RIA Novosti reported on August 30th that “Russia’s GDP growth of 5.5% in the first quarter of 2006 was the highest among the Group of Eight leading industrialized nations for the period.” Relying on data from the IMF, Russia’s Federal State Statistics Service “said real year-on-year GDP growth in Russia during the first quarter reached 5.5%, compared to 3.7%, 3.4% and 3.3% in the United States, Japan and Canada, respectively. The rate was 2.3% in Great Britain, 1.7% in Germany, and 1.5% in France and Italy.”

To its credit, RIA also reported that “Russia’s GDP still falls well behind other G8 economies. IMF preliminary estimates based on first quarter performance put Russia’s GDP for 2006 at $900 billion, compared to $13.2 trillion for the U.S., $4.42 trillion for Japan, $2.75 trillion for Germany, $2.23 trillion for Great Britain, $2.10 trillion for France, $1.75 trillion for Italy, and $1.26 trillion for Canada.”

What RIA failed to do, however, like most reports on Russia’s economy, was to put these two bits of data so that a clear overall picture is obtained. The percentage growth rate is totally meaningless to the citizens of a country; what matters is how much additional money got produced in the quarter. When we look at those figures, we see how pathetic Russia’s economic growth really is.

If Russia had 5.5% annual grown on a GDP of $900 billion, than means the value of its economic growth in the first quarter of 2006 was 900 x (5.5/4%) or $12.375 billion. Japan, which has a populuation roughly comparable to Russia’s and has virtually no natural energy resources, posted 3.5% annual growth on a GDP of $4.42 trillion. So the value of Japan’s economic growth in the first quarter was 4,420 x (3.5/4%) or $38.675 billion. In other words, with an economic growth rate close to half that of Russia, Japan produced more than three times as much value for its population — and virtually none of that growth occurred because of the accident of rising world energy prices. In fact, Japan’s growth happened despite rising prices, which inhibited its industrial growth considerably. Japan’s growth, in other words, occurred across the breadth of the economy.

If you take energy prices out of Russia’s GDP growth, which is already puny compared to that of other G-8 nations in dollar terms, you are left with a figure that is negligable or non-existent even if you try to supplement it by using “purchasing power parity” formulations (which, as we have previously argued here, are bogus). This broad economic dynamism (driving employment and wage growth) and general lack of dollars available for Russian pockets will make it increasingly difficult for the Kremlin to preserve its power by means of bribery and more likely that it will resort to force as in Soviet times.

One might not be very surprised that a Russian wire service like RIA Novosti would provide an incomplete economic picture for Russia (although RIA is by far the best source of wire news coming out of the country), but this misperception is common in the Western press as well. Not until we have an accurate picture of what is going on in the Russian economy can we properly formulate policy towards Russia as it surges into dictatorship.

Kim Zigfeld publishes the Russia blog La Russophobe.

In Caracas, there are very few green spaces, other than the Avila mountain range, which ruffles the northern side of the vast Venezuelan capital city. The rest is pure urban concrete. Of those few green spaces, even fewer are safe enough to go to without needing a bodyguard or a bullet-proof automobile.

But there is one important exception - it’s in the municipality of Chacao, and it’s called the Country Club. I was there - and it’s not quite as elite as you might think. The Country Club is a private recreation club where any resident in the area can buy a membership and where even without a membership, everyone visits and socializes. It’s safe there, nobody gets mugged, and it’s like a privately financed neighborhood community center. It has an inexpensive restaurant, some tennis courts, and a little golf course. It’s not a real big establishment, and it’s no more luxurious than a nice San Diego mall in some place like Encinitas. Feathers has some interesting corollary thoughts about this here.

The gateway to the golf course looks like this:

The restaurant and club house looks like this:

The 9000 people around Chacao who have memberships go there to play golf, providing employment to about 2,000 poorer people who have jobs there, in hospitality industry work like waiters or caddies. When I was in Caracas, the caddies said that business was down, due to all the people who were emigrating.

But given the degree of class hatred instilled by the Chavista political establishment, this community center, the only one the middle class people could go to, is now the target for expropriation. The crazed mayor of Caracas, Juan Barreto, a lunatic who once chased a man around at an airport with a broken booze bottle he smashed for the purpose at the duty free, has vowed to expropriate the little community center and turn it into low-income shantytown housing, like this:

Miguel says that confiscating this lovely green part of Caracas will take a ton of legal work and probably be very difficult to do. He’s usually right about these things, but when I was in Caracas, people at the golf course were genuinely worried. This government, after all, is capable of anything, and taking away the one safe meeting spot left in Caracas, a place they look upon with envy and expect harsh words about them being said, is too much. They’ll show those escualidos who’s in charge, is their logic. More importantly, they will take away their freedom of association, including the freedom to exchange ideas. Much better to have a constant blare of Chavez posters and soundbox speakers of Chavez’s 6-hour political speeches, the idea of calmly talking over things on a beautiful golf green is anathema to these vicious leftists who seek to control every aspect of Venezuelan life.

Their main aim, though, is probably political. When I was in Caracas, people on the green told me that the Chavistas would like to change the voter composition of of the municipality of Chacao, which is one of order and low crime and no trash, into one that makes it look just like the rest of Caracas, a dangerous mess. They want to bring in angry Chavistas dependent on handouts, achieving the same effect as would happen if Projects were put in a pleasant part of Connecticut.

Not only that, Daniel has an intriguing post describing how other mayors of Caracas are distancing themselves from this naked grab for power - he thinks it is a sign of a power struggle among the chavistas and has a great post here.

Knowing how beloved the golf course is, and knowing how it’s the one and only real refuge away from Chavez around the city of Caracas, I get the feeling that the Chavistas have stepped over the line, gone too far. My blood was boiling when I read about this proposed expropriation. I am glad Miguel made some pretty good arguments for the difficulty of doing it, but in the meantime, the place will likely go underinvested, as all properties under seige do, and further lower the quality of life to something like intolerable in a perfect reflection of Chavez’s “revolutionary” visage.

Let’s hope it does not happen.

Remember Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador? The Obragore of Mexico? Today Mexico’s election arbitrators told him to get lost.

Mexico’s electoral tribunal making its ruling on July 2’s election
Source: AFP, via Yahoo! News

Today the Mexican electoral tribunal ruled that there was no cheating in Mexico’s July 2 presidential election, and all of his 300-plus claims of irregularities were baseless. And that means free-market Felipe Calderon has won the presidential election and will take office in December.

So much for the AMLO tent camp protests, the bank blockades, the blocked roads from Monterrey to Nuevo Laredo where 40% of Mexico’s U.S. trade takes place, the trashing of the tourism industry, the clogged Mexico City streets … the garbage, the litter and the mess. It was all for naught. The tribunal ruled that there was no 2-million-person-strong conspiracy to keep the far-left candidate from the halls of Montezuma after all. There only was the rule of law combined with the will of the people, and today that dynamite alchemy has won.

This truly highlights Mexico’s strengthening political institutions and is a big victory for Mexico’s democracy. Instead of winning by protest and political pressure, as had been the way of the past, Mexico won by having a real democracy.

Mexico today has warded off a potential dictator who had intended to seize power through street intimidation and it has opted instead for the rule of law, preset and agreed upon by all parties BEFORE the election, as its model of governance.

This means democracy has triumphed in Mexico after a long hot testing summer of protests and Mexicans can rightly be proud of it.

AMLO has threatened street protests forever, but his people have got to be tired, they have been protesting for more than a month, and they’ve gotten no results. I kind of doubt it will happen, even if AMLO refuses to concede the election for as long as he lives. Look how tired AMLO looks in this picture here:

Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador greets supporters at a tent camp on Aug. 6
Source: AFP, via Yahoo! News

The bottom line - if you want to win elections, you have to win votes in real elections, not show how big a mob you can gather as evidence of your fitness to hold office. The Mexican electoral tribunal was under huge pressure to just cave in to AMLO, as has been done in the past, and they held fast and overcame it, an amazing and historic feat. They weren’t scared!

Other nations in Latin America will also be strengthened by this, they will see the example, they will be influenced by it, so it’s really a victory for everyone. Just watch - we will see a strengthening of institutions all around the hemisphere now, based on Mexico’s example. It’s too great an example to ignore.

And here’s something else we will see: altered perceptions of what Mexico is in the U.S., something that should strengthen America’s resolve to make its border situation orderly. After all, if Mexico is not such a bad place anymore, there will be fewer people seeking their fortune outside of it, and there will be more reasons to ship illegal immigrant lawbreakers back to Mexico, knowing as we do, full well, that Mexico is not such a bad place, it’s well worth living in, based on what we have seen of this election.

Mark at Mark in Mexico has two good posts on this victory of Felipe Calderon and Mexico’s democracy from his redoubt in Oaxaca, Mexico. Read them here and here.

UPDATE: Do they look like they’re gonna keep protesting on AMLO’s behalf forever?

One more time with feeling, amigos

AMLO’s babes of politics

Source, all photos: AFP, via Yahoo! News

For a long long time, Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez polled high numbers in opinion polls.

Often it was as high as 70% approval. When I was in Caracas, a prominent think tank analyst pointed out to me that about 7% of the population was and always would be hardcore communist. Another 30% to 40% after that were happy to take handouts in exchange for political support. Another 20% were middle class and detested the Thug who was ruining their country. And there was a remainder in the middle known as ‘ni-ni’s - people who couldn’t stand any politicians no matter who they were. They often overlapped with the handout class.

