Steven Fake's Blog, page 8
April 16, 2011
Humor: Libya & Book Tours
Courtesy of the Onion, the best headlines of the week:
"Libyan Rebels Still Working Full-Time At Other Jobs"
April 15, 2011
South Sudan: Rule by the NGOs
As South Sudan moves towards formal independence, "NGOs will still provide basic services to almost 90 percent of the country," reports PRI. In other words, social services will be almost entirely outside of a framework permitting even theoretical popular control (i.e. a government). It is a remarkable situation - a country bankrolled and controlled by foreign agencies.
Cuban Communist Party Congress of April 16th
COHA has a preview of some of the changes in Cuba expected to come out of tomorrow's "Communist Party Congress" (the first in over a decade): shrinking government and cutting social spending, including eliminating citizens' guaranteed rations. Just one more indicator of a trend evident for some time that changes in Raul Castro's Cuba are generally in the (or another) wrong direction.
April 13, 2011
Book Banning Last Year
Barbara Ehrenreich's "Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By In America" made the top 10 list of books which libraries have received complaints about in 2010. The reasons given? "Drugs, Inaccurate, Offensive Language, Political Viewpoint, Religious Viewpoint". Sadly "Darfur - Intervention and the USA" was not accorded a similar honor.
April 10, 2011
Crimson Tinged Democracy in Libya
Harvard's ties to the Gaddafi regime have caused it some embarrassment in the pages of the Boston Globe, thanks to an outspoken professor. A tenured professor and his consulting firm produced a report claiming, with a straight face purchased for several million dollars, that Libya has a "popular democracy system".
March 12, 2011
What Kind of Democracy for North Africa?
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton commented in advance of her upcoming visit to the region that, "We have an enormous stake in ensuring that Egypt and Tunisia provide models for the kind of democracy that we want to see." Whether her words were deliberately chosen or not, the comment is very true.
March 4, 2011
Cote d'Ivoire Facing Massive Violence
Though it's disappeared from the news, the Ivory Coast is threatened with serious violence.
