Europe.

Treasure box of civilization that every other civilization on earth, grand and small, old and new, owns a few pearls and diamonds from.

Reason, individualism, liberty, fairness and linear progress from the Judeo-Christian European heritage have affected human aspirations all over the earth - everything from Pakistani kids longing for Nikes and Iranian women demanding their human rights, to India demanding its place at the UN Security Council. All of these are derived from the heritage of reason which began in Europe.

But the LAST people who seem to be aware of this are Europeans themselves. They don’t even know who they are anymore.

Not that they aren’t arrogant jerks, they are. They just don’t know what they have a right to be an arrogant jerk about anymore. They should be arrogant jerks for their contributions to reason and logic, to science and progress, to great art and individual human achievement. But they don’t recognize that, and seem to reject it. It’s a sort of decadent boredom of idle elites who are seeking the exotic. I am always creeped out when I realize I know more about European heritage than some self-satisfied supercilious, know-nothing European. I can’t believe there are such people out there, who don’t even know the basics about where Europe came from.

They are instead arrogant about things that ought to embarass the hell out of them: That any civilization, be it Taliban or Swedish, is just as good as another. That multiculturalism and pan-Europeanism strictly from pinched little mediocre minds in dog-doo-strewn Brussels is better than any blood- and iron-forged national identity. That history doesn’t matter. That all things should be regulated by the state, as the state knows best. That unchecked immigration, with no accountability for who’s admitted, is just great. That a lack of confidence is the one and only thing to be confident about, and proof of virtue. That European history is evil and needs to be eradicated, especially stuff like Roland and El Cid and Isabelle of Castile. That appeasement of every foreign predator is ‘wisdom.’ That war, all war, is outdated and that nothing is worth fighting for. That God is dead. That the state is God. That there are no absolutes.

So it’s no wonder there are no horizons there, either. It’s all so freaking ’60s, so Beatle-y, so Sartre, so old-people-y and dreary. Thinking like that just goes to show the complete moral bankruptcy of the Eurotrash. They don’t even know who they are or where they came from. And now they are old and tired and spewing old and tired ideas that the U.S. has shunned since the Carter era.

Or is it?

There are some shifts in the wind going on in Europe, the kind that signal the shift of ideas.

Sweden’s young people have recently thrown out their socialists in favor of a center right government, the first in decades.

In France, Segolene Royal, a fairly youthful socialist leader is speaking with Tony-Blair-like free market ideas, getting vilified by the corrupt old French socialist establishment, and fighting on, undaunted, to possible victory ten months away as France’s president anyway. She seems to believe in law and order, for one, (instead of muddling things and then appeasing and hiding, liek the others) and maybe even European values.

In Italy, a real freak show of Italian government complicity with Islamofascists, under the cover of state, from the SAME government that would prosecute Oriana Fallaci for her individualist opinions, is being countered by Moderate Muslims and Pope Benedict, meeting together. The Moderate Muslims have warned the Pope that the Italian government is collaborating with Islamofascists out of fear and cowardice and asked for his help. The Pope suggested he was willing. Obviously, there are people willing to stand up for Reason. Stefania has an amazing and vivid article about this little known struggle in this post, worth reading several times over, at American Thinker here.

And back in France, Daniel of Venezuela News & Views, who is visiting the country, reports that France has ordered Turkey to acknowledge its role in the Armenian massacre or no EU membership for Turkey. And Ukraine has admitted its role in anti-Semitic massacres. Suddenly there is verifiable evil in the world, coming from tired old establishmentarians like Jacques Chirac. Daniel points out that this coincides with a European shift away from crummy leaders like Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Hugo Chavez. When Europe confronts the truth, it doesn’t have time for the preening of clown dictators. It doesn’t have the stomach for it. Read it here.

Defying the laws of economics, Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez started state-run groceries for poor people to buy food at cut-rate prices. He never imagined that the little darlings he claims to champion over Big Bad Corporations might take the cheap food, buy a ton of it, and then turn around and sell it at higher prices on the street, making a tidy profit.

Never occurred to him that capitalism could be practiced by poor people, too.

So over in Venezuela, market economics have taken rein from Chavez’s much-touted cheap food, whether Chavez likes it or not, as poor Chiclet-sellers, known as buhoneros there quickly grasp this buy-low sell-high dynamic a lot faster than Hugo Chavez ever will.

Net result? Food shortages in Chavez’s state-subsidized shops as inflation soars outside them, same thing that happens in all vaunted socialist regimes that insist they’re more humane. I don’t see what’s humane about shortages, do you? It’s all very easy to be humane if there is nothing of value left to be humane with, isn’t it?

Read Miguel’s whole brilliant piece, full of details, and in language a layman can understand, at The Devil’s Excrement, here.

Alek Boyd has more continuing coverage of the Manuel Rosales presidential campaign that is challenging the presidency of Hugo Chavez.

Alek reports that Rosales is attracting huge, growing crowds out in the Venezuelan burgs and boondocks. He has some choice quotes from locals and some descriptive writing on what it all looks and feels like. See his latest here.

The world is loaded with well-wishers who have visited communist Cuba as tourists, and marvelled at beauty of the island, the sultry enticing laid-back culture of the people, the music, the ease of life, the apparent lack of materialism, the supposed universal health care, and other illusions.

Over at Killcastro, a fine blog by Cuban exiles who have actual experience of Cuban life beyond the tourist spots at Varadero and central Havana, and who currently have some of the deepest contacts and connections inside the real Cuba, they printed a smuggled-out letter from a Cuban inside Cuba, that tells the local story of what it is like to live there. It’s not a unique experience, nor is it anything we haven’t heard from other Cubans - all of whose letters bear a disturbing similarity of descriptions. But it is different from the Cuba that western tourists so marvel at. Some excerpts are here:

“I was born in Cuba….

I was born in Cuba where a foreigner has more rights than me…

I am free; but I can’t speak my mind or live my own dreams…

I live in a democratic society where there is only one party, one point of view, and only one ruler…..

I am free to vote in the elections where there is only one candidate…

My education is free; but I must give up my time in the school year to work at our labor camps so I will not be excluded and expelled from our system of free education….

My education is free, yet, I am not free to choose my education…….

Due to the official blockade imposed by the USA, we suffer a lack of basic needs; but somehow, there is plenty of everything and no embargo for our tourists….

Mi mother said in years past, with other regimes, there was hunger here, people ate corn meal all the time….what in the world is corn meal????

My medical care is free, but there is no medication in our local hospital, our doctors are now taxi cab drivers to make ends meet, our nurses are prostitutes working the streets all night, therefore, they need their rest and sleep during the day….

