We’re close to our spending limit on the nation’s credit card. The bank bailout, the stimulus package, the Iraq War and the overall military budget: each is costing more than $500 billion.
Obama Must Pick Gurneys Over Guns
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Barack Obama
Toward an Abrahamic Peace
In what some world strategists call “the arc of instability” from Pakistan to Israel and Palestine — and what others call the central pool of oil and still others call the heart of Islam — there are several sets of overlapping wars, military occupations, and semi-military sanctions in process between the U.S. and its allies and various Muslim-majority countries.
Pushing South Asia Toward the Brink
The contradictions and confusions in U.S. policy in South Asia were on full display during Secretary of State Hilary Clinton’s recent visit to India. U.S. support for India, which centers on making money, selling weapons, and turning a blind eye to the country’s nuclear weapons, is fatally at odds with U.S. policy and concerns about Pakistan.
Obama to Africa: Tough Love or Tough Luck?
Africans are wading knee-deep in world financial institutions and leaders advising "good governance," "transparency," "accountability," and the ever-elusive "democracy." We did not need to hear these catchphrases that laced Obama’s Ghana speech. They are so benign that even Africa’s dictators, such as Kenya’s former dictator Daniel Arap Moi, promised them with each stolen election.
60-Second Expert: The U.S. and the UN Disability Treaty
In December 2006, 139 states signed the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD). It was the first human rights treaty of the 21st century and also the first of its kind geared towards protecting the rights of people with disabilities. The United States was and remains conspicuously absent from among the signatories, despite being a leader in domestic disability law and policy.
Obama Visits Africa’s ‘Oil Gulf’
Oil was discovered in Ghana just in 2007. A wide swath of the Atlantic’s Western shores, the area stretching from Morocco to Angola is becoming Africa’s “Oil Gulf.” Oil-producing countries in Africa, including those in the oil-rich Gulf of Guinea, now provide 24% of U.S. oil imports. Africa has outstripped the Middle East as an oil supplier to America. Increasingly, Africa’s oil is being produced offshore.
Showdown in ‘Tegucigolpe’
One of the hemisphere’s most critical struggles for democracy in 20 years is now unfolding in the Honduran capital of Tegucigalpa (nicknamed "Tegucigolpe" for its long history of military coup d’états, which are called golpes de estado, in Spanish). Despite censorship and repression, popular anger over the June 28 military overthrow of democratically elected President Manuel Zelaya is growing. International condemnation has been near-unanimous, and the Organization of American States has suspended Honduras, the first time the hemisphere-wide body has taken so drastic an action since 1962.
Ratify the UN Disability Treaty
The United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD, or the Convention) is the first human rights treaty of the 21st century. The CRPD is also the first legally binding international instrument with the power specifically to protect the rights of the world’s largest minority, some 650 million persons with disabilities.
What Obama Should Say in Ghana
Editor’s Note: FPIF and a coalition of organizations recently held a press briefing on Obama’s visit to Ghana. You can read the press booklet here.
That there is a carnival spirit in Accra, Ghana, ahead of President Barack Obama’s visit to this small West African country is to be expected. In March 1998, amidst low approval ratings and sex scandals, the Clintons took Accra by storm. Bill Clinton was mobbed like a rock star and later draped in colorful Ghanaian kente cloths. He preached hope for Africa and offered aid, but also apologized for America standing by as hundreds of thousands were slaughtered in the Rwandan genocide. A decade later, President George W. Bush, suffering dismal approval ratings and waging an illegal and murderous war in Iraq, rolled into town. He was received a hero, a savior of Africa from diseases. He danced and was feted. He preached freedom and democracy and promised to increase assistance for HIV/AIDS and malaria, while denying that there was an aggressive American agenda to militarize the continent to secure strategic access to its oil resources.
Obama’s Speech: Vexing Issues
President Barack Obama began the dialogue between the West and the Muslim and Arab worlds by directly confronting the vexing issues between them. The new tone is devoid of arrogance and emphasizes peaceful coexistence — in contrast to the prior administration’s bellicose tone and militaristic policy.