Archive for the ‘World current affairs’ Category
Slow justice in Cambodia
November 21st, 2007 by Roger Darlington
In the mid 1980s, I saw the film “The Killing Fields” which graphically depicted the Khmer Rouge’s reign of terror in Cambodia in which 1.7 million people died, nearly a quarter of the population. A couple of years ago, in Siem Reap I visited one of the many killing fields and found it a moving […]
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When is it right to intervene militarily?
November 18th, 2007 by Roger Darlington
Most of us like to think of ourselves as peace-loving but equally we like to feel that we care about injustice in the world and want to do something about it. Sometimes these values come into conflict and the right thing to do is to intervene with armed forces. This approach is sometimes called “liberal […]
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Russian democracy: an oxymoron?
November 15th, 2007 by Roger Darlington
In Russia, there will be elections to the State Duma in December 2007 and to the Presidency in March 2008. In preparation for these elections, I’ve added Russia to the series on my web site of short guides to various countries’ political systems. There are now eight essays in the series. You can read the […]
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Forgotten World (110): St Martin
November 9th, 2007 by Roger Darlington
Saint Martin is a small tropical island in the north-east Caribbean, approximately 300 km south-east of Puerto Rico. The 87 square km island is divided roughly in half between France and the Netherlands and it is the smallest inhabited sea island divided between two nations. The northern French half is a overseas collectivity of France.The […]
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Forgotten World (109): Kaliningrad
November 8th, 2007 by Roger Darlington
Kaliningrad by the Baltic Sea is one of the strangest territories in Europe. The region was part of Germany until annexation by the USSR following World War II when it saw bitter fighting and suffered rampant destruction. The German population was expelled or fled after the war ended. Following the break-up of the Soviet Union […]
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Forgotten World (108): Djibouti
November 7th, 2007 by Roger Darlington
Djibouti is a small (population 721,000) African country by the Gulf of Aden that is surrounded by Eritrea to the north, Ethiopia to the west and Somalia to the south. It was a French colony until 1977 and France still has thousands of troops stationed there. The country has two main ethnic groups: the Issa […]
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Forgotten World (107): Laos
November 6th, 2007 by Roger Darlington
Laos was originally known as Lan Xang (which means the Kingdom of a Million Elephants) when it was founded by the legendary Fa Ngum. It gained its independence from France in 1954, but became embroiled in the Vietnam war since the Ho Chi Minh trail ran through it. By the end of the Vietnam war, […]
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Forgotten World (106): Mozambique
November 5th, 2007 by Roger Darlington
On 21 occasions now, I’ve had a week-long feature devoted to parts of the world that tend to be under-reported or even forgotten. It’s some time since I did so, but this week I am going to run another series of postings on this theme. Mozambique is a country in South-East Africa with almost 20M […]
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How free is the world’s press?
October 28th, 2007 by Roger Darlington
An index measuring the level of press freedom in 169 countries throughout the world has just been published by Reporters Without Borders for the sixth year running. You can check it out
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Better news fron Iran
October 27th, 2007 by Roger Darlington
As I reported in an earlier posting, jailed Iranian labour activist Mansour Osanloo faced the loss of vision in one eye while the regime refused him medical treatment. A massive online campaign, involving Amnesty International, the International Transport Workers Federation, and many thousands of LabourStart readers, resulted in Osanloo receiving the medical treatment he needed […]
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