Word: easts
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Kenya's descent into something like tribal war last year followed a general election, and revived questions of whether democracy works in Africa. Kenya is the economic and political center of East Africa, and its success or failure is an indicator of the region's political health. But within days of the vote, as counting continued, paramilitary police stormed the election-commission offices in Nairobi and forced them to declare for incumbent President Mwai Kibaki. The President is a member of the Kikuyu, Kenya's largest tribe and a group widely resented for its dominance of government and business since...
Judging from his dramatic introduction in the East Room, the President is dazzled by his nominee's Puerto Rican background. Obama has an unfortunate tendency to conflate personality and principle. "I stand here today as someone whose own life was made possible by these documents," he said during his national-security speech at the National Archives in May. As if there were any American for whom that is not true. Or as if ethnic minorities can make that claim more plausibly than other Americans. (See pictures of Judge Sonia Sotomayor...
...once I got to Los Angeles, I learned that the East Coast version of democracy is weak. In L.A. we vote all the time, on everything. We've already voted twice since everybody else last voted in November. Thanks to the endless ballot-initiative system, in the four years that I've been here, I've voted on all kinds of stuff I have absolutely no understanding of: high-speed rail lines (yes!), port security (sure!), children's-hospital bonds (of course!) and how chickens should be housed (humanely and not by me!). I have considered running for the state...
...woman rides sidesaddle behind its rider, and I flinch at the potential for tragedy. There was a complete scooter on display in the museum, and Gautier had informed me that every single component - tires, brakes, fuel tank and all - had been manufactured on the sly. As the taxi veers east onto Sukhumvit Road, the traders are busy erecting their stalls for another evening of busy commerce. But me? Tonight I'll hole up in the hotel. I'll chuck that shirt in the garbage, order a pizza (is it possible to fake a pizza?) and watch a movie...
...Hizballah's success has won it support from many sides: its reputation as the most successful anti-Israeli military group in the Middle East has won support from Arab nationalists and the backing of Iran and Syria. Meanwhile, many Lebanese Shi'as revere Hizballah for its social and educational-development programs. Many Western governments, meanwhile, consider it a terrorist group; it was placed on the U.S. State Department's terrorist list in 1999. Lebanon's ruling March 14th coalition has also blamed the organization for destabilizing the region and unnecessarily embroiling Lebanon in a near-30-year conflict with Israel...