Archive for the ‘World current affairs’ Category
Forgotten World (120): Sweden
January 11th, 2008 by Roger Darlington
Sweden is a most unusual European country in that it has not been at war since 1814 and is noted for its policy of neutrality. For most of the last 70 years until 2006, the country was run by the Social Democratic Party through a model involving high taxes and substantial social provision. Now the […]
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Forgotten World (119): Quebec
January 10th, 2008 by Roger Darlington
Quebec is one of the 10 provinces of Canada. It is the country’s largest province by area and its second-largest administrative division (only the territory of Nunavut is larger). It is the second most populated province with almost 7M citizens out of the country’s total of 33M. The official language of Quebec is French; it […]
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The American presidential election (4)
January 9th, 2008 by Roger Darlington
Iowa and now New Hampshire. This is certainly proving to be an utterly fascinating race with the polls consistently wrong and fluctuating fortunes of the various candidates. On the Democratic side, most of the media attention is on Hillary Clinton and ‘my’ candidate Barack Obama, but my good friend Eric Lee – who is American […]
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Forgotten World (118): Malaysia
January 9th, 2008 by Roger Darlington
Malaysia consists of two regions separated by some 640 miles of the South China Sea (the eastern section is part of Borneo) and is a federation of 13 states and three federal territories. It may be geographically close to countries like Indonesia, Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, but it is in a totally different place economically […]
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Forgotten World (117): Argentina
January 8th, 2008 by Roger Darlington
Argentina stretches 4,000 km from its sub-tropical north to the sub-antarctic south. It is rich in resources, has a well-educated workforce and is one of South America’s largest economies. But it has also fallen prey to a boom and bust cycle with a particularly dramatic economic collapse in 2002. There has been a recent economic […]
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Forgotten World (116): Angola
January 7th, 2008 by Roger Darlington
It’s time for another week of postings in my long-running series called Forgotten World – a look at parts of the world that hardly feature in our media or thoughts. You can check the previous 115 entries here. Angola may not figure in many western minds but, according to “The World In 2008” produced by […]
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The American presidential election (3)
January 4th, 2008 by Roger Darlington
In the first actual vote of voter opinion in the US presidential primaries, the people of Iowa have now spoken – or at least a few hundred thousand of them out of three million (although turnout was much higher than four years ago). In the Republican camp, the result was: Huckabee 34.3% Romney 25.3% Thomson […]
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The American presidential election (2)
January 2nd, 2008 by Roger Darlington
Tomorrow, after months and months of campaigning, the the Democratic and Republican hopefuls for the US Presidency face their first vote in the primary race – except that the vote in Iowa tomorrow is not a primary but a caucus. Iowans will gather to discuss and vote in meetings in schools, churches, or public libraries […]
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The horror of political assassinations
December 28th, 2007 by Roger Darlington
I find it difficult to think of blogging about anything today other than the death of Benazir Bhutto. Yesterday we were driving up to Leicester to spend the day with a gathering of all the immediate members of my family. On the car radio, we were told that a bomb had gone off at a […]
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Remembering Uzbekistan
December 24th, 2007 by Roger Darlington
I haven’t had occasion to think about Uzbekistan for a while, but this morning two matters brought the country to mind. First, we had a Christmas card from one of the members of the small group with which we toured Uzbekistan last year. You can read my account of that trip here. Second, I read […]
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