The 2010 Ibrahim Prize for excellence in African leadership goes to…no one. The prize committee of the Mo Ibrahim Foundation announced last week they are not granting the award this year, as they found no suitable candidates. The Ibrahim prize is granted to an African leader who has achieved positive developments in their country, and, […]
Every year Transparency International ranks nearly all countries in the world in its Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI). In 2009 the United States ranked a respectable 19 out of 180. But within the United States there is considerable variation. Anyone who follows national news might make their own U.S. Corruption Perceptions Index, with the sheer size […]
I admit, I’m completely caught up in World Cup fever. It’s obvious from my decline in postings since the games opened two weeks ago. Most evenings I’m glued to the television screen and most mornings I awake to the sound of vuvuzelas on the streets at 6am. So, in the mayhem, I somehow missed the encouraging […]
G-8 Leaders — composed of the world’s eight major industrialized countries, as well as representatives of the European Union and heads of state from the ten leading Emerging Nations such as Brazil, India, Mexico and South Africa, among others, discussed a wide range of challenges related to financial markets, international trade, development and global peace and stability.
The oil disaster in the Gulf has revived the Obama Administration’s interest in promoting its green technology agenda. President Obama used the occasion of his recent Oval Office address to restate his view that the U.S. is falling behind China in the race to become the world’s green technology hub, with the implication that legions […]
Last week the United States issued their annual worldwide report on human trafficking, the 2010 Trafficking in Persons Report, which for the first time included a ranking of the United States. The 373-page report states that some 12.3 million adults and children are in forced labor, bonded labor, and forced prostitution globally. While the numbers […]
One of the particularly entertaining keynotes at the Social Impact Exchange conference was given by Dan Heath, co-author of Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard. He spoke about “finding the bright spots” or looking for what is working instead of what is not working. One of his examples was “positive deviance“, a theory for social […]
Mr. President, you can’t have it both ways. You can’t have General Petraeus come in and save your Afghan policy at the same time as you have been associated with MoveOn.org, which called him “General Betray Us” on the pages of the New York Times in 2007. I don’t want to be the guy always criticizing […]
1. Ethiopia’s Election Results and the Myths of African Politics, by MG Zimeta in the latest edition of The Atlantic 2. 50 Years of African Independence: the Music of West Africa in Robert Nolan’s excellent FPA blog, Music and Global Affairs 3. US food aid policies create 561 jobs in Kansas, risk millions of lives […]
Further to my last post below on the Alberta tar sands, here is a hopeful bit of news from Stacy Feldman at the excellent SolveClimate on a hard-hitting letter from Congress to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. 50 members of the House, no doubt all with very high LCV ratings, warned the Secretary of the […]
When policymakers think about agriculture in Afghanistan, they tend to think in terms of what is grown (opium, with Afghanistan being, by far the world’s largest supplier) and what should be grown (anything else). In April, Anthony Cordesman and Adam Mausner from the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) released their analysis of Afghan […]
Just wanted to add a few more thoughts to my earlier blog on General McChrystal before I head out for my daily tasks. Stratfor put out an excellent article on the situation but I disagree with some of the points made. In the article, Stratfor indicated the Rolling Stone article portrayed “McChrystal and his inner […]
Today is my birthday and having just returned home after spending two weeks away dealing with a family emergency, I had hoped to spend a quiet day contemplating personal goals for the next year and ending the day overeating with friends at one of my favorite restaurants. The best laid plans…I kept turning on the […]
Sean Murphy on the Global Film blog recently reviewed Amandla! a documentary about South African music under apartheid. As we turn our gaze to the country for the World Cup, it is good to look back and learn more about the intricacies of apartheid and the mass struggle to overturn the system. South Africa is […]
Insubordination by top military officers to civilian authority is unacceptable in America. As presidential biographer Robert Dallek argued in today’s NYTimes, McChrystal’s defiance of his civilian masters may warrant dismissal. However, there is another important issue here: how hubris on the campaign trail can lead to sub-par policy choices. President Obama’s decision early in his administration […]