I own a television set, where I am only allowed to watch two channels, both with the same people in it….

He speaks of his longing for democracy by the end of the piece. Read the whole thing here.

What is the impact of the world democracy revolution?

In Arab states, there’s been a significant change toward democratic revolution in the past two years, according to this absolutely fascinating report from a writer who visited Dubai and talked to James Zogby, a respected pollster of the Arab world.

He found that young Arabs, both men and women, in their 30s and 40s, are beginning to lose interest in a Pan-Arab identity, a dead end that has brought nothing but anguish and poverty since the post-colonial tinpot-dictator era of the 1960s. Instead, they are starting to see themselves as citizens of individual countries.

And why not? States like Kuwait and the Emirates; Bahrain, Oman and Qatar, have everything to be proud of. They are bright new Singapores with great futures emerging from a great soggy mess of self-pitying pan-Arab tyranny, into unique countries we want to trade with and see rich and full of recognizable achievements. In the latest development, Oman recently signed a free trade pact with the U.S., which was passed in U.S. Congress by a wide margin.

Arabs are taking more pride in being citizens of individual nations instead of amorphous, ill-defined pan-Arab movements, and that’s contributing to changing attitudes about women working outside homes, as well as bringing more democratic reforms. Apparently, the growing civitas is leading to a growing trust among peoples, a greater self-reliance, and a greater willingness to understand what makes life good and stand up for it. In short, greater democracy.

What that means is democratic revolution is alive and well in the Arab world, and more freedom, more individual achievement, and more real pride are on the cards for the Arab states. This is news to celebrate.

Read it here.

Hat tip: Real Clear Politics

The Moscow Times newspaper maintains an impressive stable of pundits analyzing Russian political developments, and their weekly columns are often required reading for those who wish to understand and properly respond the rise of the Neo-Soviet Union. Two recent examples deal with the disturbing and self-destructive rise of official anti-Americanism in Russia: Georgy Bovt documents its rise in the Russian Duma, while Alexander Golts explains its new significance in the Russian military.

Bovt writes:

Last week, a remarkable document titled “On a Likely Scenario of Action of the United States toward Russia in 2006-2008″ was circulated in the State Duma. It is undoubtedly the largest-scale and most comprehensive anti-U.S. program that post-Soviet Russia has seen. ÄIts authors areÅ Valentin Falin, a former member of the Communist Party Central Committee and sometime adviser to Mikhail Gorbachev who served as ambassador to Germany before turning on and pillorying his former boss at every available opportunity, and former foreign intelligence chief Gennady Yevstafyev. Suffice it to say that it brings together almost all of the anti-U.S. myths of the last 15 years. For example, it says that the United States cannot “come to terms with Russia’s growing strength,” and that Washington is preparing to “bring down” the Putin regime from within, specifically around the time of the 2008 presidential elections. The United States will, the report says, work to isolate the Russian political elite, and look for a stalking horse among liberal groups — currently former-Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov — and, inevitably, the CIA is drafting an “Orange project” for Russia. “For the United States, it is unacceptable in principle to have sovereign democracy in Russia … that is not built into the construction of global American leadership.” The United States will also work to undermine “Russia’s energy sovereignty,” and simultaneously push for Georgia to be accepted into NATO. The whole document is filled with a spirit of confrontation, a paranoid search for enemies and all sorts of U.S. conspiracies.

The growth of this classic Soviet paranoia, even at a time when Russia appears to be resurgent, is convincing evidence that Russia is proceeding back down the Soviet path. Neo-Soviet propaganda is another: Weirdly, Falin has repeatedly and publicly complained about ???????russophobia??????? in the West (he stated, for instance, that ???????in my opinion the ???????cold war???????? hasn????????t ended, since its groundwork ???????? Russophobia ???????? still exists; it????????s an evil and tenacious phenomena, that can be substantiated by many historical examples???????), even going so far as to allege that the West intentionally opened the front against Nazi Germany late so as to debilitate Russia (Russians regularly harangue the West for failing to give Russia due credit for its role in bringing down the Nazis, always ignoring the fact that Russians give the West absolutely no credit at all for its own role). This is classic Russian hypocrisy: It????????s a crime to be ???????russophobic??????? but it????????s perfectly rational to be ???????americaphobic.??????? Russia must be given time to change, America must change right now.

Now here????????s Golts:

As the latest attempts to reform the military run out of steam, the top brass are beginning to demand a military doctrine from the Kremlin, arguing that they cannot build up their forces without a document that clearly identifies the country’s enemies, its allies, and the sort of war we are supposed to be preparing for. In short, they’re looking for the equivalent of the General Secretary’s reports to the Soviet Communist Party congresses in the good old days. The main question, of course, is who should be included in the list of Russia’s potential enemies. The journalists who wrote the latest article on the new military doctrine said it singled out the United States and NATO. If the document was drafted without instructions from the Kremlin, this means that the military leadership is pushing the country into a new confrontation. It’s worth remembering that when the current military doctrine was being drawn up in 1999-2000, the General Staff argued that the United States and NATO posed a clear threat to Russian security. At the time, the Kremlin was irritated by the actions of the West in Yugoslavia, but Ivanov, who was then head of the Security Council, had the sense to remove this provocative statement from the final draft. Now it seems the generals are riding a new wave of anti-Americanism to throw the same old arguments at the Kremlin. And not because they seriously think a military confrontation with the United States and NATO is likely. Their only interest is in preserving the current structure of the armed forces so that they can hold on to their jobs as long as possible.

The similarities between the goings on in the Duma and in the Army, as described by these two columnists, are disturbing to say the least, and not merely because of their national security considerations for the United States. Indeed, a recent article in Newsweek insightfully points out that Russia is far from being a military or economic juggernaut capable of doing serious harm to the U.S. The authors note:

It’s no secret that, for all Russia’s new oil wealth, its Army remains poorly trained, malnourished and demoralized. Alcoholism, suicide and corruption are rife. Weaponry is aging and newer models arrive at a trickle: India has bought more Russian tanks since 2001 than the Russian Army. Of the $648.1 billion in foreign investment worldwide in 2004, only $11.6 billion went to Russia. The 2005 Foreign Policy/A.T. Kearney survey placed it 52nd in a list of 62 countries????????a drop of five places from 2004.

