March 2008 Archives

Putin's Critics Used to Drop Dead -- Now, they Vanish

Filed under: Russia

On March 23rd, Britain's Daily Mail reported that "jet-setting billionaire Leonid Rozhetskin [shown above with his wife and another model on the French Riviera two years ago], an outspoken critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin, vanished from his $2 million home just outside the Latvian capital Riga a week ago."

Well, you may say, so what? Who cares about a rich guy. And besides, some people say it might be a hoax (his mother begs to differ, as might one Khodorkovsky).

OK, but tell that to the family of artist Anna Mikhalchuk (pictured, left). The New York Times reported on March 28th that "she left her apartment in the West Berlin district of Charlottenburg on Good Friday at 3:30 p.m. and has not been heard from since. Ms. Mikhalchuk, who exhibits under the name Alchuk, took part in 'Caution! Religion,' a 2003 exhibition at Moscow's Andrei Sakharov Museum that opponents called 'blasphemous.' Shortly after the show opened, six men from an Orthodox church in Moscow ransacked the museum, damaging or destroying many of the works on display." The Guardian calls her "a public critic of Russian president Vladimir Putin."

Hmmmm . . .

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Barack Obama: Lower than Low, How Low can you Go?

Filed under: US Elections

You may think it's inappropriate for Barack Obama to say on his website that "endorsements from religious leaders are extended in their personal capacity, and not on behalf of any house of worship, organization or denomination" and then to show not one, not two, not three, not four but five different priests wearing their religious garb. After all, it almost makes it look like he knows what he's doing is wrong, but doing it anyway.

But that is nothing.

Because, as Michelle Malkin points out, one of those five puts the rest to shame:

Pastor Pfleger, you probably will not be surprised but may be outraged to learn, is the "white Jerimiah Wright." You might be even more appalled to find out that, though Obama has tried to distance himself from Wright in recent days, Pfleger hosted Wright at his Roman-Catholic church last Friday.

But that is nothing.

Because it turned out this wasn't any autocratic excess imposed by Pfleger on the helpless victims of his congregation. When introduced, Wright received a "raucous standing ovation" from those assembled. He then sang "Happy Birthday" to Maya Angelou.

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Russia Destroys Its Children

Filed under: Russia

Of all the criticisms that can be made of Vladimir Putin's Russia, by far the most damning is its failure to carry out the basic biological function of population replacement.

Far more Russians pass from the earth each year than are born (for this reason, Russia has a horrifying net loss of population each year, in the hundreds of thousands, even though it has a huge amount of immigration as unwelcome Russians return home from far-flung parts of the former USSR). Only 21 countries in the whole world have a higher mortality rate than Russia, and its rate of 16/1,000 is double that of the United States. The mortality rate has risen steadily through Putin's years in power (it is up nearly 15% since 2003), and the only thing Putin has been able to think of to deal with that reality is to bribe Russian parents to have more children. This classic Russian "solution" is actually worse than the existing problem. People don't want children, but they do want money. So they take the money, have the child -- and then what happens? That child will be lucky to live to see his 18th birthday, and if he does he'll certainly be impacted by the fact that the only reason he exists is because his parents got paid. Meanwhile, nothing is done about Russia's alarming mortality rate, which sees the average Russian man fail to reach his sixtieth year of life. From AIDS to smoking to house fires, Russia's population is being wiped out by every scourge and disease imaginable, while the Kremlin ignores the problem and spends its cash buzzing America and Britain with strategic bombers and sending weaponry to the likes of Venezuela, Syria and Iran.

Here are just a few of the horrifying details:

2 out of every 5 Russian children are victims of family violence
50,000 Russian children flee their homes each year
11,000 Russian children are currently imprisoned
last year alone, 2,000 Russian children were murdered by their parents
4.5 million Russian children live in single-parent homes without child support
One Russian woman is murdered by her husband every 40 minutes
Russia and Belarus lead the world in divorces
One Russian commits suicide every ten minutes
Russia has the fifth-highest murder rate on the planet

Russia's divorce rate is one-third greater than the U.S. Its suicide rate is four times higher than that of the America's, and its child and spousal murder rates are ten times higher.

In a recent op-ed column in the Moscow Times, the brilliant Russian commentator Georgy Bovt, who hosts a program on Moscow's City-FM radio station, told the paper's readers more about this ongoing atrocity against Russia's children.

Bovt noticed that while incidents of violence against Russian children by American adoptive parents, which are the rare exception to the general rule, get massive airtime on anti-American, state-owned Russian television whenever they occur, the Kremlin totally ignores the outrageous conduct of Russians themselves. And this doesn't apply only to state-controlled media. When has "president" Putin ever given a speech demanding that Russians take better care of their children?

Bovt writes:

If we are so concerned about the fate of Russian children adopted by foreigners, why do we remain silent about the children adopted by Russians? There are no statistics available on domestic abuse cases of adopted children. We know only that 2,500 Russian children die at their parents' hands every year, according to Interior Ministry statistics. We don't know how many of those children were adopted because the country has no system for monitoring the progress of adopted children. But we do know that 1 million adoptive parents were deprived of their adoption rights because of child abuse. Another 2,500 families changed their minds and sent the children they had adopted back to the orphanages.

The answer to the question he asks, of course, is simple: Russian's aren't "so concerned." In fact, they're not concerned at all. What motivates them is not love for their children, but hatred for America. Bovt writes:

Russian laws governing adoptions by foreigners have gotten stricter in recent years. Even accredited adoption agencies are finding it difficult to manage -- primarily because of the pervasive corruption among bureaucrats. Only in the last two years has the number of Russians adopting children -- 7,000 -- exceeded that of foreigners adopting Russian children -- 6,000.

So foreigners care more about Russia's children, and adopt more of them, than Russians themselves. And now, by imposing restrictions on that process, Russia is actually choking off that care, condemning its parentless children to lives of brutal isolation. In Russians' view these children are garbage, but still too good to give to filth-ridden Americans.

That's barbarism, pure and simple. Only such an attitude could explain why Russia loses up to one million people from its population every year as all manner of disease and pestilence ravage the nation. The average Russian man doesn't live to see his sixtieth year, placing Russia outside the world's top 100 nations in that category. Russia is, indeed, barbaric as a matter of statistics.

And it doesn't care. As Bovt points out, it doesn't even try to keep -- much less publish -- basic records regarding its performance, and even if it was doing so such data could not be taken seriously. Russians have chosen to be ruled by a proud KGB spy whose words are no more trustworthy than astrology. Bovt's column itself is victimized by a failure to fully recognize this lack of reliability: When he states "we do know that 1 million adoptive parents were deprived of their adoption rights because of child abuse" he forgets to insert they key phrase "at least" to signal that this Russian data cannot be considered reliable and could well be a gross understatement -- owing not merely to Kremlin dishonesty but also to Russia's general tradition of bureaucratic corruption and incompetence.

Russia scholar Paul Goble has more details about the horror of Russian atrocities against children and the pathetic efforts of the government to protect them. His post is the source for the first five of the bullet points above.

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Russia: Guilty as Charged

Filed under: Russia

Over the course of the past few years, Vladimir Putin's Russia has suffered an stunning series of devastating defeats in European courts.

First, in October 2006, the European Court for Human Rights found Russia guilty of state-sponsored murder in Chechnya. Numerous subsequent rulings of the ECHR have confirmed the Kremlin is responsible for the most egregious human rights atrocities throughout the breakaway republic.

Then, in August 2007, a Swiss court held that Russia's judicial system was so fundamentally corrupt that it would not cooperate with a Russian state investigation in the YUKOS prosecution.

Two months later, the ECHR ruled that the Kremlin's prosecution of Platon Lebedev, Mikhail Khodorkovskys' right-hand man, violated international law.

Finally, in January of this year, a court in the Netherlands ordered a new auction of the assets of Yukos Finance, a Dutch subsidiary YUKOS, after having declared last year that an earlier sale of the assets was illegal because a Russian bankruptcy declaration against Yukos was invalid under Dutch law. And now, that same court has "rejected claims by Rosneft, the state-controlled Russian oil group, against . . . assets" sought by a group of 50,000 shareholders of Yukos "on the basis that its claims had been paid in full during the forced Russian bankruptcy process of Yukos that began in 2006." It ruled instead for the ownership group, dispensing $850 million to them, a decision that "could open the way for the remainder of an estimated $2bn-worth of Yukos assets in the Netherlands to be used to compensate shareholders."

More is coming. Khodorkovsky himself is pursuing the same relief sought by Lebedev in the ECHR, and will likely win as well. Georgia also has a suit pending in the ECHR alleging mass persecution of Georgians in Russia after Georgia claimed to have discovered a Russian-sponsored coup plot against Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili and arrested four Russian military officers In November, an arbitration proceeding will commence in The Hague, Netherlands, before a panel of three respected international jurists. At issue are claims against the Russian government for illegal nationalization of corporate assets, bilking foreign investors in the now-defunct YUKOS oil company to the tune of $100 billion.

Slowly, right before our eyes, Mikhail Khodorkovsky is unraveling the web spun by the insidious Kremlin spiders who jailed him. In court after court, in nation after nation, he is proving beyond question that the actions taken against him by Russia's malignant dictatorship were illegal. He has placed the Kremlin in an utterly untenable position: It must either release him to stop the humiliating court proceedings, thereby freeing him to launch a massive civil opposition action, or it must keep him in prison indefinitely on additional trumped-up charges and face a watershed event in Europe where its basic legal legitimacy is obliterated and its international credibility reduced to the level of Zimbabwe and Zaire.

If Khodorkovsky can accomplish all this from behind bars, it's little wonder that the Kremlin had him jailed. Indeed, one must wonder whether the Kremlin is not already contemplating the Politkovskaya solution.

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Et Tu, Financial Times?

Filed under: Russia

There is a strong chance that Moscow will become one of the world's top financial centres in the next 10 to 15 years. This would see it overtake both Frankfurt and Paris, and see the Russian capital as second only to London in Europe.

If I showed you the above statement, clever reader that you are, you'd probably begin immediately to pick holes in it. What does "strong chance" mean, exactly, you'd no doubt ask. What's the source of this bold prediction? Reflecting upon the matter, you might well decide it sounds like some propaganda belched out by Russia's neo-Soviet Kremlin.

But what if I told you it wasn't, that it came from Andrew Hayes, head of Mergers and Acquisitions at Renaissance Capital, a brokerage firm, and appeared in the Financial Times newspaper.

"Oh I see," I bet you'd say -- it's an advertisement for his company's services. He must make money by getting foreigners to plonk down their money on Russia, so he's puffing his market. That's why he feels no need to give any source backing up his "10-15 years" prediction, or to define the term "strong chance" in any way.

Close, but no cigar. It's actually an article that appeared in the paper itself, and it isn't marked as an editorial -- nor is there a single word in its text to directly warn readers about the author's conflict of interest and resulting bias.

Mr. Hayes is a totally shameless propagandist, though, so most sophisticated people would certainly realize his admonitions are highly dubious to say the least. He claims that investors will not only make money on Russia, but in the process they will be promoting reform by helping to "transfer international best practices to the Russian market." Like any good stock broker, he asserts his belief that the effect of international financial turmoil will be "relatively modest" in Russia, suggesting it as some type of safe haven, while totally ignoring the horrifying risks.

He doesn't mention, for instance, the Kremlin's recent aggressive move to oust British Petroleum from its Russian stakes (much less does he discuss the arrest and Siberian imprisonment of oil executive Mikhail Khodorkovsky). Nor does he tell FT readers that the Russian stock market has lost nearly 20% of its value in the first three months of this year.

Our current editorial over at La Russophobe highlights how the FT is contributing to a gross misreading of the intentions of Russian "president-elect" Dmitri Medvedev, a wolf in sheep's clothing if ever there was one. But that's simply due to a lack of sophistication about Russia, not an uncommon problem.

The Hayes article is something else entirely. To me, it's deeply disturbing and represents a gross lapse of journalistic ethics, permitting someone with a personal financial stake in the outcome to give advice in what purports to be a professional piece of analysis but is in fact nothing more than an advertisement. If he wants an ad, he should buy one.

