Word: westernness
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...been on his own voyage of self-discovery. Raised on Badu, Saibai and Thursday islands, this grandson of a pearl diver grew up with stories of how his grandmother's side of the family had migrated to Torres Strait from American Samoa; his grandfather's people originally came from Western Samoa. While his affinity with Samoan culture and language is hardly surprising - "I'm blending in really well" - there is still much to learn, he says: "So why did they move to Torres Strait and settle up there? It's one of the things I want to find out while...
...territory. Moscow has promoted secessionist activities in several Georgian provinces: Abkhazia, Ajaria and, of course, South Ossetia. It has sponsored rebellious governments in these territories, armed their forces and even bestowed Russian citizenship on the secessionists. These efforts have intensified since the emergence in Georgia of a democratic, pro-Western government. Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's resentment toward Georgia and its President, the U.S.-educated Mikheil Saakashvili, has seemingly become a personal obsession...
...critical to the international flow of oil. A pipeline for crude oil now runs from Baku in Azerbaijan, on the Caspian Sea, through Georgia to the Turkish Mediterranean coast. The link provides the West access to the energy resources of central Asia. If that access is cut, the Western world will lose an important opportunity to diversify its sources of energy...
...Russia must be made to understand that it is in danger of becoming ostracized internationally. This should be a matter of considerable concern to Russia's new business élite, who are increasingly vulnerable to global financial pressure. Russia's powerful oligarchs have hundreds of billions of dollars in Western bank accounts. They would stand to lose a great deal in the event of a Cold War-style standoff that could conceivably result, at some stage, in the West's freezing of such holdings...
...Russians' brewing rage at their lost grandeur came in Kosovo, when, in the wake of NATO's 1999 war against Serbia - a war Russia opposed - Russian forces seized the airport that NATO had intended as headquarters for what many Russians considered an occupation force. No shots were fired, but Western generals found it jarring to see how far Russia would go for a territory so marginal to its wealth and security...