Spying on dissidents' computers
The media have widely reported on apparent efforts to spy on the computer activities of Iranian officials. But the BBC reports that it appears that the Iranian government has been doing the same thing in order to learn what political dissidents have been doing.
Trojan targets Iranian and Syrian dissidents via proxy tool
Web users in Iran and Syria aiming to circumvent censorship controls are being targeted with spyware, according to security researchers.
A team at the University of Toronto said installation software for the popular proxy tool Simurgh also implanted keylogging spyware.
Simurgh is designed to anonymise net use and allow access to blocked sites.
However, an added Trojan is said to send data from victims' PCs to a site registered with a Saudi Arabian ISP.
This can include the computer operator's username and machine name, as well as every window clicked and every keystroke entered…
"This Trojan has been specifically crafted to target people attempting to evade government censorship," he added…
The news comes as investigators probe a malware attack - dubbed Flame - found to have infected computers in Iran and other parts of the Middle East, which is thought to have been designed to steal sensitive data.
However, Sophos suggested that the the Simurgh Trojan was likely to have compromised more computers.
"Unlike Flame, which is highly targeted malware that has only been found on a handful of computers globally, this malware is targeting users for whom having their communications compromised could result in imprisonment or worse," wrote Chester Wisniewski, senior security advisor at Sophos, on his company's blog.
"Many thousands depend on the legitimate Simurgh service, which makes it likely that far more people have been impacted by this malware."
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Labels: dissent, Iran, political culture, politics
Imagine taxing glazed doughnuts but not biscotti
Creating a £35 million hole in a carefully planned budget was easy. Finding another way to raise that much in taxes is not.
British Treasury Reverses Plan to Tax Baked Goods
 |
| Anti pasty-tax demonstration |
Following a public uproar that became a symbol of the wealth gap in Britain, the Treasury reversed its plans early Tuesday to impose a 20 percent sales tax on certain baked goods, including the hot pastry-wrapped sandwiches known as pasties.
The reversal is a setback for the Conservative Party, which is overseeing a far-reaching austerity program that includes over £80 billion, or $125 billion, in spending cuts and tax increases intended to balance Britain’s budget by 2017.
George Osborne, the chancellor of the Exchequer, scrapped the plan for the tax, which was intended to raise revenue for the cash-strapped government by bringing the popular snacks in line, fiscally speaking, with other takeaway food that is served hot, like fish and chips…
The debate turned farcical when the Oxford-educated Mr. Osborne, under questioning by Parliament, had difficulty remembering the last time he had eaten a pasty…
Treasury Secretary David Gauke… added that keeping hot pasties exempt from sales tax would cost the Treasury £35 million a year. But someone is making money. Shares in Greggs, the bakery chain that is the largest seller of pasties in Britain, surged 8.1 percent Tuesday, its biggest gain in 15 years.
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The trials of globalism and transnationalism
When it gets down to specifics, transnational government by regulation is messy in a globalized world.
When Is a Wine Not a Wine? When European Regulations Say It’s Not
Poured from the bottle, the ruby-colored liquid looks like wine. Swirled around a glass, it smells like wine. Sure enough, it tastes like wine, too.
But, at least within the confines of the European Union, the closest it may come to be being called wine is “fruit-based alcoholic beverage.”
The ruling is bad news for the Chapel Down Winery, which crushed more than two tons of refrigerated Malbec grapes that had been air-freighted from Mendoza, Argentina, hoping to produce an English take on the fabled Latin American wine…
The rule is intended to maintain the integrity and quality of wine and, for example, prevent producers from importing large quantities of must, or grape juice, from warmer climes and blending it with European grapes.
For decades, European wine regulations have provoked controversy across the tier of southern nations that produce the bulk of production. In many regions disputes have intensified as centuries of wine-making tradition battle the harsh reality of global competition against commercially produced New World exports…
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in·ter·mit·tent
in·ter·mit·tent
Pronunciation: \-ˈmi-tənt\
Function: adjective
Etymology: Latin intermittent-, intermittens, present participle of intermittere
Date: 1601
: coming and going at intervals : not continuous
; also : occasional
—
in·ter·mit·tent·ly adverb
Source: Mirriam-Webster Online Dictionary
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/Intermittent
Retrieved 2 December 2010
In this post-exam, pre-holiday period I'm going to take a break from this blog. If I run into something stupendous, I'll post it here, but mostly you're on your own for a few days.