This is the sort of thing that allowed the USSR to get out of control in the first place, it's part and parcel of appeasement. If we're not careful, history will surely repeat itself.

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See, Told you So!

Filed under: US Elections

As shown above, Gallup reports that one-third more Hillary voters will support McCain in the general election if their gal does not get the nod compared to Obama voters who will do likewise if they're out in the cold.

I told you long before it was fashionable to say so that it would be far better for the Republicans to face Obama than Clinton, and this seems to be the final nail in that coffin.

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Kozlovsky on Russian Radio

Filed under: Russia

The latest entry to our sidebar is an original translation of the transcript of a broadcast from Echo of Moscow Radio in which a pair of hosts interview Oleg Kozlovsky just before the Kremlin's forces raided his Moscow headquarters in an effort to evict him. For Russian speakers, an audio link is available on the the station's web page, linked in the translation.

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It's Raining McCain!

Filed under: US Elections

Click here if you are having trouble seeing the YouTube image. May take a while to load.

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The Democrats and their Old Nemesis, Democracy

Filed under: US Elections

You may recall, if you are an ardent political junkie, a furor that arose in the American loopy left just as the primary election cycle was getting serious involving the apportionment of electoral votes in California. They decried as a "dirty tricks campaign" a Republican initiative to apportion the nation's most-populous state's presidential electoral votes proportional to the popular vote -- in other words, it wouldn't be winner-take-all. Each candidate would get the same share of the state's electoral votes (it has the most of any state) as he or she had won of the state's popular vote. This would guarantee Republicans a chunk of the state's electoral votes even if they lost, and could have created a major obstacle to the Democrats winning the presidency. Naturally, the Democrats wailed to high heaven that it was unfair.

And yet, as Democrat (and Hillary Clinton backer) Evan Bayh (Senator of Indiana) points out, the Democrats conduct their own primary nominating process in exactly this manner. Moreover, if they did in their primaries what they demanded Republicans do in the general election in California, and awarded primary electoral votes on a winner-take-all basis, then Hillary Clinton would now have a significant lead over Barack Obama even without considering Michigan and Florida. Other than those, the states Clinton has won carry 219 electoral votes, while the states in Obama's column have only 202. You need 268 electoral votes to win the Oval Office. The only reason Obama is leading in the actual primary is because it isn't winner-take-all, and he's been able to scoop up considerable support in states he has lost (including almost every "major" state in the country -- Texas, New York and California, for instance).

It probably will not surprise you to learn that the Daily Kos called the California proposal "steal this election" and opposed it vehemently. If you know Kos, then neither will it surprise you that it didn't mention a single word about that position when it also vehemently attacked Bayh for noticing Clinton's electoral position (since the Kos is feverishly and predictably supporting the wacko extremist Obama -- when a splinter group dared to support Hillary, they were savaged and driven into exile). Their old standby scatology makes its appearance in this attack, so you know that Bayh truly got under their scaly skin.

This, dear reader, in a nutrootshell, is why the Democrats haven't reelected an elected president with a majority of the popular vote since World War II, while since then the Republicans have done so four different times. The fact is that, though named after "democracy," this is the last thing Democrats actually support. See, the people of the country simply don't support the left-wing initiative, which means that by definition to enact it Democrats must be prepared (as dictators of the left always have been) to ram it down the public's throat "for its own good." This is how FDR handled the "new deal" and how LBJ handled the "great society." It's how Lenin and Mau operated, and it seems it will be so until the end of time.

NOTE: Three devastating critiques of the Obamillusion, one by William Kristol in the NYT, one by Christopher Hitchens in Slate, and one -- the most crippling -- by Lionel Chetwynd in Pajamas Media. Chetwynd references "that . . . teaching opportunity I hoped you would evoke: not explaining Wright's outrage to me, but explaining his outrageousness to him."

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Another Democrat Bites the Dust

Filed under:

First New York Governor Eliot Spitzer resigns in disgrace, and now the Mayor of Detroit, the nation's 11th largest city, is going down in flames. Kwame M. Kilpatrick was indicted yesterday on "eight felony counts, including perjury, obstruction of justice, conspiracy to obstruct justice and misconduct in office."

In an amazing outrage even by its own standards, reporting the story the New York Times forgot to mention Kilpatrick was a Democrat in the first paragraph. Then again in the second, third and fourth paragraphs. They finally tell you in the fifth paragraph, and guess how? They do it indirectly, by stating that Kilpatrick has been praised by the party as one of its rising stars.

Is that totally disgusting, or what?

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One Picture is Worth a Thousand Screams

Filed under: Russia

Source: Ellustrator.

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Earth to Cheney: You're Part of the Problem, Dude

Filed under:

Vice President Dick Cheney has announced that he thinks Hamas and Syria are trying to "torpedo" the peace talks between Israel and Palestine.

Stunning news, to be sure -- in the sense that the Veep has only just figured this out.

And worse, he still doesn't realize that he, and most especially his President, are part of the problem, not the solution. Apparently he has yet to realize that even as he spoke, the Russians were meeting with Hamas and supporting them, attacking Israel's Gaza blockade and West Bank settlements. No wonder Hamas is feeling so bold! Russia is providing them with massive financial support, and going even further with Syria -- providing dangerous weapons systems that threaten to alter the military balance.

And why is Russia, in turn, feeling it's possible to flout the U.S. in this way? Simply because of the benighted Bush Administration's bankrupt policy towards Russia, which began with Bush looking into Putin's eyes, seeing his soul and declaring him trustworthy -- a policy Cheney has done nothing to alter.

Earth to Cheney: Please sir, get a freakin' clue.

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More on Russian Elections Fraud

Filed under: Russia

Last month, we reported on an effort by two bloggers to document the extent of the Kremlin's manipulation of Russia's "elections" using statistical evidence.

Now, noted Russian scholar Andrei Illarionov has provided more such evidence, and given a lengthy interview to Echo of Moscow radio detailing his findings, which he has published as part of a PowerPoint presentation (in Russian language) that also deals with economic issues and asks whether Russia is headed for an "economic catastrophe." We've already published an original translation of the executive summary of Illarionov's analysis, and after the jump provide some further details from his findings.

The following series of three graphs prove beyond any reasonable doubt that massive electoral fraud took place in the 2004 and 2008 presidential elections in Russia, to the exclusive benefit of Putin an Medvedev. The source of the data in all cases was the Russian Central Election Commission itself.

Title: "Distribution of Voter Turnout for Presidential Elections in the Russian Federation in 1991-2008, All Regions (85)."
Vertical axis: Number of Regions (reporting this percentage turnout)
Horizontal axis: Voter Turnout (%)

From the graph above we see that the turnout rates for elections from 1991-2000 were distributed in essentially normal, bell-shaped curves - as one would expect if there was little/no/very uniform manipulation of "voter turnout" (which may include stuffing of ballot boxes and/or forcing/bribing people to vote). Very mild distortions are visible on the right side of the curves (high turnout rates) in second round in 1996 and the only round in 2000, but in 2004 and 2008, we suddenly see enormous distortions from the normal bell shape, becoming utterly ludicrous in 2008, when an actual bi-modal distribution appears, with one hump at the 95% turnout rate! This shows that manipulation of "turnout" became at the very least much less uniform in those years.

So the natural next question is: Who's responsible? Was the manipulation of voter turnout something that all parties engaged in, benefiting all the candidates equally, or did some benefit more than others? Two other sets of data presented by Illarionov answer that question definitively.

distribution%20-%20turnout%20vs%20regions%202008.jpg

Title: "Voter Turnout and Support for the Candidates in the 2008 Presidential Election"
Vertical (y) axis: Percentage of Votes From All Voters

Horizontal (x) axis: Voter Turnout (%)
Candidates (top to bottom): Medvedev, Zyuganov, Zhirinovsky, Bogdanov

distribution%20-%20turnout%20vs%20regions.jpg

Title: "Voter Turnout and Support for the Candidates in the 2004 Presidential Election"
Vertical (y) axis: Percentage of Votes From All Voters

Horizontal (x) axis: Voter Turnout (%)
Candidates (top to bottom): Putin, Kharitonov, Glazev, Khakamada

As the above tables indicate, his data shows that in regions where voter turnout exceeded 50%, the extra turnout overwhelmingly benefited Medvedev (in 2008) and Putin (in 2004); and, most critically, the higher the "turnout," the greater the percentage of the total vote that went to these two candidates. To what degree did this "rule" hold? The statistical figure "R-squared" is a measure of this - the "goodness of fit" for the rule: a value of 1.0 indicates the rule holds absolutely (that is, the higher the "turnout," the more/less the candidate's total vote); a figure of 0 indicates there is no correlation. For both Medvedev and Putin, the "goodness of fit" for this rule was very high, about 90% - which any statistician will tell you makes the correlation "highly significant." For the other candidates, there was a slight downward trend (meaning the higher the “turnout”, the lower the total percentage of votes for them), and no statistically significant fit (that is, the percentage of the vote they tended to lose as turnout increased was not related to the amount by which turnout increased). This means that almost all the ballot box stuffing and/or other means of artificially increasing the turnout was done to the benefit Putin/Medvedev.

Title: "Index of Falsification of Elections in Russia, 1991-2008"
Vertical Axis: "Falsification Index" (apparently the highest R-squared observed in regression analyses like those shown in the previous two graphs)
Horizontal Axis: Elections analyzed, starting with the Communist Party elections in the USSR in 1991, followed by all the Presidential and Parliamentary elections that followed, as well as the two Constitutional Referenda of April and December 1993.

Illarionov also presents a third data set, graphed above, which shows an enormous increase in the degree of falsification of elections beginning with the parliamentary elections of 1999. In recent years, the degree of falsification has exceeded even that seen in the final days of the Soviet Union. In July 1998, President Boris Yeltsin appointed Vladimir Putin as head of the FSB, successor agency to the KGB, and in August 1999 appointed him Acting Prime Minister. Also in 1999, according to Wikipedia, Putin, "while not formally associated with any party, pledged his support to the newly formed Unity Party, which won the second largest percentage of the popular vote (23.32%) in the December 1999 Duma elections, and in turn he was supported by it. Putin appeared to be ideally positioned to win the presidency in elections due the following summer."

r-squared%20analysis%20on%202007%20duma%20elections.jpg

Finally, Illarionov includes a great regression ("R-squared") analysis (shown above) of the Duma elections of December. He shows that falsification in those elections might actually have made a difference, since it gave Putin a constitutional majority, and it was even more blatant than in the presidential elections, with over 30% of the vote falsified in places where turnout exceeded 50%.

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Exposing Vladimir Putin's Potemkin Nation

Filed under: Russia

On March 18th the Refugee Agency of United Nations' High Commissioner on Refugees issued a report entitled "Asylum Levels and Trends in Industrialized Countries."

According to this report (see page 7), the United States leads the world in receiving refugees from other countries -- and Russia is #2 in the world in generating them (see page 10). Russia generated nearly 20% more refugees in 2007 than it had in 2006, and moved up from #4 in the world in the prior year as the result. Russia generates more refugees than China, which reduced its refugee count in 2007 compared to 2006, and is exceeded only by war-torn Iraq in causing people to flee for their lives.

So much for the idea that things are going wonderfully well in Vladimir Putin's Russia! Combine this with the net loss of hundreds of thousands from the population every year due to ill-health and short lifespans and, if things were going any better, the whole country would be completely deserted!

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And Obama said, "Let there be light . . ."

Filed under:

Pressed about race on a Philly radio sports show, where [Barack Obama] wanted to talk basketball, he called his grandmother "a typical white person, who, if she sees somebody on the street that she doesn't know, well there's a reaction that's in our experiences that won't go away and can sometimes come out in the wrong way."

It's amazing what Obama has to teach us about race. Hear him now. Who would have thought that it is only "white people" who have a "reaction" to seeing unknown people of other races "on the street"? But apparently, it is. Apparently, Obama is able to have miraculously looked into the souls of a majority of the world's white people and found that when they see a black, they have a "reaction" that blacks just don't have when they see a white, Asian or Hispanic person.

