If democracy is a government of the people, kleptocracy is a government of thieves.
Ethiopia: Licensed to Steal
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Sudan’s Divorce Proceedings
The Obama administration is grappling with a volatile diplomatic crisis in Sudan this year. With two violent conflicts on the brink of escalation, a president indicted for war crimes, and an election next month, Sudan is set to explode. The country is also preparing for a January 2011 referendum on independence for the south that will determine the fate of the country.
Postcard From…Bangkok
Former Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra received his verdict on February 26. The Supreme Court stripped Thaksin of $1.4 billion dollars in assets from his telecommunications firm. One day later, several members of the ruling coalition declared that Thaksin Shinawatra should leave politics forever. The present government came to power in semi-democratic elections following the military coup that toppled Thaksin in 2006.
Time-Lapse Foreign Policy
In the popular virtual game Civilization, you can build an empire and take over the world in a matter of hours. In other words, you can compress thousands of years of history into one long session in front of your computer. This is the gaming equivalent of time-lapse photography, which allows us to watch the blooming of a flower or the entire life-cycle of a caterpillar in a matter of seconds. Thanks to computer technology, Civilization gives you the illusion of experiencing and controlling epochal change.
China Lassoes its Neighbors
With the Doha Round of negotiations of the World Trade Organization in limbo, the heavy hitters of international trade have been engaged in a race to sew up trade agreements with smaller partners. China has been among the most aggressive in this game, a fact underlined on January 1, 2010, when the China-ASEAN Free Trade Area (CAFTA) went into effect.
Africa: C
Africans greeted Barack Obama’s presidential election with excitement and hope. Few ever imagined that a son of Africa would come to inhabit the most powerful office in the world. One year on, however, Obama’s legacy in Africa remains unclear.
Philip Morris vs. Uruguay
Choco Pies vs. Cold Noodles
In the blockbuster 2000 film JSA, two South Korean soldiers accidentally find themselves on the North Korean side of the Joint Security Area, at the border between the two countries. They meet their North Korean counterparts. But instead of fighting, the four soldiers become friends and arrange several midnight get-togethers. At the height of their secret fraternization, one of the South Korean soldiers brings over several Choco Pies, cookies with marshmallow covered in chocolate that are wildly popular in South Korea.
Will Facebook Remake the World?
When I traveled through Eastern Europe in the wake of the 1989 revolutions, I carried a computer and a portable printer. I typed up my dispatches, printed them out, and sent them back to my employers by air mail. Even with the lag time of a week or more, my reports on conversations with activists, academics, and politicians remained fresh. Email, after all, was still rudimentary in 1990. The World Wide Web was still three years in the future. Blogs wouldn’t debut until four years after that. Change was rapid in Eastern Europe in 1990. But for both activists and observers, the printed word still carried enormous weight.
South Korea’s Embattled Truth and Reconciliation Commission
Since the formation of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) to come to terms with the legacy of apartheid and colonialism, Commissions have sprung up in many countries that have sought to come to terms with painful legacies of colonialism, war, and internal strife. Nations with international and domestic traumas as diverse as Chile and Argentina, East Timor, and Sierra Leone have established TRCs.