Heritage and the Wall Street Journal released the 2012 Index of Economic Freedom on Thursday, ranking 179 countries on 10 benchmarks that gauge their economic success. This year Heritage introduced a new interactive feature that gives you the opportunity to create a comparative graph. This week’s chart shows how the United States stacks up against Canada and the United Kingdom. As recently as 2009, the United States led both countries in economic freedom. But after four years of decline, the United States is heading in the wrong direction. This year …
Was it wise for the Obama administration to reverse the Bush administration’s policy of distancing the U.S. from the United Nations Human Rights Council? With the Council’s 15th session underway, it’s a question worth asking. The Council has been receiving more attention than unusual lately because the administration recently submitted a report on the U.S. human rights record for the Council’s Universal Periodic Review process. The report has led many to question what America gets out of membership on that body. In response, the U.S. ambassador to the Council, Eileen …
A recent story by Fox News provides yet another example of the United Nations Development Program’s refusal to accede to an unfortunate reality: that the organization’s efforts to work with, and through, the world’s most despotic regimes are regularly twisted to serve the goals of the regime rather than the people suffering under their rule. According to the story: An independent assessment of a $100 million United Nations Development Program aid effort in Burma calls it ‘disappointing,’ and ‘unsatisfactory,’ and suggests that major portions of the program be discontinued next …
Like Presidents Clinton and Bush before him, Obama now has a Robert Mugabe problem. Foreign Policy Magazine recently awarded Mugabe, president of failed Zimbabwe, the dubious distinction of being the world’s second worst dictator, finishing just behind North Korea’s Kim Jong-Il. Robert Mugabe is a liberation ‘hero’ in the struggle for independence who has since transformed himself into a murderous despot, Mugabe has arrested and tortured the opposition, squeezed his economy into astounding negative growth and billion-percent inflation, and funneled off a juicy cut for himself using currency manipulation and …
The April 22-25 visits of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to Zimbabwe and to Uganda highlight Iran’s unrelenting quest for international partners ready to either associate with its anti-U.S., anti-West program or soften potential sanctions taking shape in the UN Security Council. The visits also allowed Iran to once-more denounce the meddling of the Obama Administration and proclaim itself the victim of U.S. discrimination and double standards. In Africa, Iran repeated tactics it is employing successfully in Latin America with Venezuela’s Chavez and Brazil’s influential but misguided President Lula da Silva, who promises …
The election of President Barack Obama resonated loudly throughout Africa. His victory raised expectations that Africa would assume a more prominent place in U.S. foreign policy. This was not in 2009 to be the case. To its credit, the Obama Administration has in its first year done a good job reminding Africans of the challenges they face. In July, the President spent a day in Ghana and delivered strong messages in his Africa policy speech. He talked about importance of good governance, stronger institutions, and ending festering conflicts. The future, …
On October 30, the United States voted with the majority in the General Assembly to support U.N.-sponsored negotiations to regulate the conventional arms trade. The vote was 153-1, with the pariah state of Zimbabwe the lone hold out. More significantly, some of the world’s more ethically challenged arms traders – the states of China, Russia, Iran, Syria, India, Pakistan, and Cuba – abstained in the vote. U.S. support for the negotiations reversed the policy of the Bush Administration, but the U.S. agreed to participate only if the negotiations were conducted …
Some wonder whether the stock market’s rebound to over 10,000 is a sign not of economic recovery but of inflation. Is the simultaneous rise in gold prices another symptom of dramatic inflation ahead, sparked by big government blunders? An article at Smart Money includes Jonathan Hoenig’s warning of government-caused hyperinflation. Rather than pointing to Germany’s Weimar Republic of the 1930’s, he points to Zimbabwe during the last year. That African nation printed a supply of bills valued at $100-trillion apiece—and now worthless already. Hoenig writes:
As fellow Americans we always take pride in the achievements and awards of our compatriots. Although we congratulate President Obama for winning the Nobel Peace Prize today, he should accept the award on behalf of the American people for all our many sacrifices to make the world a better place. Everyone recognizes, however, that the Nobel Committee awarded the prize to President Obama on the basis of hope for the future rather than achievements of the past. The politicization of this award saddens us when dissident leaders in China, Zimbabwe, …
As the world honors Abraham Lincoln on the 200th anniversary of his birth, it’s worth recalling one of the less well-remembered moments of his career: his letter on January 19, 1863 to “the Workingmen of Manchester,” responding to their earlier address and resolutions in support of the North. This was one of Lincoln’s earliest public letters, an art form he used to increasing effect throughout the remainder of the Civil War. The Manchester letter, though not as well known as his later letter on Clement Vallandigham, the ‘wily agitator’ and …