We haven't heard yet about the faults of "typical black people," but surely that is coming soon. Surely, Obama doesn't think white people have race-based flaws but not black people, just perhaps different race-based genetic flaws, and we're going to learn all about those as well. Then he'll move on to the Asians, the Hispanics and, invariably, the Jews.

What a wonderful world it will be!

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Russian Protest Babes: Speaking Truth to Power, and Looking Fierce Doing it!

Filed under: Russia

She's Natalya Morar. She's beautiful, glamorous, and identified as a public enemy by Vladimir Putin's craven Kremlin, because she's a journalist who, like Anna Politkovskaya before her, writes critically about Russia's government. Therefore, the Kremlin is terrified of her, and recently has barred her from entering the country, a classic neo-Soviet move.

Read her interview with Grigori Pasko on Robert Amsterdam's blog, as well as Amsterdam's own analysis of her case. Check out her amazing pics after the jump.

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I am Russian Protest Babe, Hear me Roar!

Filed under: Russia

Elizabeta Klepikova, shown above, a member of the Oborona ("Defense") youth political action organization, wrote the following on a Russian blog on March 20th (her screen name is Whitecup and she has her own blog as well, with pink petals for her avatar):

Today I stood alone in front of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russian Federation, holding high my picket banner, calling for the release of jailed Yabloko party leader Maxim Reznick. Hardly had I take my place before I was approached by police officers who demanded my identification. It seems that the sight a lone protester greatly antagonized them.

The name "Yabloko" sounds like the Russian word "apple," which is why Elizabeta is holding the fruit in the photograph.

You probably can guess what happened next, though perhaps the manner in which it occurred you will not suspect. The officers told Elisabeta that she should be careful about standing around alone in that neighborhood as there were all sorts of dangerous characters about. And no sooner had they departed than a crew of young thugs appeared, approached the young lady and tried to rip the sign out of her hands. She fought back, they knocked her to the ground and fled. Meanwhile, not a single member of the "law enforcement agency" she was standing in front of lifted a finger to help her. She approached the nearest policeman and asked to register a complaint, but he refused to take it. She called the police by phone, nobody responded. When she called back, she was accused of illegal picketing, so she walked herself to a nearby hospital to have her injuries treated. The nurse who attended her said: "Nothing will ever be accomplished in this country, certainly not justice."

That is why Oborona exists. That is why I write about them. She is me and I am her. We struggle for Russia's soul as it teeters on the brink of a flaming abyss.

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The Kremlin vs. The Blogosphere

Filed under: Russia

The Kremlin has declared total war on Russia's blogosphere, and right now a blogger is facing criminal prosecution and bankruptcy -- and, get this -- not even for blogging per se, but just for leaving a comment on another person's blog. My latest installment on Pajamas Media has the details of the Kremlin's final assault on the last vestiges of civil society in Russia. Check it out, and please consider leaving a comment in support of this besieged blogger and others like him who are struggling for survival in Russia. Any one of you who has left a comment on this blog, but for the grace of God, could be him.

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As Horror in Tibet Rises, so do Calls for Olympic Boycott

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The atrocities in Tibet are rising by the hour, even to the extent of influencing the elections in Taiwan. So are calls for a boycott of the China Olympic games. Our readers have spoken loud and clear on this issue.

Who needs China? Shall we hold a shadow games for the civilized world to attend, maybe call them the "Tibet Games"?

The Tibet government's official website is here.

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OhmyfreakinbamaGOD! What next?

Filed under: US Elections

This is a real Soviet-style campaign poster for Barack Obama (with the addition of a satirical animated button supplied by a clever Michelle Malkin reader). Scary, isn't it? That is nothing. He's been endorsed by the Black Panther Party. That is nothing. He's bragging about it. That is nothing. He is scheduled to appear on Larry King tonight to discuss . . . his crazy ideas about . . . the war in Iraq. First a speech, then Olberman, then King. Really hard-hitting challenges you're ready to face there, Mr. Obama. Very impressive indeed. Michelle Malkin says what when Obama mentions "change," he means . . change the subject. Stalin was also a big change from Lenin, you know.

Oh . . . my . . . freakin' . . . God.

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George Bush: America's Chamberlain

Filed under: Russia

For those who had been hoping that George Bush would end his seemingly limitless capacity for hideous missteps on Russia policy before his term in office ended and history condemned him to its ashcan, Wednesday's issue of the Moscow Times newspaper came as a blood-curdling wakeup call.

An op-ed column by Leon Aron of the prestigious American Enterprise Institute think tank in Washington DC discussed an event the group held on March 10th at which AEI "hosted a panel discussion with leading members of the opposition in Russia -- Boris Nemtsov; Vladimir Ryzhkov; Oleg Buklemishev, the deputy manager of Mikhail Kasyanov's presidential campaign; and Vladimir Kara-Murza, the manager of Vladimir Bukovsky's presidential bid." Why did AEI do it? Aron writes:

This event was unusual for the AEI, and we decided to hold it because it is becoming increasingly difficult to hear their voices. They are banished from state-controlled television and have been pushed out of national and local politics. In addition, their rallies and demonstrations are routinely prohibited, and when they do protest on the street, they are attacked by riot police and Nashi thugs, who are paid from government funds. Their colleagues are harassed in their homes and on the streets. They are detained on bogus criminal charges, sometimes beaten unconscious and in a few cases thrown into psychiatric wards. Owners of halls and conference centers are afraid of giving them space for meetings and debates, and many advertising agencies refuse to produce their campaign materials. The police break into their headquarters and take away their computers, leaflets and posters, and the Kremlin-friendly courts never rule in their favor. In short, Nemtsov, Ryzhkov, Kasyanov and Bukovsky are becoming more like dissidents in the Soviet sense than a normal opposition force that you would find in Western democracies.

That's to say nothing of other dissident leaders, like Oleg Kozlovsky, who didn't even try to run for president and therefore didn't receive an AEI invitation.

And who is responsible for this outrage of neglect? The Bush administration, and specifically President Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Rice was in Moscow this week to meet with Russian counterparts over various policy differences, and the Times reports that she "met some leading liberals on Tuesday but did not see the Kremlin's most strident critics." Apparently, attempting to send a message of openness to negotiation, Rice decided to sacrifice morality and common sense -- just as President Bush has repeatedly done throughout his presidency where Russia is concerned. The Times explains:

Rice and Defense Secretary Robert Gates met for about an hour at the U.S. ambassador's Spaso House residence with six public figures: Yabloko leader Grigory Yavlinsky; former State Duma Deputy Vladimir Ryzhkov; Vladimir Milovidov, a former deputy energy minister turned Kremlin critic; Carnegie Moscow Center deputy head Dmitry Trenin; Olga Dergunova, VTB board member and former head of Microsoft Russia; and Newsweek Russia columnist Mikhail Fishman. Noticeably absent were former Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov, former chess champion Garry Kasparov and Union of Right Forces leader Nikita Belykh.

It's one thing (but, make no mistake, it's outrageous) for Rice to neglect Kasparov, AEI didn't include him either (he probably deserves a wakeup call for the disgraceful manner in which he folded his tent at the first sign of Kremlin opposition to his presidential campaign), and Belykh is largely unknown in the West. But for Rice to exclude anyone from Kasyanov's campaign while the former prime minister cools his heels facing a criminal indictment launched by the Kremlin to block his presidential candidacy is the final nail in the Bush administration's Russia coffin. And what about Kozlovsky? Ms. Rice, how dare you exclude this brilliant and courageous young leader who has just fought his way out of illegal military internment? How can America expect Russia to meet it halfway on democracy if you don't even have the courage to stand up for those who are risking all to do so?

In the lead-up to the Rice visit, Bush apparently send some kind of letter to his good pal Pooty-Poot, a letter whose contents the White House has not seen fit to release. The Times reports that upon reading it, Putin was suddenly in a "good mood" and announcing: "It's a serious document and we analyzed it carefully. If we manage to agree on its main provisions, we will be able to say that our dialogue is progressing successfully."

Hitler probably said the same thing about secret love notes he received from Chamberlain.

And in the end, what came of all this back-stabbing? Russia still spurned the U.S. defensive missile system for Europe, and Rice left Moscow empty-handed. Nice job, Mr. President & Madam Secretary. A nation turns its lonely eyes away in shame.

What the world needs from America is leadership in the new cold war, and what it gets is betrayal. What the world needs from America is Bush out, McCain in, and it can't happen soon enough for me.

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Pasko Reveals the Horror of Medvedev's Russia

Filed under: Russia

I've been saying all along that new Russian "president" Dimitri Medvedev is the perfect cover (and fall guy) for a massive crackdown on human rights. It'll be harder for the West to sink its teeth into him since he's not KGB like Putin, and Putin can stay all nice and "clean" while Medvedev does the dirty work of finally wiping out the last traces of civil society in Russia, the ones that won't go down without a fight.

Now, heroic Russian journalist Grigori Pasko reports the horrifying details, on Robert Amsterdam's blog. Check it out!

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Sergei Lavrov: Card-Carrying Lunatic

Filed under: Russia

I'm willing to bet a lot of green money that many of you will not believe this.

Even though I link to it, and even though RIA Novosti is basically a Russian government-controlled wire service, you'll still say this must be some kind of early April Fool's joke.

But it isn't. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov (that's him scowling above) declared on Tuesday to state-owned official Kremlin newspaper Rossiiskaya Gazeta newspaper that independence for Kosovo had "already reverberated in many regions" and concluded "you can see what is happening in China's autonomous region of Tibet, how the separatists there are acting, there are grounds to presume that this is not occurring by chance."

No, your eyes are not deceiving you. Lavrov is blaming the bloody massacre in Tibet by the Chinese maniacs on the Western decision to recognize Kosovo (which decision Russia just happened to vehemently oppose, but that's just coincidence of course) rather than to force it to remain under the Serbian jackboot, facing mass murder (Serbia being Russia's "little Slavic brother"). How does he know? He has secret reasons, he can't tell you what they are but, trust him, they're pretty convincing.

If only the West hadn't recognized Kosovo, people wouldn't now be losing their lives in Tibet. Sound psychedelic? Sound familiar? Sound like the kind of "thinking" that motivated the USSR right into an early grave? Wonder what they might be smoking in the Kremlin, and how you might get yourself some?

Chinese political scientist Liu Junnin didn't blame Kosovo (it would be quite interesting to conduct a little survey in Tibet and find out how many locals have ever heard of the place). Instead he told the New York Times: "Why did the unrest take off? I think it has something to do with the long-term policy failure of the central authorities. They failed to earn the respect of the people there."

If anyone told rabid Russian nationalist Lavrov that the only reason the Bolshevik revolution occurred was that Russians were watching America, he'd probably bite off that person's head and drink his blood. Yet, when another country is at issue, they are all mindless sheep with no minds or hearts of their own, and their own history means nothing. This is neo-Soviet Russia at its very lowest ebb.

The dominoes Lavrov really should be talking about are the Olympic dominoes. Why shouldn't China think it has a free hand in Tibet to wreck mass murder on the population, if the world has been duped into allowing China to host the Olympic games as if it were a civilized state? And why shouldn't Russia think the same, since it too has been granted an Olympics? In our current poll, our readers are voting overwhelmingly to boycott the China games. The world still has time to back out of the games to be held in 2014 in Sochi. Otherwise, it will allow these cruel and dangerous regimes to use the Olympics as Hitler did, to erect a Potemkin shield of legitimacy and the cost of endless domestic suffering, to the permanent disgrace of the games.