If you knew anything about Venezuelan politics before Chavez - the corruption, the currency devaluation, the fiscal shenanigans, the lies - you’d understand how the ni-ni’s felt and why there were so many of them. Venezuelans were severely jerked around by their leaders in the pre-Chavez era, paving the way for the rise of the current leftist dictator.

But since the arrival of Zulia-state opposition presidential candidate Manuel Rosales, an authentic democratic alternative from an independent part of the country not affiliated with the old guard Chavez unseated seven years ago, something has shifted the wind.

Suddenly, Chavez has lost those padded middle-region areas of support he had earlier and now seems to be down to the left-leaning hardcore ahead of December’s presidential election. He’s got only about 27% support now, and he may even lose that. So explains pollster Alfredo Keller, whom Daniel Duquenal at Venezuela News & Views assures us from experience is reliable. He’s got all the details and some analysis of his own in this post here.

Alek Boyd at VCrisis has additional thoughts about Chavez’s precipitous fall in the polls, too, in this post here.

Having gone to Venezuela myself, I have always been suspicious of claims about Hugo Chavez’s popularity. I never saw it, except among the rum-swilling red-t-shirted Chavista political operatives at Mayor Juan Barreto’s office. Even they were a sort of joyless lot, they seemed more pleased with their bloodthirstiness than actually happy.

Do these people, standing in line for 8- or 10-hours in the sweltering sun for monthly Chavista handouts, no jobs, look happy?

One of the first things I did when I arrived in Kiev was take the subway to Maidan, the setting of Ukraine????????s Orange Revolution in which over one million people camped out and protested against phony elections. It is now a scene of perpetual nostalgia for those cold days and nights when the one thing keeping them warm was the feeling that, for once, good things were going to happen. There would be free and fair elections, the criminals in government would get their due, and the corruption that plagues everything from multi-billion dollar deals to traffic tickets would be purged from the system.

Some of this has happened, but for whatever reason, much of it has not. Many people I talked to said they were disappointed with President Yushchenko and disillusioned because of the breakdown of the Orange Coalition following months of political deadlock.

Now that Viktor Yanukovich ???????? who Yushchenko challenged for the presidency — has become prime minister, views on the street range from wait-and-see to outright apocalyptic peril.

Those in the latter category seem to be the majority in the capital. They worry that the old days of stolen elections and media censorship will return under the man who helped make all of that possible in the past. It should be no surprise then that Yulia Tymoshenko, the so-called ???????goddess of the revolution,??????? was the top pick in Kiev for the position.

The fiery and passionate politician has captured the hearts of the people in Kiev and western Ukraine with her talk of fighting corruption, the eastern clans, and Russia. Her popularity is blinding in its magnitude. Even if you can????????t speak, even if you can????????t listen, you can at least see it everywhere you look.

An entire side of the square is full of tables selling tourist merchandise. Ukrainian music CDs, shot glasses, scarves, and other overpriced knick knacks litter them. But then I saw her: the face of Yulia Tymoshenko. Her likeness was printed on t-shirts and buttons, the heart-shaped symbol of her ByUT party sufficing as its own standalone as well.

A pillar for the post office nearby has been contained in glass, preserving the memories drawn on it over a year and a half ago. Graffiti slogans reveal the hope of a political generation born in the community set up on the streets of those winter months. Images of young men and women discussing and deciding the national political debate over street campfires and hot tea are as vivid as the day they happened.

And even the tents are still there; an emblem that has become a political mainstay in Ukraine. Next to the post office were a few tents set up by veterans of the Afghan war wondering where their pensions went. Across the street is a larger camp representing an independent political party, and even further still is a tent camp representing an offshoot of PORA, the grassroots civil initiative that helped launch the Orange Revolution.

I crossed the street and approached the PORA tents ???????? these were the people I wanted to talk to. Undoubtedly they were there during the revolution and it would be interesting to hear what they had to say about the current political situation. Were they disillusioned? Have they given up?

The answer lied in a small group of people gathered near the makeshift wall surrounding the camp. They were reading snippets of newspaper articles, photos, cartoons that were pasted on large cardboard cutouts, portraying the devious acts as well as the promises made during those days. A steady stream of people came and went; others — from a businessman to a babushka ???????? stood by and talked politics with the campers. A teenager on his cellphone guarded the entrance.

I wanted to get in, so in the only way I knew how, I asked: ???????English????????

The man at the entrance had a confused look on his face, but after a second realized what I was asking and indicated for me to hold on. He reappeared shortly with a young man at his side who looked like he hadn????????t had the luxury of a shower for a couple days. He spoke some English, and after I told him what I wanted, he let me into the camp.

We entered one of the open tents where two university age students were playing cards. The young man we were with found some plastic chairs and we all sat around the table.

Sergei is his name, a 23 year old student of political science who has been an activist for a few years now. He is one of the main coordinators of the camp, making sure that the little village of 52 volunteers, most between the ages of 20 and 30, runs smoothly. And it does. PORA????????s base is well-regimented. Political leaflets are handed out as leaders try to persuade passersby to support their cause, the camp is kept clean, intruders are kept out, and volunteers are sent on missions to bring food and drinks for those staying in the tents.

He explained to me that he and the rest had been out on Maidan for nearly a month and would be out there until August 24th, Ukraine????????s independence day, because they don????????t like the coalition that was formed in parliament and believe that their country needs change. They no longer want to be part of Russia????????s sphere of influence and because of it consider themselves true patriots of their country.

Given the breakup of the Orange Coalition and Viktor Yanukovich????????s approval as prime minister, he was obviously upset.

???????I do not believe in Yushchenko now because he is doing nothing, nothing for our country,??????? he told me.

???????Who do you believe in then????????

He laughed a bit to himself at that one, saying something to his two friends sitting next to us. They laughed a bit too. It was one of those laughs that you have when you feel that things are going against you so badly that it????????s all you can do.

???????We haven????????t a leader, a leader in whom I believe.???????

I thought about what he said for a moment. From what I had already seen this seemed like the prevailing political mood in Kiev.

???????So you obviously know what you believe in, but what is the goal of the tent camp then? Who do you want to shape this????????

???????Shape this? Yulia Tymoshenko.???????

???????Do you think that she is the right leader for the job????????

???????Yeah.???????

I left PORA????????s tent camp around seven in the evening, just as a crowd of several dozen people began to gather in front of the camp of the independent political party next door. Some black-suited politician born in the days of the Soviet Union was giving a speech on the steps of the square.

I had no idea what he was saying, but after a few minutes he held the microphone out and let other speak. Several people got the chance to ask question and voice their opinions, often for minutes at a time to the sound of claps or boos, and the politician responded to them in kind.

A news crew was there, probably giving him more attention than he deserved, but nonetheless what I saw was a burgeoning independent media in Ukraine that could choose what it wanted to report instead of taking orders from the highest people in government.

I ended up accidentally catching the broadcast later on while I was in bed flipping the channels between bad music videos and bad soap operas. I thought, if anything, at least the Orange Revolution had achieved this.

People and media can exchange ideas freely without fear of being intimidated or even killed. Maidan has been turned into a perpetual political forum for debate, where not only the politicians but everyday people, from laborers to house moms, have a voice and a say in where this national discussion heads. Even as these people go about their daily business, they continue to stop to see what the latest message is, even though elections are long over. The tents never really left, both the square and the minds of the people that occupied them.

Whatever may happen under Yanukovich????????s premiership, if so many people believe what Sergei does, then it is wildly apparent that Kiev will fight hard for the freedoms it has won. With such vehement opposition, nothing can turn 2006 back to 2004.

This is my first piece in a series of pieces from my travels to Ukraine and Belarus. The next few pieces will focus on post-Orange Revolution politics in Ukraine, how things have turned out and where they’re going, if things will fall back to the dark days of authoritarianism, and even how the country’s democracy activists are disappointed with the little media coverage they get abroad. Interviews with a program officer with Freedom House and a key coordinator of the Orange Revolution, who is now involved in other pro-democracy projects, are included.

I will then begin to post my pieces from Belarus, the last dictatorship in Europe. It includes interviews with democracy activists who work underground just for something as basic as free speech. One activists organizes protests in front of Belarusian embassies, another works for an organization that distributes political information on the internet, and another is a student who was expelled from the state university for political activities against the president. I have so many stories ready from Belarus that it is impossible to count. The interviews will be in mp3 format so that you can download and listen to them.

The writing promises to be great and the material unlike anything you have seen anywhere else. As Michael Totten would say, please hit the tip jar to support this non-corporate writing. It will only be used to cover the cost of the travel and writing. After this series is done, I am hoping to take you all on an adventure to other dictatorships in the world, from Cuba to Uzbekistan. I have the connections, just not the money, so if you think you would like to read about this then please feel free to contribute in any way you can. Thank you!

How is this for a new idea? States that have more squiggly borders, on the whole, have more stability and cohesion. States that have harsh, arbitrary ruler-drawn line borders have a terrible tendency toward internecine warfare. Any student of African politics knows something about this, but perhaps for the first time, economists have tried to quantify this.

Via RealClearPolitics, I found the intriguing new essay by Bloomberg’s Amity Schlaes describing the findings for this new idea that’s well worth a click.

One of the most ominous questions hovering over democratic politics in the world today is how harsh an anti-democratic crackdown Russian dictator Vladimir Putin would be prepared to support in order to maintain control over the Russian population in the event of an economic downturn.

