Word: alis
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Iraqis are being asked to choose from largely anonymous slates sponsored by different factions. These slates politick via posters adorning the innumerable concrete barriers that define Baghdad's traffic arteries. Voters are urged, for instance, to pick List No. 169, the one approved by the umbrageous Grand Ayatullah Ali Husaini Sistani. Candidates do little flesh pressing and baby kissing, but there are ads on TV and radio, and each party has its own newspaper...
...more like a man from the future. While his white opponents stood and slugged in the style of the bare-knuckle era, he weaved the way Muhammad Ali would later do. Outside the ring, the handsome, savvy and charismatic Johnson prefigured today's celebrity athletes (and polarizing black stars like Kobe Bryant and Mike Tyson). He wore tailored suits, drove custom cars and slept with many women, white women in particular. His boxing wins drew death threats and caused riots, but it was his sex life that most outraged whites, and many blacks. In 1913 he was tried under...
...elect a new interim government, before getting down to the task of drafting a new constitution within nine months. And the strongest electoral slate right now looks to be the United Iraqi Alliance, a coalition of Shiite religious parties and independents assembled under the discreet auspices of Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani (who has also declared voting a religious duty for Iraq's Muslim faithful). While some leaders of that slate sought this week to assuage Sunni and U.S. fears over their ties to Iran - and their desire to avert a civil war and hold Iraq together strongly suggests they...
...contest, as the pragmatists jostle with hard-liners for the upper hand. If the mullahs continue to hold sway, it seems unlikely that Iran will give up its nuclear dreams, any more than it would make peace with the Great Satan it broke with 25 years ago in November. Ali Larijani, the leading pragmatic conservative presidential candidate, has hinted that Iran might quit the NPT if the nuclear talks with Europe fail--a move that would give Washington justification to push for U.N. sanctions. Defense Minister Ali Shamkhani, loyal to the clerics, warns that Iran would retaliate in the event...
Just like Iran's fading reformers, the pragmatic conservatives will be vigorously opposed by the regime's powerful mullahs if they show signs of moderation. That's what happened to Mohammed Ali Abtahi, a reformist cleric who, in frustration over the right-wing takeover of parliament, resigned a month ago as Iran's Vice President. "They kicked us out of the political field, arguing that we were soft and weak," he told TIME last week. "They do not want to lose the backing of the minority of Iranians who still support them." As long as the mullahs prevail...