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Now, Kremlin Seeks to Evict Kozlovsky

Filed under: Russia

The website (Russian language, logo at left) of Oleg Kozlovsky's "Oborona" ("Defense") youth opposition group reports that, having failed to keep Kozlovsky in military service (see the interview in our sidebar), it is now seeking to evict his organization from its headquarters. On March 17th, Kozlovsky was contacted by the local police precinct and instructed to vacate an apartment in Moscow which had been rented by the group for the purpose of holding their meetings. Captain Sergei Nikolayev told Kozlovsky explicitly that the basis for the order was the group's objectionable political activities and that he had received copies of the group's publications from the FSB (successor to the KGB). Instructing Kozlovsky to head for the remote suburbs, Nikolayev threatened to visit the premises every day and to find various reasons to forcibly evict the group regardless of their desires. Kozlovsky states that the impression made upon him by the "police officer's" threats was that of a mafioso, and vowed to ignore the warnings and accept the consequences.

Oborona was evicted from their headquarters in 2006, just two weeks after beginning their operations at that location, after armed officers "convinced" the landlord to break the lease. A complaint was made to the local prosecutors officers but, of course, went nowhere.

This move is breathtaking in its stupidity. The Kremlin is driving Oborona underground and martyring them. A strong, confident government would simply ignore them, allowing them to operate openly so they could be easily monitored. But Putin's Kremlin is pathetically weak and fears this group of young people desperately, as Kozlovsky states in his interview, repeatedly confirming this with barbarically crude, bullying moves against them. The Putin regime thinks it shows strength by attempting to snuff out the opposition, but in fact it shows only the most ridiculous weakness. The voice of freedom can no more be snuffed out in Kozlovsky's Russia than it could in Gandhi's India or King's America. Sooner or later, it will prevail. The only question is how much of today's Russia Vladimir Putin will despoil and destroy before it happens.

UPDATE: Kozlovsky writes about the attack on Robert Amsterdam's blog.

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Pasko and Kozlovsky in our Sidebar

Filed under:

The latest edition to our sidebar is a republication of a two-part interview of Russian youth opposition leader Oleg Kozlovsky, about whom this blog has written much recently, by heroic Russian journalist Grigori Pasko. The interview comes to the blogosphere through the good offices of Russia blogger Robert Amsterdam, who often publishes Pasko's reporting. This is required reading for all Russia watchers and should be of great interest to anyone focussed on democracy issues. Check it out!

As an aside, I note that, speaking of the blogosphere, Daily Kos Lunatic in Chief Markos Moulitsas can't seem to make up his mind what he thinks about the recent insurrection against his blog by aggrieved Clinton partisans, who are infuriated by his Stalin-like oppression of all those who don't mindlessly support Obama and of his ruthless attacks on his behalf against Clinton. Two days ago he told ABC News: "I think it's great." Yet today on DK he calls it "laughable" and then launches into a seething, venom-filled and oh-so lengthy diatribe explaining why he's right and Clinton is trying to subvert democracy. Seems Marcos sssssspeaks with a bit of a forked tongue, doesn't he? Hard to see it as "laughable" and insignificant, much less something he's happy about, when he needs to go to such great and bitter lengths to attack his foes.

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Contrabamadictions

Filed under: US Elections

So let's see now.

Barack Obama was able to instantly find out that Geraldine Ferraro, while working for Hillary Clinton, had made anti-black racist comments in an obscure local newspaper in California, and he immediately confronted them.

Yet, he had no way of knowing that his own church pastor was a pro-black racist lunatic because he just happened to miss every single one of the sermons that pastor delivered that were offensive and never heard anyone talking about them (he doesn't know anything about YouTube, but still he's a man of the new century, a vibrant and dynamic new kind of leader), and he had no way of knowing that Newsmax had reported months ago on his being present at one such sermon even though its reporter had repeatedly tried to contact him, and only learned about that recently too.

Uh, OK.

And even though Obama skipped so many sermons, we still have to accept that he's a very religious Christian, certainly not Muslim or anything, a Christian who attends church regularly and diligently.

Errmmm . . . got it.

And even though he had no idea of what his own pastor of more than two decades was doing, a person he'd made a ranking figure in his campaign apparatus and cited on his campaign website, we still have to accept that he's a brilliant, well-informed man capable of making a new kind of foreign policy for America.

Grrrrggle . . . mmmmmhhmmmm.

Thanks, MSM. Richard Cohen of the Washington Post:

Obama has learned to rely on a sycophantic media that hears any criticism of him as either (1) racist, (2) vaguely racist or (3) doing the bidding of Hillary and Bill Clinton. You only have to turn your attention to the interview Obama granted MSNBC's fawning Keith Olbermann for an example. Obama was asked whether he had known that Wright had suggested substituting the phrase "God damn America" for "God bless America."
"You know, frankly, I didn't," Obama said. "I wasn't in church during the time when the statements were made."

But had you heard about them? Did your crack campaign staff alert you? And what about Wright's honoring Farrakhan? Had you heard about that? Did you feel any obligation to denounce those remarks -- not Farrakhan's, as you had done, but those of Wright himself? Don't you consider yourself a public figure whom others look to for leadership? Do you think you failed them here?
Olbermann asked none of those questions.

All nice and clear now?

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Exposing Chinese Barbarism

Filed under: Asia

The New Yorker's review of the 2006 film Blind Mountain, currently in theaters:

The writer-director Li Yang's stunningly realistic drama, a furious denunciation of injustices in contemporary China, is designed to elicit from viewers a primal cry of anger. Bai (Huang Lu), a young woman who has recently graduated from a big-city university, is hired as a saleswoman of herbal medicines and accompanies her boss and a colleague on a business trip to an isolated, mountainous rural village. There, they drug her, steal her I.D., and vanish, having sold her to a local peasant to be his wife. Confined, beaten, chained, and raped, she is still unwilling to submit to her fate, but her every effort to escape is thwarted by a society of permanent surveillance. Li reveals corruption at every level of Chinese society, including the urban nouveaux riches who sold Bai; the police, who demand payment for an investigation; and an E.R. doctor who won't perform lifesaving first aid without cash in hand. As if to prove who's to blame, the new outfit that Bai's captors bring her is bright red, just like the armbands of Party officials and the flags that greet them. As Bai peers out from her domestic prison at the majestic mountain vistas, they look like a wasteland of barbaric ignorance and official oppression. In Mandarin.

See it. Then think about the massacre in Tibet on Saturday. The Dalai Lama calls it "cultural genocide." Should the civilized world attend the China Olympics? Boycott? Or should it go just to protest? We'd like your opinion.

The latest development is that the Chinese government is blocking CNN, the BBC and YouTube access on the Chinese Internet in order to seal out reporting on the massacre in Tibet. So much for the idea that the mighty Internet can overcome totalitarian repression. Brick and mortar repression will always require a brick and mortar response.

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Obamagate, Part III: Barack Obama, Boldfaced Liar

Filed under: US Elections

Barack Obama is now furiously scrambling to cut his ties with his racist pastor and deny prior knowledge of his racism and hatred of the country Obama wants to lead. But Newsmax reported on August 9, 2007, that its reporter Jim Davis attended services with Barack Obama and his secret service security contingent on July 22, 2007, at Trinity United Church of Christ on the South Side of Chicago. Davis was first blocked from entering the church by its phalanx of brawny bouncers, apparently because of his skin color; inside, there were virtually no whites in attendance.

At that service, Obama heard Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. say that "white arrogance" was responsible for U.S. foreign policy, and referred to our country as the "United States of White America." Giving an example, Wright said that American involvement in Iraq was due to "Bush administration bullshit." What kind of pastor uses that kind of language in the pulpit? What kind of American sits and listens rather than walking out? Clearly, Wright knew that Obama was in attendance, since the members of his security contingent and the reporter were just about the only white faces in the congregation of over 2,500. Clearly, Obama did not do a thing to oppose what he had heard, much less walk out as he should have done, and only addresses the issue now because he's been forced to do so by the media. The Democrats are directly responsible for this outrage, because they gave Obama a free pass for so long during their primaries.

So let's be crystal clear: When Obama says he never heard this kind of rhetoric from Wright, he's simply lying, and when he claims he's a candidate who stands for "change" he couldn't be more disingenuous. If he really did attend Wright's church for 20 years without ever becoming aware of Wright's racism, that would be worse than knowing about it, since it would clearly mean he's far too stupid and oblivious to be president. Who knows how many other such services he attended when reporters didn't happen to be around. If Obama can lie so brazenly, and so freely spurn the pastor he's spent his whole adult life adoring, then how can we believe he'll stick to any promise he may make now about governing the whole country and rejecting Wright's venomous ideology when president?

Davis also notes that Wright has told the New York Times that in a general election he expected Obama to distance himself from the church for reasons of political expediency: "If Barack gets past the primary, he might have to publicly distance himself from me. I said it to Barack personally, and he said 'yeah, that might have to happen.'" Conspiracy? I'm not a big believer in them, but is sure sounds like one to me.

UPDATE: A reader points out that the Daily Kos is disputing this account based solely on the date. Could be Davis got that wrong. We're seeing a new low in Clintoniansm here: Obama doesn't say "I never heard Wright say that," he just says "I wasn't there on that date." If this is change, give me the same old, same old. William Kristol writes about the incident in today's New York Times. Kristol notes Obama's response to the 9/11 and "God damn America" remarks: "The statements that Rev. Wright made that are the cause of this controversy were not statements I personally heard him preach while I sat in the pews of Trinity." How Clintonian can you get?

UPDATE #2: The LA Times reports that Newsmax stands by its story. Newsmax states that their reporter attended several services in December and is 100% sure he witnessed Obama attending the "United States of White America" sermon. The date might be wrong, of course, or a commenter suggests that Obama could have heard the sermon and then traveled to Miami the same day, especially if he left after one hour: "Trinity services start at 7:30am. If Obama stayed an hour (normal service) and left at 8:30 am. 1/2 hour to Midway Airport and in the air by 9:15 Arrive in Miami by 12 noon (allowing 2 hour and 45 minutes flight and landing, would be 1 pm Eastern time & half hour to drive to the event. I think it is a very real possibility he attended the service and spoke in Miami." Sooner or later, Obama will get nailed with conclusive documentary proof and won't be able to deny he was present. Then he'll pull another Clinton and start talking about what he remembers hearing and how he may not have been paying attention because he was thinking about saving sick children. One can only heave a sigh of disgust.

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Obamagate: Part II

Filed under: US Elections

No sooner does the world learn about the racist, thug-like comments from the pulpit of the pastor Barack Obama and his wife have been listening to for two decades, with Obama claiming he never heard them, than the other jackboot drops.

Now, the Chicago Tribune is reporting that corrupt businessman Tony Rezko (show above), currently facing a multi-count indictment for fraud, contributed not 2% (or $2,000) to Obama's first major political campaign (in 1995 for the Illinois Senate) as Obama said when news of Rezko's corruption first broke but 15% (or $15,000). And the contributions skyrocketed after that, again contrary to Obama's first claims, and reached a whopping $250,000 after three campaigns. And that doesn't even scratch the surface of Obama's corruption, since he was also involved in a questionable land deal with Rezko in order to buy his million-dollar house. Who knows what else has yet to be discovered?

Just like with his pastor, Obama claims he never knew anything was wrong. The Trib states: "After news reports of Rezko's questionable political dealings first emerged in 2005, Obama said he asked his friend about them. Rezko assured him there was nothing wrong. 'My instinct was to believe him,' he said."

Instead of investigating the charges himself, Obama chose to take the accused's word for it and keep the money. That's the best case scenario, if you believe Obama is an idiot, rather than a liar scurrying to cover his tracks. If he becomes president, is this how Obama will handle the leaders of countries like Iran and Russia, he'll blindly trust them, take their word for things like a simpleton? Can you imagine the things the left would be saying about George Bush if this type of conduct had been exposed on his part.

Last night, the nutroots attempted to respond to the horrifying news about Obama's pastor by shifting attention away from Obama's ludicrous and flatly incredible claims that he never knew about the pastor's attitudes despite sitting in his pews for two decades by attempting to attack John McCain. They tried to equate some anti-gay remarks of McCain's spiritual adviser, a hard-line conservative, with blaming America for 9/11 and condemning it to hell. The fact that the Democrats think Americans might view these two incidents as being remotely similar is a pretty succinct explanation of why they haven't reelected an elected president once since World War II while the Republicans have done it four times. The fact that they think Jimmy Carter's stupidity excuses that of George Bush is just plain pathetic.

