Election Frace at the World Bank

Elections, in the heyday of the Soviet Union, were often announced before voting concluded.  It was all a done deal.  The Soviet Union may be dead, but its ideas on how to conduct democratic elections are still alive and kicking.

On April 16, 2012, the new head of the World Bank was announced. To no one’s surprise, Jim Yong Kim, a Korean-American. His victory was assured since the major powers—Europe, US, Japan and Canada—voted as a bloc, by prior agreement.  By convention, this coalition endorses whomever Washington nominates, and so it has been from the first meeting of the World Bank in 1946.  The only break with tradition is that the winner was not a white, male politician, bureaucrat, or banker.

The Golem President

In Jewish folklore, a golem is a monster made of mud.  In the US, if President Barak Obama wins, he will be the first Golem president of the USA.

Much of the mud will be supplied by Republican strategist Karl Rove, who is expected to use an estimated $300 million that he has stashed away in American Crossroads, a Super PAC, to attack Obama in an advertising blitzkrieg the likes of which the US has never seen before. 

The Treason of Benjamin Franklin

Stop me if you’ve heard this before. A public figure receives a cache of leaked government documents whose contents is so explosive that it will embarrass the government, incite insurgents and encourage them to attack government officials. It could even bring on a war. The person leaking these documents is quickly identified and dealt with by authorities, but more of this later.

Let’s have a free market in IP

Both Samsung and Apple entered into a legal battle over patent infringement back in April 2011 on three different continents.  With such a short shelf life, if one or other company can get an injunction, it wins by just stopping its competitor getting its product to the market.