Category Archives: Politics

Fredy Massamba – Nkembo (Clip Officiel)

From my colleague, friend and neighbor… highly recommended! From Stanford University Press: Outside of Shiraz in the Fars Province of southwestern Iran lies “Aliabad.” Mary Hegland arrived in this then-small agricultural village of several thousand people in the summer of … Continue reading →

This article by Franklin Nyamsi and some preceding back and forth, lays out the case very plainly… Clearly Blaise hopes to make a good argument for another term.  He’d rather win on the argument, but given his history I am … Continue reading →

Nobody really knows… Four “eminent personalities” (one the brief and ineffective interim president Jean-Baptiste Ouedraogo who served in the interregnum in 1982-83, the other three religious leaders, one of whom has already resigned) came forth to organize talks between re-energized … Continue reading →

Alphonse Bonou and others had started a political party that appeared to be catering to Bwaba voters of the southwest.  But they got totally trounced by the CDP in the elections of 2012.  Now many of the party organizers have … Continue reading →

After his election to the papacy 11 months ago, Francis seemed to immediately grasp the significance of the divisions among the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics. He has chosen inclusive language, has played down the importance of following the hierarchy and … Continue reading →

I was in high school at the same time as Fortuño.  He definitely did the right things in successfully shrinking government and correcting spending.  But if I had known he was ideologically libertarian, rather than a committed pragmatist, I think … Continue reading →

Standard & Poor’s downgraded the debt of Puerto Rico to junk status on Tuesday, intensifying a cash squeeze for the commonwealth, whose financial condition is of outsize importance to the rest of the United States because its debt is widely … Continue reading →

The lyrics are here.

S&P cut a slew of Puerto Rico bonds to junk territory ahead of a press conference by Gov. Padilla today after the market closes, according to the rating agency’s website. via Reorg Research Intelligence Alert

I am teaching Econ 3, our introduction to international economics and development here at Santa Clara University.  I had a student in office hours today. She had spent last quarter in El Salvador on Santa Clara’s Casa de la Solidaridad … Continue reading →

A mysterious plague has manifested in the world’s starfish population, quickly spreading to several regions in which starfish (also called “sea stars”) are found. Starfish afflicted with the disease tear themselves to pieces, the arms crawling in opposite directions until … Continue reading →

In the morning Thursday, we woke up and the wife of the house made us an “aguatia.” Ok, this does not mean a small glass of juice, tea, or water; this means an entire huge meal. So we ate first … Continue reading →

The subject of comic-related-films or film-related-comics had understandably arisen and, when asked, I had ventured my honest opinion that I found something worrying about the fact that the superhero film audience was now almost entirely composed of adults, men and … Continue reading →

We were talking about this at dinner last night, so I just went online to do 5 minutes of research.  My position was confirmed: for the typical non-finance person (like an ordinary university professor), there is no low-information cost product … Continue reading →

Santa Clara County, once known as Valley of Heart\’s delight due to its abundant fruit and vegetable production, has lost almost half of its farmland, much of it to sprawling urban development with little access to healthy foods.This pattern of … Continue reading →

Read “A Mistake” by Akhil Sharma in The New Yorker.  After the last sentence (of a 30 minute read), take a test on generalized empathy for strangers, neighbors, co-ethnics, misanthropes, bullies and snarks.  You’ll be more empathetic than your “self … Continue reading →

In March 1957, Martin Luther King, Jr., and his wife Coretta Scott King traveled to West Africa to attend Ghana’s independence ceremony. King’s voyage was symbolic of a growing global alliance of oppressed peoples and was strategically well timed; his … Continue reading →

It’s not at all clear, for starters, that the fetus has a good chance of surviving inside the womb or of flourishing outside of it. In a study of a few dozen cases of continued pregnancies inside brain-dead women, only … Continue reading →