Hey, hey -- ho, ho. Barack Obama has got to go.

UPDATE: The Hillary-Obama battle has split the Daily Kos and resulted in a walkout of the pro-Hillary camp. Not only has the main page of the blog ignored the split in the manner of the USSR, it has simultaneously with the diarist post that announced it posted another vicious attack on Hillary, accusing her of being stupider than a child and, ironically, accusing the pro-Hillary forces of being like the USSR. Seems like everyone at the Daily Kos can pretty much agree that they are all a bunch of totalitarian maniacs.

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God Damn Barack Obama!

Filed under: US Elections

I thought I had seen some shocking things in my years observing the annals of American politics, but this one is in a class all by itself.

The pastor of Barack Obama's church, Jeremiah Wright of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, who is an official member of his campaign on religious issues (the two are shown above embracing), has been found to have declared in 2003 during a sermon to his flock, speaking on behalf of his Church and, presumably, with the authority of the Lord:

The government gives them the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law and then wants us to sing "God Bless America." No, no, no, God damn America, that's in the Bible for killing innocent people. God damn America for treating our citizens as less than human. God damn America for as long as she acts like she is God and she is supreme.

That's right: He's saying he wants millions of innocent American children to burn in hellfire because he doesn't care for America's politics. Not "God damn the racists." God damn America.

ABC News, reporting the story, states: "An ABC News review of dozens of Rev. Wright's sermons, offered for sale by the church, found repeated denunciations of the U.S. based on what he described as his reading of the Gospels and the treatment of black Americans."

Obama's response? The pastor is not fired from the campaign. He is not condemned by Obama. Instead, Obama responds: "There are times when people say things that are just wrong. But I think it's important to judge me on what I've said in the past and what I believe." Then he accuses ABC of "cherry picking" from the pastor's remarks and rationalized: "This is a pastor who is on the brink of retirement who in the past has made some controversial statements."

In other words what? He's senile? Then why is he a ranking member of the Obama campaign? Why is Obama attending his services?

Well, God damn you, Mr. Obama.

After 9/11, the pastor said: "America's chickens are coming home to roost." Obama's response? He said: "It sounds like he was trying to be provocative." No condemnation, no sanction. But of course, Obama doesn't agree with his sentiments. Ward Churchill was fired from his university job for saying exactly that. Yet, Obama still embraces his pastor, whom he's been sitting in brainwash sessions with for many, many years, apparently without ever saying a public word against his message of anti-Americanism.

Seen in this light, isn't Obama's refusal to wear the American flag and to put his hand over his heart when saying the Pledge of Allegiance rather more stunningly outrageous than ever?

Do you dare to imagine how Obama would react if John McCain's lifelong pastor, and a ranking member of the campaign, said: "God damn those blacks!" Would Obama be satisfied with rationalizations then?

This man may be the most dangerous serious contender for the presidency we have ever seen. The danger is so shocking that I no longer would like to see him get the nomination, even though I believe Hillary Clinton would be tougher for my man John McCain to beat. Even the smallest chance of this freak of nature becoming president is far too great a risk to run.

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Funny Games

Filed under: Philosphy

I haven't seen the movie Funny Games, don't know as I ever will, but I know that the New York Times doesn't like it, so odds are it's pretty good.

Their review states:

When asked by George -- his leg smashed, his hands tied, his eyes wide with terror -- "Why are you doing this?," Mr. Pitt's character responds with answers that parody the kind of facile back story usually applied in cases like this: unhappy childhood; sexual instability; class resentment; bad education. All of it is facetious, and none of it explains anything.

Its conclusion? "What a fraud." For a much different take on the film, check out Pajamas Media.

It's not surprising that a reviewer from the New York Times would be confused by a description of evil, for two reasons. First of all the paper itself, in many (but not all) aspects is evil, and it's hard to smell your own stink. Second, the paper's basic editorial attitude is that "misunderstanding" is the root of crime, not evil, in which it basically doesn't believe (except maybe in the case of Republicans generally, and George W. Bush specifically). So the idea of evil which can't be "explained" and "solved" but only fought is anathema to the liberal blockheads who operate and populate the paper.

The movie is apparently about two clean-cut, well-dressed, well-spoken, polite and well-educated young men who brutally terrorize an innocent, happy family of three. Evil is the only explanation for that, and if you don't believe evil exists, then such a movie really would boggle your poor little mind, frustrate the heck out of you, make it hard to sleep at night.

Might be well worth seeing. Substitute Vladimir Putin and Dmitri Medvedev for these two young men, the West for the family, and you might have a parable worthy of study.

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Glen Mamet, Glen Conservative

Filed under: US Elections

Playright David Mamet comes over to our side, in the Village Voice of all places. Liberalism on the upswing? I think not. Michael Weiss has commentary on Jewcy.

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Falling Dollar, Hidden Dragon

Filed under:

It never ceases to amaze me how stupid people can be about the relative values of national currencies. There's any number of yahoos out there who immediately think that if their national currency gains value against others, this is a reason to strut and preen, while if it falls it's cause for depression.

A recent article from MSNBC, that bastion of insight, breathlessly declared: "The dollar fell to a 12-year low against the Japanese yen Thursday, dropping below 100 yen to the dollar for the first time since November 1995. The euro rose to all time high and is currently trading above $1.55."

Now, to be sure, there are problems associated with declining relative currency value. If people don't want our money, then they don't want out debt. If they don't want our debt, we can't get loans from the world so easily to buy and invest. And on top of that, it gets more expensive to buy products from other countries.

But if you read the article, you won't see a single word touting the flip-side of this issue. If our currency is falling in value, that means the rest of the world finds the things we make to be a bargain, and rushes to buy them. That in turn means our factories need more workers to produce more stuff to meet the new demand. More profits, more jobs. It's not all that bad, is it? On top of that, our falling currency forces us to wean ourselves from foreign debt, which many seem to think is a good idea. The exact opposite happens when the dollar is soaring.

Meanwhile America, the world's largest buyer of stuff, suddenly isn't so interested in buying foreign goods. They seem more expensive now. Massive American demand, previously giving millions of jobs to foreign factories around the world, dries up. To the extent the falling dollar has any negative impact on the U.S. economy, that only magnifies the world's woes. Foreign factories close, jobs are lost, and American products flood foreign countries. Doesn't exactly seem like paradise for the America-haters, does it? Almost seems like the world might want to root for the dollar, not against it, doesn't it?

I can't help but wonder when our MSM is going to get a freakin' clue.

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"If we didn't have police, we wouldn't have crime"

Filed under: US Elections

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Solving the Spitzer Equation

Filed under: US Elections

Pajamas Media has a fascinating post (over 40 comments already) written by a madam who solves the Spitzer Equation:

Part I: The Customer

One high-powered New York attorney explained it to me like this: "Of course I love my wife. Escorts have nothing to do with that. She comes to my hotel room and I don't have to know her name, because they all use fake names like Amber and Kimberly. I don't have to worry about how she feels or what she wants. It's a simple exchange: I give her a thousand bucks, we have a good time for a couple of hours, she goes away and we never have to see each other again."

See, he "doesn't have to worry about what his lover needs or wants" yet he feels it's appropriate to say "we have a good time for a couple of hours." Not "I have a good time," but "we." He's able to convince himself she's having fun.

Part II: The Sales Girl

Then they got addicted to the money and the lifestyle. And then one day, usually between the ages of 25 and 28, once they'd developed that knowing, experienced look that clients instinctively disliked, they found that themselves in a classic bind: they were addicted to high living but could no longer pay for it; they had no marketable skills; and years of late nights and lazy days had left them with no self-discipline. What to do? The really smart ones pulled themselves together and, with the help of a sympathetic client, started some kind of a business. Others married rich, cynical, older men in a sort of paid-wife arrangement. Those were the most common stories. I did not inquire into the fate of the girls who sort of faded away. I did not want to hear about their loneliness and poverty.

She doesn't have any fun in the room, but she thinks its worthwhile anyway because of the money. Just like people think smoking is worthwhile, right up until they're diagnosed. Then suddenly a light comes on.

So there you have it, mutual delusion ending in destruction for both sides. Cue Lyin' Eyes. The equation has been neatly solved by an expert. Fade to black.

UPDATE: Nicholas Kristof reminds us why prostitution is illegal.

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Spitzering into the Wind

Filed under: US Elections

Resigning in disgrace to face a possible litany of serious federal criminal charges, after vainly and arrogantly struggling to hold on to his position by any means possible or, at least, to extort freedom from criminal prosecution, New York's Democrat Governor Eliot Spitzer has unleashed a torrent of stupidity, exposing the underbelly of American society in a way rarely seen. It's a valuable learning experience for all that should not be missed. Hard to imagine how the news could be any worse for the Democrats.

By the way, it now turns out that the prostitute is an aspiring singer who had a MySpace page that on Thursday morning had nearly 3 million hits but by Thursday afternoon had been mysteriously closed. Choice quote on how she found her music: "It started when I moved in with a musician during my odyssey to New York. One day, I was in the shower singing 'respect.' He and his lead guitarist burst in, had me repeat it and it started. We wrote, rehearsed and toured. After recording a bit with them, I decided to move to Manhattan to pursue my music career."

America reacts.

In a letter to the editor of the New York Times, Cliff Johnson of Barrow, Florida, writes:

This is why prostitution should be legalized. This should be a private matter between Eliot Spitzer and his wife. This should have no reflection on his capabilities as governor. How long is this country going to live in the Dark Ages?

Uh, Mr. Johnson, sorry to disturb your (crack) pipe dream, but Eliot Spitzer was a PROSECUTOR. He PROSECUTED prostitution charges MANY TIMES, and never once called for the crime to be abolished. You're defending Spitzer from charges that he himself countenanced. That's just plain crazy.

And then there was Harvard Law student Jessica Corsi, exposing the far greater idiocy of Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz:

I believe that the comments by Prof. Alan M. Dershowitz of Harvard Law School about prostitution were irresponsible and insensitive. As a second-year student at Harvard Law School, I have been taught by my professors that making hyperbolic, unlikely and unsupported statements, such as Mr. Dershowitz's assertion that "prostitutes aren't victims -- they're getting paid a thousand dollars an hour" is irresponsible generally and particularly so when speaking with the press. Through my Harvard Law seminar on women's human rights, I have read empirical studies that document that murder, sexual assault and post-traumatic stress disorder rates among prostitutes are much higher than among the general female population, belying the accuracy of Mr. Dershowitz's avowal that prostitutes are not victims. Finally, Mr. Dershowitz's admonishment that resources devoted to ending prostitution should be apportioned to fighting terrorism is insensitive because it ignores the continued economic, racial and sexual exploitation of women and children the world over and seeks to distract us by generating fear. As such, Mr. Dershowitz's statements are a disservice to gender equality and the fight to end violence against women and children.

But even the brilliant student didn't go far enough. Even if we don't consider the prostitutes themselves to be victims, and even if we legalized it, there would still be victims of the non-crime. Take one look at Spitzer's innocent young daughters if you doubt that. They are his victims. Professor Dershowitz might also be interested in a story in the NYT today which indicates that 25% of all girls and 50% of all African-American girls aged 14-19 are infected with a sexually-transmitted disease. And this guy's a professor! At Harvard! Yikes!

And then there was Mary Ellen Byrne of Philadelphia, who wrote:

Once again we see the iconic photograph of private and public shame, disgrace and betrayal: the "ashen-faced" wife stands stoically by and behind her husband. This time it is the wife of Gov. Eliot Spitzer; earlier, we saw the wife of Gov. Jim McGreevy of New Jersey, the wife of President Bill Clinton, the wife of Senator Larry Craig. These sordid "private" matters become public humiliations for these wives. Let us hope that the next time such a sex scandal occurs, the wife is empowered and courageous enough to say no to the photo-op. Let the husband stand alone -- like a man.

