Word: civilizations
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...great that every single one of East Timor's judges, prosecutors and public defenders failed a competency evaluation in 2005. While they undergo 212 years of linguistic training, the courts are being run by a dwindling group of international legal experts. In August 2006, for instance, not a single civil or criminal trial hearing was scheduled because of a lack of staff. Even though corruption is becoming a concern in East Timor, no cases of graft have been brought to trial since independence. Today, with so few Portuguese-speaking judicial employees available, police are having to release suspects because...
...East Timorese who have grown disenchanted with the state of their homeland, human-rights lawyer Soares has decided to leave. He plans to pursue further studies in Australia next month. "Linguistic ability is becoming the priority in hiring, not judicial expertise," Soares says. "How can you build a competent civil society with limitations like these? I don't want to participate in such a system." But he's among the lucky few. Others like Avelina Gomes, whose children's school in Dili has been shuttered for a month because it is located in a no-man's land between...
...chief accountant for the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) said the agency was considering how to shield accounting firms from civil litigation because--get this--the Administration doesn't want the Big Four firms to become the Big Three. So, on the one hand, the Justice Department is squeezing KPMG and its former employees within an inch of their professional lives. On the other hand, the SEC is pushing for limits on lawsuits that might hurt firms like KPMG. Talk about mixed messages...
...chance to change things. It was a cancer eating the entire continent. Beginning with the first successful coup in sub-Saharan Africa, in Togo in 1963, at least 200 attempts were made to seize power in Africa over the following four decades; 80 or so were successful. Bitter civil wars erupted, some of them tribal struggles for natural resources, some of them prompted by foreign powers. By the 1970s, Africa had become one of the hottest fronts in the cold war. "We had lots of fears. There was no freedom of speech," says Kwame, about the time of troubles...
Your historical perspective on the differences between the Sunnis and the Shi'ites was quite enlightening. These groups have a great deal of historical baggage to unload if they are to find peace instead of an unending civil war. But you destroyed a perfectly clear historical perspective by claiming that "there could be no more bitter legacy of the Bush Administration's fateful decision to go to war in Iraq" than an intramural death match between the two groups. This conflict has been going on for centuries. To blame it on the Bush Administration instead of those responsible--the self...