If you find a bit of information that might be useful for teaching comparative politics, post it at
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Remember, nearly all the 2,589 blog entries here are indexed at
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More leaks in the oil pipeline
It may be that losses of valuable resources begin before the well-known corruption even starts. (From
Leadership in Abuja.)
Country Lost Over U.S. $7 Billion to Oil Theft in One Year - Alison-Madueke
Minister of Petroleum Resources, Mrs. Diezani Alison-Madueke, has disclosed that while huge amount of dollars has been [spent] in the last one year on pipeline repairs, a record volume of crude valued at $7billion has been lost to crude theft via illegal bunkering within the same period…
The Team which was created at the end of a round table on the Nigerian Oil and Gas Industry convened by the Minister of Petroleum Resources is made up of personnel from the oil industry and the Military as well as the Police Force...
The minister, in a statement issued yesterday, decried the menace of oil theft, said the new understanding will strengthen partnership with leadership of security agencies in curbing the problem…
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Factional conflicts in Iran
China is not the only place where factions within a seemingly unified elite are competing with one another.
Iran’s tough nuclear stance masks struggles at top
The negotiating stance from Iranian officials never varies: The Islamic Republic will not give up its capabilities to make nuclear fuel. But embedded in the messages are meanings that reach beyond Tehran’s talks with world powers.
It points to the struggles within Iran’s ruling system as it readies for the next round of talks…
Iran’s Islamic leadership… has now staked its political credibility on its ability to resist Western sanctions and hold firm to its rights under U.N. treaties to enrich uranium.
Any concessions -- either too great or too fast -- could risk internal rifts within Iran’s power structure. And that could draw powerful forces into the mix, including the Revolutionary Guard that acts as defender of the theocracy and overseer of the nuclear program. As talks deepen, so do the political considerations for an Islamic establishment that cannot afford to appear to come away empty handed…
This is the tricky ground being navigated by Iran.
Its leaders are desperate to avoid any impression of caving under the Western economic squeeze. Any serious rollbacks -- without Western concessions in return -- could open room for hard-liners to take pot shots at the ruling clerics. It also could put the Revolutionary Guard in the awkward position of defending the Islamic system against ultra-nationalists who normally side with the Guard…
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Heaven is high; the emperor is far away
Should this example put to rest the notion that the Chinese system is totalitarian? Is the old proverb more accurate?
China’s Obsession With Stability Can Come at the Cost of Laws
China’s central government says that the activist lawyer Chen Guangcheng is a free man, and has promised him an investigation of the harrowing abuses he suffered at the hands of guards here. Mr. Chen’s desperate escape last month from persecution to American protection has embarrassed China’s leaders and cast new shadows on their commitment to the rule of law.
But a visit to this municipality in eastern China, where Mr. Chen and his family most recently spent 20 months as prisoners in their own home, offers no hint of a change in the way China deals with its dissidents.
Journalists who sought on Sunday to talk to residents a few hundred yards from Dongshigu, the village in Linyi where Mr. Chen was held captive, were quickly escorted out by thugs in four automobiles, and later were accosted in a burst of arm-wrenching and name-calling.
Members of the same gang still keep Mr. Chen’s mother incommunicado and under siege here. Mr. Chen’s nephew faces a charge of attempted murder after he slashed a knife at plainclothes officers who invaded his home and beat him. Lawyers seeking to defend the nephew have been ordered to drop the case or face retribution.
There is no evidence that the central government in Beijing ordered this harassment, all of which is illegal under Chinese law. But neither is there any indication that Beijing wants it to stop.
To the contrary, both rights activists and legal experts say, the system for dealing with dissidents and other troublemakers is geared toward allowing local leaders to ignore the law, with Beijing’s sometimes silent assent. Indeed, the central government may even reward local leaders for doing so. The reason is that their Communist Party careers depend on meeting a series of performance goals — from high economic growth to low levels of public unrest — whose importance far outweigh any gold stars awarded for following the law.
