Word: blocs
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...everyone is convinced of his good faith. Mohammed Ali Abtahi, who was Vice President to President Mohammed Khatami, the reformist President of Iran from 1997 to 2005, ridicules the idea that reformers would truly align themselves with the centrist bloc Qalibaf envisions. "In reality this is a political current constructed by the state in order to present personalities from the conservatives like Qalibaf as reformists," Abtahi says, pointing out that Qalibaf played a prominent role in quelling pro-democracy dissent during Khatami's presidency. And while perhaps not the unreconstructed revolutionary that Iran's hard-liners so admire, Qalibaf...
...mockingly compared Obama to Charlton Heston's Hollywood depiction of a Biblical Moses. "They will call him 'The One,'" intones the ad's narrator. "Can you see the light?" (Though perhaps funny to secular voters, the ad was steeped in imagery that catered to conservative Evangelicals, a key voting bloc...
Since 1988, white Evangelicals have been the second most reliable bloc in the Republican base, after Mormons. So it's no surprise that most are once again lining up behind this year's GOP presidential nominee. A new TIME poll of white Evangelical voters finds that 70% support John McCain. Large pluralities also prefer him over Barack Obama when it comes to fixing the economy and restoring America's image in the world. For a man who has had a sometimes prickly relationship with religious conservatives, these numbers have to be good news...
...ASEAN's nine other members not to at least arch an eyebrow when Burma signed the charter is nothing short of willful ignorance. Yes, ASEAN did speak forcefully on July 20 when Singaporean Foreign Minister George Yeo said the bloc's members felt "deep disappointment" that Burma in May prolonged the detention of opposition figurehead and Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi. But any mention of that negative emotion was excised from the formal communiqué issued by ASEAN the following day. And an initial flurry of excitement caused by Yeo when he said that his Burmese counterpart had told...
...aircraft might have been used to help the Sandinistas gain information on contra operations. White House officials also said that a Soviet freighter had delivered a large shipment of arms to the Nicaraguan port of Corinto. That the Sandinistas were receiving weapons made in the U.S.S.R. or East bloc countries was nothing new. But for the past 18 months, such shipments had been sent to Cuba and subsequently picked up by Nicaraguan vessels. The resumption of direct deliveries may reflect a new and unsettling boldness on Moscow's part. In the midst of the Administration's warnings about the Nicaraguan...