Summer in Seattle shines wonderfully warm and leaves most mornings and evenings still cool. Spring and fall usher in clouds and drizzle, but it’s summer now. I was born here and elated to move...
The previous post started with a discussion of potential benefits from a “soft partition” policy for Iraq. Iraq is half-way there (or one-third?) with the soft partition of Kurdish territories. An semiautonomous Sunni territory...
Improved Kurdish relations with Turkey are good news for the Middle East and for oil consumers. Consider this June 23rd article on Kurdish oil being sold to Israel: Area historically inhabited by Kurds. (Photo...
If it matters, measure it. The Fraser Institute has long worked with a network of think tanks around the world to measure economic freedom, country by country. Market economists claim that improving economic freedom...
War is a horrible reality in the Middle East, and military conflicts allow minority ethnic and religious groups to be targeted. Christian communities in the Middle East have suffered during and after military conflicts...
First page of the Economics of U.S. Middle East Policy study guide. The page one article is a report on economic freedom in Bahrain which cites: According to the annual Economic Freedom of the Arab...
Military generals are charged with managing national security which has included protecting access to “needed” natural resources. Military goals have been stretched to securing resources “needed” for economic security. And for the U.S., overseas...
The dysfunctional legal systems of the Middle East and North Africa lock most young people out of the formal economy.Izzit.org offers a twenty-minute educational video on the topic: Locked Out: The Roots of Arab Spring, and...
NCFCA debaters spent the 2013-14 school year advocating federal election law reforms and arguing against opponents’ reforms. With next year’s Middle East topic we have an important, if not obvious, connections with the federal election...
George Will in The Washington Post reviewed Ilya Somin’s book Democracy and Political Ignorance: Why Smaller Government is Smarter. Both the column and the book are relevant for the federal election law reform topic. Somin and Will note...
