Our friends in the desert - TheHill.com "A less-than-accurate narrative is saleable as long as those to whom it is sold don’t discover that it is little more than fiction.
Controlling the narrative becomes even more important when few Americans are familiar with the facts. "
(tags: westernsahara)
African poverty: Falling faster than you think | vox - Research-based policy analysis and commentary from leading economists Our main conclusion is that Africa is reducing poverty, and doing it much faster than many thought. * The growth from the period 1995-2006, far from benefiting only the elites, has been sufficiently widely spread that both total African inequality and African within-country inequality actually declined over this period. * The speed at which Africa has reduced poverty since 1995 puts it on track to achieve the Millennium Development Goal of halving poverty relative to 1990 by 2015 on time or, at worst, a couple of years late. * If the Democratic Republic of Congo converges to the African trend once it is stabilised, the MDG will be achieved by 2012, three years before the target date.
(tags: africaeconomics)
cassiphone: The Women of The Five Doctors "There is an emotional core utterly missing from The Five Doctors, only evident in tiny moments here and there, while the larger ones are wasted. I still enjoy it as a story, I always will - it’s a grand adventure and one of those Doctor Who stories that is burned on to my ten-year-old psyche - but for a show that was working so hard to define the mythology of Doctor Who, it missed the mark when it comes to defining and redefining the role of women in the show. By acknowledging the cliches about girl companions and not doing enough to counteract them or even comment on them (we needed more pineapple cocktail moments to balance out the tea-making!) it only serves to cement those cliches as being essential to the show’s history, rather than one of the least interesting aspects of it."
(tags: doctorwho)
Why WikiLeaks Is Bad for Scholars - The Chronicle Review I'm not sure that I really agree with Drezner. Many academic international relations specialists are far behind the reality of what is happening anyway. I hope Wikileaks may shake up the better ones and humble the worse ones. Sure, primary materials written now and made available in thirty years' time may become more guarded, but I am not convinced that they are being well used by scholars even now.
(tags: wikileaksusapolitics)