government & governance

The world after the (bailout) vote


We were glad to be reminded of this wonderful Long Johns clip  about how it all began - laughter truly is the best medicine
Dear American:
I need to ask you to support an urgent secret business relationship with a transfer of funds of great magnitude.
I am Ministry of the Treasury of the […]

Sarah Palin II


See also Vice President (R) Sarah Palin

The Wild Wordsmith of Wasilla Dick Cavett on “the serial syntax-killer from Wasilla High”
11 November
Palin Defends Herself in Fox Interview
In her first national television interview since the election, Gov. Sarah Palin delivered a lengthy post-mortem of the presidential campaign, criticizing the media, her campaign handlers and the aides […]

Myanmar/Burma


See also Wednesday-night.com on Burma

Myanmar News Agency, via Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
An aerial view of a town in the southern Irrawaddy Delta region of Myanmar that was devastated by the cyclone More Photos
Junta launches […]

Zimbabwe II


Previous events in the sorry saga

Mugabe rejects recommendation for unity government
Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe announced his intention to form a cabinet “as soon as possible” in defiance of a recommendation by southern African leaders that he form a unity government by sharing control of the Home Affairs Ministry with the opposition […]

Obama’s Challenge — Stratfor


We find this article to be an excellent summary of  the complex problems that the President-elect will face and therefore are publishing in in its entirety, believing that we may well wish to refer to it in the coming months and years.  
By George Friedman
Barack Obama has been elected president of the United States by […]

The world & the financial crisis


Financial Times Report on World Economy

A light at the end of the tunnel?

(The Economist) THE dithering has ended. After a week in which the financial system almost ground to a halt, governments of the industrialised world seem at last to have found the right tools to get credit markets moving again. At the weekend […]

The G.W. Bush Presidency


This illustration was on the cover of this week’s SPIEGEL. It is a remake of a SPIEGEL cover from 2002 showing President George W. Bush’s cabinet on its way to war. The US Embassy in Berlin ordered 33 copies of the original illustration in poster form for the White House. There has been no word […]

The Economy - What went wrong & What’s next? II


See Part I of this topic/saga ; The evolving bailout plan ; The world after the (bailout) vote
Reversal of Fortune
How ideology, special-interest pressure, populist politics, and sheer incompetence have left the U.S. economy on life support, Joseph E. Stiglitz puts forth a clear, commonsense plan to reverse the Bush-era follies and regain America’s […]

Africa: economies & governance


See also Global Monitoring Report 2008
More on Wednesday-night.com
Sub-Saharan Africa is a highly complex Region of 47 countries with 7 distinctly different colonial histories. It is also highly diverse, with more than 700 million people of at least 1,000 different ethnic groups. The Region is a critical development priority—it has some of the world’s poorest countries […]

Monbiot: The degradation of intelligence and learning in American politics


The Triumph of Ignorance
Why morons succeed in U.S. politics
(The Guardian) How was it allowed to happen? How did politics in the US come to be dominated by people who make a virtue out of ignorance? Was it charity that has permitted mankind’s closest living relative to spend two terms as president? How did Sarah […]

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