Not so fast there, Mary. I fell for that one too at first. But it turns out that Spitzer's wife was the only one telling him not to resign, and so she appeared with him at her own instigation in order to try to save his job (and her position as first lady of the state). Of course, that doesn't mean she was happy to have her husband get blown (pardon the pun) as a john, and certainly in that sense she too was one of his victims. So much for the victimless crime! There is carnage everywhere you look.

Finally, let's not forget the fact that there was plenty of evidence of Spitzer's unfitness for office long before he was elected. Let's not forget that he won office with a Stalin-like 70% of the vote because institutions like the dastardly New York Times editorial board (and many others) endorsed him without giving any warning as to what problems might result. Think they've apologized for their error? Think again. We're now going to have a governor here in New York who is (literally, physically) blind and totally unqualified for the position, because nobody told us we might see Spitzer blown out of office. Shame on them. And shame on us for not demanding better.

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Assassination as Politics: Worse than the Disease?

Filed under: Philosphy

We welcome submissions from readers and are happy to grant anonymity upon request. An anonymous contributor who would like to be known as Diplomacy Dan submits the following commentary to Publius Pundit:

In August 2006 Publius Pundit posted about world crazies or "leaders" who should be eliminated because they are so dangerous. It quoted the late Jean Francois Revel's How Democracies Perish on two observations: First, that "democracy is zealous is devising arguments to prove the justice of its adversary's case and to lengthen the already overwhelming list of its own inadequacies" and, second, that "it is a mistake to ascribe democratic logic to a totalitarian system." The West often does exactly what Revel describes: it proves the justice of the adversary's case (think, for example, Guantanamo) and ascribe democratic logic to totalitarian systems (Iran, Russia, Cuba, as a start).

Unfortunately none of the people nominated has been removed, several are even worse than before and only one "resigned." But now we have the contribution of two young economists to suggest that assassination of tyrants does help. Benjamin Jones and Benjamin Olken studied the effects of assassinations and, in a May 2007 paper, found:

Assassinations of autocrats produce substantial changes in the country's institutions, while assassinations of democrats do not. In particular, transitions to democracy, as measured using the Polity IV dataset (Marshall and Jaggers 2004), are 13 percentage points more likely following the assassination of an autocrat than following a failed attempt on an autocrat. Similarly, using data on leadership transitions from the Archigos dataset (Goemans et al., 2006), we find that the probability that subsequent leadership transitions occur through institutional means is 19 percentage points higher following the assassination of an autocrat than following the failed assassination of an autocrat. The effects on institutions extend over significant periods, with evidence that the impacts are sustained at least 10 years later.

Read the paper to get the details, including that, unfortunately, seventy-five percent of assassination attempts fail!

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Democratic Doings in Mississippi: Stormclouds on the Democrats' Horizon

Filed under: US Elections

Via data from CNN, the Daily Kos posts the two charts above, which show the results of a Mississippi exit poll (Barack Obama cruised to easy victory there last night). DK crows about how only 4% of those who would be unsatisfied with an Obama nomination would be Obama voters, while nearly four times more of those unsatisfied with a Clinton win would be Clinton voters. They believe this shows Clinton's support is hollower than that of their man.

Yet, amazingly, DK ignores the other point the poll data is making. The result shows that a whopping 32% of Democrats will be unsatisfied if Obama wins, and even more (39%) will be unsatisfied if Clinton wins. That means that nearly one-third of all Democrat voters will be unsatisfied no matter who wins -- and the Republicans have nominated the perfect candidate, John "Moderate/Independent Magnate" McCain, to grab all those unsatisfied folks. Think conservatives disaffected by McCain will vote for the Dems? Think again. Just 66% of Democrat voters will be satisfied if Obama wins the nomination, their best-case scenario (60% in Clinton's case).

That's hardly an indication that Democrats can unify around the ultimate winner, now is it? And just imagine if, as seems quite possible, a divisive brokered convention is the way that winner is chosen, something that hasn't even happened yet -- nor has either candidate been subjected to a roasting from the Republicans. The fact that before the real campaign even begins and despite George Bush's lack of popularity Democrats can still have such a high level of dissatisfaction speaks volumes about the quality of their candidates.

It's simply jaw-dropping that the DK can play such blatant propaganda games with data like this. It reminds me of the USSR. No wonder the Democrats haven't reelected an elected president with a majority of the popular vote since World War II.

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Obama vs. Edwards: What's the Difference?

Filed under: US Elections

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If you think about it, it's hard to explain why Barack Obama dominated John Edwards at the polls. They're almost identical in background: leftist wealthy lawyers who've served a bit of time in the Senate. In fact, it can easily be argued that Edwards has more experience, given that he's previously been a vice-presidential candidate and has a longer period of service in the Senate. Try to explain how they differ significantly at the policy level, and you'll be hard-pressed. The one major difference, of course, is that Obama is black -- but that's supposed to be an obstacle for him to overcome, isn't it? If it were, what superior qualities could we point to that Obama has over Edwards that allow him to overcome it? Is he, in fact, greatly benefited by being black, giving the lie to the notion that America is a racist nation? Is he, in fact, trading on his race? Is America that advanced as a nation?

What do you think?

Feel free to add your own answer in the comments section (all other types of comments will be deleted).

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Our New Paper of Record

Filed under: Russia

I continue to be favorably impressed by the way the Washington Post is covering Russia these days. For my money, the Post has wrestled the moniker "Paper of Record" away from the New York Times. As I've previously noted, the Post reported prominently on the fate of leading Russian opposition leader Oleg Kozlovsky after he was illegally drafted into the Russian army as a means of halting his activism in the run-up to the presidential elections, while the Times ignored the story.

And now the Post is leading the way in calling for NATO to extend its protections to former Soviet slave states like Ukraine and Georgia which are now facing relentless Russian imperialist attacks. In an editorial last Saturday, the Post stated:

An upcoming NATO summit meeting in Bucharest, Romania, could well be dominated by debate over how and even whether the alliance can succeed in Afghanistan. But another topic, barely discussed so far, may be almost as important: whether NATO can extend its last major mission of expanding Europe's zone of security to former communist countries.
Since NATO was created to defend the West against the Soviet Union, its greatest accomplishment may have been its role in consolidating democracy in Romania and nine other former East Bloc states, then admitting them to its ranks in two successive waves in 1999 and 2004. The process paved the way for the expansion of the European Union, ended the continent's Cold War division and ensured that liberal values would define its future. But it left out some critical places: most of the former Yugoslavia as well as the former Soviet republics of southeastern Europe.

The Bucharest summit is set to decide whether two of the former parts of Yugoslavia -- Croatia and Macedonia -- as well as nearby Albania should be offered full membership. The Bush administration and most other NATO members appear to agree on membership for Croatia and Albania, but Greece clings to an absurd demand that Macedonia first change its name. That objection, pushed by Greek nationalists, should not prevent NATO from issuing Macedonia an invitation.

At the same time, the alliance owes answers to Ukraine and Georgia, both of which have formally asked NATO for a Membership Action Plan, the bureaucratic vehicle used to guide countries through military and democratic reforms. The decisions are harder than those of the past -- because of the greater instability of those two countries and the greater resistance of Russia to further NATO expansion. At a meeting of foreign ministers in Brussels this week, Germany and France spoke up against Ukraine and Georgia, largely because of fear of offending Moscow.

For just those reasons, the United States should push the alliance to move forward. Russia's repeated and heavy-handed maneuvers in and against Ukraine and Georgia in the past several years have dramatically demonstrated Moscow's ambition to destroy those countries' freedom and independence. Russian President Vladimir Putin's recent threat to target Ukraine with nuclear weapons should have been a wake-up call for any Western government that doubted whether Kiev needed defending.
While the administration is clearly sympathetic to the two states, it has held back from pressing their case with the reluctant Europeans. Yet Mr. Putin surely will regard a failure by the Bucharest summit to act on Ukraine and Georgia as an admission that they are outside its sphere and an invitation to escalate his bullying. President Bush, who oversaw NATO's last expansion eastward, should reinforce that legacy by insisting that the alliance reach out to these threatened democracies.

Let's be clear: Russia is intentionally attempting to destabilize Ukraine and Georgia, and this tactic is not only motivated by the desire to reconquer them directly. Even if Russia fails in that endeavor, at least it can hope to achieve their disqualification from NATO membership, leaving the door open for future conquest. The domino theory is as valid today as ever, and NATO cannot allow this crass manipulation to prevent it from stabilizing the post-Soviet world. To do so would be to undercut the very purpose of its creation, and to betray the democratic values that made it possible.

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Ladies of the Democrats' Evenings

Filed under: US Elections

So let's see now.

Democrat Governor of New York Elliot Spitzer (and former Attorney General, no less) has been seeing "Emperor's Club" prostitutes who cost from $1,000 per hour for the lowest quality to $31,000 per day for the highest quality (how they are rated, exactly, nobody quite knows for sure -- maybe the good Governor fills out a score card -- excuse the pun).

When caught red handed, he responds with a 64-second statement to the press in which his description of what he'd done wrong is limited to having "acted in a way that violated the obligations to my family and that violates my -- or any -- sense of right and wrong." No mention of prostitution. He refuses to take any questions either about his acts or his intention to resign (or anything else for that matter), and when asked about the latter as he fled the room at high speed, he slammed the door in reporters' faces.

He states (no kidding): "We vowed to bring real change to New York and that will continue." Indeed so, governor. It's quite a change to have our chief executive busted in a prostitution raid. Can't really recall the last time such a thing happened. The New York Times reports: "As state attorney general, he prosecuted prostitution rings with enthusiasm -- pointing out that they are often involved in human trafficking, drug trafficking and money laundering. In 2004 on Staten Island, Mr. Spitzer was vehement in his outrage over 16 people arrested in a high-end prostitution ring." It forgets to mention that it endorsed Spitzer, misleading New York voters, much less does it apologize. Spitzer now faces possible indictment for transporting a prostitute across state lines (trafficking) and laundering the funds to pay her (structuring), either one of which could lead to serious jail time. And despite that, his refusal to honestly confront the charges is an even worse offense, to say nothing of his hypocrisy and obscene cruelty in forcing his wife to stand next to him during his pseudo "press conference" which lasted barely a minute.

Responding to the news, the Daily Kos states (no kidding): "At $5500/hour, the Emperor's Club prostitutes cost Spitzer approximately the same as Rudy's security detail cost the taxpayers of NYC every time that Rudy went to the Hamptons on a tryst with Judy." So get this: It's OK if Democrat governors bag prostitutes and commit federal crimes because Republican mayors have extramarital affairs. Welcome, boys and girls, to the new liberalism.

Thanks, Democrats, for showing us how to govern the right way. Lord knows, we poor Republicans need all the advice we can get.

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NATO 2, Russia 0

Filed under: Europe

Vladimir Putin's Russia has suffered another devastating defeat in the former Yugoslavia. First Kosovo managed to successfully declare its independence despite Russian opposition, and now the pro-Russia government of Serbia itself has collapsed. The BBC reports:

Serbia's Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica [pictured] has said his coalition has collapsed and is calling for elections. The move follows his failure to get his cabinet to reject closer ties with the European Union in the wake of Kosovo's declaration of independence. Mr Kostunica, a nationalist, has described the decision by EU states to recognise Kosovo as illegal. "The government of Serbia has no united policy any more on an important issue related to the future of the country - Kosovo as a part of Serbia," Mr Kostunica told reporters as he announced his move in Belgrade.

The more pro-EU president of Serbia, Boris Tadic, will now call new elections.

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The New Cold War

Filed under: Russia

My latest installment on Pajamas Media is a review of two new books by Russia journalists (and bloggers) Edward Lucas and Mark MacKinnon, both ominously entitled The New Cold War. These two books are required reading for those who want to understand the state of modern Russia, especially the Lucas volume, which blazes a path by offering not only documentation of the existence of the new cold war but a battle plan by which we can win it.

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Getting to Know the Real Vladimir Putin

Filed under: Russia

Very often, you can learn all you need to about a person by knowing who his admirers are.