As if to bolster the Newsweek position, the World Economic Forum just published its most recent economic competitiveness survey, and here Russia plummeted even more dramatically than in the Kearney survey, from position #53 last year to #62 this year ???????? a decline of nearly 17% in just one year. And these negative results are coming while Russia????????s revenues are at their peak, with oil prices having skyrocketed. As the Newsweek article asks: ???????What happens when????????not if????????oil and gas prices begin to retreat????????

So rather than fearing Russian encroachment on U.S. security, we should rather be disturbed by our failure to take corrective action, relatively easy given Russia????????s significant weakness, and even more so by Russia????????s apparently suicidal desire to provoke a new Cold War with the United States. Compared to Russia, the USSR had a far larger population, military establishment and economy and yet the USSR was no match for the U.S. in the last cold war. That decimated Russia would even consider provoking such a confrontation indicates not only latent hatred of the United States but a fundamental inability to perceive reality. Even though Russia has become a more open society with the fall of the formal Soviet structure, its impoverished population still remains largely cut off from real information about the outside world. Perhaps even more important, the Kremlin continues to insulate itself from the criticism and information flow that would come from viable opposition parties and an independent news media, resulting in an ???????Emperor????????s New Clothes??????? phenomenon that renders Russia virtually incapable of recognizing, much less improving, its shortcomings.

How is it possible that Russians can barrel so heedlessly down the selfsame path that led to their utter ruin only decades ago? And, even more disturbing, how is it possible that we can sit idly by while our moment of opportunity to interrupt this activity once again passes, giving Russia the chance to morph into something that actually could threaten basic U.S. interests? Remember, Russia is displaying this rabid anti-Americanism even though the current occupant of the Oval Office has ???????looked into the eyes of Putin??????? and found him to be a partner he can deal with. What can America expect if the next president takes a more critical view of Russia and its KGB spymaster president?

Kim Zigfeld publishes the Russia blog La Russophobe.

Hot on the heels of the surprise power-packed U.S. consumer boycott of Venezuelan oil, a huge refinery explosion of Venezuelan oil occurred this morning in Havana, Cuba, where considerable Venezuelan oil is being refined. Gigantic. Val has a photo of the inferno, the latest oil blow to Hugo Chavez. The Real Cuba has more photos and details. Along with this, this, this, and this, just this past week, Venezuelan oil production under a communist regime is profoundly strained - beset with accidents, safety violations, waste and destruction. Even if oil prices rise as a result of all this, if Hugo can’t pump oil, he won’t get any of the extra cash.

These growing signs of wear and tear on Citgo and other Venezuelan oil pumping operations are a sign of major stress, owing to Chavez’s failure to invest in his oil industry, based on his firm belief that oil profits are not there to be invested but to be spent on pork barrel handouts. These repeated oil industry losses - those links show a pattern - may significantly affect Chavez’s ability to advance his communist ‘revolution’ and destroy the freedom of peoples with his meddling throughout our hemisphere.

Both ideologically and physically, Hugo Chavez may be running out of gas.

UPDATE: Killcastro has more in an engaging piece titled ‘Flambe’ here.

Jonathan Scheele, head of the European Commission’s Delegation to Romania said about the upcoming accession of Romania to EU that, “There will be no more reports by the European Commission and it will therefore be very important for the Romanian political class, civil society and Romanians in general to take responsibilities.” Easier said than done.

Jos???? Manuel Durao Barosso emphasized: “Yesterday we decided, today we are celebrating and tomorrow we must go back to work.”

The Romanian Premier, Calin Popescu Tariceanu promised the reform process would continue, especially in Justice, agriculture and the sanitary-veterinary field. He said that, ???????Romania is ready to get actively involved in consolidating the European project.”

The US appreciates the European Commission’s decision to admit Romania and Bulgaria in the EU in January 1, 2007. A press release published on the website of the US State Department informs that the US has asked the EU to think about means to admit more members.

US State Department Spokesman Sean McCormack describes the decision as good news for both states and for the EU as well and mentions the US would certainly encourage the EU to keep prospects open for more states, the Balkan ones and Turkey included.

The Francophone Sommet (27-29 September) brought a series of unpleasant things for the citizens living in the capital — new traffic regulations, traffic jams on the major boulevards, lots of money used for this event when most people do not understand what the big deal is to have dictators of Burkina Faso, Gabon, Niger, Morocco, Burundi, etc. and people such as Hun Sen, the Prime Minister of Cambodia, a man who worked directly with Pol Pot “honoring” Romania with their presence. Of course, there are positive aspects of this whole affair. Romania always wanted to play a bigger role regionally, if not globally. However, with the servant attitude the Romanian political class have, it is highly unlikely. Well, at least the national pride has tremendously grown or so I hear. Romania is the first Eastern European country to host the Francophone summit of the heads of state and governments. The first such gathering took place in 1986.

Lebanon is boycotting the summit because its President, Emile Lahoud has not been invited. In early June the Lebanese PM, Fuad Siniora was invited to attend the summit instead of the President. The rumor was that President Chriac suggested that he would not like to see Lahoud at the event, and the Romanians respected his wish. However, the French Presidency denied such allegations and yesterday the Romanian President, Traian Basescu said that he had done the right thing by not inviting Emile Lahoud and that this was the decision of the Romanians, without any interference.

“Lebanon will not participate at the Francophone summit because no invitation has been sent to the president,” a statement issued by the Lebanese Presidential Palace said. Emile Lahoud added that anyone who would participate will not represent Lebanon, but his own person. This issue has created a bit of stir in the Lebanese political circles, not because of their loyalty towards Lahoud, but rather because they feared that such an embargo on their President undermines the top Christian position in the country. It is not a secret anymore that Lahoud is pro-Syrian, and his mandate has been prolonged in 2004 with three more years by Damascus. At that time, both France and USA criticized this move and asked for free, independent presidential elections. Lahoud mandate ends in 2007.

Fuad Siniora chose not to attend the event and sent the Culture Minister Tarek Mitri as his personal envoy explaining that Lebanon should not miss such an important international event. Tarek Mitri is due to arrive today in Bucharest, while Siniora headed for Strasbourg to attend a session of the European Parliament.

On the left above, you see the face of pro-U.S. Ukrainian Viktor Yushchenko before he sought the presidency of his country. On the right, you see his face shortly after he made that decision.

What happened? Well, he ingested a large amount of highly toxic chemicals, and it wasn????????t a suicide attempt. Many people believe it was an effort by the Russian secret police to keep Yushchenko from ousting pro-Russian prime minister Viktor Yanukovich from power in the upcoming election. Yushchenko had promised to move Ukraine away from Russia and towards the European Union, NATO and the United States.