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Is Lords' reform just a political boondoggle?
The Economist offers an op-ed on the reform of the UK's upper chamber
House repairs: Beneath high-flown talk of Lords reform lies a grubby power struggle
Lords reform sounds an abstruse subject to outsiders, on a par with the gilded and berobed flummery of the State Opening itself. Research by YouGov, a pollster, suggests it is a political priority for precisely no voters (though if prompted, most people prefer the sound of an elected upper house)…
Thanks to pressure from Liberal Democrats, for whom constitutional reform is a defining concern, legislation to reform the Lords should reach Parliament within weeks…
Opponents, including many Tory MPs and peers but also members of Labour and even a few Lib Dems, charge that an upper house with its own electoral mandate would threaten “the destruction of the House of Commons as we know it”, to quote one Conservative peer…
As it happens, there are questions of real principle to consider. If current proposals are followed, the Senate would be only tenuously accountable to voters, with members elected from giant constituencies for 15-year terms by a variant of proportional representation. Yet even such arms-length democracy would test the century-old convention that in tussles with the House of Commons…
So much for high principle. In private, peers, MPs and officials describe a debate steeped in self-interest and cant. Naturally lots of MPs want to keep an appointed House of Lords, growls a senior Lib Dem: it’s where they plan to retire, or flee after losing seats…
Of course Lib Dems want a proportionally elected Senate, counter Tory and Labour politicians: they think they would hold the balance of power there.
In short, the airy debate over Lords reform is really a brutal fight about power. Which is why a Senate will probably not happen…
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Labels: change, legislature, politics, regime, UK
Islam 101
One of the keys to understanding Iranian political culture is understanding Islam. This might come a little late this school year, but I'd want to have this next time I taught about Iran.
Sunni-Shia strife: The sword and the word
IT SEEMED historic. Muslim scholars, 170 in number and representing nine schools of legal thought (including four main Sunni ones and two Shia), gathered in Amman and declared that, whatever their differences, they accepted the others’ authority over their respective flocks. Implicitly, at least, they were renouncing the idea that their counterparts were heretics…
But seen from the outside, feuds between Sunnis, who make up roughly 80% of the world’s Muslims, and the Shia minority (most of the rest), remain savage and are, in some ways, worsening.
In conservative Sunni monarchies (especially those with restless Shia populations) dislike and suspicion of Iran, the Shia bastion, is running higher than ever. Theology intertwines with geopolitics—and an incipient strategic-arms race. Far beyond the Gulf or Middle East, from western Europe to North America, Sunni agitation (often Saudi-sponsored) is intensifying against the supposed heresies contained in Shia teaching…
European Shia-Sunni acrimony is part of a many-sided contest over the future of the continent’s tens of millions of Muslims, says Jonathan Laurence, a scholar at Boston College. The religious authorities in migrant-sending countries like Turkey and Morocco struggle to keep their people loyal to their own varieties of Sunni practice: they see Shia Islam and hardline Sunni groups like the Salafists as equally dangerous and insidious temptations for their sons and daughters in Europe…
Click on the chart or go to The Economist article to read the chart.
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Labels: concepts, history, Iran, political culture
Mid-term check up
Are the strains of coalition threatening the partnership government?
I never promised you a rose garden
TWO years ago Britain’s first peacetime coalition government since the 1930s set out to prune the state. Defying the long trend in which power was centralised in Westminster, it sought to push it out to cities, towns, schools and doctors. It moved to shake up public services by encouraging firms and non-profit groups to compete for tasks generally done by the state. Schools, local government, policing, health, planning, welfare, justice—almost every arm of the state was to be transformed. All this as the government cut spending more deeply than any since the second world war.