So if, for example, I were to tell you that both The Nation magazine, as extreme a left-wing partisan screed as exists in the U.S.A., and convicted criminal Lyndon LaRouche are both ga-ga over Vladimir Putin, you'd probably conclude that he's likely not the greatest thing since sliced bread, wouldn't you? And if they were both working together, little question would undoubtedly remain in your mind but that Vladimir Putin may well be the locus of evil in the modern world.

And that's the case. As James Kirchick points out in The New Republic's blog The Plank (full of links, click through to read them):

Robert Dreyfuss, a contributing editor to The Nation, has written a piece this week entitled "Hothead McCain." I wonder if Dreyfuss would use a similar descriptor for his longtime former employer, the convicted felon and political cult-leader Lyndon LaRouche. Though Dreyfuss officially left the employ of LaRouche (in the sense that he does not currently write for LaRouche's publications, at least not under his own byline), his politics clearly haven't changed much from the tinfoil hat variety characteristic of the 8-time fringe presidential candidate and conspiracy theorist. Dreyfuss still spends his days feverishly slumped over his keyboard warning of neocon conspiracies and shilling for authoritarian regimes--hallmarks of any good LaRouchite. Now, he just gets published in ostensibly respectable magazines like The Nation.
Dreyfuss's attacks on McCain for "drawing up plans for a new set of global institutions" are right out of the LaRouche playbook, which views international institutions as part of a grand, "satanic" conspiracy involving international banks, the Trilateral Commission, and the drug-running Queen Elizabeth II. Sound familiar? LaRouche, and his disciplies like Robert Dreyfuss, make Ron Paul seem sane. As such, Dreyfuss's fearmongering about McCain's plans for an "expanded NATO that will bump up against Russian interests in Central Asia and the Caucasus" is in line with LaRouche's own pro-Putin sympathies. That Russia is a wounded power, righteously lashing out at an expansionist and imperialist West has long been a rallying cry for the American far-right, which finds many things to admire in the ethno- nationalistic chauvinism of Vladimir Putin and, before him, Slobodan Milosevic. So why is this bunk appearing in The Nation? Which of Russia's "interests in Central Asia and the Caucasus" does Dreyfuss seek to defend? Its punishing violence in Chechnya? Its bullying of Georgia? Strange that a left-wing publication would shill for the quasi-fascist authoritarians now running Russia. Perhaps The Nation is reliving its enthusiasm for the Hitler-Stalin pact.
Dreyfuss mimics Pravda when he writes that McCain's proposal to expel Russia from the Group of Eight for its rigging elections, murdering journalists, poisoning dissenters and other myriad human rights abuses is a "flagrant and dangerous insult." He then rakes McCain over the coals for supporting Kosovo's declaration of independence and for backing American intervention to avert genocide in the Balkans. Again, that this man is given space in The Nation and The American Prospect (where he is a "Senior Correspondent") to spew apologetics for Vladimir Putin is perplexing. But perhaps it is expecting too much that a publication featuring a regular column by Eric "Let's make fun of Andrew Sullivan for being HIV-positive" Alterman would care about things like propriety or editorial integrity.

Previously over at my blog La Russophobe, we've pointed out that the editor of The Nation, Katrina vanden Heuvel, routinely publishes the senile Russophilic ravings of her husband Stephen Cohen, a professor of Russian politics at New York University.

Want to see who Vladimir Putin is in even more brutally frank terms? Click here.

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Obamimpolsion

Filed under: US Elections

As left-wingers see things, it's perfectly OK to stereotype and demonize and monger hate, as long as you're doing it for the "right" reason. This fundamental hollowness in their core belief system is why they so routinely implode before our gaping eyes. And so we have Harvard professor and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Samantha Power (pictured), a key foreign policy adviser to Barack Obama, calling Hillary Clinton a "monster" and then promptly resigning in disgrace.

Truly, Obama does remind one of JFK. Remember how JFK barely squeaked into office without a majority of the popular vote, and then proceeded to surround himself with the "best and the brightest" lights of Harvard, etc.? And remember how those brilliant geniuses than proceeded to cause the two greatest foreign policy debacles in all of American history, the Bay of Pigs and the Vietnam War? Remember how they caved in to the Russians, bribing them out of Cuba by surrendering a key strategic position in Turkey? Remember how they felt it was OK to lie to the country about their president's woeful ill health and chronic drug abuse (to say nothing of his philandering and mafia ties)?

Are we quite sure that we want more of the same?

A sensible country certainly wouldn't, which is actually why I'd love to see Obama get the nomination, as I've said before. Because I still feel that, all things considered, America is quite a sensible country, and will until I'm proved wrong. Yet, after watching "Mr. Inevitable" get his butt kicked in Ohio and Texas, it seems the Democrats may unfortunately be waking up from their Kool-Aid-induced fantasies in time to choose the more dangerous (less feeble) candidate. Or maybe Obama is going to do their work for them, proving how "ordinary and checkered" he really is all by himself.

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Kozlovsky 1, Putin 0

Filed under: Russia

The Kremlin can be beaten.

Novaya Gazeta reports that 23-year-old Oleg Kozlovsky has won his battle against Vladimir Putin's Kremlin after it attempted to illegally draft him on December 20, 2007, into the Russian army in order to silence his political activism. On March 4th he returned home to Moscow from the military base in Ryazan (to which he had been quickly spirited and held in communcido) and the next day appeared at the local enlistment office (as shown above) where he officially received demobilization status as a reserve. The Russian paper notes that Kozlovsky's release occurs immediately after the conclusion of the presidential election even though the official decision in his case was made on January 29th in response to his vigorous legal attack. The website of Kozlovsky's political organization, Oborona, came under cyber attack in the election run-up and is still inaccessible, forcing Oborona to establish a new web presence, which includes links to a video interview (Russian transcript) of Kozlovsky by the New Times magazine and an audio interview by Echo of Moscow radio (for those who speak Russian). Kozlovsky relates how he was continually monitored and followed throughout his military internment in Ryazan, as if he were a convicted criminal, and he gave assurances that he will in no way curtain is political activity. Instead, he stated that he has concluded from the Kremlin's actions that such activity is even more necessary. He plans to file suit against the local military enlistment office for its illegal actions against him and to seek the dismissal of the ranking officer there as well as financial compensation.

As we've previously reported, sending Kozlovsky into the army was illegal for three reasons: First because he was classified as a reserve officer and had been drafted as an ordinary conscript, second because he was engaged in an approved course of higher education and third because he had a recognized medical disability.

The Moscow Times reports he declared: "It's the old Soviet tactics at work. The problem with that, as ever, is that there is no proof of FSB involvement." He was told by various military personnel that the FSB was guiding the illegal attack, and would like to take action against the FSB as well if proof could be obtained.

Will the Kremlin accept this defeat? Or will it pursue the Politkovskaya solution? Only time will tell. The world must now rally to Kozlovsky's aid, as only massive international support can maximize his chances against the malignant forces of the Kremlin. Had not publicity instigated by this blog raised his profile and resulted in several major stories in the MSM, he might still be languishing in the neo-Soviet gulag -- or worse. We cannot expect the Kremlin to simply let him enjoy his victory.

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Bush Snubs Russia

Filed under: Russia

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President Bush has snubbed Russia by calling "president-elect" Dmitri Medvedev and failing to offer him "congratulations" on his victory at the polls, something normally done by the U.S. president in such cases. North Korea, by contrast, stated: "I convey my sincere congratulations to you."

Lying brazenly to their readers as usual, Russian media claimed congratulations were given (the Moscow Times has a devastating long piece exposing the extent to which Russian journalists have blithely sold out to the neo-Soviet system).

At last, perhaps, George Bush has grasped the extreme gravity of the situation into which he has placed himself, imperiling our security by telling us we could "trust" Vladmir Putin, only to see him abrogate democracy and provoke a new cold war. But failing to say congratulations is far short of the emphatic condemnation of the sham "elections" that have taken place in Russia which Bush should have immediately issued.

Meanwhile, for his part, Vladimir Putin has betrayed his country to an even greater extent, poisoning its relations with all the civilized, developed nations of the globe and leaving it with only rogue states for company.

Click the jump to read the White House Press Secretary's exchange with the press on Bush's call to Medvedev.

May 4, 2008 White House Press Briefing by Dana Perino

Q Dana, I missed the top of the briefing, so forgive me; if you've already addressed this, just stop me. On Russia, what's the message being sent by not congratulating Medvedev? Every statement that's come out of State, out of here, always avoids saying, we congratulate him, the President congratulates him, whatever. What's the purpose of that?

MS. PERINO: I don't know of any purpose, necessarily. I think that what the President did today was call the President-elect of Russia. They had a very good first conversation. You'll recall that they actually met in 2004, had brief conversation there. The President doesn't know him very well, as you heard him say last week. He's established a good relationship with President Putin, in that they've had their difficulties over the years -- I think the President described it as "diplomatic head butts," and I think that's an accurate description. But I also know that at the -- that the President and President Putin have long believed that having a good relationship between our two countries is in our interests on a variety of levels, especially when it comes to counterterrorism, non-proliferation issues. And I would note that Russia yesterday joined the U.N. Security Council in unanimously voting for a third round of sanctions against Iran, to make sure that Iran does not have the capability to produce a nuclear weapon. So there's lots of different ways that we can cooperate with President-elect Medvedev, and we'll look forward to working with him. Obviously, the President will be talking to President Putin between now and May 7th.

Q Dana, to be clear, in this call, he did not do something he routinely does with elected Presidents all over the world, which is say "congratulations"?

MS. PERINO: He did what he routinely does with lots of Presidents-elect around the world, which is call to say thank you for taking my call, and I look forward to working with you. I'm not going to get into the word game about congratulations or not congratulations. Our position about the Russian elections leading up to it have been well-known, and our concerns were expressed from the beginning. At this point, they now have the President-elect. He will be -- he will take office on May 7th. And President Bush believes it is very important that we continue to have good relationship with Russia. It's in both of our countries' interests. We don't believe that Russia, going forward, should have anything to fear about having multi-party elections, more free speech, more access for media, and a free press. There's lots of issues that we've had to work out, and I would just point you to the past comments about these elections, but also that the President is looking forward, and that's why he called him today.

Q Dana, Senator McCain said that the Russian election wouldn't pass the smell test of any functioning democracy. He said that the elections were clearly rigged, the opposition was repressed. So just so I'm clear, the White House position now is still that essentially, let's let the observers make a final determination? Or are you just moving beyond, now, the election, and looking forward to working with him?

MS. PERINO: I respect Senator McCain's views. I'm not going to comment in any way to try to get myself involved in the '08 election. But what I will say is that our position about the run-up to the elections in Russia was well-known. Our concerns were expressed not just from this podium, not just from the State Department, but from President Bush to President Putin himself. But it should be noted the President Bush realizes that what we need to do now is make sure that we establish a good foundation of a relationship that we can have going forward with President-elect Medvedev, who will take office on May 7th.

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Democratic Doings in Texas, Ohio

Filed under:

Strange to say, every single Republican in the nation was rooting hard for Hillary Clinton in last night's crucial Texas and Ohio primaries. Half wanted her to win so there'd be a chance she'd actually get the nomination, seeing her as the weaker candidate, while the other half (including me) wanted her to expose Barack Obama as the general election weakling he is.

She whipped him in both contests. Republicans are still celebrating.

Clinton has now destroyed Obama in almost every major state except his home state Illinois, including New York, Texas and California. She's lagging behind him in the delegate count 1,451 to 1,365 according to CNN, meaning that only 86 votes, a thin 3% of the total, separates them -- and remember, the only reason that's so is that Clinton's party has refused to credit her wins in Florida and Michigan because those states fooled with their primary dates. Credit them, and she's in the lead. That can't bode well for Democratic unity in November, and could easily lead to a divisive and contentious brokered convention.

Emperobama has no clothes.

At 7:30 pm last night the Daily Kos, consumed with pathological left-wing denial, said: "Many of the early vote 'precincts' in Texas have largely been counted, and the election day precincts are beginning to allow Hillary Clinton to close the margin with Barack Obama. But a lot of the bigger counties haven't counted their early votes yet, so the margin could widen in Obama
s favor again."

