It doesn’t take an economist to notice the rumblings of historic change pushing close to the surface. Demand for oil is growing faster than supplies, so oil prices are moving to dizzying new highs every few days, threatening to transform the world. If this trend continues, much will have to change, not just in America, but everywhere. Americans use far more oil than anyone else, but China and India and the rest of the planet need fuel to pull their populations out of poverty. Every day that demand increases without a corresponding increase in supply. Economic pressure builds, making the [...]
U.N. TO CLOSE ANGOLA OFFICES — United Nations officials announced April 18 the world body will close its Angola offices by the end of May at the request of Angolan authorities, who no longer wish to cooperate with the U.N. on formulating a comprehensive human rights policy. Angola, which is still struggling to recover from more than two decades of warfare that ended in 2002, has used growing oil revenues to insulate itself from Western criticism of its rights situation and to lay big plans for its own development. Human rights groups and U.N. officials, however, have expressed grave concerns [...]
How do you respond to a democratically elected governing party that just happens to be a terrorist outfit? I guess that depends who the outfit is. According to an unconfirmed report citing the U.S. Ambassador to Nepal, Nancy Powell, the State Dept. is ironing out the final “technicalities” needed to remove the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist), winners of Nepal’s recent elections, from its terrorism watch list. Now, there are several terrorist listings maintained by the U.S. government, including the Foreign Terrorist Organization list, the Terrorist Exclusion List, and EO 13324 (an executive order issued in the aftermath of the [...]
