On October 7, Hugo Chavez won re-election as president of Venezuela for another six-year term. While accolades continue to pour in from Russia, Cuba, Bolivia, and other unfriendly corners of the world, there is no reason to mince words: Chavez’s re-election was a sad defeat for liberal democracy, economic freedom, …
On September 27, Reporters Without Borders issued a report on the threat to Internet freedom that focused on the relationships of Google and YouTube in the Middle East and beyond. The call for censorship comes in response to the National Islamic Union’s complaint that Google has violated the “constitutional right …
On Wednesday, Turkey retaliated against a Syrian mortar attack earlier in the day that killed five civilians in the Turkish border town of Akcakale. Turkey responded in kind with limited artillery attacks against Syrian army outposts. Whether planned or not, Syria’s shelling of Akcakale is just another step in the …
On October 7, millions of Venezuelans will vote for the man who will lead their country for the next six years. Hugo Chavez, Venezuela’s populist, authoritarian Goliath, is confident of victory. Despite battling cancer and working overtime to hide the consequences of 13 years of mismanagement, incompetence, and corruption, he …
On Tuesday, United Nations Deputy Secretary-General Jan Eliasson characterized free speech not as a fundamental right, but as a “privilege” given to us by the U.N. Specifically, he referred to “the freedom of speech, the freedom of expression” as a: gift given to us by the [Universal] Declaration of Human Rights, but …
Trade and job creation came up in the presidential debate last night. A longstanding argument for blocking trade is that imports hurt jobs. This argument is wrong, and we can prove it. A paper published by The Heritage Foundation documents that the process of importing—offloading from ships and planes, transporting …
A new study by the international watchdog group Publish What You Fund finds U.S. foreign aid programs lagging seriously in transparency. According to the organization, transparency is critical for ensuring genuine accountability for results. Of the various U.S. aid organizations, the Millennium Challenge Corporation is the most transparent, with a …
Most people are familiar with the U.N.’s notorious ineffectiveness, but viewers of the documentary U.N. Me will reach an inevitable conclusion: It’s even worse than we thought. Managing to fit as many U.N. scandals into the short documentary as possible, filmmakers Ami Horowitz and Matthew Groff rely on interviews with …
BAKU, Azerbaijan — Georgia’s governing United National Movement (UNM), led by President Mikheil Saakashvili, and the opposition Georgian Dream coalition, led by the billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili, both claimed victory in the country’s parliamentary elections. Violence—somewhat of a political tradition—is so far absent. Saakashvili already admitted that the opposition had won …
