Archive for February, 2010
Forgotten World (205): North Marianas
February 12th, 2010 by Roger Darlington
The Northern Marianas is a chain of 14 islands in the north-west Pacific Ocean. It is self-governing but linked politically to the United States. The territory is exempt from US minimum wage and immigration laws; this has helped to drive a billion-dollar garment trade which employs thousands of migrant workers, many of them from China […]
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Mandela’s 20 years of freedom
February 11th, 2010 by Roger Darlington
Like so many people all around the world, today I celebrate the news of the 20th anniversary of the release from prison of Nelson Mandela after 27 years. It was such a moving occasion. Since then, I have visited South Africa and went to Robben Island where Mandela was imprisoned [my account here] and where […]
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Forgotten World (204): Egypt
February 11th, 2010 by Roger Darlington
Egypt conducted wars with Israel in 1948, 1956, 1967 and 1973, before eventually making peace with its adversary in 1979, so the country has moved from being a warring nation to becoming a key representative in the peace process. President Hosni Mubarak has been in power since 1981; his strongest challenger is the Muslim Brotherhood […]
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Forgotten World (203): Macedonia
February 10th, 2010 by Roger Darlington
Following the break-up of Yugoslavia in the early 1990s, Macedonia was spared the inter-ethnic violence that scarred much of the Balkans and became independent in 1991, but a decade later it came close to civil war as a result of the challenge of the ethnic Albanians who make up a quarter of the population of […]
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The Glorious Revolution
February 9th, 2010 by Roger Darlington
Three Labour Members of Parliament are being prosecuted over the alleged fraudulent claiming of expenses and – rightly – they are being criticised for suggesting that they will claim that they cannot be prosecuted because of Parliamentary privilege. Of course, there is such a notion – an important one – of Parliamentary privilege but most […]
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Snow in Washington DC
February 9th, 2010 by Roger Darlington
My friend Carrie lives in Washington DC where the Federal Government has been closed down by snowmaggedon. This is her house.
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Forgotten World (202): Brunei
February 9th, 2010 by Roger Darlington
Brunei is a tiny country with a small population located in the north-west corner of the island of Borneo. In 1963, it was the only Malya state to choose to remain a British dependency rather than join the Malaysian Federation. It became independent in 1984 and, thanks to its large reserves of oil and gas, […]
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New platform for NightHawk
February 8th, 2010 by Roger Darlington
I’ve now been running a personal blog called NightHawk – the name given to a night fighter ace whose biography I wrote – for almost seven years. From April 2003-July 2006, I used pmachine as the platform. Then, from July 2006-February 2010, I used Movable Type. From today, the blog is using Word Press and, […]
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Forgotten World (201): Nunavut
February 8th, 2010 by Roger Darlington
It’s time once again for one of my regular weeks 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 200 entries here. Nunavut covers 1,932,255 sq km (746,048 sq mi) of land and 160,935 […]
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Sarah Palin’s top three prorities
February 7th, 2010 by Roger Darlington
Read Sarah Palin’s answer, when asked what she thought that a Republican-controlled Congress’s top three priorities should be, here. One of the fundamental principles of the United States Constitution is the separation of religion and the state – but Palin wants the Congress to seek “divine intervention”. And Americans criticise Iran for being a theocracy.
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