Word: rulers
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...Indeed, no ruler should be allowed to mismanage a country and expect the world to fold its arms. While the initiatives to address the Zimbabwe situation are very welcome, one cannot overlook the fact that this deal rewards political violence and repression at the expense of electoral popularity and acceptance. By endorsing power-sharing agreements (first in Kenya and now in Zimbabwe), African leaders have, in principle, set a dangerous precedent: dispute election results, hang onto power, then negotiate into a compromise arrangement...
...outpouring of city pride. Despite the drums of war being sounded in New Delhi and Islamabad, life goes on. A few days after two terrorists killed 10 patrons at the Leopold Café, a popular drinking spot, I sat there and watched an elderly carpenter with a ruler and tape take measurements of the large glass pane, damaged by bullet holes, that fronted the bar. Onlookers snapped pictures of the poignant moment of recovery, camera flashes twinkling in the crystalline cracks. At the end of the Inferno, Dante plunges into the icy depths of Hell and beholds the terror...
...home to three-fifths of the world's population, but not a single election over the past decade has produced a leader able to build broad-based support for decisive policy choices. Why is this? One answer lies in a fundamental difference in the way Asians regard their rulers. Although the Asian Barometer Project found that the majority of Asians say they support most democratic ideals, their commitment to limits on a leader's power is far lower than that of people polled in Europe or even sub-Saharan Africa. In South Korea, for instance, nearly two-thirds of those...
...This ruler-knows-best attitude can make Asians act more like subjects than citizens. Militaries - the other power pole in much of Asia - can meddle in politics without much public distress from the masses. Just look at how Bangkok office ladies cheerily handed carnations to the soldiers who carried out a 2006 coup against Thailand's democratically elected leader. When Asians finally do react against their governments, it is often in extremis, anger spilling onto the streets in revolutionary-style rallies...
Alexander Solzhenitsyn was so elderly and melancholy that in 2008 he died. In the final years of his life, back in the homeland he had fought so hard to free from the oppression of the KGB, he came to a disappointing rapprochement with the new ruler of Russia, a former KGB agent. Having for years been tarred with the accusation of anti-Semitism, he devoted his final energies to a two-volume book about the Jews which would, among other things, demonstrate that he was not anti-Semitic. It mostly did the opposite. When, in the wake of his death...