Mr Big Spender's Duel in "Who Is Richer", Spending Other People's Money

Hantu Laut

The heat is on who could spend more on downing bottles of Cristal champagne in one night of orgasmic drinking spree in the slimy world of the filthy rich and famous.

Now, our Mr Big Spender has roped in his brother to help spend the money he couldn't spend fast enough, rumoured to be courtesy of the royal household of the Al-Nahyan family of Abu Dhabi whose sons went to the same university as Mr Big Spender.His other mates at Wharton was rumoured to be Najib's son.

Is he the front man and Mr Fixer for his rich friends? That may soon change when his very rich friends decide to trade places with him.See the movie "Trading Places" starring Dan Aykroyd and Eddie Murphy and you would get my drift.



Zhen Low, the younger brother of Mr Big Spender Jho Low was involved in a competition with Winston Fisher, a New York property developer to see who could order more bottles of Cristal champagne.They two tycoons spent a staggering 1.8 million pound sterling in one night display of exhibited wealth.



















Cherubic Jho Low and Winston Fisher were having a whale of a time pouring their money down the gutter to impress the girls.Paris Hilton former boyfriend Doug Reinhart who happened to be in town gave up after spending on 4 gigantic bottles, no match for our new free spending Malaysian billionaire.

Scene at the Les Caves du Roy nightclub in St Tropez.






















































The princes ?







































Even Joan Collins who came to town felt poor and humbled by our "Maggie Mee" billionaire.



















More images here.

The Worst Of The Worst. Who Are They? Part II

Bad dude dictators and general coconut heads.

BY GEORGE B.N. AYITTEY

1. KIM JONG IL of North Korea: A personality-cult-cultivating isolationist with a taste for fine French cognac, Kim has pauperized his people, allowed famine to run rampant, and thrown hundreds of thousands in prison camps (where as many as 200,000 languish today) -- all while spending his country's precious few resources on a nuclear program.
Years in power: 16

2. ROBERT MUGABE of Zimbabwe: A liberation "hero" in the struggle for independence who has since transformed himself into a murderous despot, Mugabe has arrested and tortured the opposition, squeezed his economy into astounding negative growth and billion-percent inflation, and funneled off a juicy cut for himself using currency manipulation and offshore accounts.
Years in power: 30

3. THAN SHWE of Burma: A heartless military coconut head whose sole consuming preoccupation is power, Shwe has decimated the opposition with arrests and detentions, denied humanitarian aid to his people after 2008's devastating Cyclone Nargis, and thrived off a black market economy of natural gas exports. This vainglorious general bubbling with swagger sports a uniform festooned with self-awarded medals, but he is too cowardly to face an honest ballot box.
Years in power: 18

4. OMAR HASSAN AL-BASHIR of Sudan: A megalomaniac zealot who has quashed all opposition, Bashir is responsible for the deaths of millions of Sudanese and has been indicted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes. Bashir's Arab militias, the janjaweed, may have halted their massacres in Darfur, but they continue to traffic black Sudanese as slaves (Bashir himself has been accused of having had several at one point).
Years in power: 21

Continue reading.

Source:Foreign Policy

The Worst Of The Worst. Who Are They?

The Worst of the Worst

Bad dude dictators and general coconut heads.

BY GEORGE B.N. AYITTEY

A continent away from Kyrgyzstan, Africans like myself cheered this spring as a coalition of opposition groups ousted the country's dictator, President Kurmanbek Bakiyev. "One coconut down, 39 more to harvest!" we shouted. There are at least 40 dictators around the world today, and approximately 1.9 billion people live under the grip of the 23 autocrats on this list alone. There are plenty of coconuts to go around.

The cost of all that despotism has been stultifying. Millions of lives have been lost, economies have collapsed, and whole states have failed under brutal repression. And what has made it worse is that the world is in denial. The end of the Cold War was also supposed to be the "End of History" -- when democracy swept the world and repression went the way of the dinosaurs. Instead, Freedom House reports that only 60 percent of the world's countries are democratic -- far more than the 28 percent in 1950, but still not much more than a majority. And many of those aren't real democracies at all, ruled instead by despots in disguise while the world takes their freedom for granted. As for the rest, they're just left to languish.

Although all dictators are bad in their own way, there's one insidious aspect of despotism that is most infuriating and galling to me: the disturbing frequency with which many despots, as in Kyrgyzstan, began their careers as erstwhile "freedom fighters" who were supposed to have liberated their people. Back in 2005, Bakiyev rode the crest of the so-called Tulip Revolution to oust the previous dictator. So familiar are Africans with this phenomenon that we have another saying: "We struggle very hard to remove one cockroach from power, and the next rat comes to do the same thing. Haba!" Darn!

I call these revolutionaries-turned-tyrants "crocodile liberators," joining the ranks of other fine specimens: the Swiss bank socialists who force the people to pay for economic losses while stashing personal gains abroad, the quack revolutionaries who betray the ideals that brought them to power, and the briefcase bandits who simply pillage and steal. Here's my list of the world's worst dictators. I have ranked them based on ignoble qualities of perfidy, cultural betrayal, and economic devastation. If this account of their evils makes you cringe, just imagine living under their rule.

Who are they ?
Starting tomorrow. The World's worst dictators.

Anwar and Erdogen,Killing Me Softly

Unholy Alliance

When one gets past the cosmetics of his public persona, one sees that Anwar has forged a coalition including PAS, a militant Islamic party that advocates the introduction of shari’a law. PAS wants to legalize stoning, the mandatory wearing of full burkas, and the amputation of hands for theft. Unsurprisingly, the extremist fringes of PAS are identical to the extremist core of Erdogan’s Justice and Development party.

Anwar has been an apologist for Erdogan’s excesses for many years, and even wrote glowingly about him in the Washington Post during the Turkish election of 2007. “This is a government clearly committed to the process of preserving democracy at great costs while taking concrete steps to dispel the misperceptions about parties with an Islamic tag,” Anwar wrote of Erdogan’s administration.

Birds of a feather flock together. So, for that matter, do faux reformists.Read more..

India unveils prototype of $35 tablet computer.

By ERIKA KINETZ, AP Business Writer Erika Kinetz, Ap Business Writer – Fri Jul 23, 12:55 pm ET

MUMBAI, India – It looks like an iPad, only it's 1/14th the cost: India has unveiled the prototype of a $35 basic touchscreen tablet aimed at students, which it hopes to bring into production by 2011.

If the government can find a manufacturer, the Linux operating system-based computer would be the latest in a string of "world's cheapest" innovations to hit the market out of India, which is home to the 100,000 rupee ($2,127) compact Nano car, the 749 rupees ($16) water purifier and the $2,000 open-heart surgery. Read more.

Click image to see the Nano car and other ultra-cheap products

Seven banks fail Europe stress test

Reuters – 2 hrs 13 mins ago

LONDON/MADRID (Reuters) - Just seven European banks failed a health check and were ordered to raise their capital by 3.5 billion euros ($4.5 billion), much less than expected, confirming fears the continent's long-awaited stress test was too soft. Full Story »

Umno kicks off campaign to win Selangor

SHAH ALAM, July 24 — Selangor Umno launched its campaign to recapture the state from Pakatan Rakyat (PR) last night with a public rally in the Malay-dominated constituency and state capital here, drawing a crowd of some 200 supporters and curious residents.

The rally was part of the party’s campaign to expose what it claimed to be irregularities in ... Read More

In schools, a crackdown on non-Muslim clubs

By Debra Chong

KUALA LUMPUR, July 23 — Students, parents, teachers and religious representatives are complaining of a systematic effort by education officials to frustrate their initiatives to ... Read More