The Kremlin has no qualms about using violence to destroy its political opponents. When Mikhail Khodorkovsy, chairman of the YUKOS oil firm, began making noises about seeking the Russian presidency, he was promptly arrested, sent to Siberia and his company obliterated. The Kremlin even went after his lawyer, the mother of two small children. The Moscow Times recently reported on yet another physical assault on a key member of Garry Kasparov????????s political team, which has been under siege from the Kremlin for months now. Kasparov is the former chess master who is now seeking to bid for the Russian presidency in 2008, and he has been fiercely critical of the Neo-Soviet policies of Vladimir Putin.

And now it looks like it????????s Mikhail Saakashvili????????s turn. Publius Pundit has already reported indications that Russia attempted a direct coup d????????etat against the pro-West Saakashvili. Now, things have gone from the frying pan to the fire.

On September 26th, Georgian officials arrested five Russian military officers for spying. Believing a sixth member of the conspiracy was holed-up in a Russian military compound in Georgia????????s capital of Tbilisi, daring Georgians surrounded the facility and enforced a blockade, demanding that the individual be turned over to their law enforcement authorities. Russia threatened to use force to break the blockade, and shut down it????????s embassy in Georgia, refusing to issue travel visas to Russia. The Times of London reports: ???????Georgia has accused Russia of backing separatists in the provinces of Abkhazia and South Ossetia in an attempt to undermine the Government ???????? an allegation which Russia denies. Only last Friday, President Saakashvili accused Moscow from the rostrum of the UN of trying to annex the breakaway provinces.??????? A Georgian government official stated that the alleged spies had ???????staged a mine explosion in February 2005 which killed three police officers in the town of Gori. He added that the arrested suspects had shown interest in Georgia????????s defence capabilities and its plans to join Nato, as well as energy security, political groupings and the country????????s military. The Russian army still has two bases in Georgia - relics of Soviet times - which are to be withdrawn by bilateral agreement in 2008.??????? As tensions escalated, on September 28th ITAR-TASS reported that “Russia has made a decision to recall its ambassador in Tbilisi, Vyacheslav Kovalenko, for consultations, the Foreign Ministry said on Thursday. ‘In view of the growing threat to the security of the employees of Russian offices in Georgia and members of their families their partial evacuation from that country is about to begin. The first flights are scheduled for September 29,’ sources said.”

In a truly bizarre turn, Russia????????s foreign minister Sergei Lavrov suggested that the U.N. be called in to resolve the dispute. This statement is incomprehensible given that, as previously reported on Publius Pundit, only weeks before the foreign ministry????????s own press office had stated that Russia believed the U.N. had no role to play in dealing with issues in conflict zones of unrecognized republics of Abkhazia and South Ossetia in Georgia, as well as the self-proclaimed republic of Transdnestr in Moldova. Apparently, Russia feels the U.N. can be useful as a club in the hands of Russia but not as a shield in the hands of any Russian adversary, a classically Neo-Soviet position that is deeply unsettling in light of Russian moves to reestablish control over the former Soviet slaves states as they struggle for independence.

Apart from direct frontal assaults on the Georgian regime, Russia is also seeking to destabilize it by fomenting armed conflict in various regions of unrest, particularly Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Here Russian hypocrisy is truly breathtaking; Russia utterly rejects Chechnya????????s claim to independence and righteously bellows whenever any outside nation is thought to be supporting Chechnya????????s claims. Yet, Russia has no problem in fomenting discord within Georgia, seeking to encourage similar regions to break from the Georgian fold.

The spy scandal is unfolding in the immediate wake of NATO????????s decision to begin ???????intensive dialogue??????? with Georgia over its admission to the NATO family, the final phase of negotiation before membership is granted. Obviously, once Georgia becomes a full-fledged member of NATO it will no longer be possible for Russia to attempt direct military intervention in Georgian affairs, so it is not surprising to see Russia reaching deep into its bag of evil tricks in a last-gasp attempt to unseat Georgia????????s government and forestall admission.

The very notion of democracy, much less its practice, is under direct assault in Russia today. The Kremlin has seized control of all national television media, ended popular election of local officials, destroyed national political parties and is even beginning a program to teach Russian Orthodoxy in public schools. The Western democracies must increase their vigilance in order to forestall the forces of authoritarianism from seeping outside Russia????????s borders and infiltrating the nations of the former Soviet bloc. It is very clear now that Russia has no intention of letting those nations go without a fight.

Kim Zigfeld publishes the Russia blog La Russophobe.

Cripes, what’s got into these guys?

I used to live in Singapore and I used to write for the Far Eastern Economic Review, mostly slapping around China’s oppression in those palmy expat days.

Today, the once-ominiscent FEER, now a news-turned-essay magazine, and down on its heels due to the Internet and global forces, is nevertheless back on the Singapore sheet list.

In fact, this time the Singaporean government has downright banned it.

And for SUCH a Singapore reason! They said the FEER failed to provide the name of someone they could serve papers to, in the (inevitable) event they sued them for their coverage. If they can’t have some point man from which to sue them out of business, then they won’t let this magazine be sold on the city-state. Their ban was harsher than the previous ones - they actually banned any possession of the magazine at all, even if a businessman walks in with one on him at the Changi airport from a commuter flight in from Kuala Lumpur. If he does that, he’s toast.

Here’s what really bothered them, though. The poor, scruffy, now-barely-there Far Eastern Economic Review did an interview with an equally poor, scruffy, barely-there democracy activist in Singapore, Chee Soon Juan. They considered his statements about a scandal at a state charity threatening to their grip on power and want to sue over that. Cripes. So much for all the prime-ministerial disco dances, and state-sponsored, let-yer-hair-down Gay Festivals. Singapore, when it comes to political power, is still the same old Singapore, acting more un-confident of its ability to retain power than ever. Such a shame! Such an annoyance! But they won’t stop doing it.

In my opinion, they are asking for it by doing this. But the Singapore government continues to take great pride in oppressing as many foreign journalists as they possibly can.

Wise up, Singapore!

There is something majestic about the power of the markets. No dictator, anywhere can control them. They do what they do, based on thousands of decisions by thousands of individuals, acting on a collective wisdom. No central planning can match this people’s verdict in reflecting the here and now, or the future. That’s a people-power Hugo Chavez repeatedly disparages and discounts even as he claims to represent the aspirations of the people.

Today, it wasn’t George Bush who spoke but the People of the United States who issued a majestic market verdict on him.

