A United Nations conference this week in Geneva, ostensibly designed to address racism and other forms of intolerance, provides a welcome wake-up call for those who believe that all global disputes are rooted in mere misunderstanding. The reality is much different, as the results of U.S. diplomatic efforts of recent weeks have made clear. President …
Continue reading “UN’s Durban II a Disgrace, But Also a Welcome Wake-Up Call”
Policymakers in Washington have come to accept “spin” as a normal feature of the legislative process, with each side in a debate pushing a message and bending facts so they best support its case. But bending facts is one thing, breaking them is another. In some cases, one side actually ignores facts and creates a …
Continue reading “The Sad (and False) Tales of Victims of the Estate”
President Obama is about to test an important proposition – that the United States can more effectively improve even the worst global institutions by participating in them than by shunning them. In this case, the institution is the United Nations Human Rights Council, for which the Obama Administration has applied for U.S. membership, reversing a …
Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao’s recent demand that Washington guarantee the safety of China’s investments in U.S. Treasury securities highlights just one problem that huge federal budget deficits present for the United States. China is now America’s largest creditor, holding about $1 trillion in securities – having lent us much of the necessary funding that …
Fascinating. I run a campaign based on “change you can believe in.” I win big at home, and hundreds of millions of people around the world seemed thrilled as well. I’m still very popular with the American people, so I should have all the political capital I need to tackle the big problems that we …
In her new book, Alger Hiss and the Battle for History, the brilliant intellectual historian Susan Jacoby describes the Hiss case of the early post-World War II period as a kind of political Rorschach test. If you‟re a liberal, she writes, you believe that Hiss, a former top State Department official in the 1940s who …
Continue reading “Charles Freeman, America’s Next Political Rorschach Test”
Welcome to “Israeli Apartheid Week,” the fifth such global event, which runs this year from March 1 to 8 and is designed, its organizers say, to “educate people about the nature of Israel as an apartheid system.” With activities in over 40 cities from Berkeley to Johannesburg, this yearly event is designed to build support …