The coalition faced a dilemma in its Queen’s Speech on May 9th… The government plans lots of incremental changes: loosening labour regulation, tightening public-sector pensions, and establishing a new agency to fight organised crime and strengthen border security. As for making the House of Lords more democratic—a key Liberal Democrat demand that many Conservatives oppose—a bill has made it into the government’s agenda, but it is unclear how much priority it will have…
The government’s mission to trim the state and deliver more cost-effective and innovative public services… has run into problems. After two years in power, the coalition has chalked up a few clear successes. But the list of failures is growing, and so is the general sense of drift…
The coalition’s greatest achievement has been to set the country on the course of deficit reduction. It has raised taxes and curbed public spending…
Until recently the clearest failure seemed to be health care. The government’s attempt to decentralise and diversify the National Health Service by making local doctors more accountable for the money they spend and opening the door to private practitioners has been botched…
The attempt to devolve power to cities is another failure… On May 3rd the government held referendums in ten of England’s biggest cities, asking people if they wanted elected mayors. Voters in all but one—Bristol—said no…
Welfare reform also illustrates a big problem with the government’s programme: the lack of money to lubricate changes…
Some reforms are simply evolving, in ways that make early pledges seem silly. One of the Conservative Party’s early ideas was to create a flourishing “Big Society” composed of voluntary and local groups doing tasks once monopolised by the state… The Big Society has given way to big business—no bad thing, but a departure from the blueprint. Meanwhile contradictions are emerging, between both policies and politicians…
Most seriously, there are growing doubts about the government’s basic competence. Mr Cameron rightly deplored the micromanaging style of his predecessor, Gordon Brown. But he may have veered to the opposite extreme with a magisterially hands-off approach. Whereas Labour made Downing Street an unofficial “Department of the Prime Minister”, with battalions of political advisers helping the government impose itself on wayward departments and recalcitrant civil servants, Mr Cameron undid much of that. Insiders increasingly concede that Downing Street now lacks “grip” on the rest of government…
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Labels: policy, politics, UK
All the best to AP exam takers
Best wishes to all the Advanced Placement students who are taking the exam today.
Do your best. I hope you feel good about it.
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Another party heard from
Note from the state parliamentary elections in North Rhine Westphalia (Germany):
"The surging Pirate Party won 7.8 percent of the votes, enough to enter the state Parliament for the fourth election in a row, helping the party firmly establish itself on the national political scene." -
New York Times
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Transition complete, perhaps
A premier, a legislature, and a president walk into a capital...
With Some Dissent, Russia’s Parliament Confirms Medvedev
A day after stepping down as Russia’s president, Dmitri A. Medvedev was confirmed as prime minister on Tuesday, completing a long-planned political transition that was nevertheless marred by unusual opposition to his candidacy in Russia’s Parliament…
[W]hile Russia’s rubber-stamp Parliament easily approved his nomination for prime minister as required, nearly a third voted against it…
It was an abnormally candid expression of dissent following rounds of sharp questioning of Mr. Medvedev, which seemed to suggest that at least some in Parliament’s typically docile opposition have begun to recalibrate their political strategy.
This could be due in part to the results of December parliamentary elections, which gave opposition parties their largest number of seats in years. United Russia, the governing party created by Mr. Putin and now led by Mr. Medvedev, lost its constitutional majority, and while it still managed to hang on to half of Parliament’s 450 seats, its popularity has been further eroded by accusations of widespread electoral fraud.
But opposition parties, which for years have served at the Kremlin’s behest, have been largely restrained in their dissent so far…
The Communist Party, which has been the most critical of the Kremlin, voted unanimously against Mr. Medvedev on Tuesday. Ahead of the vote, Just Russia also vowed that its members would vote no. But in a sign that not all were prepared to flout the ruling authorities, four members of the faction joined United Russia and the Liberal Democratic Party, a Kremlin-friendly opposition bloc, in voting for Mr. Medvedev…
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The Queen's legislative agenda
I know, you didn't think the British Queen had a legislative agenda. But she stood in front of both houses of Parliament and the TV cameras and announced her government's list of priorities, most of which will become law. Do you know what's going on here?
State Opening of Parliament, 2012, a 14-minute video of the Queen's Speech from the Prime Minister's Office
Queen's Speech 2012 Explained by the Prime Minister's Office
A Transcript of the Queen's Speech
Queen's Speech 2012 at-a-glance: Bill-by-bill from the BBC
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Back to the future
This time there were protests over Putin's ascension to the presidency.
