Mobile phones have already transformed life in developing countries. They have brought phone service to remote areas that had little hope of ever seeing landlines. They have also had major economic benefits for so-called micro-entrepreneurs, helping them with everything from establishing mobile barbershops to determining the best time to bring goods to market. And now […]
Foreign Policy’s, The Cable, has some clues on the USAID revamp, released in an email to USAID employees yesterday. They write: USAID Administrator Rajiv Shah is moving ahead with his promise to give the agency back its capability to think strategically by building an official policy planning staff. “This new bureau, bolstered by the agency’s […]
Here are a couple of events for anyone in the Washington, DC area (be sure to RSVP if you want to attend). Note that the second will also be webcast! Pakistan’s Lawless Frontier The Most Dangerous Place The New America Foundation and the Heinrich Böll Foundation are pleased to host Imtiaz Gul, a Pakistani journalist […]
Henrique Meirelles, Brazil’s central bank president, helped save President Lula’s hide back in 2003 when the bond markets priced Brazilian sovereign bonds at default levels. He was a key pillar of Lula’s credible economic team, which convinced markets that the firebrand leftist was not going to spoil Lula’s predecessor’s hard work crushing pernicious hyperinflation. Lula had the […]
UNICEF is concerned by Guantanamo trial for former child soldier The impending July trial of Omar Khadr at Guantanamo Bay sets a dangerous precedent on the treatment of child soldiers, UNICEF head Anthony Lake warns. Khadr was arrested in 2002 when he was 15 years old, accused of throwing a grenade that killed an American […]
On June 7, the Carnegie Endowment in Washington, D.C., sponsored a discussion of the Polakow-Suransky book in which Shimon Peres is said to have offered apartheid South Africa nuclear weapons–the subject of an earlier blog. The discussion involved several experts on Israel and international affairs, notably Avner Cohen, author of The Worst Kept Secret: Israel’s […]
As wages rise in China, US dependent export products may become more expensive at a time least convenient to the struggling, fragile U.S. economy.
Women Deliver, held this week in Washington, DC, has opened with a bang – a $1.5 billion pledge over 5 years from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation focusing on maternal and child health. The NY Times writes: “Ms. Gates said much of the next $1.5 billion would go to programs in India, Ethiopia and […]
Turkish President Gul pictured with the world’s most notorious extremist, who is quoted in the article below as saying that the Zionists are “holding up the flag of the devil itself…” and are “the backbone of the dictatorial world order,” taking a page again from Julius Streicher’s Der Stuermer. In its drive to be a regional power, […]
Interesting Economist article (below) discussing whether other Asian currencies — the Korean won, Thai Baht, Singapore dollar, Malaysian Ringgit, New Taiwan dollar, Vietnamese dong, Indian rupee, Indonesian rupiah — track the Chinese yuan in order to maintain competitiveness in US markets relative to China as well as access to the Chinese market. There have been […]
The recent Flotilla Affair has sparked a round of reflection regarding Turkey’s role in the Middle East and the wider Muslim world. The questions being raised suggest that the U.S.-Turkey relationship is in a state of transition as the logic that cemented the alliance during the Cold War gives way to a variety of changing […]
As the US watches the growing disaster from the BP oil spill unfold, it seems appropriate to take a look at what has happened in the wake of other modern industrial disasters. Unfortunately, the developments of this week illustrate that justice is not always served in the aftermath. Twenty five years after a chemical gas […]
Benjamin Netanyahu subscribes to the George W. Bush school of anti-diplomacy. It’s nice to blow off steam, especially when you are in the right. But does brandishing your sword make an effective foreign policy? Ask Kaiser Wilhelm II, the arch-villain of World War I, whose bluster and belligerence led to the encirclement of Germany, his gravest fear. Ask most Americans after W left […]
Interesting excerpts from what I’ve been reading this past week. It’s a bit of a mixed bag, but there is one theme that I detect: behaviour is integral to the maintenance and promotion health…but it’s hard to predict, hard to control and hard to change: Dan Heath at Fast Company gives us some reasons, and they don’t include lazyness. He explains that […]
The indispensable (to me anyway) “NY Review of Books” has an insightful look at Bill McKibben’s new book, Eaarth. The reviewer is no less a personage than Nicholas Stern. In generally praising “McKibben’s engaging and persuasive book,” Lord Stern gives a particularly succinct summary of the history of the science and present state of the […]