At 8 pm it stated of Ohio: "As expected, though surprisingly enough, Obama is currently winning the delegate battle in the state, 32-28."

Then Obama lost Ohio, and the DK noted his campaign saying: "On losing Ohio, he said it doesn't matter if the campaign didn't win since a Democrat will win Ohio regardless -- due to the economic situation there."

Then he lost Texas, and the DK stated: "In both the Ohio and Texas primaries, more than twice as many votes were cast for Democrats than for Republicans today." They seemed to have forgotten that was because the Republicans no longer have a race (John McCain formally won a contest last night that had been over for weeks). But then they remembered, and said it was a good thing the Democrats still have a race (even though they'd previously said it was bad for the Republicans when they had a race) because this means George Bush will now endorse John McCain. If you can follow that, you're a better man than I am, Gunga Din.

Left-wingers are panicking, as they should be. The DK is babbling sheer unmitigated incomprehensible gibberish. Republicans are jubilant, triumphant. All is right with the world.

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Annals of Neo-Soviet Barbarism

Filed under: Russia

Yesterday, two different groups of political activists tried to go into the streets to demonstrate in Moscow, Russia. One, shown above, was the "Nashi" ("us Slavic Russians") pro-Kremlin youth cult. They wanted to praise the "victory" of Dmitry Medvedev in the "presidential elections" the day before, and to attack the United States. Not only were they allowed to march, they were allowed to snarl traffic and given widespread media coverage.

Here's what happened to the other group:

They represented opponents of the elections farce, and sought to protest the Kremlin's systematic exclusion of all viable opposition candidates from the presidential "race." Their leaders were arrested before they even reached the streets and then they were attacked with bloody violence by an army of the Kremlin's stormtroopers.

Make no mistake. Just as the people of Russia chose their president, they also ratified this aftermath. They are as much responsible for this barbaric violence as the Kremlin thugs who ordered it and who carried it out.

The people of Russia have made their choice. Now, we must make ours.

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Publius Pundit Wants to Know

Filed under: US Elections

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Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Flaming Psychopath

Filed under: Iran

That flaming psychopath Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran is at it again.

You may remember the incident a few months ago when he boldly declared that there are no homosexuals in Iran.

Now, if you can believe it, while visiting Iraq he has stated: "We do not care about [American] statements and remarks because they make statements based on erroneous information. We cannot count on what they say." How's that for hypocrisy? And then he adds that "no one likes" the American forces present in Iraq. Apparently, he's not only in touch with the thinking of every man, woman and child in Iraq, just as he knows, Santy-Claus-like, about the sexual proclivities of every Iranian, but he seems to have forgotten the horrific wars fought between Iran and Iraq, resulting in rivers of Iraqi blood moistening the desert.

Can you imagine how it must feel to know that your country is governed by a raving madman who's furiously striving to acquire nuclear technology? This lunatic makes George Bush look like St. Thomas Aquinas. He makes Teddy Kennedy look like Boss Tweed.

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The Devil's Advobama

Filed under: US Elections

The Transfiguration (Yes, That's Soros All Right)

Being that it's a woman's prerogative to change her mind, I have to say I'm starting to feel rather sanguine about the prospect of an Obama presidency, not that I still wouldn't prefer to see McCain trounce him. Here's why.

First, there was Obama's recent savaging of Vladimir Putin's Russia. I think McCain would be plenty tough on Russia, but who knows? Maybe once Obama realizes how racist Russia is, he'll be tougher still. Maybe, with McCain still in the Senate and cooperating with him on Russia, galvanizing the Republicans (or, be still my heart, as Ambassador to Russia), Obama could unify American policy even more sharply than McCain. Gives me butterflies just thinking about it.

Second, it's now being reported that Obama has plans to fill his cabinet with conservatives and govern from the center. Remember the last time Democrats got all excited about winning the White House? Their candidate's name was Bill Clinton. In short order, he'd enacted a whole litany of Republican pipe dreams, including free trade, welfare abolition and the balanced budget. Then, to round things out, he delivered the House of Representatives back into Republican hands for the first time in a half century, and he was followed by a two-term Republican president. Guarantee me that all over again, and I'm an Obama Girl this minute!

Third, some folks are predicting that the U.S. is on the brink of entering a recession, which does seem to come along every ten years or so and is therefore just about due. I'm not convinced, but if it happens then it would be quite convenient for the Democrats to shoulder the blame. Reminds me of Jimmy Carter.

And fourth, there's his race. It really would be kind of cool to throw him up in the face of all those folks who pour hatred and scorn on America (including a whole host of America-hating Americans), it really would seriously take the wind out of their sails.

Now I'll grant you, there are two pretty nasty, smelly flies in this ointment (apart from the fact that I might be overstating the foregoing merits). One is the danger that Obama's inexperience will allow him to be duped by the Medvedev facade of the Putin regime just as George Bush was made a fool by Putin himself. There's no chance that McCain can be suckered by Putin's Medvedev mask. He certainly hasn't spoken out often enough on Russia to be at all sure of his policies. The other is Obama's weird personality cult (aptly documented and satirized by the great ObamaMessiah blog -- if you read the shocking litany of public statements likening Obama to a religious savior, you can't but be deeply disturbed). All by themselves, the recent statements of praise for Obama by crazed racist lunatic Louis Farrakhan should be enough to give any thoughtful person serious qualms about voting for him.

And yet, these two things make Obama curiously vulnerable. There's simply no way that Obama could maintain a personality cult as a lever of power once he became president, and if he relies on it to become president he would set himself up for a big fall and be all the more likely to cooperate with the right. And if he lets himself get played by Russia just as Bush did, won't he suffer the same fate Bush has? Even worse, in fact, because Bush has some protection from conservative wrath because he's one of us (maybe).

In short, it's pretty clear that it would be better for the country if McCain was elected, but it wouldn't necessarily be the best thing for the Republican Party, and maybe having Obama wouldn't be all that bad. Conversely, though, Obama could be the worst thing for the Democrats since Bill Clinton -- which would mean he could be one of the great Republican presidents of all time.

What do you think?

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Russia Rapes Democracy

Filed under: Russia

Primary Suspects: And no, it's not a Photoshop

Yesterday, neo-Soviet Russians "voted" in "presidential elections" that inflicted upon the institution of democracy one of the most barbaric indignities she has seen from a major country in her whole experience on planet Earth. Collective farms named after Putin were forcing their employees to "vote" for his proxy successor, after whom they were naming streets. Reuters noted: "Not everyone in Gornovka, however, voted for Medvedev. Communist leader Gennady Zyuganov won the support of pensioners in a village whose other farm, only several kilometers away, is named after Soviet leader Josef Stalin."

In our sidebar, we post an original translation of an article from the Russian press by former Kremlin insider Andrei Illarionov, condemning the process in the most acidic manner possible. In his article, he adopts our longstanding practice of placing words like "president" in quotation marks where Russia is concerned.

Over on my Russia blog La Russophobe, we post another translation from the Russian press, this one an article in which the Russian author tries to draw comparisons between Putin's rule over Russia and Hitler's rule in Germany. The Kremlin's response to this article was to file criminal charges against the writer.

LR also offers its own editorial reflecting on the meaning of Russia's "elections" and drawing a very bleak picture of betrayal and, to all appearances, national suicide.

Last week, we reported on efforts by the Russian blogosphere to document, with mathematical precision, the extent to which Putin was willing to shamelessly manipulate the country's legislative elections last year. In one town, every single one of the 18,282 registered voters went to the polls, and every single one of them voted for Putin's party. You can be sure that, where the presidency is concerned, he would be prepared to go much farther, so attempting to discuss the details of the "voting" is a huge waste of time.

There was a time, not so long ago, when some among us were heard to argue that the people of Russia were as much victims of their government as we were. Predictions were made that if only they could manage to shake off their oppression, they would build a responsible democracy and join the community of nations as an ally. Just as the people of Russia have now utterly betrayed all the countless millions of their ancestors who were brutally cut down by the forces of dictatorship in the past, those apologists and collaborators who urged us to hesitate before confronting Russia, to understand the "position" of the Russian people, have betrayed us. It's time now for us to see them for what they were, our enemies, and to cast them out from out midst.

Neo-Soviet Russia stands before us. If we continue to see it through rose-colored glasses and wait for even more egregious misconduct before acting, we will have only ourselves to blame for the consequences. "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me!"

Protest marches were scheduled throughout Russia for Monday.

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Freedom isn't Free

Filed under: Russia

News was released last week that the United States has more people in prison than any other country in the world, including places like China that have far more people in them. Statistics showed that one out of every 100 Americans was in prison, according to one study.

This news should surprise nobody, and far from being evidence of weakness on America's part, it should simply be seen as conclusive proof that America is living out its creed: "Live free or die."

It's been noted that there may be a correlation between crime and involuntary hospitalization. Specifically, one can argue that Seung-Hui Cho, the Virginia Tech shooter, should have been locked up in the booby hatch long before the shooting occurred, preventing it from happening and saving lives. One might suppose that places like China have committed far more citizens to mental "hospitals" than has the United States, where elaborate protections on civil liberties make doing so more difficult. Moreover, one can suppose that America's jails could be even more packed than they are, if some of those protections were abandoned and all those who were likely guilty of crimes were actually incarcerated. And then there's the fact that anyone who relies on data of this kind as produced by countries like China may need his own form of mental treatment, and the fact that, for instance, even though Russia is presided over by a KGB authoritarian, its murder rate is far higher than America's.

The left-wing freaks, of course, will tell us about how we aren't doing enough to "understand" the "root causes" of crime, how we need to "cure" and "heal" the "disease" that is afflicting America. Barack Obama spews out rhetoric of this kind from time to time.

But let's be clear: The "disease" they are referring to is liberty. Americans are the freest people in the world, they have the fewest legal and social restrictions on their conduct (no class system like Britain, no caste system like India, no police-state regimentation like China or Russia). Therefore, it's entirely predictable that America will have the most crime and the most incarcerated criminals.

And let's not forget what else America will have: It will have an economy that bestrides the globe like a colossus. It will have, by far, the most stable political system, the oldest, of any constitutional democracy on the planet. It will have literally hoards of foreigners begging for entry to the golden door, and it will stand for the dreams of oppressed people all around the globe.

When people are free, they are free to do all, good and bad. The free society reaps the benefit of the good and pays the cost of the bad. But, more important, even if you think the balance is unfavorable, the free society recognizes the ultimate sovereignty of man as an individual, the rights we were born with, for good or ill.

You may say you'd prefer to live in a totalitarian country where people's minds are "adjusted" so that crime does not occur. If you do, you're free to live in one, the world offers many such choices. But if you are a true left-winger, then you embrace diversity as a fundamental precept, and you don't want to see the American choice taken off the table.

And if you're a right-winger, terrified by the prospect of being enslaved by totalitarian overlords like those who destroyed the USSR, you're even more sanguine about American criminality -- because you know the alternative to fearing the crimes of your neighbor is fearing the crimes of a far more powerful and dangerous governmental entity.

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All in Due Time

Filed under: Russia

Some women are getting annoyed by the fact that Hillary Clinton appears to be going down in flames because women won't support her.

I'm not concerned, for two reasons.

First, the fault isn't that women don't support Hillary, who's a bad candidate. The fault is that we didn't insist on more than one female candidate in the primaries, didn't organize and support such candidates from both parties from the beginning. In fact, I think Hillary should have been rejected immediately by all female voters, simply because she was attempting to ride her husband's coattails. If women created a huge pot of campaign cash available to female contenders from both parties, we'd have more applicants to choose from than we could count -- contenders who were self-made leaders deserving of power. So it's clear we need to learn a bit more about power before we take it.

Second, and more importantly, black men got the vote long before women of any color did -- a full half-century before. So it's only natural that they would have a major-party candidate for president before women would get one. All in due time. Women are slowly coming to dominate American society, from schoolgirls on the Internet to university classrooms to corporate boardrooms, and they will inexorably seize the White House as well.

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