Recently, Putin has been recording 70+% approval in public opinion surveys, owing largely to the perception that under his stewardship the Russian economy has become much more vibrant. Leave aside the fact that this perception is wholly inaccurate, since virtually all of Russia’s economic growth is attributable to rising world energy prices that Putin had absolutely nothing to do with: The point is that the perception, accurate or not, made the Russian population particularly docile and easy to handle (it has never shown much desire to check the power of its government under any circumstances). No serious opposition was raised when Putin made moves like abolishing the election of local officials, appointing a crush of KGB spies to high positions in his administration or destroying the independence of television news media.

So the question arises: What if the perception of economic vibrancy were to change radically, and the stirrings of opposition were to begin. In that case, Putin would have to adopt a strategy of Stalinist blunt trauma if he wanted to stay in power. How far would he be prepared to go? The month of August, famous among Russians for bringing ill-tidings on the economic front, has removed this question from the theoretical and placed it firmly in the realm of the practical. We must now begin to consider it.

Days ago, both the Russian newspapers Kommersant and The Moscow Times reported that during the month of July, for the first time in nearly a decade, “real ” (or “net”) personal incomes in Russia fell — by nearly 5%. Gross personal incomes have continued to rise at the rate of around 10% or more, but consumer price inflation, particularly for the basic basket of consumer goods people need to survive, has continued to soar at a significantly higher rate of 15% or more (as depicted in the Russian graphic shown above, which is self-explanatory even if you don’t read Russian). In July, inflation caught and passed incomes in a deadly footrace for the Russian future.

A fascinating article in the August 28th issue of the New Yorker by Malcolm Gladwell points out the importance of what are called “dependency ratios” in determining national (and corporate) economic prospects. The larger the ratio of wage-earners to non-wage-earners in a society, the more prosperous it will be; the smaller the ratio, the more destitute. Russia is, and always has been, one of the world’s most victimized countries in this regard; it can almost be said that in Russia only Moscow is employed, and supports the rest of the nation as it languishes in extreme poverty. Russia’s centuries of strict authoritarian rule have bred a pernicious pattern of dependency from which the nation is unlikely to break free, and economic pressure from below requires countervailing autocratic pressure from above in order to prevent an explosion like the one that occurred in 1917 and in the early 1990s when the Berlin Wall fell.

Thus, the inflation/wage vice is most pronounced and grave away from the major cities where wealth has become concentrated, often leading to a stilted picture of Russian economics from Western reporters who rarely venture into the countryside. The Moscow Times reports on the drastic consequences in Russia’s Siberian region of Kamchatka: “When the price of bread jumped by 6 rubles overnight, Vladimir Gaidukas was left reeling. City authorities quickly began handing out bread coupons to him and hundreds of other pensioners in Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky — the first time food vouchers had been issued anywhere in the country since the dark days of 1992. But the gesture brought little comfort to Gaidukas, 72, who lives on 5,000 rubles ($187) per month. ‘People are in a state of shock,’ Gaidukas said by telephone from the remote city on the Kamchatka Peninsula this week.” The minimum hourly wage in Russia today is a puny $0.25 (based on 1,100 rubles or about $40 for four forty-hour weeks per month) ???????? in other words, the price of bread jumped in day by one hour????????s minimum wages, quite a shock indeed.. But the government claims that the basic subsistence income in Russia is four times higher, and will be $163 per month in 2007. In other words, employers are legally allowed to pay workers four times less than the starvation wages of $1 an hour that subsistence calls for by the Kremlin????????s own definition. RIA Novosti recently asked a deputy finance minister when it could be expected that the government would raise the minimum wage to the subsistence level (it is used to calculate welfare payments as well) and he responded that the country couldn????????t afford to do so, saying ???????if the minimum wage is raised too quickly, regional budgets might not be able to cope with the increase.???????

An article last week in the Japan Times observed that the natural result of this pressure is that people like Mr. Gaidukas are fleeing Siberia for the Western cities. The paper stated that “something like 20 to 25 percent of the population have moved out of Siberia and the Far East in the last 10 years.” The depopulation of Siberia is one of the first authoritarian challenges Putin will face: After all, the only reason Siberia got populated in the first place was the brutal totalitarian polices of the maniacal dictator Josef Stalin. If Putin wants any chance of protecting Siberia against the encroachment of China, and can’t rely on bribery based on a dynamic economy, he will have no choice but to implement a Neo-Soviet crackdown. How far will he go?

We got any early indication a few days ago when the Kremlin announced an attempt to prosecute Steven Theede. Theede, a Briton, became CEO of the Yukos oil concern after its Russian boss, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, was jailed by the Kremlin on tax fraud charges widely seen as political, since they arose only when Khodorkovsky started making noises about challenging Putin for the presidency. It was hoped that the presence of Theede, a respected foreigner, could staunch market panic over the fate of Yukos; Putin assured the world that he did not intend to obliterate the company, just its founder. But Putin’s promise soon proved illusory as further moves were made to nationalize Yukos, and Theede resigned in protest, spilling the beans to Westerners and badly embarrassing Putin. Hence the new indictment. Theede responded to the announcement as follows: “This is just an amazing move that the Russian authorities have taken, to open an investigation against individuals who are not residents of Russia. They are trying to impose their will on those of us who have spent the last two years doing nothing but trying to do the right thing in protecting the interests of the company. And it brings up, I think, an important point of what I’ve discovered in the time I’ve been in Russia, and that is that even though my principles have always been to always do the right thing, time after time, but in Russia today the key to success is more doing what the authorities want you to do rather than doing the right thing.”

Indeed, we must now ask: If Theede can be indicted, who’s next? Is the Kremlin getting nervous? Right now, chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov is touring the country giving speeches attacking Putin and calling for his ouster. Most recently, Kasparpov published an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal in which he scaldingly criticized Putin’s economic policies: “I am horrified as I watch my country turn into an oil-and-gas empire. From struggling workers in Vladivostok to top-notch lawyers in Moscow, we are a people proud of our intellectual traditions. Russia is a country of great literature and scientific accomplishments. It should not be our destiny to become another Saudi Arabia or Venezuela, to quite literally fuel the achievements of other nations while we lose ground.”

Is Kasparov long for this world? It’s already been reported by A Different Russia, the opposition movement led by Kasparov, that about 20 of its members have been detained, beaten, or mysteriously fallen ill on their way to a conference in Moscow. When Kasparov tried to host a conference of opposition parties to shadow the G-8 Summit in St. Petersburg, a meeting was raided by the secret police and four attendees dragged off to jail. How long before the authorities come for Kasparov himself?

The answer to that question largely depends on two other questions: How does the Kremlin view Russia’s economic prospects (more accurately, how successful does it think it can be in fooling Russians into thinking their prospects are good), and what does it think the West will do if serious moves are made against people like Theede and Kasparov? If the Kremlin believes the business cycle has crested and hard times are ahead, and if it believes the West will turn a blind eye to a crackdown because it doesn’t want to alienate Russian energy supplies and it is preoccupied with Muslim extremism, then Theede, Kasparov, and anyone else the Kremlin can get its hands on are in great danger.

The fate of democracy in Russia, and hence the status of a new international cold war, hang in the balance regarding these crucial inquiries. It????????s time for those outside and within Russia who are committed to democracy to begin asking themselves how they will respond with the inevitable crackdown comes in Russia. The world was taken by surprise when the Soviet Union appeared and even more so when it crumbled and fell. We ought not allow ourselves to be three times burned.

Kim Zigfeld publishes the Russia blog La Russophobe.

In April two prominent observers of politics died. The first, John Kenneth Galbraith was an influential Canadian-American economist of the 20th century. He was a Keynesian and a leading proponent of 20th-century American liberalism and progressivism, died on the 29th. The second, Jean-Fran????ois Revel was a French politician, journalist, author, prolific philosopher and member of the Acad????mie fran????aise since June 1998. Unfortunately, Galbraith????????s death overshadowed Revel????????s: the later did not receive the attention he deserved. Galbraith had been a charming, immodest, outspoken fellow whose every word was taken seriously: he also was almost always wrong. Revel, not dashing, stable, firm, the bete noir of the French left, was also outspoken and almost always right.

Two comments by Revel are relevant to this article:

???????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.

It is a mistake to ascribe democratic logic to a totalitarian system.????

The West often does exactly what Revel describes in these two comments.

I had been working on this article about the importance and usefulness of eliminating particularly dangerous people on the world scene, when I received a great assist from Michael Rubin in the latest National Review< ????. He lays out, in detail, why political assassination should be considered a legitimate response in certain cases. Some of his key comments are:

If suicide bombers are allowed to kill innocents, we should be allowed to assassinate the leaders who deploy suicide bombers.

If a single bullet or bomb could forestall a far bloodier application of force, would it not be irresponsible to fail to consider that option???????

The idea that governments cannot defeat terrorism by force may be a mantra among the foreign-policy elite, but it is not true.

Any individual, be he guerrilla or a state official, who is involved in planning terrorist attacks is a combatant and, according to international law, a legitimate target.

I fully agree with Mr. Rubin. Further, state led terrorism is growing too rapidly and creating too many current and future problems. Steps should be taken to avert the problems. As Thomas Sowell points out, we are fast approaching the point of no return????. Also, some dictators have created situations which severely castigate their own citizens, simply to achieve the objectives of the dictators. These people should also be considered for elimination.