That was evident in action taken today, when 7-Eleven dropped Citgo as a contractor for its U.S. gasoline stations. Over 1100 stations will lose their Citgo label in favor of a new homebrew 7-Eleven brand gas. The cause? 7-Eleven made no bones about it. They said that they couldn’t stand Hugo Chavez and all his anti-American statements. They had a PR disaster on their hands, the American public was upset, and they were losing customers. No doubt they had been getting a lot of calls from irate Americans, angry at 7-Eleven’s sales of Venezuelan petroleum in the U.S. after Hugo Chavez called President Bush a devil and said that U.S. democracy was a sham to benefit elites.

On that day, Chavez proved himself to be nothing more than a thug before all the world from the podium of the United Nations. And a slow-burning boycott of Venezuelan fuel turned into a firestorm. That’s why 7-Eleven told Venezuelan-owned Citgo to find some other marketer.

Net result? Consequences for Chavez’s hard abusive words. Not from Bush but from the American people, millions of millions of them, acting in a pocketbook revolution to send a message to the Venezuelan tyrant, who thought he could get away with anything.

This great nation of 300 million people are Chavez’s biggest oil customer. Enough of them together boycotted Chavez, sending an eloquent message about democracy that no retort from Bush could drive home harder. They told Chavez to take his oil and get out. While politicians were falling all over themselves to accept Chavez’s cheap fuel for pork barrel votes, Americans on their own were quitely repudiating the Venezuelan thug, sending him a message that they aren’t interested in buying oil from a menacing dictator who abuses them.

Just say the devil made them do it.

Miguel Octavio has an excellent essay conveying the full rage and disgust of Chavez’s action that provoked 7-Eleven to stand up on its hind legs to the Venezuelan dictator right here.

And via RealClearPolitics, here is a new IBD editorial on the issue, describing the message the American people sent to Hugo Chavez (along with the stunned reaction in Caracas) here.

UPDATE: You gotta see this item from Wizbang Bomb Squad about poor people all over the country telling Hugo to take his cheap gas and shove it. Cripes, it’s happening everywhere. Read it here.

Venezuela tonight held its first presidential debate. But it wasn’t quite like any other debate I’ve ever heard of. Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez refused to participate of course, due to a congenital inability to share the television screen with any other human being. The Caracas megalomaniac just can’t make himself do it.

But that was no problem for Venezuela’s enterprising private sector. Globovision took his long windy speech off state TV, ran half the screen with the dictator’s bloviating, and then had Venezuelan opposition candidate Manuel Rosales reply to each and every Chavez lie and idiocy.

Can you imagine?

They had a debate whether Chavez liked it or not. I am sure Rosales won this one by the way, dictators like Chavez get soft and soggy when they are no longer accountable to anyone, and cannot debate effectively. A classic case is in what Chavez said today: that he has made lots of mistakes and this is exactly why he should have another term in office! He doesn’t get it about crime and punishment, does he?

In a way, Chavez seems to be running scared with such a statement, Rosales is rapidly gaining on him in the polls. That in turn may be another reason why he didn’t want to come out like a man and debate Rosales.

Daniel has the whole surreal presidential debate, described in his brilliant entertaining way, in this post here.

Alek has a good item about how many different and creative ways Chavez has of avoiding blame for his own failures in this essay here.

And check out Miguel’s awesome note about Chavez’s nutty meltdown campaign speech, written with full commentary, in this post here.

Bolivian government coca-leaf graffiti targeted at dissidents in Santa Cruz
Source: AP, via Yahoo! News

Argentina’s Cronista Comercial newspaper last week released an Argentine foreign ministry study, whose authors used various corporate-risk business models to forecast a 56% chance of civil war breaking out in Bolivia in the next few months.

It’s faster than anyone thinks.

Bolivia’s President Evo Morales
Source: Reuters, via Yahoo! News

At issue is the growing tyranny of Bolivia’s leftwing populist president, Evo Morales. His popularity numbers have dropped, and in Bolivia’s industrious, entrepreneurial, job-creating and mixed-race east, discontent with his Marxist remedies is growing.

Morales has tried to rewrite the Bolivian constitution to ensure his permanent grip on power, something he has not succeeded in doing so far. He’s abused foreign investors, striking out at energy investors first through a troop-filled mass expropriation last May Day, a significant day on the Marxist calendar. Now, there are fuel shortages in Santa Cruz, the same shortages that occur in every Marxist regime that attempts to set prices over markets.

While Morales was getting feted by the likes of glitterati like Bill Clinton in New York and Jimmy Carter in Plains, touted as the new radical-chic emblem of progressive “change,” Morales has already begun coercive measures worthy of Stalin.

He’s begun confiscating the land of his political enemies and instituting roadblocks on the eastern Santa Cruz region, as a means of economic warfare on whole classes of opponents. He’s also planning military bases as a means of preventing Brazil or Argentina from invading on the side of the democracy-loving easterners, an ominous development.

Bolivia’s bloggers have been watching this closely, and have added some perspective to the rather disturbing information.

Miguel Centellas, at Ciao! blog reports that civil war is not all that uncommon in this day and age, and explicitly cites some places where it has also happened. He says government efforts to arm new militias targeted at Santa Cruz are not a good development and the broad military base approach of Morales is a bad sign indeed. Read his well-linked piece about this here.

Miguel Buitrago, at MABB blog, reports that Vice President Alvaro Garcia Linera seems to be worth watching. The leftist ex-guerrilla turned Bolivian vice president has been rabble rousing with entourages of troops as his means of stirring up class warfare against Bolivia’s middle class in Santa Cruz in the east. When confronted with it, he begged off and said his fiery words were taken out of context but he did nothing to repair the damage he had already done. In all, a disturbing picture. Miguel says that if civil war does break out, the best scenario is secession, a very sad thing. Read his well-linked post here.

Bolivia’s Vice President Alvaro Garcia Linares, a soft-handed far-left intellectual who’s decided to get down there with ‘the people,’ going native. His aim? To stir them up against people in Santa Cruz
Source: AP, via Yahoo! News

The European Commission has announced that Romania and Bulgaria are set to join the European Union at the beginning of 2007. It truly is an historic achievement; something that bodes well for the future of the two countries and the continent as a whole.

The European Commission has announced that Romania and Bulgaria will be admitted to the EU in January 2007, but under strict conditions.

Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said both countries had made enough progress to join the union.

But they will be checked for progress in curbing organised crime and corruption, and ensuring food safety and the proper use of EU funds.

Bulgaria’s PM said the move was the fall of the Berlin Wall for his nation.

Romanian Prime Minister Calin Tariceanu said his people should be proud of themselves, but should not make the mistake of thinking that accession would mean all the country’s problems would be solved.

