Word: openings
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...half. The initiative faced ridicule in the national media, but it was presumably designed to placate the nationalist army faction to whom Abhisit's administration is beholden. Thailand also continues to court international criticism for the strict application of lèse-majesté laws that dissuade open discussion of the royal family and succession issues. Under Abhisit's tenure, the number of high-profile lèse-majesté cases working their way through Thai courts has increased. Shortly after Abhisit told TIME that "there has been an improvement [although] there may have been one or two cases which...
...state power." In August I went to Sichuan to testify at his trial. Tan is an editor and environmentalist, not a revolutionary. But like my father, Tan asks the important questions and says what he thinks. Now, as then, that's a dangerous thing in China. If you open your mouth to point out something that is clearly wrong, if you believe in your essential right to speak, then you can be labeled an enemy of the state. (See pictures of the making of modern China...
...Malays, Indians and Europeans - in a region where ethnic and political strife are commonplace. But as the tiny number who seek to form or join opposition groups know, speaking out in Singapore can invite a lawsuit, bankruptcy or even prison. From time to time the government tentatively tries to open up. "Speakers' Corner" was one such attempt. Modeled on its London namesake, it was established in 2000 in a park in downtown Singapore. When I visited last year, the instructions on a bulletin board listed the following rules: You must register at the police station around the corner; you must...
...Russia, Vladimir Putin knows the pact well. Putin has long argued that economic success and social order must come before openness and plurality. Many Russians I know - friends from the early 1990s when we all watched, spellbound, the brief flowering of democracy - have come to agree with him. When I quit as editor of a British political magazine, one Russian friend phoned to declare how happy she was that I would now start doing something worthwhile with my life, like making money. Russians, Chinese and others utter a single word when such a viewpoint is challenged: Gorbachev. Remember, they...
...flow with the perceptions of nuclear threat. Since 2002, the Pentagon has pumped more than $60 billion into new antimissile missiles now on guard against North Korean launches in the Pacific. But the system--likened to hitting a bullet with a bullet--too often fails what are essentially open-book tests. That it could annihilate an actual warhead is still an article of faith...