Background given, and with thanks to Mr. Rubin for his considerable help, I propose a list of International people who deserve to be eliminated from their posts (and the world). I will list them in terms of urgency.

Hassan Nasrallah

His role as leader of Hezbollah, the Party of God, has created so much danger and destruction that listing him is obvious. It seems that he is in deep hiding because he knows that the Israelis are looking for him.

Moqtada al-Sadr

Backed by Iranian Shi????????ites, determined to be a major factor in his country, he is responsible for much of the internal carnage in Baghdad. He has denounced as “puppets” the members of Iraq’s U.S.-appointed Governing Council. He also announced his own plans to form a militia and his intention to form an Islamic state in Iraq by establishing a shadow government there, complete with ministries. His elimination could lead to considerable progress in democratizing Iraq.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

His refusal to halt development of nuclear weapons and enrichment of uranium combined with his frequent and virulent statements against Israel and the West, make him one of the most dangerous political leaders in the world. If Iran gets nuclear weapons, terrorists will soon have them. Diplomatic negotiations most likely won????????t work: Security Council states have an unwillingness to confront tough and resisting chaps who ignore international demands. Elimination should be considered.

Ayatollah Ali Khameini

He was appointed as Iran’s Supreme Leader in June 1989, following the death of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. He is the absolute authority in Tehran and is answerable to nobody. He is an arch-conservative dedicated to keeping political power in the hands of the politicized clergy. Iran’s supreme leader says his country will continue to pursue nuclear technology, despite a U.N. demand it stop sensitive nuclear work. He, like Ahmadinejad, is a very dangerous person. Eliminating Ahmadinejad without also getting rid of Khameini, won????????t work.

Kim Jong-Il

His fanatical desire to acquire nuclear weapons, which apparently he has achieved, is very bad. He is a strong-willed dictator who is short-tempered and ruthless when it comes to punishing anyone who questions his policies. His nuclear weapons and his recent missile launchings are a good indicator of his probable intentions. He is a very dangerous person. But the fact that he has done this primarily by suppressing his own people, making them suffer famines and untold hardships, makes him a doubly dangerous man. He must go!

Osama bin-Laden

I think I do not need to say much about this rather obvious case.

In a second submission I will nominate men who should be eliminated not because they are terrorist threats but because they have treated their own peoples so badly.

I????????ve just found some month-old photos showing Iranians (in Iran) celebrating the banned pre-Islamic Chahar Shanbe Souri festival.
As you know, every woman is forced to wear the mandatory veil when in Iran (this goes for non-Iranian women,too).

Source: Roozi.com

Look, I haven’t even gotten used to the idea of San Francisco raves! Ten years ago, they used to be this thing people I knew did at old warehouses in the South of Market in San Francisco. I think I went to see an indy flick at the Angelica Theatre in New York about these things, I recall it was pretty good, but cripes, it was about taking drugs! I never went to a rave itself on my own. But I had a roomate, Melinda, who always did. She was one of the cool people, and I adored her. She — coincidence! — worked at SFWeekly and was quite an interior designer - she had weird things like burnt Barbie dolls hanging from her bedroom ceiling and said the lead singer of Faith No More once wrote a song about her. I loaned her my blowdryer which she never returned, and I always admired the way she could break up fights between the guys in our Old Victorian house household. Anyway, that was then.

Now Iranians are having raves! Clad in their usual ayatollah-enforced bedrobes, they’re out having their own forbidden (really forbidden) fun! Can you believe this? The young peoples’ impulse toward the forbidden, the mind-altering and the hip is alive and well in Mullahcratic Iran, and right under the mullahs’ noses. It calls to mind Rob’s earlier question about the feel of a tyranny and what goes on in a tyranny.

In their case, I can see the reason why - there’s nothing to do there, there’s no such thing as legal fun, there’s little future under the ayatollahs, the young are treated like annoyances to the gerontocrats, and it’s not easy to get out of that place, both because of geography (Iran is huge) and Iranian money tends to be both exchange-controlled, and worth very little. I can understand the appeal.

Via Glenn at Instapundit, Jim at GatewayPundit has a ton of pictures showing just this Iranian phenomenon here. (Or scroll up one post to here, I think Stefania has some of the same pictures posted just above mine, with some additional and different commentary. In fact, I think Jim might have got them from her!)

Meanwhile, the fearless Borzou Daragahi, now of the Los Angeles Times, who’s always on the cutting edge, was reporting about these Iranian youth social scenes about five years ago. He writes:

It’ s near midnight on a Wednesday. I’m riding shotgun as my two friends and I inch along traffic on Tehran’s famous Jordan Street. It’s swarming. Cars full of men and women in their twenties drive up and down the street using headlights and directional signal in an elaborate pick-up ritual.

Typically a car full of guys will wink their headlights at a car full of gals, who’ll signal with their turn signals whether they’re interested. If they find each other agreeable, the parties will direct each other to a side street. They’ll get out, quickly chat and swap phone numbers. Usually, the guy will give the girl his number (some parents may object to boys calling up their single daughters). She’ll call a few days later if she’s interested.

The sight of carloads of twenty-something women in hijab and looking for action is surreal. Both of my friends grew up on Jordan Street, which is now officially renamed Africa Expressway, but called Jordan Street - after the American founder of a l local college - by almost everyone. “You see,” one of my guides tells me, “on the surface you look at Iran and it’s this modest, Islamic society. But look beneath the surface and you’ll find everything. You want alcohol, it’s here. You want gambling, it’s here. You want drugs, it’s here. You want prostitution, it’s here. You just have to know where to look.”

…

You can read the whole firsthand account of what it’s like to go to raves and other Iranian youth social scenes in Tehran on his blog here.

There’s a new U.S. development on the horizon that’s coming on us like a Singapore sunrise - which is to say, fast.

Small towns in America are rebelling against unchecked immigration, which has spread well past the big cities like Los Angeles and deep into the small towns of America.

Tiny Hazleton, Pennsylvania got itself a slew of lawsuits from leftwing lawyers like the American Civil Liberties Union for passing some of the toughest anti-illegal immigration muncipal laws in the country. The small city, population 31,000, made English its official language, vowed to fine anyone who rents flophouses to illlegals, 20 to a room, $1000 a day, and posts big sanctions on employers who hire illegal immigrants. The lawyers say the town is trying to usurp federal immigration laws. The town points out that it’s not shipping home anyone who’s illegal, it’s just using zoning laws to target lawbreakers’ enablers and to preserve the town’s quality of life.

Itty bitty Riverside, N.J., home of 3000 illegal Brazilian immigrants, is passing a similar measure. Booming Escondido, Calif., which I’ve been to many times, it’s becoming a run-down shantytown of Mexican illegals, is also passing a similar measure, Huntsville, Ala., is passing a similar measure, and now Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, is on the same track. There are towns in Arizona, in Nevada, in North Carolina, in Washington, in Georgia (where illegal immigration is up 120% in the past six years, the highest percentage gain in the country) that also have similar plans. Google Hazleton, and you will learn that Wilkes-Barre, Shenandoah, Altoona, Pocono, all are thinking of this, too. None of them are famous, they are all little towns.

The sentiment in Coeur d’Alene, here, is unbelievably negative against illegal immigrants. These tiny towns out in the middle of nowhere, are getting flooded with illegal immigrants. Leftwing lawyers are swift to dismiss them as a bunch of small-town rube racists who refuse to adapt to the tolerant ways of the Big Cities, but as usual, they are calling it like a cartoon, arrogantly refusing to look hard at what’s really going on in these towns they’d never otherwise set foot in.

There are some major problem with illegal immigration as it hits small towns: The first is economic: Illegal immigrants, 20 to a room, do not invest back in their communities. They live solely for their communities back home. They earn $6 an hour packing chickens or cleaning houses or hauling hods but all the money they earn doesn’t return to the small towns they occupy, it goes back to build a roof on the casa in Zacatecas. That Mexican town, gleaming and empty, stands people-free, maybe just a few old people and small children left behind while all the able bodied people work up in El Norte. Meanwhile, tiny Hazleton, or Van Nuys or Escondido or any of these other places, starts looking like pre-immigration-era Mexico: poor, undercapitalized, impoverished, and not invested. Just check out what once-gleaming Van Nuys has become now that illegal immigrants have moved in. It looks like Nayarit, Mexico, circa 1986, when I last visited - a veritable third world dump - garbage, crime, litter, rundown mess.

But there is plenty of work in Van Nuys. It really shouldn’t look like a hellhole. That’s what’s so paradoxical about this. What’s happening is, the cash that should be invested from the work provided in Van Nuys, something that happens in economically natural conditions, is now being invested in the gleaming, people-free homes of Zacatecas. That’s why Van Nuys is such a third world-looking place right now.

Do you see the strange contradiction? There’s something wrong with this picture, where whole towns are being used as money-earning depots, sort of yucky economic bus stations where transients pass through, but going permanently underinvested as money heads somewhere else.

