BANGKOK, Thailand — While a jittery Thai capital has been warned to brace for more bomb attacks from unidentified terrorists, the country’s military-installed government is sowing fear among Thailand’s foreign business community. New laws promulgated by the unelected interim regime following the September army takeover seem to have less to do with the coup’s professed aim of putting the country back on the road to national unity than with blatant nationalism. Foreign companies in Thailand are seething in the wake of a law that tightens restrictions on foreign business ownership. This follows a clumsy diktat in late December on foreign [...]
WASHINGTON — As “civil war” rages in Iraq, so does the increasingly furious fight between Democrats and the Bush administration over what to do now that the holidays — and with them the season of election-year posturing — are finally over. The rhetorical salvos could not have been more piercing across Washington yesterday as the new Democratic leadership of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee convened the first in a series of hearings on how to change the current course of action in Iraq — just hours before President George W. Bush appeared on national television in an apparent attempt to [...]
For such a small country, Israel manages to offer one of the most unpredictable, lively and entertaining political scenes around. Observers of Israeli political theater have not had a dull moment in years. It was barely 13 months ago that the iconic Prime Minister Ariel Sharon rocked the political scene when he bolted Likud, the party he created, to launch the new Kadima party. Before long, Sharon had fallen into a coma; Ehud Olmert had taken over, formed a Kadima-Labor coalition government and built a most peculiar cabinet. The post of defense minister, a crucial job in Israel, went to [...]
