Word: westerns
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...always been proximity to the countryside. In Shanghai, Beijingers point out smugly, you can drive for three hours and still be trapped in urban sprawl. In the capital, not much more than an hour on the road gets you out into the stark, sparsely populated beauty of the Western Hills, with the Great Wall thrown in as a bonus. Sadly for Beijing partisans, they will be less able to rely on that argument in future, because from now on Shanghaiers will come back with a single word: Moganshan...
When Christopher Columbus arrived in 1492, he named the land La Isla Española. It served as a Spanish colony and base for the empire's further conquests, though it was never particularly profitable. In 1697 the Spanish formally ceded the western third of the island to the French, who were already present and more heavily invested. The Hispaniolan outposts of both empires imported African slaves, though the latter did so to a much greater extent. The colonies - Santo Domingo and Saint-Domingue, respectively - subsequently developed vastly different demographics. According to a study by the American Library of Congress...
...Interference by foreign powers was often the norm. The Spanish took back the Dominican Republic in the early 1860s, and for periods during the 20th century, the U.S. occupied both nations, supposedly to restore order but also, in the face of European threats, to assert its influence in the western hemisphere. Internal politics were characterized by multiple coups, revolts and dictators, the most infamous being Rafael Trujillo in the Dominican Republic and François and Jean-Claude Duvalier in Haiti. Juan Bosch, the first democratically elected President of the Dominican Republic in 1962, was almost immediately overthrown after taking...
Today, with a lack of resources and a much higher population density than its neighbor, Haiti is the poorest country in the western hemisphere. The U.N. has sent peacekeeping missions to maintain order there since the mid-1990s, but terrible conditions persist. Haiti's dismal statistics have a long history; no devil is necessary...
...ways to avoid such unintended consequences, as that commander at Forward Operating Base Maizan in Zabul province noted, is to remember why foreign troops and internationals are in Afghanistan. "Winning hearts and minds," that catchphrase of counterinsurgency, can be easily misunderstood. The aim of Western soldiers in Afghanistan is not to win affection for themselves or their armies but to build support for the Afghan government...