New Economic Freedom Report on Prosperity, Gender Equality and Populism
TheEconomic Freedom of the World: 2017 Annual Reportis out today. Co-published in the United States by the Fraser Institute (Canada) and the Cato Institute, it continues to find a strong relationship between economic freedom on the one hand, and prosperity and other indicators of human well-being on the other.The United States ranks 11 out of 159 countries, indicating a slight improvement recently in its rating, but its economic freedom remains far below what it was in the year 2000, when it began a long decline. Since 1970, the index has typically ranked the United States among the top four countries. The top countries in...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - September 28, 2017 Category: American Health Authors: Ian V ásquez Source Type: blogs
Cynical Hawks Exploit North Korea Crisis to Torpedo Iran Agreement
Donald Trump ’sspeech to the UN General Assembly underscored his intention to adopt highly confrontational policies toward both North Korea and Iran. He threatened to “totally destroy” North Korea in the event of war and re-emphasized Washington’s long-standing determination to compel Pyongyang to renounce its nuclear and ballistic missile programs. The president scorned Iran as “an economically depleted rogue state” and described the current multilateral nuclear agreement with Tehran as “an embarrassment” to the United States. If Trump is not merely engaging in bombast, Washington appears to be ginning-u...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - September 20, 2017 Category: American Health Authors: Ted Galen Carpenter Source Type: blogs
Is Trump Putting Us Back on the Road to War with Iran?
On Monday, the Trump administration once again officially certified that Iran is in compliance with the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the agreement that rolled back Iran ’s nuclear program and subjected it to unprecedented levels of inspections and monitoring in exchange for sanctions relief. But, according tomultiplereports, Trump was very close to refusing to do so.Apparently, there is a split in the administration. Some of Trump ’s national security advisors, along with some hawks on Capitol Hill, are intent on torpedoing the Iran nuclear deal. And Trump was set to officially claim, contrary to the fac...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - July 19, 2017 Category: American Health Authors: John Glaser Source Type: blogs
Trump's No Good Very Bad Arms Deal
Tomorrow Congress will vote on resolutions of disapproval in response to Trump ’s recent arms deal with Saudi Arabia. If passed, Senate Resolution 42 and House Resolution 102 would effectively block the sale of precision guided munitions kits, which the Saudis want in order to upgrade their “dumb bombs” to “smart bombs.” A similar effort was defeated last year in the Senate. How should we feel about this vote? Before the ink was dry President Trump was busy bragging about his arms deal with Saudi Arabia, a deal that heclaimed would reach $350 billion and would create “hundreds of thousands of jobs.” The sale...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - June 7, 2017 Category: American Health Authors: A. Trevor Thrall Source Type: blogs
Looking at EHR Internationally
Today, I’m sitting in my hotel room in Dubai (Check out my full health IT conference schedule) looking out over this incredible city. This is the 3rd time I’ve come to Dubai to teach an EHR workshop and so I’ve had a chance to fall in love with some many things. Not the least of which is the people that come to participate in the workshop. Each time is a unique perspective with people coming from around the middle east including countries like Saudia Arabia, Oman, Bahrain, Qatar, and of course Abu Dhabi and Dubai in the UAE to name a few.
There’s something incredible about coming to a place that is ...
Source: EMR and HIPAA - August 24, 2016 Category: Information Technology Authors: John Lynn Tags: EHR Electronic Health Record Electronic Medical Record EMR Healthcare HealthCare IT Dubai EHR EHR Conferences Healthcare IT Conferences Middle East EHR Saudi Arabia EHR Source Type: blogs
Does The U.S. Really Need an Ally Like Saudi Arabia?
Despite recently expressing doubts about America’s relationship with Saudi Arabia, President Barack Obama again flew to Riyadh and sought to “reassure” the Saudi royals about U.S. support.
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia should raise the question: what are allies for? The president should have started moving Washington and Riyadh toward a more normal relationship.
Most important, the U.S. should drop any security guarantee, whether explicit or implicit. If the KSA is worth defending, its own people should do so. At the same time, the U.S. should take a more even-handed approach in the Iranian-Saudi cold war, looking for ...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - April 28, 2016 Category: American Health Authors: Doug Bandow Source Type: blogs
Stop Reassuring Saudi Arabia, a Worse Threat to the Middle East than Iran
Secretary of State John Kerry recently traveled to Riyadh to reassure the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states that the U.S. stood with them. “Nothing has changed” as a result of the nuclear pact with Iran, he insisted.
Washington’s long relationship with Riyadh was built on oil. There never was any nonsense about sharing values with the KSA, which operates as a slightly more civilized variant of the Islamic State. The royals run a totalitarian system which prohibits political dissent, free speech, religious liberty, and social autonomy.
At a time of heavy U.S. dependence on foreign oil a little compromise i...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - January 26, 2016 Category: American Health Authors: Doug Bandow Source Type: blogs
The Syrian Civil War Just Became Even More Complex
Just when you thought the Syrian civil war couldn’t get any messier, developments last week proved that it could. For the first time in the armed conflict that has raged for nearly five years, militia fighters from the Assyrian Christian community in northern Iraq clashed with Kurdish troops. What made that incident especially puzzling is that both the Assyrians and the Kurds are vehement adversaries of ISIS—which is also a major player in that region of Syria. Logically, they should be allies who cooperate regarding military moves against the terrorist organization.