Amid Protests, Putin Returns to Presidency in Russia
Vladimir V. Putin reclaimed the Russian presidency under the gold vaulted ceiling of a Kremlin palace on Monday, as police attempted to stamp out a second day of opposition protests in the city, passing on orders to detain anyone wearing a white ribbon.
In a ceremony anchored less in words than the physical attributes of power, Mr. Putin’s motorcade glided soundlessly through a city that seemed emptied of people. Inside the Kremlin’s battlement, he then walked over a long red carpet through a series of large chambers until he reached one as lustrous and intricate as a jewel box.
There Mr. Putin took the oath of office for a third time, extending his status as Russia’s paramount leader to a total of 18 years. He has said he may run for a fourth six-year term after that, meaning he could legally remain in power until 2024.
Mr. Putin, who will turn 60 in the fall, looked grave — and at times burdened — as he delivered a short address to a roomful of ministers, religious leaders and a sprinkling of international figures, including his close friend, the former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi.
“I will do my best to justify the trust of millions of our citizens,” Mr. Putin said. “I think it is the meaning of my whole life, and it is my duty to serve our country, serve our people. This support encourages me and inspires me and helps me address the most difficult tasks. We have passed a long and difficult road together.”
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UK local elections summary
Labour gains many seats in local elections that had the lowest turnout in over a decade. Here is a summary.
At-a-glance: Elections 2012
Projected vote share:
- Labour 38%, Conservatives 31%, Lib Dems 16%, others 15%
- Labour have gained 823 councillors seats, the Conservatives have lost 405 and the Lib Dems 336
- The Conservatives are nine points down on 2008, Labour are up 16 points and the Lib Dems down eight points
Osborne urges '100% focus' on economy after election defeats
George Osborne has said his party will focus on what matters to the public amid criticism from Conservative MPs in the wake of local election defeats…
Many Conservative MPs want ministers to use the occasion to assert more traditional Conservative priorities on issues such as welfare, crime and tax and either delay or abandon proposals to legalise gay marriage and reform the House of Lords, seen predominately as Liberal Democrat ideas…
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Comic relief?
Talk about a political cleavage
Winner of Mexican presidential debate? Sexy model
Who won Mexico's presidential debate? According to the media and Twitter frenzy, at least, the victor wasn't any candidate but a curvaceous model in a tight gown who puzzled millions by appearing on stage for less than 30 seconds during the showdown.
Julia Orayen has posed nude for Playboy and appeared barely dressed in other media, but she made her mark on Mexican minds Sunday night by carrying an urn filled with bits of paper determining the order that candidates would speak.
Not that viewers were looking at the urn…
Alfredo Figueroa, director of the Federal Electoral Institute responsible for organizing the debate, blamed the incident on a production associate hired by the institute to help with the debate. The institute later issued an apology to Mexican citizens and the candidates for the woman's dress…
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And the winner is…
The final round of legislative elections in Iran seem to guarantee that the supreme leader will remain supreme.
Iran President Ahmadinejad in parliamentary poll setback
Iran President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has suffered a fresh setback in run-off parliamentary polls.
Mr Ahmadinejad's supporters won only 13 of the 65 seats up for election in Friday's vote, further reducing his power base in the 290-seat parliament.
Conservative supporters of the Supreme Leader had already won an outright majority in March's first round…
According to final results announced on state TV, Mr Ahmadinejad's main conservative rivals won 41 seats of those contested, while independents won 11.
The president's supporters appeared to have fared best in the capital Tehran, where nine seats were won out of a total of 25…
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So's your old party, too
This report makes it seem that the Mexican candidates have learned how to handle televised debates from US candidates: answer the question you want to be asked regardless of what is asked.
Mexico election: TV debate sees candidates trade barbs
Mexico's election race has stepped up a gear with the four presidential hopefuls facing one another in their first TV debate ahead of July's poll.
Front-runner Enrique Pena Nieto of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) faced sharp attacks from his rivals.