Investment and the appearances of towns isn’t the only problem with vast influxes of illegal immigrants. Here’s another problem: The very act of being an illegal immigrant is a challenge to authority itself. By being illegal, you are necessarily going to distrust authorities, you are necessarily going to avoid them. So, if a crime is committed, you aren’t going to want to say you saw anything to the cops investigating the problem. Your interests and the cops’ interests will necessarily be different. Think about the impact of that attitude on community development and cohesion. You have whole towns where no one will talk to the cops and you cannot be surprised if crime suddenly becomes rampant. If no one will talk to the cops, the cops can’t solve anything. This is a direct byproduct of non-citizenship and non-legal residency. You just don’t care or are too scared to care what goes on in the small town you happen to occupy, you have other interests, like that roof you are earning for the place home back in Zacatecas and the parents you need to support. You may be acting rationally from your own perspective, but you are not acting in a way tha supports the town’s community interests. After all, your community is elsewhere. So crime goes unchecked, ESPECIALLY in the non-cooperating illegal immigrant enclaves, and it spreads to affect the citizens who are lawfully there. That’s another reason why small town people see a problem. They don’t have the material advantages of the Big Cities, but their consolation is that they don’t have the crime, either. Well, now they do. Ironically, it’s a direct result of the federal government’s failure to enforce immigration laws.

Another problem is medical care. If you are busy remitting money back to Zacatecas, you might well neglect your health. You might bring in TB, spreading it to others, or wait until your ailment gets so serious you’ve got to get emergency care. That’s flooding emergency rooms, which tiny small towns need to pay for, and if you are an illegal in the underground economy, no one is going to know enough about what you earn to be able to counter your claims of being indigent. From your own point of view, it would make sense to say you are destitute because no one can check on tax-free income earned illegally, and in so doing, get free medical care. Enough illegals are doing it that the city and the taxpayers are starting to grow angry. They feel expenses faster in small towns because they don’t have the vast pots of money you might see in big cities.

Here is a fourth factor that I think making the debate so bitter: Small towns have been maligned for a long time as rust-belt has-beens, and many have had to pick themselves up by their bootstraps to become economically attractive again. It takes a lot of work and dedication of small town leaders and townspeople to do this. Like third world countries on IMF programs, they’ve had to do things to make themselves attractive to business - they’ve done tax cuts, enterprise zones, other free market improvements. They do it to attract people, but when they attract the wrong people, the illegals, it throws their hard work to the dust, because the town isn’t safe or nice to live in anymore. It’s nasty. It would have been better if they had not done anything at all. It sucks the incentive out of doing the economically intelligent things, and instead brings back the temptation to do the populist things, like crony pork-barrel spending that dampens free enterprise and innovation. Do you see how scary this is?

The only alternative is to make the illegal immigrant problem less pervasive at the very least. That’s why these ordinances are going up at the speed of condos in Marina del Rey. They going up everywhere. Leftwing lawyers and their leftwing judicial allies are so far behind them, working in solidarity to distort the picture and call the small townspeople hopelessly evil.

Meanwhile, as muni ordinances strive to put bandaids on the festering and growing problem of illegal immigration - up from 6 million illegals in 2000 to 11 million in 2006, the backlash is populism. This is happening because it’s getting clear that the elites don’t know what they are doing, ignoring an obvious problem like illegal immigration and failing to police our borders. But populism and protectionism and other bad ideas don’t make things really better.

Illegals and legitimate citizens are now pitted against each other, and the struggle is bitterest where they can see each other closest and can’t get away from each other, in the small towns. I fear that much more trouble is on the horizon over this.

I am not talking about Guantanamo Bay, where prisoners are fed and allowed to read the Koran. This is the real deal. This is what they did and in many places still do to you if you are a political dissident in the backward societies of the Middle East.

The blog “… Or Does it Explode?” posts a link to an article in the groundbreaking Moroccan publication Tel Quel. The article is an impassioned interview with a former torturer, who confesses to the things that he and others did on orders from higher-ups, and how those actions haunt him to this day. Drowning people in buckets of feces, violently raping women, forcing male prisoners to perform sexual acts on each other, and electrical shock. Not very Islamic, is it?…

If you cannot read French, the Google translation is here, and is actually comprehensible. A suggested must read. It’s almost unbelievable.

Just over three years ago, the United States and Chile signed a free trade agreement, opening up markets and allowing for greater prosperity in both countries. Now, Chile has signed a free trade agreement with China, the first between the Asian giant and a Latin American country, bilaterally opening up markets on both sides. It will lead, just as it has in the past, to greater prosperity for both.

China and Chile have signed a free-trade agreement, Beijing’s first in South America.

The deal will give China better access to Chile’s extensive natural resources, such as copper, while Chile will be able to target the vast Chinese market.

Chilean president Michelle Bachelet said the deal was a “milestone” in the country’s economic expansion.

China is rapidly increasing trade deals in the developing world to help fuel its surging demand for raw materials.

Chile is an ideal free-trade partner for Beijing, as while China is now the world’s biggest consumer of copper, Chile is the largest producer of the metal.

“We are convinced that a treaty of this nature will be to the benefit of most Chileans,” said Ms Bachelet.

The treaty will free 92% of Chile’s exports to China from customs tariffs, and remove Chilean tariffs on 50% of China’s exports.

Other Chilean exports will remain subject to ongoing tariffs for between five and 10 years.

Chilean exports to China totalled $4.6bn (????2.4bn) last year, while those moving in the other direction amounted to $2.5bn.

Chile uses free trade and the business that comes with it to finance the expansion of its social programs, making it not only one of the most economically powerful countries on the continent but also the one that looks out for its people the best. It’s not as if Chile is just giving its resources away; the deals are good, and in this case, the deal looks to be the best for Chile.

While the world’s powers like the United States, China, Russia, etc. are all busy competing with each other, smaller countries like Chile and Singapore have figured out how to turn themselves into the middle-man. Their foreign policies are relatively neutral and their markets are open, making them ideal centers for commerce. The money flows in, the people become richer, and the government has money to finance programs which further improve the country.

Contrast this to the protectionists, like Hugo Chavez, whose money comes from oil, but instead of using it for the better of his country he uses it for political games. His argument is that free trade means burglary and slavery. In reality it means prosperity and freedom when done right. It means good relations and peace.

It seems that slowly but surely both the big guys and the small fries are learning the lessons of the past. Powers such as the United States have realized that bullying unfair deals only leads to resentment and uncertainty, while the middlemen like Chile have realized that they can make a killing. What must happen now is that other countries must learn these lessons and formulate similar policies that allow for the maximization of their potential.

Small countries aren’t just for destructive proxy wars anymore. Now they’re the center of trade competition, and they are the ones who benefit the most from it. This is the future.

The results of the a July 30 election in the “Democratic Republic” of the Congo were announced on Monday. Nobody won an outright majority, but I will give you one guess as to what happened given that it has taken over two millions deaths to lead up to this point. That’s right, people started killing each other, as militias loyal to the top two presidential candidates attacking each others’ supporters.

There is an inherent flaw to the way this election has been carried out. They are bidding for the presidency, a position that in African skeleton democracies means protection for your clan and the ability to dominate all other clans, not to mention rob millions of dollars from the government. For the winner, this is a reason to breathe a sigh of relief and perhaps commit genocide just for insurance. For the loser,, well, it fear that the latter will do exactly just that. They are fighting for supremacy over scraps.

The presidency and the control that comes with it is an institution that has proven time and time again to have failed in Africa, as well as Latin America and Central Asia. Europe’s imperial legacy has given the African people the curse of the nation-state, arbitrarily forned, so that nations of people are split between different states or forced to live with historical enemies in a single state.

The Constitution of the Third Republic, which came into effect in February 2006, establishes a more decentralized federal system with regional parliaments, along with a prime minister that is responsible to the federal parliament. Yet a simple majority is needed to elect this prime minister, and the president remains commander in chief of the armed forces. The changes do not go far enough, and as evidenced by the fighting, nobody believes that these changes will translate into reality.

If these issues are to be solved, and if the bloodshed is to be stopped, then these nation-states must either be dissolved or new institutional configurations for democracy must be figured out in order to control the power of different clans and tribes. Western-style majoritarianism just doesn’t work. Lebanon has its consociational system which balances the different religious groups, why are not interesting configurations found for this battered country?… This is a step forward, but it may be many years before the right steps are learned and taken.

I have returned from my trips to Ukraine and Belarus. As I sit here editing audio and writing stories, a question has crossed my mind that is hard for me to answer because it requires knowledge of the mass perception of what I am asking. So if you have the time, drop off a comment, and answer this for me: “When you hear the word tyranny, what do you think of?”

Do my eyes deceive me?

The most leftwing alternative-media newspaper, SFWeekly, in the U.S.’ most leftwing alternative city, San Francisco, has given one heck of a thrashing to the world’s most leftwing alternative Sandalista nuisance group, Global Exchange.

The leftwing newspaper’s charge? Rampant Sandalista meddling!

SFWeekly is laying it on thick against the leftwing “revolutionary” tourism group, led by Medea Benjamin, whose other group, Code Pink, famously photoshopped one of the Iranian freedom babes seen on this site here into a war protestor, which she was not.

The alt-media newspaper warns that Global Exchange is spreading LIES about the Mexican election, claiming that there was rampant cheating going on, when in reality, there wasn’t. It says that the left (as well as the right) has always had a need to say Mexico is tottering, the better to promote their political agendas. It’s a profound observation, I think it’s totally true. SFWeekly takes Global Exchange to task for claiming they are impartial election observers but in reality, are just activists promoting a political agenda, unable to distinguish partisan political activity with objective observation.

The SFWeekly writer, Matt Smith, admits he wanted AMLO to win, but can’t stand this persistent and crazy effort by GX to denounce Mexico’s hard-won and strengthening political institutions, which have come such a long way since Mexico’s become a democracy. In Mexico, there was no systemic fraud. There was no massive cheating. There was no grand conspiracy. And there is no need to break Mexican election laws by making up new requests for them that the electoral rules cannot support. That’s what AMLO is doing, and the Financial Times can no longer conceal its scorn about this - they ran the headline: “Mexico’s leftwing leader plots as he sulks in his tent.” (They’ve since softened that title on their Web site but the Google search, scroll down, clearly shows the original FT headline.)

