Word: lites
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...government has been formed - the fourth in 2008 - but its Prime Minister, Abhisit Vejjajiva, was forced to delay his inaugural policy address because of protests by supporters of the previous administration. Hovering in the background is the PAD, which draws its ranks from the very middle class and élite that supported the 1992 democracy movement, and has as its ultimate aim a so-called "New Politics," whose fuzzy, oft-shifting aims have included the undemocratic step of appointing parliamentarians. "We're looking at a dead end politically," says Thitinan Pongsudhirak, a political scientist at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok...
...Lowdown: Burger's replication of Milgram's famous demonstration was watered down somewhat; a review of his findings by University of California-Davis professor Alan Elms terms the study "Obedience Lite." The electric charges were purposefully subtler and the conditions less stressful. But the takeaway is no less disturbing: humanity's threshold for cruelty is, like everything else, situational. We seem wired to follow orders, even when they're harmful to others. In her chilling portrayal of Nazi middle-manager Adolf Eichmann, Hannah Arendt famously excoriated this impulse as "the banality of evil." Evil is way too strong a word...
Mexico's criminal police are a product of the financial neglect and social scorn heaped on public law enforcement by the country's élite - the same ostentatiously upper-crust families who are now rampant kidnapping targets. Either way, cops are the main reason only 2% of Mexico's criminal cases are ever solved, according to the National Commission for Human Rights. Officially, Mexico is second only to war-torn Colombia in the number of kidnappings, but many security experts believe Mexico may have overtaken the South American nation in recent years. Thousands of abductions take place each year, they...
...Zedong saw it, art was to be accessible to the masses and not the exclusive province of an intellectual élite. Painting and sculpture, as well as fiction, music, theater and ballet, were to reflect new common values, not individual ideas or feelings. The products of this "art for politics' sake" were mostly optimistic in spirit and patriotic in purpose...
...government budget was based on oil at $70 per barrel, way above the current ? level, and it will consequently swing into deficit next year for the first time since 2001. The stock market has dropped more than 70% in the past year, as the nation's business élite dumped stocks to repay the huge loans they took out to finance acquisitions in Russia and abroad. Capital is fleeing - investors have pulled about $190 billion out of Russia since August - and the ruble is under pressure...