Let the French Pay for UNESCO
There’s no reason to waive U.S. laws to bankroll a wasteful, anti-American U.N. agency.
Zimbabwe
Gay—or Left?
On July 19, 2005, authorities in the Iranian city of Mashhad publicly lynched two teenagers, Mahmoud Asgari and Ayaz Marhoni, for the alleged crime of raping a 13-year-old boy. Horrific pictures...
Op-eds
Lose LOST
The Law of the Sea Treaty requires surrendering sovereignty and paying taxes to international bureaucrats and dictators.
Op-eds
Iran, Voice of the UN’s ‘Committee on Information’
It’s quite perverse enough that the United Nations would have a so-called Committee on Information whose members include such c...
Op-eds
Bradley Manning is No Gay Hero
From 1916, when the United States military first expressly prohibited homosexuals, until the 1993 passage of "don't ask, don't tell" (DADT), gay men and women were considered psychologi...
Op-eds
Madness in High Places
I am just back from a pilgrimage to Machiavelli’s town, San Casciano, and I’m happy to report that the sort of “virile Christianity” he favored is still alive and active i...
Op-eds
Yep: Robert Mugabe, UN Leader for Tourism
Surely even the United Nations would hesitate over celebrating Zimbabwe’s longtime despot, Robert Mugabe, as a “leader” of any kind? That’s why, in my...
Op-eds
Former Czech President Vaclav Havel, a Revolutionary Who Always ‘Lived Within the Truth’
In 1985, then dissident and future Czech president Vaclav Havel, who died Sunday at the age of 75, wrote an essay...
Op-eds
Mistaking Symptom for Cause
Arabs and Muslims have many reasons, some of them valid, to detest Israel. Though it is a liberal democracy in which Arabs have more freedoms than anywhere else in the Middle East, Israel remains...
Op-eds
Belarus, the Land of No Applause
Unlike other dictators, who speak of their love for “freedom” and “liberty,” President Aleksandr Lukashenko of Belarus is admirably blunt abou...
Op-eds
Beyond Mugabe’s Madness
Even by the ridiculously low procedural standards of Africa's club of presidents-for-life, last Friday's poll in Zimbabwe was a truly pathetic exercise. As Barry Bearak, the Pulitzer Pr...
Op-eds
Zimbabwe’s Runoff Rip-off
Three months ago, Zimbabweans went to the polls and by a clear majority repudiated the nearly three-decade misrule of the Zimbabwe Africa National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) in general and t...
Op-eds
U.S. Engagement of Africa in the National Interest
Earlier this year, citing an array of new initiatives including the United States Africa Command (AFRICOM), the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC), and the President's Emergency Plan for...
Op-eds
Dollars for Durban II
Back to the U.N.
Op-eds
Bad Faith Actor
In the pantheon of United Nations causes, Africa by many measures occupies a preeminent role. Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon has described “the African challenge” as “the highest...
Op-eds
Enabling Mugabe to Cling On
Last Friday was the twenty-eighth anniversary of Zimbabwe's independence, although the country's long-suffering people of the country might be forgiven for not exactly marking the occas...
Op-eds
Botswana’s Success Sparkles amid African Gloom
While the world has been watching the pathetic spectacle being played out in Harare, Zimbabwe, as Robert Mugabe clings desperately to the levers of power he has held for nearly three decades (see...
Op-eds
Zimbabwe Zigzags Onto Another Rough Patch
The ongoing stand-off in Zimbabwe between incumbent President Robert Mugabe and the main opposition leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, shows how much the political landscape can shift back and forth in t...
Op-eds
Just Move the UN Human Rights Council to Syria
With the Assad regime murdering hundreds of protesters, it’s patently grotesque that Syria might get a seat on the United Nations Human Rights Council. And yet, when the General Assembly vo...
Op-eds
The Battle for Libya: Implications for Africa
As battle lines crisscross between the rebels marching west to overthrow him and loyal military units taking the offensive against rebel-held towns in the eastern Libya, Colonel Muammar al-Qadhaf...