Word: firebrands
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
That summer of 2005, many Iranians actually heeded Ebadi's call and boycotted the vote. This helped the election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the firebrand leader who proceeded to gut the country's economy and sully Iran's reputation in the world. Reformist politicians, whose candidates had fared badly at the polls, told moderate Iranians that they were to blame for Ahmadinejad's victory. If the so-called silent majority - the millions of middle-class, educated Iranians who seek more freedom and economic opportunity - had voted, the emerging wisdom went, then the country wouldn't have been lost to the lunatic...
...propaganda machinery extends beyond the borders of Afghanistan. In Pakistan's Swat Valley, Mullah Qazi Fazlullah, a firebrand Taliban cleric known as "Mullah Radio," has used unlicensed FM stations to effectively paralyze the former resort area, now under militant control. Last week, an editorial from the The News International, a leading English daily, called the Pakistani government's failure to "evolve a counter-narrative to the Taliban propaganda" that fills airwaves and newspaper columns a "dereliction of the highest order...
...royalists, big businessmen and urban middle class Thais who are opposed to the return of former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra. Thaksin was ousted in a 2006 coup, convicted of conflict of interest charges by Thai courts last year and is now living in self-imposed exile. Sondhi's firebrand speeches full of demagoguery rallied crowds of supporters in prolonged, occasionally violent, protests last year against Thaksin, but he has been accused by critics of stoking hatred against rural people, who form Thaksin's support base, and of being antidemocratic for advocating appointed, as opposed to elected, representatives. (See pictures...
Nearly two years after the arrest of Abdul Aziz on multiple charges of inciting violence against the state of Pakistan, the firebrand cleric of Islamabad's radical Red Mosque has returned to the pulpit with a promise that he will continue with his struggle to establish Shari'a, or Islamic law, throughout the country...
...brother after Fidel underwent surgery in 2006) has indicated that he would like to open a dialogue with the U.S. Fidel himself, upon meeting the Congressional Black Caucus in early April, reportedly asked, "How can we help President Obama?" - although his later comments reverted to his typical uncooperative, firebrand type. The U.S. has extended a small olive twig to an ailing nation run by the brother of an ailing man, and what happens next is anyone's guess. Will Cuba respond by releasing political prisoners? Allowing free trade? Or will the 82-year-old former President and his brother rebuff...