Word: localism
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...aloft. On the holiday itself, every year about 5,000 people turn out to see the President or Vice President give a speech and lay a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. And other Americans are encouraged to observe in a more solitary fashion. At 3 p.m. local time, according to the 2000 National Moment of Remembrance Act, which was passed to emphasize the meaning of Memorial Day, all Americans should "voluntarily and informally observe in their own way a moment of remembrance and respect, pausing from whatever they are doing for a moment of silence or listening...
...sticking point is democratic freedoms, particularly the right of journalists to report the news. Prime Minister Tsvangirai declared that all the banned foreign media organizations - such as CNN and BBC - were now free to operate from Zimbabwe. But Mugabe's faction has not made operating easy, especially for the local reporters the foreign media often hire to help gather information...
...Which makes Rakhmon's sudden bout of modesty all the more puzzling. According to Russian news agency RIA Novosti, on May 15 local Tajik officials received phone calls from the president's office playing a recorded address by Rakhmon in which he stated that from then on, they could only display portraits of him that had been given official approval: "In order to prevent the veneration of bureaucrats [and] eliminate misunderstandings among the public ... the placement of portraits of the head of state in public places will be determined by the Office of the President of Tajikistan." The directive says...
...what the government is touting as an effort to tackle the obsession with celebrity, some observers say could simply be the president's way of keeping local leaders from trying to up their status by basking in his reflected glory. Rakhmon, a former cotton farm boss whose prezident.tj website features nearly a dozen pictures of him on the homepage alone, led pro-communist forces against Islamist rebels during Tajikistan's civil war in the 1990s and became leader of the nation in 1992, a year after independence. The nation's longest-serving president, Rakhmon continues to command popular support, despite...
...Although images of Rakhmon pictured alone will stay put, crews taking down images of local politicians standing or sitting next to the leader have their work cut out for them, with hundreds of enormous billboards casting shadows over roadways and blanketing buildings across the country. They might soon wish that all they had to do was pull down a rotating golden statue...