InternationalRelations

Chinese companies can treat their employees pretty much as they please, the group wrote in a forthcoming report, because workers are desperate and local authorities either lack the capacity to enforce domestic labor laws or are easily bribed to ignore violations. In June, civil servants in Katanga went on strike after several weeks without receiving paychecks."The weakness of our government, for the Chinese, represents a business opportunity," said Jean-Pierre Okemba, one of the rights group's investigators. "We don't want a relationship like that."

While Beijing likes to describe its investments as a "win-win" for African nations, a case of developing nations helping each other, many Congolese have grown deeply resentful of Chinese business practices.

the market power of the very few oil-producing countries that hold substantial reserves of oil – mostly in the Middle East – would increase rapidly as the oil crisis begins to grip after 2010

Many people think there will be a recovery in a few years' time but it will be a slow recovery and a fragile recovery and we will have the risk that the recovery will be strangled with higher oil prices.

demand after 2010 is expected to exceed dwindling supplies

an interactive map of state fragility, to illustrate their Failed States Index 2009, covering 177 countries. Most fragile are Somalia, followed by Zimbabwe, Chad, Sudan and DRC. Most stable are (inevitably) the Scandinavians – Norway, followed by Finland and Sweden

Barroso no longer has any significant authority -- if, indeed, he ever had any. Why then did EU leaders want this man in the first place, and why do they mock him today, allowing him to flounder, as if his position were merely an afterthought and not a prominent office within the EU, a major economic power with aspirations to be a major political power? The reason is obvious, says a regent from southeastern Europe: The EU is holding on to the man, who is known to be weak, for reasons of convenience, and because the search for an alternative could possibly lead to greater conflicts. In truth, politicians like Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy appreciate the downhill gradient between them and the European Commission president. If he were a peer, a man like Frenchman Jacques Delors, who led the Commission from 1985 to 1995 with a mixture of ambition and panache and was justifiably dubbed "Mr. Europe," the EU wouldn't be the kind of organization that large countries can control for their own benefit.

It is no comfort that other large organizations that seek to play a role in global politics are taking the same approach. The imbalance between standards and leadership is currently the most glaring at the United Nations, where Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, a South Korean, is more of an administrator than a leader. NATO and, similarly, the World Bank, also applied the criterion of inconspicuousness in choosing its current secretary general.

The leap from domestic politics to the international level is often enormous, and in many cases the newly elected or appointed chief executives are suddenly confronted with the task of leading giant bureaucracies with an independent streak. Usually, it quickly becomes apparent whether they will live up to the challenge, and will either develop the ambition to take control or submit to the wishes of the larger countries.

In terms of Kandaharis' experience, the saddest thing about all that I have described above was watching the faces of my friends - particularly Kandahar's young people - as they found out what was going on. A great sense of disappointment darkened most of my conversations during the last few hours of polling and during the evening and next day. People focused on some of the details, especially the non-indelible ink that had been promoted with such fanfare by the United Nations earlier that year.  People frequently blamed "the foreigners" for mismanaging things and allowing so much fraud and deception to take place.  Admittedly these days conspiracy theories about the invisible hand of "the foreigners" are omnipresent in southern Afghanistan, but "the farce of this year's election" (as one friend put it) struck a nerve among those people who did want to vote, who did want a change, who didn't have a direct stake in anyone's campaign.

it is a pity that the wishes of ordinary Afghans for a free and fair election were not heard.

In the coming days a highly dubious turnout will be announced by Hamid Karzai and the IEC. The final results will award Karzai victory with over 50% of the votes.  Ashraf Ghani and Abdullah Abdullah will go into overdrive for a while, but slowly deals will start to be made behind the scenes