Any other considerations aside, got to give him bonus points for chutzpah.
Former Lebanese minister Wiam Wahhab said his money could improve Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s looks and help put President George W. Bush in an asylum.
“I offer them my money in the United States - half of it to Rice so she can embellish her looks and the other half to President Bush because he will soon enter a mental institution,” Wahhab said.
“Bush is obsessed with power, destroying the world, killing and aggressing against people,” the pro-Syrian Druze opposition politician said.
On Monday, Washington slapped sanctions on four people, among them Wahhab and a cousin of Syrian President Bashar Assad. Article
The global fallout of the policies of the woebegone G. Walker administration — a veritable nuclear political winter.
Japan’s opposition parties will persist with their plan to block the Fukuda Government’s anti-terrorism law despite a damaging row at the weekend that almost toppled opposition leader Ichiro Ozawa.
Mr Ozawa was reconfirmed by his colleagues as Democratic Party of Japan leader last night, after withdrawing the resignation he submitted on Sunday under criticism of his dealings with Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda.
[snip]
Japan’s Washington ambassador, Ryozo Kato, said at the weekend the US-Japan alliance relationship was in its most “difficult and delicate” condition in his six years at the post.
There is concern in Washington that the Fukuda Government wants to cut financial support for US military bases in Japan.
Faced with rising costs in Japan and its own budgetary problems the Pentagon had asked Japan to increase support in its so-called “sympathy budget”, which last year amounted to Y218 billion ($2.04 billion).
However, an unconfirmed report in the Japanese press last month had the Government wanting to reduce base support payments by Y10 billion. Article
A veritble tsunami of competing “don’ts.”
A century ago, the fatwa department at Cairo’s Al-Azhar University issued fewer than 200 edicts a day. Now it turns out about 1,000.
The university, a center of Islamic learning for more than a millennium, isn’t alone. Around the world, an explosion in the number of fatwas — pronouncements by religious leaders intended to shape the actions of the faithful on everything from sex to politics — is sparking efforts by prominent Muslims to rein in the practice. That’s proving a nearly impossible task, given Islam’s decentralized nature and the growing number of outlets for the edicts.
Muslims in Egypt seeking religious guidance may now turn to satellite television and the Internet for opinions from as far afield as Indonesia and Morocco — unless they follow the fatwa issued in 2004 by the Dar ul-Ulum, India’s largest Islamic seminary, that ruled Muslims shouldn’t watch TV.
With no pope or patriarch to arbitrate orthodoxy, “it’s the nature of Islamic thought to have many options,” says Abdel Moti Bayoumi, who heads the Islamic Research Compilation Center in Cairo. “But there are too many unqualified opinions being spread, and this is wrong.”
The result is what MENA, Egypt’s official news agency, calls “fatwa chaos.”
[snip]
“The real problem is that religion is being put out front at all times and injected into everything,” says Aly Elsamman, head of Al-Azhar University’s Dialogue and Islamic Relations Committee. “This makes the need for knowledge more pressing, but the need isn’t met.” Article
Remote mind-reading as a tool of state policy? Bedlam, sheer bedlam.
When Alexander Sibert told President Vladimir Putin that former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright had said Siberia held too many resources for Russia alone, Putin dismissed the statement as “political erotica.” Albright might have found “political fantasy” more appropriate.
Putin said he was not aware of the comment, Albright denies ever making it, and no one else seems able to provide any evidence that she did.
But this hasn’t stopped Putin and others from attributing these thoughts to foreign figures who they say wish Russia harm.
Sibert, 70, a mechanic who works at the Institute of Nuclear Physics in Novosibirsk, brought up the purported statement in a question during Putin’s annual call-in show last month.
“I know some politicians entertain such ideas in their heads,” Putin replied, adding that Russia was able to and would protect its natural resources.
The only problem is that Albright, who is now a principal at the Albright Group strategic management and lobbying firm, denied through a spokeswoman that she ever entertained the idea.
“I did not make that statement, nor did I ever think it,” she said.
On Tuesday, Sibert was unable to provide a source for the alleged quote, or even a guarantee that he had heard it.
[snip]
In perhaps the strangest part of the story, there are those who argue that it doesn’t matter what Albright said — they know what she was thinking.
Boris Ratnikov, a retired major general who worked for the Federal Guard Service, said in a December 2006 interview with government newspaper Rossiiskaya Gazeta that his colleagues, who worked for the service’s secret mind-reading division, read Albright’s subconscious a few weeks before the beginning of the NATO bombardment of Yugoslavia in 1999.
Albright, who as secretary of state played a major role in the lead up to the attacks, was one of the main targets of Russian criticism of the bombing campaign.
Apart from her “pathological hatred of Slavs,” Ratnikov said “she was indignant that Russia held the world’s largest reserves of natural resources.”
On Tuesday, Ratnikov, 62, said he hadn’t been part of the mind-reading experiment but had worked as an analyst on the data produced by his colleagues in the study. He said the mind-reading process involved using a picture or some other image of the person under study.
“By tuning in on her image, our specialists were able to glean these things,” he said. Article
Following up on the Spanish king’s tour of African coastal enclaves mentioned here last week:
Moroccan Prime Minister Abbas El Fassi condemned on Wednesday Spain’s “occupation” of two disputed enclaves, in the wake of a visit by Spain’s King Juan Carlos which prompted Rabat to recall its ambassador to Madrid.
[snip]
El Fassi insisted that only negotiations could save relations with Madrid following Juan Carlos’ two day visit this week to Ceuta and Melilla — where he also reasserted Spain’s sovereignty.
The two towns on Morocco’s Mediterranean cost have been held for centuries by Spain.
[snip]
Despite the war of words, both sides seemed keen to avoid any long-term fallout from the dispute.
In Cueta, Juan Carlos spoke of Spain’s “sincere friendship with its neighbors,” while Morocco’s King Mohammed VI on Tuesday urged a “responsible dialogue which guarantees our rights of sovereignty and takes into account the interests of Spain.” Article
The Oregon Supreme Court becomes embroiled in a Solomonic situation.