The article makes a lot of fuss about the large amount of restrictions put on Romania and Bulgaria — unprecedented for EU member countries. But it makes sense. They have a lot of institutional reform to undergo. Corruption still reaches throughout society, schools need to be improved, child trafficking needs to be combated, along with a whole host of other things. They may become members, but they are not equal in terms of quality of governance, and so they will not be treated as equals.

However, there is a lot of good news. They will get many of the same benefits that southern Europe — countries like Spain and Portugal — got when they were accepted to the European Union. They will get tons of subsidies to help boost their economies, professionals to help train the civil services, and more. Today, Spain is a thriving democracy, because it rejected the ways of its past partly because the incentives of EU membership were so great. Bulgaria and Romania will be the same in time.

Gates of Vienna posts and interesting article, along with his own commentary, regarding a recent referendum in Switzerland in which around 2/3 of the population voted to tighten the country’s asylum laws. This is what happened:

According to early poll projections, Switzerland has voted heavily in favour of making it harder for asylum-seekers to gain entry to the rich Alpine state.

Despite warnings of damage to Switzerland’s humanitarian reputation, some two-thirds of voters appeared to have said ‘yes’ in referendums on laws limiting access for non-European job-seekers and making the country’s asylum rules amongst the West’s toughest.

They seemed also to have rejected a call by centre-left parties to redirect part of the central bank’s profit to the public pension system - a move opposed fiercely by the powerful Swiss National Bank.

“The revision of the asylum law looks to reserve Switzerland’s humanitarian tradition while at the same time stopping abuse,” right-wing Justice Minister Christoph Blocher, a strong backer of the new laws, had said during campaigning.

The measures have already been passed by both parliament and the government, but opponents raised enough signatures to force a national vote.

Have the Swiss woken up, or have they always been this way?…

What one has to understand about Switzerland is that, in general, it is a very introverted country. People keep their manners, keep quiet, obey the law, and respect one another. While everyone speaks different or multiple languages, everyone there is very patriotic and consider themselves Swiss above anything else. Anyone who does not act Swiss or conform to Swissness is looked down upon.

When I was in Basel this summer, this attitude was all too apparent (I was once lectured by an old man in German for parking my bike in the wrong place!). While Basel is perhaps one of the most introverted cities of Switzerland, it is also the safest an most law-abiding. So when something bad happens, people are shocked and they stare. I remember being downtown and seeing a guy get arrested. Everyone stopped and stared. I’m talking hundreds of people. You don’t see this kind of thing often in Basel.

The reason why this story is relevant is because this attitude is mostly projected toward immigrants — namely Turks. More Turks have been settling in Basel over the past few years, and as a result the city has seen a large increase in violent crimes. A murder in the streets or a husband killing his wife — these are all things that the Swiss cannot believe even happen. And when it shows up on the evening news that a Turk did it, they decide to vote in a referendum that this is the kind of thing that they don’t want in their country. The explanation is as simple as that.

Whoo hoo!

Our favorite writer, Alvaro Vargas Llosa, has done the impossible in a new essay - taken on sex in Colombia as a struggle for democracy. A perfect topic for Publius Pundit to link, so go see what he’s written here.

In Colombia, young women have told their young men to drop the gangster and gun and drug crap or else they’ll get no sex from them. Apparently, it’s very primal and effective, for a society at its wit’s end. Yep, no sex, those who can’t drop their barbarian activity can be laughed at by their peers as maricones or become frequenter of the whorehouses or something but they won’t get any of the good stuff if they can’t stop engaging in gang and drug activity. After all, the latter makes life such a plague for women and children, one can see the primal logic of it all. Instead, only the productive and peaceable will get some. It’s a perfect example of civil society trumping brute force, Vargas LLosa argues.

It’s one of his most original and wonderful essays. Check it out here.

The mystery country in the United Nations voter lineup for Security Council seats, Chile, led by a socialist with roots in the Allende era, is apparently fed up to the quick with the government of Hugo Chavez.

Chavez’s anti-American diatribes disgusted most nations that had planned to support Venezuela over Guatemala for the Security Council seat, but didn’t bother Chile’s President Michelle Bachelet all that much. More recent Chavista attacks over the weekend, charging her with being rightwing - on the weekend she laid a wreath at the spot where Allende’s foreign minister, Orlando Letelier, was assassinated, was an entirely different story. Michelle Bachelet is now said to be only on spitting terms with the Caracas thug, and Chilean officials are telling the Chilean media that diplomatic relations are irreparable now.

This whole turn of events stuns me. But that is only because I am a North American. Bachelet feels deeply about her identity and who she is and tries hard to reconcile her own position as the social-democratic president of the free Chile with her own family’s totalitarian past. Chavez, suspecting she is not a Chavez loyalist, went and charged her with being rightwing just for not kowtowing to his cult of personality.

She’s gonna beat the crap out of him now .

Free Republic has an amazing translation of a long article, that will knock your socks off, from El Mercurio, here.

It will blow your mind!

Boz at Bloggings by Boz has a must-read collection of poll numbers, many the last pollings that will be available before elections next week in Brazil and Nicaragua. He has a special item on Brazil here, as well. I love his item on what Guatemalans have on their minds, it’s something that will provoke a knowing nod from people who know what common sense is. And Peru’s opinion poll revelations confirm just what we have been thinking about Alan Garcia.

Read Boz’s latest poll numbers here.

I was going to put together a Venezuela blog roundup but Daniel got there before me, putting together a fine collection of Venezuelan blog posts in these fermenty times, and saying all the stuff I wanted to say.

It reminds me of Daniel’s and my own simultaneously-made observation that Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit did exactly for Miguel Octavio what Hugo Chavez did for Noam Chomsky - rocketed him up to Number One.

For Miguel, Glenn’s link yesterday got Miguel’s blog over 13,000 hits and put him at the very top of the salon.com blog rankings for two days in a row, besting his nearest rival more than fourfold. For Chomsky, the Venezuelan dictator put him at number one at Amazon, well, for one day at least, not because of his recommendation but because everyone wanted to know just what Chavez was filling his head with to come out with that kind of sulphur spew.

Read Daniel’s Venezuela News & Views blog news roundup in this great post here.

By popular demand, I post Alvaro Varga Llosa’s awesome essay on Chavez’s appearance at the United Nations and what it really means for Venezuela. For educational purposes, only

It would have been more appropriate for Hugo Ch????vez to brandish Dante’s “Divine Comedy” than Chomsky’s “Hegemony or Survival” during his sulfuric broadside at the U.N. last week. In the first part of the Italian masterpiece, the author undertakes a journey through the nine concentric circles of the Inferno, each representing a type of evil. Dante’s description reads like a script of present-day Venezuela.

