DEREK BARRY
It was impossible not to think of the Denver shootings as I attended the new Batman movie at the local cinema tonight. This latest random mass murder could have been scripted in the film itself, though it would have been the work of a cardboard-evil mastermind rather than just an unhinged student.
PROTECT OR RESPECT: BURMA’S CONSTITUTIONAL CHALLENGE
DEREK BARRY
The wording of an oath is the pawn in a dangerous power game in Burma as newly elected democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi flexes her muscles. Her party the National League for Democracy refused to allow its newly elected members to be sworn in at the parliamentary opening in Naypyidaw yesterday.
A YEAR OF REVOLT: IN MEMORY OF MOHAMMED BOUAZIZI
DEREK BARRY
Francis Fukuyama’s 1992 book The End of History and The Last Man was misinterpreted as a triumph for democracy in the wake of the fall of western communism. It was therefore easy to laugh at him being hopelessly wrong as the New World Order collapsed in the late 1990s and new enemies appeared to replace old bugbears.
RAZAN GHAZZAWI ARRESTED IN SYRIA
DEREK BARRY
Prominent blogger Razan Ghazzawi is the latest victim of an increasingly desperate Syrian regime, arrested on her way to a media conference in Jordan on Sunday.