Babchenko alive ?Murdered? Russian journalist turns up alive

[Tim Nickerson]

If you want to call Russia, China and North Korea more free than India or Ukraine, be my guest. It's good for general ball park figures.  Also, should we see how often, National Review is wrong on things? They don't have a perfect record either and I can name particular cases.

Amnesty International has skewed views; but they still produce valuable information from time to time.

Did you just equate Russia with North Korea? 

[Richard Rubio]

Did you just equate Russia with North Korea? 

First off, what National Review probably takes issue with, are European countries getting ranked higher than the US in the Freedom Index.  I agree with this.  I would think UK is not "freer" than the US. I agree that Freedom House like Amnesty International are flawed in their methodology. But they are probably useful to repeat myself, in a general way.

Per North Korea and Russia,  they equate as far as being "unfree nations", we are talking about that map after all and I posted one of Freedom House's maps from a few years ago. So, currently, are North Korea, Russia and Iran for example, graded as unfree? Yes.  Are a few countries like Ukraine graded as "semi-free", yes,  is the US, Sweden and so on, graded as free countries? Yes.

For the record, Turkey has been moved into the "unfree" category, with the recent clampdown per the alleged coup that took place there about 2 years ago.

2018 map:



When Reagan called NK, Iran and the USSR the axis of evil, was he equating them? Of course not.

For the record, it's interesting that Mongolia is listed as freedom, just because of its locale.

For the record, at the Freedom House website, there are exact grades they give nations, interactive maps as well.... so this shows how they equate or don't.

I disagree if the US is rated lower than say, some European country or even Canada, but in a general way, it's still a "useful" map.

Interactive Map: https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/freedom-world-2018