Dante’s first circle is for those who lack faith. In Ch????vez’s Inferno, the first circle is made up of those who lack food. Cendas, a research center, maintains that 80% of Venezuelans cannot meet the cost of a basic daily diet. According to an official statistic the government inadvertently made public on the Web site of the Instituto Nacional de Estad????stica, between 1999, the year in which Ch????vez took office, and 2004, poverty rose to 53% from 43% of the population. The authorities attributed the figures to an outdated methodology and now claim the rate of poverty is 42%. If it were true, that would be embarrassing enough, because it would mean that poverty has remained at nearly the same level for eight years.

Dante’s second circle is for those unable to control lust. Ch????vez’s second circle is for those unable to control homicidal instincts. His government has degraded social coexistence so much that there have been more homicides in Venezuela during his seven-and-a-half years in office than there have been deaths in any single armed conflict around the world in recent years. Between 2001 and 2006, the number of homicides in Venezuela has been three times the number of victims in Afghanistan.

Dante’s third circle is for gluttons who leave us with no food. Ch????vez’s third is reserved for corrupt authorities who leave Venezuelans with no wealth. The major sources of corruption have been Plan Bol????var 2000, the state-owned oil company, and social programs known as “missions.” Under Plan Bol????var 2000, the army took over development programs from the local governments. In the case of PDVSA, the energy giant, no one but Ch????vez and his cronies have access to detailed financial records. The budget for social programs, personally controlled by Ch????vez, is not included in any government ministry.

Dante’s fourth circle is for misers. In Ch????vez’s Inferno, the fourth circle is made up of bureaucrats who claim to provide social services but use funds to pay people to attend rallies or bust up opposition gatherings. Marino Gonz????lez, from Universidad Sim????n Bol????var, says that the “Barrio Adentro” program that purports to tend to all the pregnant women in the country only serves 2,000 expectant mothers out of a total of half a million each year. No country ever became prosperous through socialism, but for a government that claims to be able to tend to the needy, not being able to meet even 1% of the commitment is a particularly hellish sin.

Dante’s fifth circle is for those who succumb to wrath. Ch????vez’s fifth is for political persecution. Venezuela’s human rights record is atrocious. Two violent incidents involving Chavista henchmen with many fatalities have gone unpunished, including the killing in April 2002 of 12 people who were protesting near the government palace. There are political prisoners such as Francisco Us????n, former minister of finance in Ch????vez’s government, who received a six-year sentence for saying he thought an incident in which a few soldiers died at Fort Mara in 2004 was no accident. Henrique Capriles, the mayor of Baruta, was jailed in 2004, accused of organizing a violent protest against the Cuban embassy which he had actually helped diffuse.

Dante’s sixth circle is for heretics. Ch????vez’s sixth circle is for heretic journalists who try to tell the truth. In December 2004, a “gag law” was imposed making it easy to prosecute journalists. The president continually threatens to withdraw TV and radio licenses — the reason why there are no opinion programs on network TV. Government-controlled mobs called Bolivarian Circles, formed with the help of the Cuban intelligence apparatus, harass journalists.

Dante’s seventh circle is for the violent. Ch????vez’s seventh circle is another name for imperialism. His government has bought (or is buying) 100,000 AK-47s, 53 Mi-35 assault helicopters, fighter jets, transport planes, patrol boats, speedboats and Tucano jets from Russia, Spain and Brazil. Ch????vez is a long-time supporter of FARC, Colombia’s terrorist group. He granted Venezuelan citizenship and protection to Rodrigo Granda, its “foreign minister,” until Alvaro Uribe’s government hired bounty hunters to bring him back to Colombia in 2005. The Venezuelan leader has given financial and political support to movements from Mexico to Bolivia. (His support for Ollanta Humala in Peru and Andr????s Manuel L????pez Obrador in Mexico was a major factor in both men’s recent defeats.)

Ch????vez buys influence through oil. It is a form of blackmail: At OPEC, Ch????vez fights for increasing prices, making life hard for poor countries that import oil, and then offers those very nations oil subsidies they have no choice but to accept. That is what happened with the 14 Caribbean countries that make up the Caricom group. He also sends 100,000 barrels of oil to Cuba daily; and 200,000 barrels to Bolivia every month in exchange for soy, poultry and political subservience. And he has bought $3 billion worth of Argentine bonds to entice President Kirchner’s loyalty. Ch????vez is denying his nation its wealth from oil, somewhere between $40 billion and $50 billion a year. His annual “aid” budget totals more than $2 billion. He sponsors 30 countries, including some in Africa, in order to buy their vote for a seat at the U.N. Security Council.

Dante’s eighth circle is for those who commit fraud. Ch????vez’s eighth is fraudulent anti-Americanism. Ch????vez exports 1.5 million barrels of oil a day to the U.S. Since oil makes up half the government’s revenue and the U.S. is the principal destination of Venezuelan oil, he pays daily homage to U.S. capitalism. Moreover, Venezuela imported $18 billion worth of goods and services from the U.S. in 2005. He may have signed 20 trade deals with Iran’s Ahmadinejad, but what he really lusts for is U.S. capitalism. (Another type of fraud involves the electoral system. Ch????vez has manipulated the voter registration rolls, adding two million phantom voters, including 30,000 who are 100 years old and citizens named “Superman.” Four out of five members in the Electoral Council are Ch????vez lackeys.)

Dante’s final circle is for traitors. Ch????vez’s ninth is for traitors, too — and the place is getting crowded. Army officers betray Ch????vez every day. Labor leader Carlos Ortega recently fled with three officers from a high-security prison controlled by the army. They evaded security controls thanks to help from army personnel.

At the end of Dante’s Inferno is the center of the earth, where Satan is held captive in the frozen lake of Cocytus. In Venezuela’s Inferno, Satan is frozen in oil-rich Lake Maracaibo, a metaphor for astronomical wealth squandered by tyrannical populism. The journey through hell is now complete.

Mr. Vargas Llosa, author of “Liberty for Latin America” (Farrar Straus Giroux, 2005), is director of the Center on Global Prosperity at the Independent Institute.

URL for this article: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB115914134454172599.html

Alek Boyd has an excellent new photo show of scenes from the Chavista political “base” around Caracas. He shows dilapidated housing and garbage flung all over the place, in pictures that make Tijuana look like Beverly Hills.

Check it out, here.

