Freedom House says how free your country is

[BeBMan]

Visit the "Map of Freedom"! You can zoom into that map until your country is clickable. Click it, then you'll see the rating.

http://www.freedomhouse.org/template.cfm?page=15&year=2005

Germany has the same freedom as the US! Now if that doesn't count as proof!

Tell me how free/unfree your country really is.

Alternatively there's also a "Map of Press Freedom"

[Harry Tuttle]

Ummmm, three ratings? Not to in-depth are they?

[Kontiki]

Hey, Canada's "Free". Whodathunkit?

[Spiffor]

Maps of France

[Richelieu]

Russia's status is interesting...

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Harry Tuttle
Ummmm, three ratings? Not to in-depth are they?

They used to publish a whole book that explained what was behind the ratings for each country - I presume they still do.

Ive seen the maps of freedom since the 1970's. The organization has been around since the 1940s, but im not sure when they started with the maps and rankings.

[Provost Harrison]

That script keeps dying

[Last Conformist]

"Freedom House"? My prejudices tell me they're consie nutjobs who can safely be ignored.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Last Conformist
"Freedom House"? My prejudices tell me they're consie nutjobs who can safely be ignored.

FH's Board of Trustees, with my comments
Peter Ackerman, Chairman
Stuart Eizenstat, Vice-Chairman (former Carter staffer)
Mark Palmer, Vice-Chairman
Walter J. Schloss, Treasurer
Max M. Kampelman, Chairman Emeritus
Bette Bao Lord, Chairman Emeritus
Ned W. Bandler, Secretary, Governance and Ethics Officer


Jacqueline Adams
Kenneth L. Adelman (Reaganite)
Alan P. Dye
Thomas S. Foley (ex Dem congressman)
Malcolm S. Forbes, Jr. (Libertarian leaning publisher)
Theodore Forstmann
Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (Head of African American Studies at Harvard)
Sidney Harman
Samual P. Huntington (Yup, him)
John T. Joyce
Kathryn Dickey Karol
Farooq Kathwari
Jeane J. Kirkpatrick (neo con and Reaganite)
Anthony Lake (former Clinton Nat Security Advisor)
Nancy Lane
Mara Liasson(NPR reporter?)
Jay Mazur
Michael McFaul
John Norton Moore
Azar Nafisi
David Nastro
Andrew Nathan
Diana Villiers Negroponte
P. J. O'Rourke
Nina Rosenwald
David M. Rubenstein
Arthur Waldron
Ruth Wedgwood
Wendell L. Willkie II (son(?) of one of the founders, an internationalist Republican from the 1940's)

theyve always been bipartisan, though commited to internationalism.

BTW, they rank Venezuala as more free than Guatemala, which you wouldnt expect of "conservatives"

[Odin]

Them labeling Venesuela and Bolivia as only "partially free" pretty much shows this has a right-wing bias. Right-wingers think "freedom" requires capitalism, so thery will consider countries with left-wing populist leaders like Chavez, Morales, and Aristide as not completely free.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Odin
Them labeling Venesuela and Bolivia as only "partially free" pretty much shows this has a right-wing bias. Right-wingers think "freedom" requires capitalism, so thery will consider countries with left-wing populist leaders like Chavez, Morales, and Aristide as not completely free.

im pretty sure the rankings were released before Morales won.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Odin
Them labeling Venesuela and Bolivia as only "partially free" pretty much shows this has a right-wing bias. Right-wingers think "freedom" requires capitalism, so thery will consider countries with left-wing populist leaders like Chavez, Morales, and Aristide as not completely free.

"Haiti's political rights rating declined from 6 to 7 due to the lack of a democratically derived sovereign authority resulting from the ouster of President Jean Bertrand Aristide,"

[Dinner]

Indeed. It is dated 2005.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Odin
Them labeling Venesuela and Bolivia as only "partially free" pretty much shows this has a right-wing bias. Right-wingers think "freedom" requires capitalism, so thery will consider countries with left-wing populist leaders like Chavez, Morales, and Aristide as not completely free.

Theyve addressed this over the years since 1973. Theyve pointed out that Social democracies in Scandinavia almost always get the highest rankings, and that Chile under Pinochet got almost the lowest. They have pointed out that socialism CAN put more power in the hands of an authoritarian govt, but that this is not necessarily so.

I really suggest you learn more about them before judging them.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Facts and Odin don't mix.