randomafrican

Then again, The Gambia is special.

They have held multiparty free and open elections from independance until 1994 (Jammeh's coup). This a continent where most countries had experienced Coups, Single-Party rule or both by 1970. (The only country with continuous multiparty democracy is Botswana)

Jammeh himself quickly felt the need to organise elections to legitimize his rule. Sure there was intimidation and other manoeuvers but oddly he almost always won with results in the high 50's. Those are crazy tight results by African standards (even in democracies incumbents rarely go lower than 60).

That's why everybody uses the word "shock"

He has not publicly conceded yet (so we may still get a surprise) but :

- his electoral commission has announced the results

- the head of his electoral commission has announced Jammeh will conceide

- rumour says his concession video has been recorded

- the internet that has been cut-off on election's eve is functionning again

- soldiers who were deployed have left the streets

It really sound this is happening

$2mm is something like one hour of revenue for Apple

I don't think they make design decisions on that basis

Western oil companies produce all the oil worldwide.

The fracking guys are minor players.

"Critics have complained"

No data, no study on the effect.

If Communist Cuba didn't exist, may be most of those dictatorships wouldnt have happened.

And Costa Rica may be an exception because their lefties (or liberals) were smart enough to keep their eyes on the price.

Quite often the IMF is an easy scapegoat. You'd be surprised by how often the IMF advice is ignored or by how sound it can be at times.

For instance, in Ukraine a few years ago, the IMF's advice was to cut down on some structural expenses (gas subsidies mostly) and not to touch investment expenses as doing that would trigger a recession.

For political reasons IMF did the opposite.

what if the supply of medical workers in Cuba allows it to send so many abroad with little effect on the local conditions ?

Costa Rica has done as well or even better

Small margins and low growth though.

And many would argue that it'd be hard to do better.

You'd'be surprised by how well his nationalistic projection works nowadays

Top Gear tries to kill a Hilux :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xnWKz7Cthkk

Can someone explain why the network controls the update ?

I get why OEMs need to test/approve an update for their specific phones but what kind of role carriers play here ?

There are been rumours saying that it has been ready for months if not years.

The decision to release it is Nadella's.

Nazism didn't last long enough. With North Korea, we're talking about a system that lasted for multiple generations.

And Turkey is an ally in that confrontation and in the one with Syria.

(though not an ally on Irak and Iran)

Many of them actually get power-hungry while in power.

Especially the ones who get elected after spending some time in the opposition under not-so-democratic regimes.

It's a matter of how things are moving.

Homosexuality has been illegal in India. No change no uproar. Russia's laws have moved things bavkwards.

Look at what happened in Uganda.

I was about to argue that institutions like Freedom House are ideologically biased but then I realized that each of the institutions have very different biases.

Ok but is it similar to the Black Market that existed in the 80's in the USSR or closer to the late 90's in Cuba ?

If it's the first case, it's argue that the most corrupt rank isn't deserved. If it's the latter, we're getting close but we're still far from places like Guinea-Bissau.

I know that(I've lived in countries that were at the time last on the list).

But did they survey North Koreans to discuss said perception ? Is "corrupt" really an equivalent of "bad and arbitrary and awfully run" ?

To me those are two different things.

Or may be things are just uneven..

While officials in touch with foreigners in Santiago are clean, it could be that it's less the case at the local BMV in remote town..

May be I should download the brochure to learn more about the methodology but some of the countries at the bottom seem weird.

North Korea is last ? Is there even room for corruption in the North Korean public sector ? I imagine it being arbitrary and all sort of things but I wouldn't dare attempting to bribe a North Korean official.

Does Somalia even have a public sector ?

M-Pesa is one service by one telco operator. Almost every teco in Africa has implemented an equivalent.

Now the penetration may not be as deep in the other countries as in Kenya but that will change.

So now the country with the worse case of hyperinflation of may be the last 30 years is somehow representative of a continent of 50 countries ?

Anyway.

Capital flight (especially unearned capital) has been a more common issue for much longer. I'm not sure how making that problem worse would help.

Do we all agree that their only hope in consumer mobile is making Office cross-platform ?

what if sales have peaked not because don't buy new tablets but rather because people don't replace them that often ?

>People saved money with Icelandic banks that had opened branches in the UK and the Netherlands.

Weren't many of those branches of Icelandic banks seized/nationalized/prevented from repatriating any capital to Iceland all over Europe ?

I'll give you the Eurozone... Makes it impossible to devaluate and much harder to put capital controls in place (though Cyprius manage to do so while being in the Eurozone).

However, what Iceland did was still unilateral. They didn't ask for anybody's permission and didn't expect their decision to be accepted.

Laws and treaties still need to be enforced and those countries are still sovereign. What happens if a country does something that is against EU law ? At worst, they may be expelled from the EU.

So it's really a matter of comparing the advantages of EU membership to the cost of the path of action that was taken.

It's still a political decision.

You make it sound like things were all bright and shiny for Bjork, Icelandi and Thor.

In real life they were not.