The Cultural Revolution swept up all of China.

Naglaa El Emam made headlines again when she converted to Christianity and changed her name to Catherine.

This is certainly true in Latin America, where a wave of leftist populism has swept many countries.

Anti government protests swept Bahrain's streets on February 14, 2011, with protesters calling for democratic reforms and more freedoms.

Much of the time the barbarism in Iraq goes unrecorded, as when American tanks sweep into Iraqi neighborhoods and kill dozens of innocents in the name of fighting insurgents.

Starting with Japan, this modernizing wave has swept through the four Asian Tigers (South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore), some ASEAN countries (Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, and Vietnam), and then to China and India.

But the plant was not designed to withstand the 14 meter high tsunami waves that swept over its protective sea wall less than an hour later.

Then, in the closing decades of the twentieth century, a counter revolution swept the world, pushing for just the opposite disperse capital as widely as possible by getting everybody involved as owners.

The winds of global change began sweeping through Asia roughly two decades ago, first in East Asia, then engulfing China, and in the course of the 1990 s blowing on to South Asia, most importantly India.

The defaults of that time were not confined to one country, but swept across the globe in a contagious panic that destroyed financial systems in lending as well as borrowing countries.

Overall, the top 25 Russian companies hold 59 billion in foreign assets and are the third largest investors in emerging economies, following Hong Kong and Brazil. Even though the financial crisis has wiped out Russian stock market, some of the best run companies are hit less badly than their Western counterparts and will therefore be shopping in the global market next year.

Among the leading politicians of the parties that overwhelmingly won the parliamentary elections the neo liberal Civic Platform and the conservative populist Law and Justice almost every face has been around since 1989.

And it is easy to see why. In Brazil s underdeveloped Nordeste, Dilma (in Brazil, politicians, like footballers, go by their first name) swept the vote.