Word: states
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Today, Taybeh Beer is a potent symbol of the emerging Palestinian state and its tiny Christian minority - which is less than 2% of the population. The brewery turns a tidy profit, produces 600,000 litres a year and is brewed under license in Germany. Half the sales are within the West Bank, 40% go to Israel, and the rest are exports to Japan. Taybeh even had a nearby rabbi certify its product as kosher. Last year the brewery introduced a zero-alcohol brew for Muslims. Taybeh billboards with the slogan "Drink Palestinian - Taste the Revolution" tower over the main street...
...seems improbable that Mao would actually have expressed such a reactionary sentiment at such a heady time. His was a movement driven by the cause of the exploited worker and peasant. Yet the scene appears in The Founding of a Republic, a slickly produced (though ponderously paced) state-backed film to commemorate this year's 60th anniversary of the People's Republic of China. (See pictures of China's 60th birthday bash...
...Then there's the Sinophile John Leighton Stuart, son of missionaries to China and U.S. ambassador to Chiang's Nanjing government. At the time, the real-life Mao vilified Stuart as an agent of American aggression toward the communists. In the film, Stuart, as well as the U.S. State Department, is lukewarm toward Chiang and the KMT - reflecting, perhaps, Beijing's desire to maintain the momentum of its improving diplomatic ties with Washington. (Last November, the Chinese acceded to a four-decade-old request by Stuart's family to have his ashes buried in a cemetery in Hangzhou, near Shanghai...
...early 1970s - at that point they knew less about Belfast than they did about Nairobi - well, I haven't come across a single file that relates intelligence during the Troubles that begin in 1969 to intelligence between the Easter rising in 1916 and the founding of an [Irish] Free State in 1922. Files from that previous period show that intelligence was incredibly confused, and poorly coordinated with local police. What happens in the 1970s? Exactly the same thing. It's a nearly perfect example of the old adage that those who do not understand past mistakes are doomed to repeat...
...While under attack in a Senate subcommittee from Republicans who are skeptical over the Geneva talks, Deputy Secretary of State Jim Steinberg suggested on Tuesday, according to CNN, that "one reason for the Obama Administration's engagement toward Iran was to secure international support for sanctions if Iran continued to defy international demands." The argument works if Iran stonewalls; but if it offers counterproposals deemed reasonable by China, Russia and some Europeans, winning support for further sanctions would become even harder. And that's a game the Iranians may be ready to play, by refusing to give up uranium enrichment...