Gordon Brown is prepared to risk the future of the ‘special relationship’ with the United States by reversing Tony Blair’s support for the Iraq war, President George W Bush has been warned. He has been briefed by White House officials to expect an announcement on British troop withdrawals from Mr Brown during his first 100 days in power. It would be designed to boost the new prime minister’s popularity in the opinion polls. The President recently discussed with a senior White House adviser how to handle the fallout from the expected loss of Washington’s main ally in Iraq, The Sunday Telegraph has learned. Details of the talks came as a close ally of Mr Brown called for a quicker withdrawal of British troops. Nigel Griffiths, a former minister, said: ‘We should get out of Iraq as soon as is practicable. We should consult the Iraqi government – but they cannot have a veto. This cannot be delayed.’ Mr Griffiths, who resigned as deputy leader of the Commons this year over the decision to replace the Trident nuclear weapons system, spoke out as reports suggested that Mr Brown would use an early trip to Iraq to […]
NEW YORK — The Chinese government is to use $3bn of its vast foreign exchange reserves to buy a 9.9 per cent stake in Blackstone, the US buy-out fund, in an unprecedented move that underlines Beijing’s desire to tap into the private equity boom. The investment will coincide with Blackstone’s landmark $40bn stock market listing, expected in the next few months, and will allow the private equity group to nearly double its original target of raising $4bn. Stephen Schwarzman, Blackstone’s chief executive, hailed the deal – the first time Beijing has invested its foreign reserve in a commercial transaction – as an ‘historic event that changes the paradigm in global capital flows’. Under the terms of the deal, which is believed to have been agreed in just a few weeks, the Chinese government has taken the unusual step of giving up its voting rights associated with the stake in Blackstone. The move appears aimed at defusing any US political opposition to the deal at a time of tension between Washington and Beijing over the renminbi. The US Treasury pointed out that it had decided last week to allow the Chinese to invest more in foreign […]
The Senate’s compromise immigration bill offers something for everyone to hate, including presidential candidates forced to confront the divisive issue. Unlike the war in Iraq, which separates lawmakers mainly along party lines, immigration fractures Republican and Democratic ranks from within: splitting business interests from social conservatives, dividing labor from Hispanic groups. ‘The issue is fraught with danger,’ said John Anzalone, a Democratic pollster. ‘It’s one where it’s tough to please everybody within your base or coalition.’ For that reason, perhaps, the only major candidate who embraced the bipartisan proposal announced Thursday was Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who helped negotiate the agreement. However, McCain’s decision to step off the campaign trail and appear at a Capitol Hill news conference with Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) raised some GOP eyebrows. ‘The American people want solutions to major problems,’ said John Weaver, a McCain strategist. ‘He’s running for president to do the tough things, and he’s doing them now.’ New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, a Democrat, also praised the bill. ‘This legislation makes a good start toward re-securing our southern border,’ he said Friday. But, like other Democratic candidates, he expressed concern about a temporary worker […]
LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — Former President Carter says President Bush’s administration is ‘the worst in history’ in international relations, taking aim at the White House’s policy of pre-emptive war and its Middle East diplomacy. The criticism from Carter, which a biographer says is unprecedented for the 39th president, also took aim at Bush’s environmental policies and the administration’s ‘quite disturbing’ faith-based initiative funding. ‘I think as far as the adverse impact on the nation around the world, this administration has been the worst in history,’ Carter told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette in a story that appeared in the newspaper’s Saturday editions. ‘The overt reversal of America’s basic values as expressed by previous administrations, including those of George H.W. Bush and Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon and others, has been the most disturbing to me.’ Carter spokeswoman Deanna Congileo confirmed his comments to The Associated Press on Saturday and declined to elaborate. He spoke while promoting his new audiobook series, ‘Sunday Mornings in Plains,’ a collection of weekly Bible lessons from his hometown of Plains, Ga. ‘Apparently, Sunday mornings in Plains for former President Carter includes hurling reckless accusations at your fellow man,’ said Amber Wilkerson, Republican National […]
The death of the Rev. Jerry Falwell marks a changing of the guard for religious conservatives that has been under way for several years. In the 1980s, Falwell mobilized millions of evangelicals. But today, younger Christians are becoming restive with the old style and focus. In fact, some pollsters say that more than 40 percent of white evangelical voters could be up for grabs in the 2008 election. Beyond the Wedge Issues Two months before he died, Falwell gave a televised sermon about global warming. It was vintage Falwell: grand, pugnacious and, he admitted, politically incorrect. Falwell said that the danger to society is not global warming, but the green movement itself. He worried particularly about evangelicals involved in the green movement: They were being distracted from moral concerns, such as abortion, gay marriage, violence and divorce. ‘It is Satan’s attempt to redirect the church’s primary focus,’ Falwell said in March to his 22,000-person-strong congregation at the Thomas Road Baptist Church in Lynchburg, Va. ‘I’m telling these guys they need to get off that kick,’ Falwell said, ‘because the idea is to divert your energies from the message and the mission and the vision of […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
