Editor’s note: Corridors of Power is written by World Politics Review Editor-at-Large Roland Flamini and appears every Monday. This week’s edition appears Tuesday due to Monday’s Memorial Day holiday in the United States. A GHOST AT THE COMMITTEE — Randall Tobias will not be present when the U.S. Congress takes up foreign aid appropriations after Memorial Day, but he will certainly be there in spirit. Tobias resigned as head of USAID, the U.S. Agency for International Development, following that rather bizarre Washington madam scandal, in which he was the only publicly identified alleged high-profile client. But it is largely the [...]
TASHKENT, Uzbekistan — It is too early to measure the social effects of tighter restrictions on alcohol sales introduced early this month by Uzbekistan President Islam Karimov’s government. However, beyond their purported social function, the laws appear politically motivated, aimed at depriving the country’s opposition from gaining funding from major alcohol producers in what, until very recently, was a largely unregulated local industry. Among other things, the new regulations ban the sale of alcohol near schools, and in health care and sports facilities, railway stations, bus stops and airports. Political analysts contend that while one motivation of Uzbek authorities may [...]
VILLA CARDAL, Uruguay — The 1,200 inhabitants of this isolated rural town could not care less about a feud between U.S. tech companies Intel and AMD. But recently it began a social experiment that could impact not only its development but also the fortunes of several U.S. corporate giants. Eight-year-old Nahuel Lema and his 135 classmates at Number 24: Italia, the only primary school here, took home new laptops May 10 thanks to a partnership between the Uruguayan government and One Laptop per Child (OLPC), a United States’ non-profit born out of the MIT Media Lab. Nahuel’s mother, Grisela, sat [...]
