Mess Up & Clean Up via It's Getting Hot In Here
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A dash of hope via Extra Extra
One form of optimism
Did you hear about the Week of Positive Blogging? I did, by chance, when Global Voices mentioned Omodudu’s optimistic letter to Mother Africa. (An extract: “…The Sudanese, a funny bunch, there is no divisiveness amongst the Arabs and the Blacks anymore, as a matter of fact I attended a mixed wedding on a boat at the banks of the Nile the other day. Oh yes the Americans are still there dancing to country music at the international club, but now the Sudanese are allowed in, sans bomb detectors at the entrance. Isn’t that wonderful ma…”)
In that spirit, I have three bits of good news in relation to earlier posts here at Extra Extra:
Firstly, do you remember the family who mounted a legal challenge to evict an army Colonel from their... How’s my driving? via Extra Extra
The Mo Ibrahim Foundation has just published the Ibrahim Index of African Governance, which rates countries by the best available measures of security, rule of law, human rights, economic opportunity and human development. The 2007 index is based on scores for 2005, the most recent year for which reasonably complete statistics are available, though I imagine the biggest limitation of the project is the dearth of credible statistics. (That and the risk that the prize rules may put off leaders with no plans to leave office in the next decade.)
I’m afraid did not fall out of my chair when I saw that the Democratic Republic of Congo is ranked at 47 out of all 48 African countries, just ahead of Somalia. A quick look at the breakdown suggests that if Kabila has an urge to move up the... Three abductions via Extra Extra
Happy Birthday, Alan Johnston.
1. The BBC’s Gaza correspondent turns 45 today. This is his ninth week in captivity. Reporters without Borders say 14 journalists have been kidnapped in the Gaza Strip since January 2005, but this is the first time that any of them has held for more than two weeks.
2. Arriving in the UK, I found the headlines dominated by one of Britain’s periodic outbreaks of mass sentimentality, last seen on this sort of scale in the period following the death of Princess Diana. Urged on by the press and a growing constellation of their favourite celebrities, the public - or at least that part of it which most avidly consumes the news, and in turn (symbiosis!) helps to direct its attention - is alarmed about a pretty young girl called Madeleine McCann who... Optimists’ assault course via Extra Extra
History unmade
Three weeks and three days ago, under the watchful eyes of tens of thousands of party witnesses, electoral observers and journalists, 16.6 million Congolese people cast their votes. At least ten independent international observation missions declared the second round of the elections free, fair, transparent and well organised.
Professor Elikya Mbokolo recently warned that, ‘whether at school, in sport or in love, the Congolese are ‘bad losers‘. Well, I’m not sure if that’s fair. Most of them seemed to take the provisional results (a 60-40 split) pretty philosophically, at any rate. But yesterday, a crowd just two hundred or so - among them numerous soldiers in civilian clothes - showed the world what they thought of the will of the people by...