Word: openness
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...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...
...most coffee growers, Fair Trade is still slightly more lucrative than the open market. Two years ago, the Germany-based Fairtrade Labelling Organizations International (FLO), which sets worldwide prices and standards, raised the minimum per-pound price of nonorganic coffee 9¢, to $1.35 (a dime of which goes to social programs like scholarships for growers' children). That's 15¢ higher than the current market rate. And yet, according to Fair Trade researcher Christopher Bacon of the University of California, Berkeley, the per-pound price that's needed for farmers to rise above subsistence is really more than $2. Farmer advocates...
...Here we are aiming at honing an open and questioning mind, that is eager to probe and challengeā€”actions that were sorely lacking by certain officials and regulators in the financial markets.ā€¯ Danos says...