Saddam Hussein Abd al-Majid al-Tikriti, was an Iraqi politician and revolutionary who served as the fifth president of Iraq from 1979 to 2003. He also served as prime minister of Iraq from 1979 to 1991 and later from 1994 to 2003. He was a leading member of the revolutionary Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party, and later, the Baghdad-based Ba'ath Party and its regional organization, the Iraqi Ba'ath Party, which espoused Ba'athism, a mix of Arab nationalism and Arab socialism.
Sir Robert Peel, 2nd Baronet,, was an English Conservative statesman who served twice as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, simultaneously serving as Chancellor of the Exchequer (1834–1835), and twice as Home Secretary. He is regarded as the father of modern British policing, owing to his founding of the Metropolitan Police Service. Peel was one of the founders of the modern Conservative Party.
The speaker of the United States House of Representatives, commonly known as the speaker of the House, is the presiding officer of the United States House of Representatives. The office was established in 1789 by Article I, Section II, of the U.S. Constitution. By custom and House rules, the speaker is the political and parliamentary leader of the House and is simultaneously its presiding officer, de facto leader of the body's majority party, and the institution's administrative head. Speakers also perform various other administrative and procedural functions. Given these several roles and responsibilities, the speaker usually does not personally preside over debates—that duty is instead delegated to members of the House from the majority party—nor regularly participate in floor debates.
John Leslie Prescott, Baron Prescott is a British politician who served as Deputy Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1997 to 2007 and as First Secretary of State from 2001 to 2007. A member of the Labour Party, he was Member of Parliament (MP) for Kingston upon Hull East for 40 years, from 1970 to 2010. He was seen as the political link to the working class in a Labour Party increasingly led by modernising, middle-class professionals such as Tony Blair and Peter Mandelson and developed a reputation as a key conciliator in the often stormy relationship between Blair and Gordon Brown.
Robert Finlayson "Robin" Cook was a British Labour Party politician who served as a Member of Parliament (MP) from 1974 until his death in 2005 and served in the Cabinet as Foreign Secretary from 1997 until 2001 when he was replaced by Jack Straw. He then served as Leader of the House of Commons from 2001 until 2003.
John Ramsay Swinney is a Scottish politician who served as Deputy First Minister of Scotland from 2014 to 2023. He held various Scottish Cabinet roles under First Ministers Alex Salmond and Nicola Sturgeon from 2007 to 2023. Swinney has served as the Member of the Scottish Parliament (MSP) for Perthshire North since 2011, having previously represented North Tayside from 1999 to 2011. He was the Leader of the Scottish National Party (SNP) from 2000 to 2004.
Matthew Edward Gonzalez is an American politician, lawyer, and activist. He served on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors from 2001 to 2005 and was president of the Board. In 2003, Gonzalez, running as a member of the Green Party, lost a race for mayor of San Francisco to Democrat Gavin Newsom. In the 2008 presidential election, Gonzalez ran for vice president as the running mate of candidate Ralph Nader. As of 2020, he works as the Chief Attorney at the San Francisco Public Defender's Office.
Matthew Owen John Taylor, Baron Taylor of Goss Moor is a British politician who has been a life peer in the House of Lords since 2010. A member of the Liberal Democrats, he previously served as the Member of Parliament (MP) for Truro and St Austell in Cornwall from 1987 until he stood down at the 2010 general election. He was granted a life peerage and so became a member of the House of Lords on 16 July 2010.
Andrew Fountaine was an activist involved in the British far right. After military service in a number of conflicts, Fountaine joined the Conservative Party and was selected as a parliamentary candidate until his outspoken views resulted in his being disowned by the party.
The Green Party of Canada ran a full slate of 308 candidates in the 2004 federal election. Some of these candidates have separate biography pages; relevant information about other candidates may be found here.
Grant Ernest John Tambling, AM is an Australian politician. He was a member of the House of Representatives from 1980 to 1983 and then a Senator for the Northern Territory from 1987 to 2001, representing the Country Liberal Party. In federal parliament, he sat with the National Country Party, later renamed National Party. He later served as Administrator of Norfolk Island from 2003 to 2007.
Michigan's 12th congressional district is a U.S. congressional district in Michigan.
Roy Painter was a former leading figure on the British far right.
Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, better known as Vladimir Lenin, was a Russian revolutionary, politician, and political theorist. He served as the first and founding head of government of Soviet Russia from 1917 to 1924 and of the Soviet Union from 1922 to 1924. Under his administration, Russia, and later the Soviet Union, became a one-party socialist state governed by the Communist Party. Ideologically a Marxist, his developments to the ideology are called Leninism.
The Alberta Greens, also known as the Green Party of Alberta, was a provincial political party in the province of Alberta, Canada.
Nineteen Eighty-Four is a dystopian novel and cautionary tale by English writer George Orwell. It was published on 8 June 1949 by Secker & Warburg as Orwell's ninth and final book completed in his lifetime. Thematically, it centres on the consequences of totalitarianism, mass surveillance and repressive regimentation of people and behaviours within society. Orwell, a democratic socialist, modelled the authoritarian state in the novel on the Soviet Union in the era of Stalinism, and Nazi Germany. More broadly, the novel examines the role of truth and facts within societies and the ways in which they can be manipulated.
Ian Murray is a British politician who has served as Shadow Secretary of State for Scotland since 2020, and previously from 2015 to 2016. A member of the Labour Party, he has been Member of Parliament (MP) for Edinburgh South since 2010.
The 2007 National Assembly for Wales election was held on Thursday 3 May 2007 to elect members to the National Assembly for Wales. It was the third general election. On the same day local elections in England and Scotland, as well as the Scottish Parliament election took place. This election was preceded by the previous Assembly election in 2003.
On the Cult of Personality and Its Consequences, popularly known as the Secret Speech, was a report by Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, made to the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union on 25 February 1956. Khrushchev's speech was sharply critical of the rule of the deceased General Secretary and Premier Joseph Stalin, particularly with respect to the purges which had especially marked the last years of the 1930s. Khrushchev charged Stalin with having fostered a leadership cult of personality despite ostensibly maintaining support for the ideals of communism. The speech was leaked to the West by the Israeli intelligence agency Shin Bet, which received it from the Polish-Jewish journalist Wiktor Grajewski.
John Read was a New Zealand politician and trade unionist.
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