Harry’s Place

Today is the day when the British freed themselves from a despotic monarchy and declared independence. Unfortunately, they were unable to liberate their homeland of the British Isles, but those Britons willing to stand up to a tyrannical king went on to become “Americans” and created a world superpower, invented the corndog, and gave the […]

Without firing a shot, Colombian forces have rescued Ingrid Betancourt and 14 other hostages from the narcoterrorist group FARC.
Colombian Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos said the Colombian military had infiltrated the FARC leadership and arranged for the hostages to be taken to the south of the country, where they were to be picked up by […]

Taking a leaf from his friends in the Islamic Republic of Iran, Hugo Chavez’s electoral council has moved to ban nearly 400 mostly-opposition candidates from state and local elections in Venezuela next November.
As Jackson Diehl writes in The Washington Post, the council acted on the advice of a Chavez appointee, who ruled that “each of […]

As the farcical Zimbabwe “election” proceeds, The Daily Mirror provides a helpful list of companies which are helping to prop up the disgusting Mugabe regime.
To echo Ben Cohen: where’s the Left, comrades? Where’s the campaign to convince depositors to withdraw their money from Barclays and Standard Chartered banks until they break their ties with […]

This is a guest post by Ben Cohen, editor of Z-Word 
Consider the following scenario:
An international mining conglomerate is poised to honor a $400m deal which will bolster an African dictator currently visiting murderous violence upon his people. Said dictator is following through with a sham election which the opposition, as a result of grotesque intimidation, […]

Paddy Ashdown is suggesting military intervention in Zimbabwe:
Military intervention in Zimbabwe would be justified to stop the violence there deteriorating into mass slaughter, Paddy Ashdown told The Times last night.
Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon said: “The situation in Zimbabwe could deteriorate to a point where genocide could be a possible outcome - something that looks like […]

A full-page advertisement appears in today’s Washington Post entitled:
Welcome His Excellency Nguyen Tan Dung
Prime Minister, Socialist Republic of Viet Nam
It features the American and Vietnamese flags next to each other, a photo of the smiling and waving prime minister, and a letter from His Excellency, in which he says:
Today, Viet Nam is known as […]

In the week that brought us the mathematical equation for the perfect cheese sandwich, I bring you the equation for measuring terrorism.

where terrorjit represents our jth measure of terror for country i in period t, and USit measures political proximity to the United States. Xi,t−1 is the vector of (lagged) control variables, λt are fixed […]

The speech of ANC Youth League president, Julius Malema this week provided a scary glimpse of a possible future for South Africa unless strenuous steps are taken to avert a slow descent into hell.
At a rally in Johannesburg Mr Malema declared the Youth League’s willingness not only to die for Jakob Zuma, but to kill […]

This seems a fair assessment from Oliver Kamm:
For all Bush’s verbal infelicity, diplomatic brusqueness, negligence in planning for post-Saddam Iraq, and insouciance regarding standards of due process when prosecuting the war on terror, the world is a safer place for the influence he has exercised.
When Bush ran for president in 2000 he was an isolationist […]