– Spitzer wants to be more than just a number…hehehe.
– Derrick Ashong in the New York Times.
– The Shikwekwes, an African ‘webcomic’.
– Interesting post by Ethan on transparency and corruption in Brazil. Speaking about public declaration of wealth by civil servants, what the hell is happening in Kenya? Wasn’t there a push to make the forms accessible to the public. According to this report, the wealth declaration process has been a bit of a mess with no one knowing what to do with the forms after they have been collected – they are apparently not even being computerized. Lets not even go into the fact that the information reported is to be kept confidential…what’s the whole point then? There should be a push to get the current members of the tenth parliament to make their forms public even though the law does not require it.
Yep, why the desire for keeping everything hidden from the public. No wonder all that blood was shed in Africa. I don’t buy the usual excuses/assurances for transparency, after all we can never tell what someone thinks when they say something, and on the internet it is even more confounding as there is no clue with the body language, not that that is foolproof either. If we human do not know our own mind how can we hope to know someone elses. I am old and I have only met one person in my whole life who seems to know how it is with people, it begs the question : what about the sheep?
There’s some interesting comments about Derrick Ashong on Digg. Choose the option “sort by most diggs”. Generally pro-Derrick and anti-interviewer.
I *heart* Derrick.
But seriously, I was so impressed by his answers…it was clear that there as a certain element of baiting by the “reporter” but Derrick held his ground and gave some really well thought-out and insightful aswers. It’s funny because typically these “man on the street” interviews tend to target the lowest common denominator…usually finding a fairly reasonable-seeming white person, and in contrast, a dim, semi-coherent (perhaps even drunk and homeless) black person. I know how the game is played. As, apparently, does Derrick. I think he’s also written an article for CNN subsequent to that interview, but I don’t know how to link stuff. Sorry.
And as a fun aside, I believe he attended your alma mater, Ory.