At the blog of the Association of Social Anthropologists. The full announcement: The ASA blog’s attempt to discuss the financial crisis currently occurring around us seeks to bring together anthropologists, sociologists, who work on the cultural political economy, anthropology of money, class, labour, industry, economic anthropology, informal economy, wall street as an ethnographic site, micro… Read More »
And from the Nigerian minister for information: MALICIOUS ADVERTISEMENT AGAINST THE GOVERNMENT AND PEOPLE OF THE FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF NIGERIA BY SONY COROPORATION The attention of the Federal Government of Nigeria has been drawn to an advertisement by Sony Corporation on the internet which from all indications is designed to portray Nigeria in bad light… Read More »
Pat Buchanan’s blog post arguing that Hitler did not want war has been taken apart by Mat Yglesias and Ta-Nehisi Coates. An article has also been published by the New York Times, presenting what it describes as a ‘cool-headed look at 1939’. I just want to add this series of articles published by Der Spiegel.… Read More »
From NYTimes: The bankers plan to buy “life settlements,” life insurance policies that ill and elderly people sell for cash — $400,000 for a $1 million policy, say, depending on the life expectancy of the insured person. Then they plan to “securitize” these policies, in Wall Street jargon, by packaging hundreds or thousands together into… Read More »
A news story on crossing from Benin to Nigeria, through the Seme border: “At every half kilometre, you encounter checkpoints manned by all sorts of agencies. This is a real problem to the sub-region,” he said. “On a bad day, from the Seme border down to Lagos, you meet over 70 checkpoints and they all… Read More »
BBC’s Mark Doyle is going around Africa asking the question for a documentary series. The first installment is here. One or two instances of bad interviewing, but generally worth listening to.
1. Remember the list of debtors that was published a last week by the Central Bank of Nigeria? Well, some of the money is now recovered 2. It seems that the Nigerian stock market is getting over the initial shock of the banking reform 3. More on the effects of the rescue of Nigerian banks… Read More »
Moisés Naím, editor-in-chief of Foreign Policy writes in Financial Times: Oil is a curse. Natural gas, copper and diamonds are also bad for a country’s health. Hence, an insight that is as powerful as it is counterintuitive: poor but resource-rich countries tend to be underdeveloped not despite their hydrocarbon and mineral riches but because of… Read More »
BBC has a report on the West African soldiers who fought with the British forces in Burma during the second world war: Nigerians made up more than half of the total force of 90,000 West African soldiers deployed to South East Asia after 1943 as part of the British Army’s 81st and 82nd (West Africa)… Read More »
NEXT has a story that says that state governors may lose control over land in their states. The story is a report of a public hearing of a House of Rep Subcommittee. Incidentally, my BusinessDay column of this week is on a presidential committee on land reform. I am sure that very, very soon, sometime… Read More »