Word: ironization
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...shortage of dictators who made lofty promises to uplift the poor and build powerful nations. Few ever delivered. But then there is South Korea's Park Chung Hee. A general who took control of South Korea after a coup in 1961, he ruled, often with an iron fist, for 18 years. Yet he was also deeply moved by South Korea's destitution. In the early 1960s, the country's per capita national income was just over $100 and the economy depended on American aid. Park, a virulent nationalist, vowed to do something about this. "I had to break, once...
...Qinghai province. Like the majority there, he was an ethnic Tibetan, a nomadic yak breeder in town on a pilgrimage. While friendly toward foreigners, Dorje nodded at the video cameras mounted above the road and said we'd better speak somewhere private. It's a grim commentary on the iron grip China maintains on Tibetan areas of the country that even a yak herdsman knows to be wary of video surveillance. In a sheltered corner of the monastery's walls, Dorje enumerated the wrongs visited on ordinary Tibetans by the Chinese authorities: beatings, arbitrary arrests and lengthy jail sentences, extortion...
...First, to debase Tibetan culture and broadcast authority, the Chinese government has conspicuously placed signs of Chinese culture on top of Tibetan ones. The government has planted a television tower atop the Iron Mountain—a sacred landmass in the center of Lhasa, Tibet’s Holy City. This eyesore casts its shadow on some of the most important relics of the Buddhist world, belittling Tibetan identity both physically and figuratively. Centuries ago, the Iron Mountain served as a principal shrine for medical studies. Now, Tibetan identity comes second to Chinese cable...
There is a hidden motive behind the technology and development that the Chinese government has brought to Tibet. Because of the television tower, the Tibetans cannot rebuild the shrine that used to stand atop the Iron Mountain. Because of the Chinese flags on top of their roofs, Tibetans can no longer decorate their homes and schools with prayer flags—one of the most important traditions of Tibetan life. Television and new homes are in themselves beneficial to the Tibetans, but the Chinese have used them to inhibit traditional Tibetan practices and make Chinese culture more visible...
...catching is the Canal House Hotel (www.canalhousepanama.com), an elegantly renovated late 19th century mansion where actor Daniel Craig stayed during the three-month Bond shoot. The hotel's three guest rooms are named after the Canal's massive locks - Miraflores, Pedro Miguel and Gatun - and each has a wrought-iron balcony with views of the Casco's Cathedral Plaza and surrounding red-tiled roofs and cobblestone alleyways...