Word: feudal
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Anselm too read the New Testament lines calling Christ's death a ransom, but he could not believe that the devil was owed anything. So he restructured the cosmic debt. It was, he posed, humanity that owed God the Father a ransom of "satisfaction" (to use Anselm's feudal terminology) for the insult of sin. The problem was that the debt was unpayable: not only did we lack the means, since everything we had of value was God's to begin with, but also we lacked the standing, like a lowly serf helpless to erase an injury to a great...
...three years in a row, Transparency International (TI), a Berlin-based watchdog, has ranked Bangladesh as the country perceived to be the world's most venal. Corruption in Bangladesh operates with the sweep, intricacy and structured hierarchy of a medieval feudal system, replete with an English-language nomenclature in which "tolls," "fees," and "payments" extorted from the poorest Bangladeshis are funneled up daily through an elaborate web of "collectors," "higher collectors" and intermediate barons into the ultimate hands of criminal "godfathers." Corruption starts on the streets. Every evening a "lineman" visits Dhaka's hawkers, making his way down a sidewalk...
...Bangladeshis live in an overwhelmingly corrupt feudal state, then the knights errant of the system are widely believed to be the nation's policemen. According to a survey conducted by TI's Bangladesh branch, 84% of all respondents who had interacted with the police said they encountered corruption when dealing with them. When asked about this finding, Dhaka police commissioner Ashraful Huda doesn't deny that corruption exists in the force, but says, "We take severe punitive measures against any policeman found guilty of corruption." Though ordinary Bangladeshis have little faith in their police, they also believe the cops...
...eight years that Nepal has been racked by a Maoist insurgency, the impoverished Himalayan kingdom could always count on two sources of foreign revenue: aid groups and backpackers. Now they are under threat, too. Earlier this month, Maoist guerrillas fighting to overthrow the monarchy and the country's feudal system called for a protracted national transport blockade to starve the capital, Kathmandu, and so to "pressure" the government to call a cease-fire, according to a statement from Maoist spokesman Jhhakku Prasad Subedi...
...flair for clandestine organization, a taste for brinkmanship. Now President Saakashvili is using those skills to try and bring Ajaria - one of three breakaway regions - back into the fold. An economically important Black Sea region, Ajaria is run by Aslan Abashidze, a tough, rich autocrat Saakashvili has called a "feudal chief." When the President turned up on Ajaria's borders, ostensibly to campaign for allies running in the March 28 parliamentary elections, Abashidze's men barred his way. Saakashvili promptly slapped a blockade on the region. After a tense few days he traveled to Ajaria's capital Batumi to negotiate...