But in Syria, very little is simple or straightf...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - January 19, 2016 Category: American Health Authors: Ted Galen Carpenter Source Type: blogs
Meet a Globe-Trotting Chemist and Builder of “Smart Molecules”
Jayawickramarajah taking a “selfie” with “The Bean,” a large, highly reflective sculpture in Chicago
Credit: Janarthanan Jayawickramarajah
Janarthanan Jayawickramarajah
Born in: Kandy, Sri Lanka
Job site: Tulane University, New Orleans, Louisiana
Alternate career choice: Anthropologist
Favorite sports teams: Sri Lanka national cricket team, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Tar Heels basketball, New Orleans Saints football
Favorite weekend activity: Strolling through parks with his wife and two kids and stopping for coffee and beignets (a New Orleans treat, a lot like a doughnut covered in powdered sugar...
Source: Biomedical Beat Blog - National Institute of General Medical Sciences - January 7, 2016 Category: Research Authors: Srivalli Subbaramaiah Tags: Being a Scientist Chemistry and Biochemistry Profiles Smart Molecule Source Type: blogs
Where Do K-1 Visa Holders Come From?
Syed Farook and Tashfeen Malik were killed last week in a gun battle with police after they committed a mass shooting in San Bernardino, California. Malik entered the U.S. on a K-1 visa, known as the fiancé visa, accompanied by Farook. Their attack is the first perpetrated by somebody on the K-1 visa - igniting a debate over increasing visa security.
The government issued approximately 262,162 K-1 visas from 2005 to 2013 – 3177 or 1.21 percent of the total to Pakistani citizens.
Senator Rand Paul’s (R-KY) SECURE Act identifies 34 countries as particularly terror-prone. There were 32,363 K-1 visa, 12.34 pe...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - December 7, 2015 Category: American Health Authors: Alex Nowrasteh Source Type: blogs
Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States Have Accepted Many Syrians
Many more Syrians are living in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States than at the beginning of the Syrian civil war in 2011. The World Bank reports that 1,000,000 Syrians resided in Saudi Arabia in 2013, a whopping 795 percent increase over 2010. There were 1,375,064 Syrian migrants living in the Gulf States in 2013, a 470 percent increase over 2010. Excluding Oman, the 2013 Syrian population in every Gulf State has increased dramatically since right before the beginning of the Syrian civil war.
Syrian Population Residing in Each Country
2010
2013
Increase Since 2010
Saudi Arabia
111,764
1,000,000
794...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - December 1, 2015 Category: American Health Authors: Alex Nowrasteh Source Type: blogs
With "Friends" Like Saudi Arabia, the United States Doesn’t Need Enemies
One striking feature of the first debate featuring the top tier GOP presidential candidates was how many of them described Saudi Arabia and its allies in the Persian Gulf as “friends” of the United States. And clearly that is a bipartisan attitude. Obama administration officials routinely refer to Saudi Arabia as a friend and ally, and one need only recall the infamous photo of President Obama bowing to Saudi King Abdullah to confirm Washington’s devotion to the relationship with Riyadh.
It is a spectacularly unwise attitude. As Cato adjunct scholar Malou Innocent and I document in our new book, Perilous Partn...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - August 28, 2015 Category: American Health Authors: Ted Galen Carpenter Source Type: blogs
The Bad and Ugly of the GOP’s Foreign Policy, Part II
The Republican presidential race is heating up and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio is talking foreign policy. Alas, he believes intervention and war to be a first resort and seems willing to sacrifice American lives, wealth, and prosperity for almost any reason.
Rubio shares the common delusion on the Right that the world has grown more dangerous since the end of the Cold War. Actually, the end of the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact has made it much safer for America.
Rubio claimed that “Turmoil across the world can impact American families almost as much as turmoil across town.” But that is only if the United States allows it. ...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - August 13, 2015 Category: American Health Authors: Doug Bandow Source Type: blogs
Saudi Arabia Rents U.S. Military to Help Kill Yemenis
The Obama administration is part of Saudi Arabia’s 10-member “coalition” fighting against Houthi rebels and in support of the now-deposed Yemeni government that is in exile in Riyadh. This was recently underscored by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, who said of the Saudis, “We’re not going to step away from our alliances and our friendships.”
Alas, the entire Yemen campaign is built on a lie. Contrary to Riyadh’s claims, the Houthis are not directed by, and seem only barely supported by, Iran, whose supposed involvement is the ostensible reason for U.S. involvement. Instead, the rebels have been fighting ...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - April 24, 2015 Category: American Health Authors: Doug Bandow Source Type: blogs
MENA’s Misery Indices, a Story of Economic Failure
Steve H. Hanke
In my misery index, I calculate a ranking for all countries where suitable data exist. The misery index — a simple sum of inflation, lending rates, and unemployment rates, minus year-on-year per capita GDP growth — is used to construct a ranking for 108 countries. The table below is a sub-index of all Middle East and North African (MENA) countries presented in the world misery index.
A higher score in the misery index means that the country, and its constituents, are more miserable. Indeed, this is a table where you do not want to be first.
Syria and Iran were the most miserable in the region. War and...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - March 9, 2015 Category: American Health Authors: Steve H. Hanke Source Type: blogs
