Word: islands
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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After being imprisoned for crusading against apartheid, Nelson Mandela spent countless hours splitting rocks on South Africa's Robben Island. Since 1949, some 50 million Chinese have passed through a system of prison camps known as laogai, which translates from Mandarin as "reform through labor." According to the Laogai Research Foundation, an organization devoted to chronicling the practice's atrocities, approximately 6 million Chinese are imprisoned in this vast system of forced-labor camps at any one time. Millions more have died while toiling in cramped, pestilential conditions with meager food rations...
VENICE, Italy — He’s been a glass-blower for the last ten years. Specializing in beads, he now teaches the skill to college students on Murano, the Venetian island renowned for the craft. I ask the man whether he lives here. He smirks and responds, half in jest, “No one lives on Murano.” Leaving him, I walk along the boardwalk-turned-sidewalk, watching as the never-ending line of shops begins to close. It’s a wonder that they all stay in business, as each...
...darker place. Perhaps along with gondolas and bridges, the city should be thought of as a place where, as you dine along the Grand Canal between the mainland and Giudecca, you should expect small cities to float by you: cruiseships so enormous that they form a shadow over the island as the passengers onboard wave down to you. Perhaps you should expect that in viewing the sites, you, too, become a part of the display. Over 130 years ago James was able to make the observation, “The everlasting shuffle of these irresponsible visitors in the Piazza...
...predictions that China will not adopt liberal values in the future ignore the part of China that already has. For Taiwan, as Mitter says, has a deep sense of Chinese cultural identity (more so than the mainland, arguably) and yet is a "highly modern, liberal democracy." Who knows? The island may yet turn out to be a model for China as a whole. (Read "Taiwan: How to Reboot the Dragon...
...Rhode Island family that invented the game--and that plans spin-offs in the shape of pears and apples--has kept control of the company. Granddad's new title: top banana...