The barbed comments enlivened a rigidly controlled format, correspondents say.
But it is unclear how many voters were watching, with the main TV channels opting to show a dance show and a football match instead…
Perhaps the surprise of the night was outsider Gabriel Quadri from the New Alliance (PANAL), who portrayed himself as the anti-politician and refrained from personal attacks, says the BBC's Will Grant, in Mexico City.
Mr Quadri later told the BBC that the format of the debate prevented any genuine discussion.
"I think that the moderator has to have a more active role because the politicians just answer what they want even if that doesn't have anything to do with the questions."
The two-hour debate covered a range of issues, including the economy, job creation and Mexico's drug-related violence that has claimed some 50,000 lives.
The candidates spoke of the need to boost the police and maintain troops on streets until security has improved, but there were no new proposals, correspondents say…
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Old habits
For seventeen years I taught about French government and politics. So, consider this reference as habitual.
Hollande Ousts Sarkozy in French Presidential Election
François Hollande defeated President Nicolas Sarkozy on Sunday, becoming the first Socialist elected president of France since François Mitterrand.
Mr. Hollande campaigned on a gentler and more inclusive France, but his victory will also be seen as a challenge to the German-dominated vision of economic austerity as a way out of the euro crisis…
The balance between reducing the debt and addressing popular anger is proving complicated for Europeans, and Mr. Hollande has said that he intends to give “a new direction to Europe,” demanding that a European Union treaty limiting debt be expanded to include measures to produce economic growth. Domestically, he has promised to raise taxes on big corporations and raise the tax rate to 75 percent for those earning more than one million euros a year…
Mr. Hollande’s victory was narrow but undisputed. With 95 percent of the vote counted, official results showed him with 51.6 percent of the vote while Mr. Sarkozy, of the center-right Union for a Popular Movement, had 48.4 percent, The Associated Press said…
Mr. Hollande’s victory will also have important implications for the right in France, with Mr. Sarkozy’s party already split between the prime minister, François Fillon, and the Sarkozy-like party leader, Jean-François Copé. The strong showing of Marine Le Pen of the National Front, who got nearly 18 percent of the vote in the first round of the presidential election, is a serious threat to Mr. Sarkozy’s party. It now must decide whether to make a deal with Ms. Le Pen for assembly seats in the second round of the legislative election; if not, the Union for a Popular Movement could lose up to 100 seats, political experts say…
Voter turnout Sunday was about 81 percent of the 46 million registered voters, down from the 84 percent who participated in the last presidential ballot five years ago — the highest turnout since 1974…
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Will the race be a run-away (as in decades past)?
As a rule, the gap between candidates in a campaign narrow as the election approaches. Will that happen in Mexico this year?
Old party has big lead in Mexico presidential race
A month into Mexico's breakneck campaign season, the movie-star handsome candidate of the former ruling party is 20 percentage points ahead of his two main rivals and drawing tens of thousands of cheering supporters to tightly choreographed rallies that feel as much like victory celebrations as campaign events.
If the next two months go as planned, Enrique Pena Nieto will return the Institutional Revolutionary Party to Mexico's highest office 12 years after voters fed up with its corruption, mismanagement and repression of opponents ended its 71 years of autocratic rule.
What a Pena Nieto presidency would look like, however, remains unclear…
He has offered few specifics about how he would address Mexico's bigger problems like crime and poverty, sticking tightly to his broader themes of change and competence as he tries to ride his commanding lead to a victory in the July 1 elections…
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Terrorism spreads in Nigeria
Another task on the "to-do" list for the Nigerian government is deterring terrorism. Will it be more successful in that than in its efforts to stop corruption or promote economic growth? What is the capacity of the state?
Nigeria's Boko Haram militants claim ThisDay attacks
The Nigerian Islamist group Boko Haram has posted a video on YouTube claiming responsibility for the bombing last week of a major newspaper's offices…
A voice-over on the film, which shows the suicide blast in Abuja, threatens further attacks against media groups for committing crimes against Islam.
Boko Haram says it wants to establish Islamic law in Nigeria.
