[NEWS] Some international links: Koreas, eastern Europe, Brazil, Ireland and England, Canada

[rfmcdonald]

• This sad SCMP article takes a look at the struggles of North Korean defectors on arriving in South Korea, a competitive society with its own values alien to them.


• This Open Democracy book review asks what went wrong in eastern Europe, that illiberalism became so popular. (Of note, I think, is the suggestion that Western definitions have changed substantially since the 1990s.)


• The rise, in the person of Bolsonario, of fascism in Brazil is the subject of this stirring Open Democracy feature.


• This New York Times opinion piece by an Irish woman living in England touches upon the ways in which Brexiteers' blithe dismissal of Ireland and Irish needs are starting to make many 21st century Irish angry with their eastern neighbour, again.


• MacLean's notes how the legalization of marijuana in Canada came about as a consequence of the recognition by Justin Trudeau of the unfairness of the old regime.