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George Takei is both consistent and crafty with his social media persona. He posts regularly and the content is always top-notch. Through his regular and highly hilarious posts he has cultivated a persona as a social media personality who is both reliable for good, sharable content and someone whom I like on a personal level, despite never having met. OH…MY!
"Am I going to give up following the NFL? Am I going to give up listening to music and going out and seeing it? Am I going to give up riding my bike? Or am I going to cut back on some of these digital habits I have that are eating me alive and some of these … endless panels about the future of journalism. The future of journalism is wearing badges and talking on panels, as far as I can tell."
On today’s Fresh Air, journalist David Carr talks about how social media has changed his productivity. (via nprfreshair)
(via semiprofessional)
Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan said Wednesday in Perth, Australia that for Nigeria and other African countries to speed up the attainment of their potentials, they must improve their governance structures, curb illicit financial outflows, increase capital investment and diversify the productive base of their economies.
Delivering a key note address titled: “Unleashing Africa’s Potentials – A New Vision” to the Commonwealth Business Forum, President Jonathan said that African countries must also quicken their pace of human capital development and ensure a better utilisation of opportunities which international trade offers for growth.
“A central plank of actions that we need to take to ensure that Africa achieves its latent possibilities as a contributor to global ideals of peace, security, growth and prosperity is improved governance. We must, therefore, continue to strive to ensure the enthronement of credible and accountable governments.
He also identified illicit financial outflows from Africa as one of the factors hindering the attainment of the continent’s full economic potentials.
“As we think of scaling-up growth in Africa, we will, of course, have to factor in Africa’s relationships with the global economy. At a time when we are looking for as much resources as possible to drive Africa’s economic transformation, we now have to contend with an increasing trend of illicit financial outflows from Africa which is conservatively estimated in the Global Financial Integrity report to be about $854 Billion between 1970 and 2008.”
http://www.channelstv.com/global/news_details.php?nid=29897&cat=Politics
Protesters have also pointed to what they call government corruption. A 2011 report commissioned by the United Nations Development Fund says that between 1990 and 2008, $34 billion disappeared from Angola’s public coffers. The report’s author, economist Dev Kar of the international watchdog group Global Financial Integrity, said the report measures the gap between a countries source of funds and its use of funds. “Kickbacks, asset stripping and corruption must have happened to the balance of payments,” said Mr. Kar, saying the underlying numbers come from the International Monetary Fund as self reported by the Angolan government. Mr. Chikoti, the foreign minister, said the corruption charges are “vague” but that if true, Angola will have to address them.
One of the things I hope to see GFI do in the not-too-distant future is develop a snazzy, user-friendly, useful mobile phone application. I think back to my guerilla media opps days when we did things the old fashioned way: sustainable seafood wallet cards, fake dollar-bill fact sheets, key-chain fobs. Simpler materials for a simpler time. Or something. I like the idea of something that can be used repeatedly. That is, something that enables our reports to be read on a phone would be great. Something that enables a user to instantly call up the numbers for one specific country out the 132 we measure, would be better. I envision something that combines the look of my Iphone Weather app with our IFF data.
Idea Fodder: http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/10/09/iphone-app-design-trends/
It really doesn’t get any better than this. ONE criticism made of the Occupy Wall Street movement, a gathering of anti-bank protestors now three weeks old, is that it has not made its grievances clear. Something the great unwashed might chant more about is the damage done by offshore finance. Global Financial Integrity, a civil-society group, calculates that more than $1 trillion a year flows illicitly out of developing countries, far more than flows the other way in aid. Much of this departing money goes to tax havens and jurisdictions with high levels of financial secrecy, sent there by criminals, corrupt politicians or tax-dodging individuals and multinational companies. Banks in Europe and America profit handsomely from these flows—indeed, many are themselves heavy users of tax havens as a way to reduce their tax bills. Will be posting pics from the conference and some analysis of highlights including thoughts on collaborating with Paris-based NGOs on media, live-streaming and interacting with media participating from remote, and where we go from here in the final push for connecting the Conference Message with G-20 press and advocacy targets.
Another great story from the folks at Reuters. Heather Lowe talked Brian Grow through much of the background on this piece, and while we don’t get a quote in this latest installment, we are thrilled to see this issue finally being fleshed out in the detail and scope needed to do it justice. Three cheers to Reuters and eyes glues to the wire for the next installment.
Samuel Rubenfeld covers the FACT coalition’s outreach to Secretary Geithner on review of current AML laws. The WSJ “Corruption Currents” blog and GFI love affair continues!
Talked a bit with Susanna Kim on this piece. Hats off to anyone trying to put together a story on Gadhafi’s assets. Corrupt heads of state are some of the best magician’s around when it comes to making money disappear…
Global Financial Integrity, a nonprofit research firm in Washington, D.C., advocating against illicit global financial flows, said that $33 billion in Libyan money has been unaccounted for from 2001 to 2009, according to data from the World Bank and International Monetary Fund.
Monique Danziger, communications director with Global Financial Integrity, said Libya has the “spottiest” data reporting of the 162 countries that report financial figures to the IMF and World Bank.
More excellent work from the investigative team of Kevin Drawbaugh and Brian Grow at Reuters…
