Free Republic

Private Route Avoids the Aid Trap By Roger Bate, Richard Tren Posted: Monday, January 24, 2005 Gordon Brown, Britain's chancellor of the exchequer, has finally gone home after his African trip, no doubt with a glowing feeling in his soul. His efforts to forgive debt, increase government-to-government aid transfers and increase trade will win him many friends at home and abroad. Increasing aid transfers pleases Big Government supporters who believe the west's wealth came at the expense of African development. Bureaucrats in Africa and in developed countries will be pleased, as they will have increased budgets and power. However, the...

Atlantic Unbound | November 23, 2004 Politics & Prose | by Jack Beatty Clinton's Perverse Legacy Is Clinton to blame for the Democratic Party's plight? ..... Listening to Bill Clinton—by turns, charming, shrewd, and wise—speak at the opening of his presidential library in Little Rock last week, brought home anew the gap between his gifts of brain, heart, and speech, and what he made of them as president. In this he compares unfavorably to George W. Bush, who has made more of less (and worse) than any president in modern times. Clinton was a business cycle president who happened to...

Remapping the Middle East, Maybe By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN Published: January 9, 2005 After Saddam Hussein seized neighboring Kuwait in 1990, the historian David Fromkin published an essay in the Smithsonian journal recalling how the modern Middle East was formed, in which he wrote: "In 1922, Churchill succeeded in mapping out the Arab Middle East along lines suitable to the needs of the British civilian and military administrations. T. E. Lawrence ["Lawrence of Arabia"] would later brag that he, Churchill and a few others had designed the modern Middle East over dinner. Seventy years later ... the question is whether...