Over the last 20 months its fighters have targeted government institutions, churches, bars and schools across northern Nigeria…
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Labels: capacity, cleavages, Nigeria, terrorism
Message control
Attempts in Mexico to shape political debate during a presidential campaign are running into the reality of new media.
A Race Recast by YouTube and Twitter
It sounds like the typical hardball, American-style campaign. The presidential candidate from the incumbent’s party calls the front-runner a “liar” in television and Internet advertisements. Supporters of the front-runner retaliate with a Web site and Twitter posts that say his top opponent “lies.” And the third-place candidate wraps the gaffes of both of them into a YouTube video cheekily titled “Excuses Not to Debate.”
State-of-the-art, no-holds-barred political warfare, perhaps, except that after President Felipe Calderón narrowly won a divisive race here six years ago that featured ads calling his opponent a danger to the country, Mexico’s political establishment had vowed that it would tolerate no more of that.
But a law passed in 2007 that was intended to keep campaigning orderly and clean — it bans the Mexican equivalent of political action committees, limits spending, regulates language in advertisements and tightens the official campaign period to just 89 days — has been undercut by the unpredictable and uncontrollable Web.
On Web sites and in the online social media, a parallel battlefield has emerged as candidates vie for the support of voters, more than a quarter of whom, polls say, have not made a choice as the July 1 election nears…
Just under a third of Mexico’s population regularly uses the Internet (compared with 80 percent in the United States). But the campaigns have seen how social media sites can help shape public opinion — newspapers here closely track and publish the number of each candidate’s Twitter and Facebook followers — and they skirt the heavily regulated airwaves.
Often using automated programs or armies of volunteers, the campaigns battle to land trending topics on Twitter and celebrate them as important discussion points…
See also:
Mexico candidate, actress wife star in reality TV campaign videos
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Labels: elections, Mexico, politics
Corruption in Nigeria
If corruption is a normal part of politics and doing business, then Nigeria is in the mainstream.
Nigeria fuel subsidy report 'revealing $6bn fraud' due
Nigeria's parliament is to discuss a report said to reveal that $6bn (£4bn) has been defrauded from the fuel subsidy fund in the past two years.
The debate will be televised live - and make official findings that have been widely leaked in recent days…
The 205-page parliamentary report uncovers a long list of alleged wrongdoings involving oil retailers, Nigeria's Oil Management Company and the state Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation.
According to the leaks, a total of 15 fuel importers collected more than $300m two years ago without importing any fuel, while more than 100 oil marketers collected the same amount of money on several occasions.
The leaked report also says that officials in the government of President Goodluck Jonathan were among those who benefited from the subsidy fund…
Many Nigerians were livid when they were told by their government that the fuel subsidy was economically unsustainable - only to now find out the scale of fraud in the operation of the fund, our correspondent says.
Despite being a major oil producer, Nigeria has not invested in the infrastructure needed to produce refined fuel, so has to import much of its petrol.
The annual $8bn subsidy means prices are lower than in neighbouring countries - and correspondents say many Nigerians see cheap fuel as the only benefit they get from their country's oil wealth, much of which is pocketed by corrupt officials…
Teaching Comparative blog
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Labels: corruption, Nigeria, politics
Changing places
Putin and Medvedev make the switch official and complete
Putin Steps Down as United Russia Party Chief
President-elect Vladimir Putin tried to distance himself from the fraud-tainted ruling United Russia party on Tuesday, announcing he was stepping down as its chairman…
Putin proposed outgoing President Dmitry Medvedev as its new leader instead…
Putin, 59, has also said that Medvedev, a longtime ally who led United Russia's campaign in the December election to the Duma, the lower house of parliament, will become prime minister.
"Since Dmitry Anatolyevich led the party in the State Duma election campaign, and since I will recommend him for the post of prime minister, I believe it is right for him to head the party as well," Putin said. "It is a global practice that the government leans on the support of the parliamentary majority."…
Teaching Comparative blog
entries are indexed.
The Fourth Edition of What You Need to Know is available from the publisher (where shipping is always FREE).
Labels: leadership, politics, Russia
