, so it is no surprise, but … now here comes the truly funny bit …  she has been off on Tours of various sites, and for her latest boondoggle to some far-flung place she would probably not be able to identify on a map, she told Christina Lamb in the Sunday Times:

I am going to Sudan in July and hope to stop in England on the way. I am just hoping Mrs Thatcher is well enough to see me as I so admire her.

I guess I can understand her desire for such a meeting, as the keeper of the Ronald Regan flame, self appointed of course, it fits in quite well with her political agenda. However, when presented with the idea, Thatcher’s aids are quoted as saying:

Lady Thatcher will not be seeing Sarah Palin. That would be belittling for Margaret. Sarah Palin is nuts.

You can read the original report about this here, and then you can enjoy the frothing and foaming it generated within the right-wing kook camp here.

Read more

Religious discrimination in a secular culture

by

The recession in the UK (are we allowed to call it that) has motivated the powers that be to seriously consider finding god. Well not quite, what they are doing is starting to look upon religious groups as potential service providers. The most obvious example is of course education. Many non-believers are eager for their offspring to enroll within Church schools simply because they have better exam results, and perhaps also with the thought that they will be instilled with good moral guidance. I need not point out the reality, but what the heck, I’ll do so anyway:

The deal we dare not turn down

by

Sometimes it is simply appropriate to, coffee shop style, slap an article down and announce, “You must read this”. Well, this is one of those occasions, because Johann Hari says it far better than I ever could …

Sometimes, there are hinge-points in human history -moments when we have to choose between an exuberant descent into lunacy, and a still, sober voice offering us a sane way out. Usually, we can only see them when we look back from a distance. In 1793, the great democrat Thomas Paine said the French Revolution shouldn’t betray its principles by killing the King, because it would trigger an orgy of blood-letting that would eventually drown them all. They threw him in jail. In 1919, the great economist John Maynard Keynes said the European powers shouldn’t humiliate Germany, because it would catalyze extreme nationalism and produce another world war. They ignored him. In 1953, a handful of US President Dwight Eisenhower’s advisors urged him not to destroy Iranian democracy and kidnap its Prime Minister, because it would have a reactionary ripple-effect that lasted decades. They refused to listen.

Read more

#SuperInjunction

by

Now that the concept of super injunctions is falling apart in the UK, I can  reveal that I am not having an affair with Jeremy Clarkson. Also, it has now been disclosed that Clark Kent is Superman.

(OK, tongue placed firmly in cheek, but stick with me here, I have a skeptical point coming up later on)

Folks not in the UK might be wondering what this is about, so as a quick aside I better explain. In the UK if the press catch you doing something you should not have been doing (think shenanigans one night with a supermodel), you can take out a legal injunction to prevent publication. However, what can then happen is that the press can be a bit sneaky and report that there is an injunction in place that prevents them reporting something and so they name names without actually saying what happened. To prevent this, there is the concept of what is now known as a super-injunction to prevent them reporting on the very existence of  the injunction. To do that costs about £50K.

Read more