I can barely believe what I am reading! SFWeekly - I know this paper, they are rabidly leftwing! - is laying on the charges against Global Exchange, and those charges are 100% correct, fully discrediting this Sandalista meddler group. In doing so, this newspaper just goes to show that there is hope for the democratic left, in that they are willing to clean house of the bounders in their ranks in the name of fair elections and real democracy. It’s absolutely revolutionary.

Look how good this SFWeekly piece is! Here is an excerpt:

This idea ???????? that Mexico is a simmering cauldron of discontent poised on the precipice of societywide instability ???????? is an old canard, inaccurately invoked by both left- and right-wing U.S. opinion makers for most of the previous century.

The administration of the first President George Bush used it to help explain its backing with money and political support the corrupt, authoritarian, right-leaning government of Mexican President Carlos Salinas. Without the PRI’s brand of soft-dictatorship, I heard bankers and politicians assert time and again during those years, Mexico would fall apart.

Yet somehow, for the past six years since Vicente Fox was elected as an opposition candidate, the country has enjoyed democratically elected government yet remained quite intact.

Left-wing activists from all over the world invoked this teetering-Mexico idea to aggrandize the importance of a tiny, 1994 local dispute over access to arable land, in which peasants for several hours occupied municipal buildings in the small town of Ocosingo, Chiapas.

Anti-capitalists worldwide cast the Ocosingo incident as the “Zapatista Rebellion,” a supposed example of simmering unrest in Mexico. At that time Global Exchange led “reality tour” visits by foreigners to the Chiapas region, an effort that may have admirably helped prevent a brutal government crackdown against the peasants. The Mexican instability myth touted by visiting foreigners, however, was based more on leftist public relations than reality. In this spirit soon after the rebellion, its leader, the pseudonymous Subcomandante Marcos, morphed from peasant leader to celebrity pundit.

The Mexico Burning fable is likewise meager pudding as the basis for Global Exchange’s argument that 41 million votes from a fair election should be retallied.

Good work, SFWeekly! And boy that article, “Mexico burning? Don’t believe it” is a thing of beauty to read, don’t miss it, read it here!

Ruins of a Russian jet crash which killed 170, Aug. 22, 2006
Source: Associated Press, via Yahoo! News

On Tuesday morning (August 22) it was reported by the Associated Press and Reuters that a Russian passenger jet, a Pulkova Airlines TU-154 airliner bound from the Black Sea resort of Anapa to St. Petersburg, crashed in Ukraine with 171 people on board.

This comes after a July crash in the Russian city of Irkutsk of a Russian A-310, operated by the Russian carrier S7, killing 124 passengers and crew, and it is the third crash the region this year. In May, an A-320 of the Armenian airline Armavia crashed into the Black Sea while trying to land in the Russian resort city of Sochi in rough weather, killing all 113 people aboard.

There was also a shocking series of three emergency landings related to engine failures on July 10th. A TU-134 overran a runway at a naval base in the Crimea after an engine malfunction at takeoff, an Airbus A-310 als operated by S7, made an emergency landing at another airfield in Ukraine after experiencing engine trouble, and a Tu-154 operated by Urals Airlines on a flight from the Russian Far East to Yekaterinburg landed in Irkutsk after one of its engines broke down. How many other similar incidents have failed to make the Western or Russian press is frightening to imagine.

So it appears that as many as 400 or more travelers have been killed in plane crashes in Russia this year, which still has several months left to go. Ironcially, the major policy announcement involving airplanes from the Kremlin has been not about increasing safety but about the Kremlin’s intention to shoot down planes taken hostage by terrorist hijackers.

Yet, it appears that Russia’s poor quality service is far more dangerous to passengers than any terrorist. The Kremlin has also announced that it intends to launch a multi-million-dollar PR offensive to comat Russia’s negative image as a tourist destination, a classically Neo-Soviet gesture. Rather than undertake genuine reform of Russia’s tourist market to remove what foreigners find objectionable, Neo-Soviet Russia prefers a propaganda campaign seeking to whitewash the defects. But no amout of public relations will induce foreign tourists to take their lives in their hands boarding Russian jets, and one must wonder whether the Kremlin is even genuine about wanting to change Russia’s image, which is perfectly consistent with Russia’s general attitude of xenophobia. Perhaps the PR offensive is more aimed at a Russian audience, as such things often were in Soviet times.

Kim Zigfeld publishes the Russia blog La Russophobe.

Val Prieto, the estimable and amazing Cuban-American blogger at Babalu blog has been asked for advice about creating a post-Castro Cuba, along with Alvaro Vargas Llosa, Carlos Eire and others luminaries, by none other than the White House and its top policy makers.

He’s obviously been watched and read for a long time by the White House and the leading policy makers in the U.S. for a post-Castro Cuba.

I am not surprised. Val projects a warmth, a soul, an unerring sense of timing, a social intelligence, and a referent power. He’s someone everyone in the Cuban-American community (and well beyond) likes and respects.

He admitted he was a little afraid to be in the company of intellectual powerhouses like Vargas Llosa and Eire, but I think he’s exactly in that league. Val is one of the most unique and admirable people I know. The White House called it right. There will be a free Cuba, and Val is one of the people who understands how to make it happen.

Congratulations, freedom fighter Val!

Read it here.

Venezuela has a peculiar economy. For many decades, it’s been known as Saudi Venezuela, in reference to its vast oil reserves, reserves so high, and so profitable, that it brings in huge dollar reserves. Those dollar reserves strengthen the currency to such an extent that it’s very difficult for exporters in other industries to get their businesses off the ground, because compared to say, their neighbors on Colombia, they cannot compete, given what they must be paid in. This is known as ‘Dutch disease’ or, the curse of oil.

But it’s also switching to a tried-and-failed Marxist model on top of it. The means of production are being taken from the hands of private owners, or, “oligarchs” - cattle, sugar, chocolate, manufacturing - and turned into worker’s collectives, which have nothing to do with power to workers, but everything to do with power to party loyalists. These party loyalists - a.k.a., the Vanguard, as Lenin and Trotsky devised, or the ‘nomenklatura’ as later Soviet models had it, often nominally claim to be ‘workers’ but are usually petty intellectuals with an petty intellectual’s deep desire to control others. Calling themselves ‘workers’ they lack of any expertise in actual management. The net result: A hateful approach to workers who cross them, which takes away worker motivation, and a phenomenal waste of resources, particularly when up the chain of command, there are additional petty intellectuals with no understanding of management of resources, and profit-making is a dirty word. In a nutshell, this is why communism is such a massive, wholesale, and complete economic failure no matter where it’s tried and no matter how many times it’s tried.

Combine those two, and you have Venezuela, something which appears to be headed for an economic collision to top anything Argentina or the Soviet Union have ever seen. On the surface, it looks great. Oil prices are high. The money rolls in and out. But walk the streets of Caracas. The shortages are there in the stores, due to foreign exchange controls. Oh how I struggled to find a bottle of Frizz Ease shampoo when I was there! The garbage, the mess, and the crime are there. The buildings are covered with blood-red FARC and other Marxist graffiti, defacing the city. The informal sector is absolutely massive, more than half the workforce, a growing nation of Chiclet sellers. None of these people can get real jobs, because the government simply is trying to do too much and doing the most it can to crush the private sector, aided not just by its Marxist plan of takeover of production, but by the curse of oil and the difficulty of high oil prices.

So what’s left is a strange consumption culture from the high oil revenues, but a complete vortex of no investment from the Marxist imperative, sucking such investment right out of the country - and much of it is fleeing to Miami, Panama, or Colombia, based on rational economic forces. After all, no one wants to invest in a country where private property is considered illegitimate, and socialist confiscation is a very real prospect.

These are the economic dynamics that are creating the conditions for revolution in Venezuela. When high oil prices fall, Marxist collectivism cannot stand on its own, because only party loyalists want Marxist collectivism, there is no such thing as voluntary collectivism under a party vanguard; workers value freedom as much as anyone. The Chavista idea is to consolidate political control in the time it takes for oil prices to fall. That way, Venezuela will look and be ruled like Cuba, and like Cuba, the people will have very little means to change matters.

Daniel at Venezuela News & Views has a long and interesting piece on Chavista economics, explaining it out bullet point by bullet point and concept by concept, from an on-the-ground perspective inside the country. It’s brilliant reading here.

Next week will mark 15 years since the August Putsch. On August 19, 1991 a group of Soviet politicians calling themselves the State Executive Committee (Gosudarstvennyi Komitet po Chezvychainomu polozheniiu, GKChP) attempted to seize power in Moscow. The ???????putsch??????? took a very Soviet form. The Committee announced that Gorbachev was ill and was relieved of his position while he was on vacation in Sochi. Soviet Vice-President Gennady Yanayev was named in his place. The precedent for removing GenSeks while on vacation was set with Khrushchev????????s sacking in 1964. The real reason for the move was that Gorbachev and his counterparts in the Soviet Republics were to sign a new Union treaty the next day, thereby dissolving the Soviet Union. The Committee????????s membership consisted of KGB chairman Vladimir Kryuchkov, Internal Affairs Minister Boris Pugo, Defense Minister Dmitriy Yazov, and Prime Minister Valentin Pavlov.

