A lot of these have probably been seen by most of you but they caught my eye for one reason for another:
This line from the Economist in an article about how ‘green’ policies have become (at least in rhetorical terms) mainstream made me smile:
The shared level of commitment and wonkiness is, in its way, inspiring (though it must be a bit dispiriting for the Green party, which to stay distinctively unelectable has had to move towards a thoroughgoing social-justice agenda funded with tax increases no-one else would touch)
This is a really good graph showing how much the PIIGS economies owe to each other and to Britain, France and Germany. Really scary to see how much of the debt is owed even within Europe.
This Der Spiegel interview with Col. Gaddafi throws up some truly mad lines. Personal favourites include a strange burst of what appears to be sense (or at least a technically accurate statement):
I don’t think that Ahmadinejad means the violent destruction of Israel when he says this. I think he is thinking of a new democratic state structure to replace the current state of Israel — on the territory of what is geographically Palestine. No one is talking about throwing Jews into the sea.
but he quickly runs back to his regular self when talking about Angela Merkel
She is a strong personality. More like a man than a woman. But I have never had a conversation with her
and possibly the most revealing insight ever into somebody’s personality:
SPIEGEL: Where do you get your facts? Do you watch television? Do you read books?
Gadhafi: I get most of them from the Internet. I constantly sit at my computer
…. Gadaffi is basically an internet troll cast as world leader? The more you think about it the more sense it makes….
