Monday, November 5, 2012

With the U.S. presidential election looming, former New Mexico governor and current Libertarian Party presidential nominee Gary Johnson spoke with Wikinews reporter William S. Saturn on an assortment of economic, foreign, and social issues. In the interview, Johnson makes his final plea to voters before they cast their ballots on Election Day, November 6.

Though a member of the Libertarian Party in the early 1990s, Johnson was elected and re-elected governor of New Mexico in 1994 and 1998 as a Republican. During his governorship, he vetoed over 750 bills, more than all other then-governors combined, and left the state with a $1 billion budget surplus. He briefly ran for president as a Republican in 2011 before rejoining the Libertarian Party to seek its 2012 presidential nomination.

After winning the nomination this past May, Johnson has campaigned throughout the nation espousing the Fair Tax, spending cuts across the board, a repeal of Obamacare, an audit of the Federal Reserve, a non-interventionist foreign policy, an end to the Drug War, and legalization of same-sex marriage. He and his running mate, Judge Jim Gray of California, have attained ballot access in all U.S. states except Michigan, where he is a write-in candidate, and Oklahoma. Nationally, he has received four percent registered-voter support in the past two CNN/Opinion Research Polls that included him with President Barack Obama, Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney and Green Party nominee Jill Stein. It is the campaign’s goal to reach five percent on Election Day, which will enable the party to receive ballot access and federal funding on par with the two major parties.

With Wikinews, Johnson discusses the federal budget, education, entitlements, the Syrian uprising, Mexican Drug War, same-sex marriage, the Libertarian Party, and his political future.

Sunday, October 7, 2007

Shona Bracken is running for the Communist Party in the Ontario provincial election in Toronto—Danforth. Wikinews interviewed her regarding her values, her experience, and her campaign.

Thursday, November 8, 2007

What you are about to read is an American life as lived by renowned author Edmund White. His life has been a crossroads, the fulcrum of high-brow Classicism and low-brow Brett Easton Ellisism. It is not for the faint. He has been the toast of the literary elite in New York, London and Paris, befriending artistic luminaries such as Salman Rushdie and Sir Ian McKellen while writing about a family where he was jealous his sister was having sex with his father as he fought off his mother’s amorous pursuit.

The fact is, Edmund White exists. His life exists. To the casual reader, they may find it disquieting that someone like his father existed in 1950’s America and that White’s work is the progeny of his intimate effort to understand his own experience.

Wikinews reporter David Shankbone understood that an interview with Edmund White, who is professor of creative writing at Princeton University, who wrote the seminal biography of Jean Genet, and who no longer can keep track of how many sex partners he has encountered, meant nothing would be off limits. Nothing was. Late in the interview they were joined by his partner Michael Caroll, who discussed White’s enduring feud with influential writer and activist Larry Kramer.

Thursday, March 16, 2006

Australian Prime Minister John Howard has given his strongest indication yet that Australians may choose to change their head of state beyond Queen Elizabeth II‘s reign. The comments are the first from Mr Howard, a proud monarchist, casting doubt over the future of the monarchy in Australia.

In an interview with the BBC, Mr Howard said that he did not believe Australia would become a republic while Queen Elizabeth II is on the throne, but he conceded that he did not know what would happen after Elizabeth II’s reign ends.

“I do not believe this country would become a republic while the Queen is on the throne; beyond that I don’t know,” Mr Howard told the BBC.

In a separate interview with British broadcaster ITV, Mr Howard refused to predict whether he thought Prince Charles would become King of Australia and indicated that it would be for the Australian people to decide.

“Well, that is a matter for the Australian people, and I believe in democracy,” he said.

“If the Australian people want to change the system, they will. But if they don’t, they won’t. The only prediction that I make is that I do not believe that this country will become a republic while the Queen is on the throne.”

Republicans have seen significance in Mr Howard’s comments. Ted O’Brien, Chair of the Australian Republican Movement said Mr Howard has provided some recognition for a possible Australian head of state.

“Mr Howard’s recognition that it is very unlikely that the country will become a republic while the present Queen is on the throne indicates quite clearly that this may not be the case when Prince Charles takes over,” he said.

“Mr Howard is an astute reader of the mood of the Australian people, and this change in language, if not in sentiment, is clearly some recognition of the likelihood of a future Australian head of state,” added Allison Henry, ARM national director.

Monarchists are urging people not to make too much from Mr Howard’s comments. Professor David Flint from Australians for Constitutional Monarchy said that to think Australia will become a republic based on Mr Howard’s comments would be grasping at straws.

“He’s just saying that he doesn’t know the future, he can’t tell the future, none of us can,” he said.

“It would be grasping at straws for the republicans to say that this means Australia will become a republic or that the Prime Minister says that.”

Tony Abbott, Australia’s health minister and staunch monarchist said he did not believe Australia would become a republic after Queen Elizabeth II’s reign. Mr Abbott told ABC that he believes the person on the throne is irrelevant: it is the institution that Australians admire.

“It’s the institution, not the individual which really counts,” he said.

“I am quite confident that were the Queen to pass on and her successor to occupy the throne that there would be the same magic and same personal affection between even Australians and our monarch.”

Sunday, April 2, 2006

Claims in the British newspaper The Sunday Telegraph that senior military officers of the United Kingdom will meet with government officials on Monday to discuss a US-led assault on Iran have been denied by the Ministry of Defence.

However, the Defence Correspondent for the BBC Paul Wood said that “US plans for a possible strike are thought to be at an advanced stage.” This echoes reports made in December by the influential German magazine Der Spiegel that, according to a report by intelligence expert Udo Ulfkotte, during a December 2005 visit to Ankara, Turkey, CIA Director Porter Goss asked Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan for support in a potential air strike against the Iran’s recently infamous nuclear facilities, including the enrichment facility at Natanz. Der Spiegel goes on to say that, “More specifically, Goss is said to have asked Turkey to provide unfettered exchange of intelligence that could help with a mission.”

While speaking on British television channel ITV1 during her recent visit to the UK, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said, “We believe that diplomacy has a chance to work but we are going to work with whomever we can, in whatever form we can, diplomatically, to try and bring the Iranians around. Iran is not Iraq. I know that’s what’s on people’s minds. The circumstances are different.” However, she then added, “The president of the United States doesn’t take his options off the table.”

Also on the programme with Rice was Jack Straw, the British Foreign Secretary. After admitting that UN Security Council member Russia was uneasy regarding the Iran issue, he said, “They are worried about the possibility of the Iranians stirring up trouble for them, but they also share our high suspicions that Iran may be using its civil nuclear capability to develop a nuclear weapon and they do not want that.”

In the initial article, The Sunday Telegraph stated that “a high-level meeting will take place on Monday in the Ministry of Defence at which senior defence chiefs and government officials will consider the consequences of an attack on Iran.” The Ministry of Defence, (often abbreviated to MoD), later denied all the claims, and made it clear that there were absolutely no plans for a meeting of the kind described in the newspaper.

However, the article also went on to claim that an attack centred around removing Iran’s nuclear capabilities was inevitable if Tehran failed to accept the demands of the United Nations. Somewhat surprisingly, the MoD failed to comment on this point, merely stressing the false nature of the claims regarding the meeting supposedly set for tomorrow (Monday, April 3).

Regarding his country’s nuclear program, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is maintaining his defiant stance, alluding to the fact that Article IV of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which was reaffirmed by the United Nations Security Council in its March 29, 2006 presidential statement, implies that Iran has as much right to press on with such technologies as any other nation which is party to the NPT.