The putsch was quickly met with resistance. Crowds of protesters gathered in Moscow. Then Russian RSFR President Boris Yeltsin denounced the coup and his subsequent speech on the top of a tank in front of the Russian Parliament became a defining symbol for the Soviet Union????????s implosion and the end of the Cold War.

Now fifteen years later, how do we characterize the resistance to the August 1991 coup that led to the collapse of the Soviet Union? Was Yeltsin????????s resistance merely composed of pro-democracy elites or did it have a popular base? Such are the questions Harley Balzer addresses in his article ???????Ordinary Russians: Rethinking August 1991??????? published in the Spring 2005 issue of Demokratizatsiya. Balzer argues that assumptions about Russians as political lemmings ready to accept any strong leader have led to a misunderstanding of August 1991 and the role ordinary Russians played in the Soviet Union????????s collapse. Contrary to prevailing wisdom, Balzer provides evidence that there was popular resistance to the attempt by the State Emergency Committee to unseat Gorbachev and roll back perestroika.

The argument is quite timely. Non-violent democratic revolutions against authoritarian systems are few and far between. The Revolutions of 1989 stand as a most often cited template. Mass demonstrations revealed the inherent weakness in the Communist system. Once the citizenry turned its back it seemed as if the system simply withered away. The recent ???????colored revolutions??????? in Ukraine, Georgia, and Kyrgyzstan are placed in that same pantheon. Writing in the New York Review of Books in 2005, historian Timothy Garton Ash placed the ???????Orange Revolution??????? in the Ukraine as within that lineage.

However, many Russia experts and Russian liberal intellectuals have met the prospects of the same occurring in present day Russia with both skepticism and pessimism. As Yuri Afanasev stated in disappointment about the prospects of democratic resistance in Russia, ???????Many of our people seem reduced to a condition resembling that of cattle and, what is more frightening, they do not ask to live any other way??????? (194).

Balzer shows that the events surrounding August 1991 prove otherwise. Such ???????revisionism??????? offers the prospect for not only placing 1991 in a comparative perspective, it also allows for remembering that Russians did stand up to authoritarianism. This is shown by the fact that resistance and subversion to the coup was not simply regulated to Moscow and St. Petersburg, though like in 1917 the twin capitals were the most important centers of political activity. Popular resistance was spread all over the Union as citizens held protests, strikes, and in some cases acquired arms:

One personal story undoubtedly has colored my own perception of this period. My driver met me at Sheremetevo in September 1991, a few weeks after the coup, and on the ride into town he recounted how on August 19 he had taken the store of hard currency he had been saving to open his own business and bought a Kalashnikov automatic rifle for $1,500. He claimed that had the coup lasted longer, he would have used the weapon to defend his right to private economic activity. At the end of August he sold the gun for 25,000 rubles (about the same value as the purchase price, but not in hard currency).

In fact, Russians???????? close attention did not begin with opposing the coup. The first session of the USSR Congress of People????????s Deputies in May-June 1989 was met with so much interest, factory production declined 20 percent because workers chose to follow the session????????s debates and discussions rather than work. Live coverage of the event was eventually suspended because of the disruptions it caused (195).

As Balzer argues, this politization among ordinary Russians has been written out of the narrative because of how the memories August 1991 ???????have become increasingly selective and political??????? (195). The memory of popular resistance has been overshadowed by the belief that Yeltsin????????s opposition was mostly composed of a ???????small number of property-grabbing Yeltsin cronies??????? (198). The uncertainty, violence, corruption, collapse of the economy and standard of living of the 1990s has colored many Russians???????? personal memories and has increased their sense that the collapse of the Soviet Union was a mistake.

This ???????impaired memory,??????? however, has an additional source. Since Putin????????s rise to power, the winds have changed. No longer is the Soviet period viewed as a pariah nor is the quest to fill the ???????blank spots??????? of Soviet history part of the agenda. Historical reconciliation, a move best symbolized by Putin????????s own ambivalence on the Soviet period, has clouded fact that the population induced and supported the Soviet Union????????s collapse.

In addition to all this, one cannot diminish the reality that Putin????????s rule has been more in line with the putsch organizers than with Gorbachev????????s or Yeltsin????????s reforms. As Balzer writes,

A decade and a half after the attempted coup, Russia in many respects looks as if the coup plotters has succeeded. Many of their aims have been achieved and most of the plotters have had successful careers. Their primary objective, preservation of the union, was not achieved, but this was not a realistic goal short of war. Much of the rest of the agenda outlined in the GKChP????????s ???????Appeal to the Soviet People??????? sounds remarkably similar to Putin????????s policies (210).

This fact engenders an important question in regard to popular resistance in 1991. If there was so much resistance to GKChP, how did they essentially win in the end? Why didn????????t the protests transform into more permanent organizations that could make up Russia????????s civil society? One could easily point to the instability of 1990s for an answer as one could also point to the ideological discrediting ???????democracy??????? underwent in those years. While democracy and freedom were aspirations in 1991, they were quickly attached to Western control and plunder by the middle of the decade. Still, when evaluating the type of resistance that ordinary Russian practiced in 1991, we must also ponder what it was all worth when it came to building a society from the rubble of the Soviet project. I think that this kind of questioning will not only prevent collapsing democracy and mass protest and resistance, it will also remind us that the latter means little if the former doesn????????t follow in real concrete institutions and structures.

This article is crossposted on Sean’s Russia Blog

Curious about the political temperature in this hemisphere? Wondering what the average Mexican thinks of Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador’s nonstop protests? Want to hear how the Panamanian public feels about the canal expansion or what the Ecuadorean public thinks about its current plate of candidates for its election, come October?

Check out Boz’s poll roundup for the past week to see what’s going on around our regional neighborhood here.

Phil Gunson from The Miami Herald recently reported on a memo that Venezuelan Ambassador to the UK Alfredo Toro Hardy had sent to Rafael Ramirez, Minister of Energy and Director of Petroleos de Venezuela. Toro Hardy’s purpose was to keep Ramirez up to speed with regards to developing conversations between his office and Greater London Authority staff, geared at implementing an oil-for-propaganda programme, similar to the one broke with Bill Delahunt and Joe Kennedy’s Citizens Energy Corporation, as announced by Hugo Chavez in his last visit to this city.

Interestingly, the memo reveals the names of those involved, on behalf of the Greater London Authority, in the process of bringing the programme to life: Redmond O’Neill, John Ross, Simon Fletcher, Neale Coleman, Peter Hendy and Mike Weston. The choice of local operators is not surprising, after all London’s Mayor Ken Livingstone is the director of the Venezuela Information Centre, a propaganda outlet manned by some of his staff at City Hall’s at the expense of London’s taxpayers. A LexisNexis search of the names returns a great deal of information. Expectedly all seem to come from the radical fringes of the Labour Party. The Guardian has a rather useful description:

Four people - John Ross, chief-of-staff Simon Fletcher, public affairs director Redmond O’Neill and best-value and partnership director Neale Coleman - will be the spine of the administration. All are indispensable and utterly loyal to Livingstone. Others will stand or fall depending on how close they are to these key players…

…What is more interesting is the journey that the four, like Livingstone, have made to mainstream acceptability. In the early 90s, Fletcher, Ross and O’Neill were all involved in the Trotskyite splinter group Socialist Action. Among Ross’s more colourful views at the time was a belief that union members should be allowed to form militia units. “This is the only peaceful road to socialism. The ruling class must know that they will be killed if they do not allow a takeover by the workers. If we aren’t armed there will be a bloodbath.”

As readers of this site will remember Ken Livingstone seems to think that I am a criminal, opinion which, according to his lawyers, he reached after having read some posts of mine where I argued that violence was the only solution to deal with a criminal state that keeps trampling upon the rights of its citizens. Some of his collaborators apparently held the same view, not vis-a-vis an illegitimate government but towards the “ruling class.” Could I interpret this as Ken Livingstone being a supporter of terrorism, given his lasting association with a person who thinks that the ruling class should be killed?

And what can be said of Livingstone’s and his henchmen’s association with Hugo Chavez? Should one suppose that their involvement with the Venezuelan regime is on a pro bono basis or are they to become fat cats at the detriment of the Venezuelan people?

My issue with Livingstone is far from over. The more I research him, his cronies, his advocacy in favour of criminal organizations, his associations with dictators that demonstrably support terrorism and Islamic fundamentalists, the clearer the view that sooner or later he will have to face the music. Londoners however should raise these issues with the Standards Board for England and start asking some pertinent questions about the Chavez-Livingstone marriage of convenience, whose image is to be plastered all over London’s fleet of buses, as Toro Hardy’s memo suggested. If only the “ruling class” had a quarter of the drive to fight for what’s right that the radical Left has to defend their flawed conception of the world…

The British are rebelling.

Their target is their own idiot authorities, the lunatic leftists who’ve managed to get into power on the coattails of the estimable Tony Blair, who’s from the Labour Party, which attracts all kinds. They’ve gotten control of the BBC, of the city of London government, of the regulatory agencies. They are the ones who are putting out all these politically correct rulings, rulings designed to appease local Islamofascists and far-leftist lunatics eager to meddle with and remodel British life, while British voters suffer.

That’s why they are rebelling.

