Last week the UK’s Serious Fraud Office brought bribery charges against an agent of British defense contractor BAE. These are the first criminal charges to be brought against a company that has been under investigation for more than five years. The status of BAE is highly contentious. Unlike Siemens, another major company accused of bribery, […]
You can’t beat that. Catching up on my reading, I came across this terrific article, Construction plant, from the FT from a couple of weeks ago. Hemp is the building material that can work wonders. (This reminds me of biochar, one of the most exciting developments in agriculture and horticulture to come along in a […]
Swaziland is Africa’s last absolute monarchy. It has the world’s highest HIV infection rate and its citizens have a life expectancy of 31 years. King Mswati III, who was installed in 1986, appears to be out of touch with his people who live lives of devastating poverty. [kml_flashembed movie=”http://www.youtube.com/v/o37iJhBo7VU” width=”425″ height=”350″ wmode=”transparent” /] This documentary […]
Chronicles the rise and fall of the efficient market theory and the century-long making of the modern financial industry, Justin Fox’s The Myth of the Rational Market is as much an intellectual whodunit as a cultural history of the purveyors, the perils and possibilities of financial risk.
January 2nd was the National Annual Journalism Awards Day. But for many Iranian journalists, it was just another day behind bars. Aidan White, secretary-general of the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), said at a press conference at the European Parliament in Brussels that three board members of the Association of Iranian Journalists (AoIJ) had been […]
These all come courtesy of Security Law Brief: A Canadian victim of rendition is appealing to the Supreme Court. Five American terror suspects are alleging that they were subjected to various forms of torture including electric shocks by the FBI and Pakistani police. Latvia will take one of the U.S.’s Guantanamo inmates. Marc Ambinder theorizes […]
Larissa Douglass Recently, one of my friends told me that the anglosphere is dead and the future lies in Asia. Beyond the condition of the world economy that this fashionable attitude reflects, the fashion is actually typical of the anglosphere itself. The term “anglosphere” became briefly popular in conservative circles around 2003-2004, reviving Churchillian values […]
From the I.C.C. Situation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo: In this situation, three cases are being heard before the relevant Chambers: The Prosecutor v. Thomas Lubanga Dyilo; The Prosecutor v. Bosco Ntaganda; and The Prosecutor v. Germain Katanga and Mathieu Ngudjolo Chui. The accused Thomas Lubanga Dyilo, Germain Katanga and Mathieu Ngudjolo Chui […]
Carl Bildt, Swedish Foreign Minister, sometimes PM, and general foreign-policy badass, has a rather self-aggrandizing and content-free editorial calling for Internet Freedom in the WaPo recently. There’s not a lot on which to comment. Dictators on the wrong side of history, etc. The main significance, I think, is that it riffs on Hillary’s Internet Freedom speech. The […]
Ars Technica, one of my favorite geeky news sites, has a great scare piece on the Hobbsian state of nature in cybersecurity. (No, not this Hobbes. This one.) Go read it, and after deciding that eArmageddon 2.0 is on the way come back before you start building your disaster preparedness kit. The report comes from […]
According to Mineweb, Greenland Minerals and Metals (a company) has finished an initial report on the Kvanefjeld site on Greenland’s southwest tip. Kvanefjeld could potentially become a major rare earth mine and would also produce uranium. Greenland noted that Kvanefjeld’s Joint Ore Reserve Committee (Jorc)-compliant resource estimate, containing 4,79-million tons of rare earth oxides (REO) and […]
I wrote in September about what I identified as Tom Friedman’s Strange Call on China. I was reporting that the “NY Times” hadn’t printed a letter I’d written in response to one of Friedman’s columns – Our One-Party Democracy – and so wanted to share the column and response. Funny thing: They did print […]
I’ll be in august company tonight, discussing climate change on The Hyperbole Hour. Gavin Schmidt will be talking about climate science, and Amanda Little and I will be kicking around some policy and politics. I had the opportunity to review Gavin’s book, Climate Change: Picturing the Science, for “Nature Reports Climate Change” and I had […]
From the Brussels-based record label that brought the innovative and “hypnotique” sounds of Konono No 1 to the world stage comes another Congolese sensation with a great back story. Staff Bendi Bililli are a high energy group of paraplegic street musicians who were stumbled upon by Crammed records near a zoo in Kinshasa, DRC. Cruising […]