The Dihly Mail, a newspaper that I had always perceived as a left-leaning but Sloane Ranger-type paper read by prissy English girls in Laura Ashley dresses speaking in abnormally high flowery voices, (I got this notion from my days at Oxford), has come up with two British culture rebellions that are absolutely fascinating to watch and something we need to start duplicating in our own country and all over the world. I am amazed that these items are from the Mail. They show that the British are standing up on their hind legs against meddlesome leftist nanny-state bureaucrats who are absolutely sure they know best.

Item One: Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit found an item about how British air passengers refused to board a flight where two Islamic-looking men, acting furtively, whispering, and wearing inappropriate dark heavy leather jackets, spooked British passengers to refuse to get on the plane until something was done about it. The guys were probably innocent but they most certainly felt they could act weird and scare people as their constitutional right, even though if they had turned out to really be real terrorists, well, ‘too late, the plane’s aloft, too bad about your life, we bureaucrats just don’t care, and by the way, none of us are ever fired let alone jailed for our irresponsible but wonderfully politically correct decisions. You stupid Brits just need to accept your deaths at the hands of Islamic terrorists. Stiff upper lip, old sport, don’t you know.’ Brits rebelled. Meanwhile, Glenn points out that these rebellions happen when people no longer believe the authorities are interested in protecting them - his excellent item is here.

But there’s more:

Now the Brits are rebelling about trash collection. The fanatic environmental wackos, who are making a bundle off forcing British people to do their sorting of trash for them, have issued dozens and dozens of regulations. Combined with their union-goon allies in the trash pickup department, they are turning Britain into a pighole by forcing unreasonable trash-sorting regulations on British citizens, making them sort out zillions of items for the profiteers in the recycling business, and making the regulations so byzantine, so unworkable, so full of tiny vilolations that the union goons don’t have to pick up any trash at all. It’s a great deal for the meddlers in the environmental wacko movement, and a great deal for the union goons who no longer have to provide work for their union wages, but a terrible deal for British homeowners who must watch trash build for tiny violations on their streets (the union thugs in the trash-collection business don’t have to pick up slightly unsorted garbage or any that contains a tiny mistake of sorting), creating garbage, litter, mess, rats, roaches and maggots. Not that the environmental wackos care about that - like Venezuela’s Chavez, they like to see garbage go uncollected in middle class areas. It’s their way of doing class warfare on those whose earnings they’d like to extract from them as taxes instead. Anyway, via Lucianne, the Daily Mail’s trash mutiny item is here.

Britain’s a strong democracy given its citizens’ lack of fear to take on petty bureaucrats. I think it’s an old British tradition, I can think of some other examples. It’s part of being British. Let’s hope they get some results, a nanny-state that actually cares about them and their needs instead of wonderful political correctness that these bureaucrats can share with each other at cocktail parties and awards ceremonies and in the halls of power.

The purpose of government is to listen to the people, not to be a forum for nasty meddling bureaucrats to top each other with demonstrations of political correctness. Either they can be in constant warfare, which will grow uglier, with their citizens, or they can start working with people and creating reasonable regulations that everyone can follow, ensuring harmony and rule of law. Right now, the nanny-staters have amassed way too much power.

Campaign kickoff rally for Manuel Rosales in Caracas Saturday
Source: The Devil’s Excrement, which has a lot more here

Is there any greater losing proposition than trying to win an election as a non-Chavista in Venezuela? The courts are stacked, the electronic fingerprint machines ensure that HOW you voted is recorded and delivered to the authorities, the vote-tallying machines by Smartmatic can report any result they like regardless of how you voted, the whole election apparatus can be rigged to ensure that if you live in a middle class neighborhood, you’ll stand all day in the sun to discourage your participation, the hours of the election can be arbitrarily changed to as long as it takes for Chavistas to bus in unwilling supporters to make the total they’d like - and all this, with official threats and intimidation over how and whether you vote. Venezuelans in their millions saw how this rigged setup was working and last December 2, decided to stay away from the election altogether, for an 82% rate of abstention, according to Sumate.

No electoral observers have signed on to this election, none. Nobody wants to be part of calling an obvious electoral travesty, an election to be called ‘Chavez Wins.’

The Venezuelan thug, thus, will win the Dec. 3 election, this year, too.

But amid this Belarus- and Zimbabwe-style electoral horror, Venezuela’s opposition has done the courageous thing and decided to stand for election anyway. Even though they are sure it will be a disaster. They are showing that the desire for democracy in the face of Hugo Chavez’s increasingly communist tyranny is still alive and well.

That will be important if Chavez is ever thrown out of power by the military, or if Colombia needs to clean the place out, or for some other reason. The presence of a vibrant democracy in waiting is VERY important, a warning to Chavez that there are alternatives out there, even if he cheats.

Majestically, thousands and thousands of Venezuelans came out this weekend to show support for Manuel Rosales, the unified opposition party candidate who will oppose Chavez and surely see his victory stolen.

Rosales is a marvellous man. He’s the governor of Zulia state out near the dangerous Marxist-narcoterrorist-infested Colombian border where the people under seige are rightwing and concerned with security. His party is just some small Zulia-based party with no ties to any of the old guard dinosaur parties like AD or Copei, who had ruled Venezuela (mostly badly) before Chavez. He has no ties to them, so by default, he is a fresh face.

Zulia’s the Santa Cruz of Venezuela: an energy rich state, the most entrepreneurial in the nation, and the only holdout region that is so flamingly anti-Chavez no election could cheat them out of their victories. It’s the only state with a non-Chavista governor. Rosales is that man.

In a sea of Rosales supporters this weekend, almost all of them dark-skinned shantytown dwellers (errr, ‘oligarchs,’ as Chavez says), Rosales called for economic opportunity, direct cash grants from Venezuela’s oil earnings to the people (welfare, sure, but a way better idea than bureaucratic programs, which facilitate Chavista stealing. It’s likely to appeal to the poor), an end to Chavez’s $36 billion in oil giveaways to foreign countries, including the “needy” U.S., via Chavez’s Citgo program, and no more “sitting in Castro’s lap.” The rest of his program is knock-it-out-of-the-park, too.

What a powerful campaign platform! What beauty that the opposition was able to unify under this one sensible candidate! What a glorious spectacle of all the thousands of people here!

I am not sure why this has come about, but my theory is that the other elections around the hemisphere have had an impact. From Mexico, we learned that even if you think you are losing, if you keep fighting and keep pushing for economic opportunity over government handouts, and talk economic sense, as Felipe Calderon did, you can actually win. From Peru, we learned that courageous voters can hold their noses and vote for a guy they have every reason to despise if it’s needed to save democracy, and be happily surprised at getting a good president - Alan Garcia of all people - in the bargain. From Colombia we learned that when a leader keeps his eyes on the prize, doesn’t steal money, remains humble and austere - he has a sure recipe for electoral victory, as happened for Alvaro Uribe. And although it’s not an election, the rise of civil society groups in the monstrous communist Cuban tyranny has got to give courage to people everywhere that if they keep trying for democracy, they might just get it.

The resurgence of Venezuela’s opposition from nowhere is an amazing development, given the conventional wisdom that the Venezuelan opposition could not get its act together and that Venezuelan voters would not vote. I think they will vote - party operatives from the old-guard AD party were ignoring orders to abstain attending the rally, even though AD isn’t going to get anything from this election, and coming. That’s pressure from the people at work.

And it’s got to throw Chavez off guard.

The tricks will be very dirty in this election, but the whole specter nevertheless is a positive one. People are rising up and demanding democracy even though they already know they will be cheated. Absolutely amazing.

Miguel Octavio at The Devil’s Excrement has a good firsthand account of the rally, a super analysis, and the must-see photos of the poor people attending the Rosales rally here.

Academic Elephant at Elephants in Academia has an excellent, thoughtful analysis, describing how fast this miraculous event came together, as well as the snowballing troubles for Hugo Chavez and all his mismanagement, here.

Daniel at Venezuela News & Views observes that the crowds were bigger than anyone anticipated and that this is a moment to savor here.

Aleksander Boyd at VCrisis has some additional thoughts about the rise of the Zulia state here - its entrepreneuriality, its superior administration, and its good leadership here.

Andres Oppenheimer at The Miami Herald has a terrific exclusive recent interview of Rosales and a good short analysis of the issue with a link to his interview here.

I wrote more of my own thoughts on this resurgence of Venezuela’s opposition on Babalu blog this weekend here.

If I’ve missed any good links, email me at ammorayleon at gmail dot com

A Venezuelan T-shirt depicting typical Zulia independence sentiment
Source: The Devil’s Excrement

According to an article in today’s Guardian Unlimited, United Russia, the largest Russian political party by far, is losing its appeal with the electorate. It seems that the party’s narrow platform, to support the President in every way, is something of a turn-off. So, what is to be done?

‘Create another…ÄpartyÅ…that pretends to be an opponent.’ Yes, Putin is going to manufacture an ‘opposition’ party…controlled by the Kremlin of course. This is another wonderful example of managed democracy in Russia.

As Andrew Wilson wrote in his book Virtual Politics, the Russian words often translated managed democracy are better translated directed democracy. Indeed, parties, politicians, successes, disasters, etc. are all largely crafted and controlled.

However, it is worth pointing out that even Wilson thinks real politics still take place in Russia - though at the moment very much on the fringe. Yet, in the mainstream, virtual politics reigns supreme.

Today’s Guardian agrees: this recent event ‘confirmÄsÅ the Kremlin’s paternalistic attitude to political parties rather than a genuine desire for a competitive system’.

www.JonathanTaylor.eu