Following the famous United Nations devil speech, this is the singularly best Hugo Chavez cartoon I’ve ever seen, snidely illustrating the realities of the U.S.-Venezuela relationship. I’ve never seen anything so mean. Hugo comes out absolutely pathetic, you’ll never look at him the same way again.

See it here.

We have previously discussed the question of Russia????????s membership on the G-8 panel; given Russia????????s feeble economic performance and, more importantly, its widespread corruption and anti-democratic politics, it is virtually impossible to offer any cogent argument in favor of membership. Russia simply is not qualified.

However, there is a second major question which is harder to resolve. Should Russia be admitted to the World Trade Organization? The WTO is not analogous to the G-8; it is a populist body, not an elitist one, and Russia????????s issues of democracy and corruption are less relevant here since there are some countries with levels of corruption and dictatorship similar to that of Russia which are members of the WTO. It currently has 149 members and half of them have been admitted since the organization????????s founding. On the other hand, some nations have been repeatedly rejected. Syria, for instance, first applied to join the WTO in October 2001, then again in January 2004 and September 2005. Its application for membership is currently still pending, waiting for WTO General Council approval to start negotiations. Russia is part of a large group of countries (nearly three dozen) consigned to ???????observer??????? status in the organization.

Whether Russia should be admitted to the WTO is a question ripe for debate, and hopefully the comments section of this post can be one forum for that to take place. To jump-start the discussion, let????????s address three recent events which militate against admission.

I. What does Russia want?

Probably the most interesting question for discussion concerning this issue is whether Russia actually wants to be admitted to the WTO or not. For sure, America has the right to oppose and veto Russia????????s admission even if Russia is otherwise qualified because of Russia????????s litany of aggressive actions in support of arch American foes like Iran, Venezuela, Hamas and Hezbollah. Nobody can argue that American is somehow obligated to accept Russian membership if it would violate America????????s national security interests. But there are those who argue that leverage could be obtained over the Russian economy by bringing it in to the WTO fold.

If Russia has malevolent intentions towards the U.S., then knowing what Russia truly wants concerning admission would be useful; the U.S. might simply oppose what Russia wants. Russia has applied for membership, and Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin appeared to lobby hard for admission during the recent G-8 conference in St. Petersburg (he even declared, prematurely it turned out, that the deal was done ???????? the U.S. reinstated its veto after the St. Petersburg talks). But the Kremlin is ruled by a clan of proud KGB spies and, for them, misdirection is child????????s play. Publius Pundit recently reported that the participants in the annual ???????Valdai Club??????? propaganda festival were vehemently told by Kremlin insiders that ???????for us young reformers, Putin is our hope.??????? As for America????????s efforts to block the admission of Russia to the WTO, the official implored ominously: ???????The WTO game is directly related to the siloviki. These people who are playing the game don????????t understand what????????s going to happen if we don????????t get a deal at this time. We have to get the message across to Bush: ???????Boys, stop drinking Russian blood.??????????????? If the Kremlin is sending the message that it wants admission, then maybe it should be denied on that basis alone.

On the other hand, it????????s hard to imagine how a rational Kremlin leader could think his recent foreign policy decisions would do anything other than provoke and alienate the United States, and in doing so doom Russia????????s chances for WTO admission (it was reported on September 21st that Russia and Venezula are now negotiating yet another massive arms deal despite the U.S. embargo on that rogue state, and on September 17th that it may be violating the nuclear arms accords with the U.S. by deploying non-strategic nuclear missiles on its submarines). So maybe Russia is intentionally burning this bridge, fearing that WTO admission would diversify the economy and make the Kremlin????????s control over the population more tenuous? In that case, maybe WTO admission should be pursued forthwith.

II. Neo-Nationalization in the Neo-Soviet Union

Over the past few days, Vladimir Putin????????s Kremlin has launched two startlingly brazen assaults on the property rights of foreign oil companies doing business in Russia; these events drastically alter the basic nature of the economy Russia would inject into the WTO bloodstream.

First, the Kremlin announced its intention to repudiate a production-sharing agreement on Russia????????s Sakhalin Island with ExxonMobil that had existed for more than a decade. In order to encourage exploration investments, the agreement called for new discoveries of reserves to be incorporated into ExxonMobil????????s interests, but a recent discovery was apparently large enough that the Kremlin didn????????t feel like sharing.

Then, the Kremlin moved against the other major foreign production base on Sakhalin, operated by Royal Dutch Shell, summarily revoking Shell????????s rights in the entire project and couching its revocation under the guise of an allegation that Shell had committed various environmental transgressions. This shocking action provoked a furious response from both the European Union and Japan. The Moscow Times reported:

EU Energy Commissioner Andris Piebalgs warned against the creation of an unstable investment environment that could halt future energy projects and disrupt global oil supplies. He took “this announcement very seriously indeed,” Piebalgs said in a statement, adding that he would soon discuss the issue with Industry and Energy Minister Viktor Khristenko. Shinzo Abe, Japan’s government spokesman and the man tipped to succeed Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi later this month, said the decision, which effectively suspends all work on the multibillion-dollar project, could harm diplomatic relations between the two countries.

The Guardian reported that ???????an asset grab by the Kremlin this winter in the frozen climes of Sakhalin would convince many that Russia is hell-bent on creating a new economic cold war??????? and indeed, for all the world, these look like moves to renationalize the Russian energy sector, a horrifying prospect indeed. The investment gurus at the Motley Fool website were apoplectic, condemning Russia????????s actions as follows:

“All I really need to know, I learned in kindergarten,” goes the saying. Here, at least. Over in Russia, I’m guessing it goes more like: “What I didn’t learn in dyetsky sad, I never learned.” Case in point: Russian President Vladimir Putin, who’s acting less like a “Vladimir” and more like a tantrum-throwing “Vova” with every passing day. The unhappy moral of this story (for investors): Beware of investing in Russia. Certain children over there have difficulty playing nice with others, and sharing their toys.

Does Russia intend to use this leverage to continue its support of rogue regimes (Venezuela, Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah) and to further repress its domestic society? The conclusion seems almost inescapable. And if Russia is indeed better referred to as the Neo-Soviet Union, ???????hell-bent??????? on provoking a new Cold War with the U.S., then it would not seem that its economy is suitable for melding with the WTO group.

Yet, one cannot exclude the possibility that Russia????????s actions are to be explained simply by the increasingly bold and brazen level of corruption that is taking over Russian society. As previously reported on Publius Pundit, three recent comprehensive studies by respected international organizations document this phenomenon, placing Russia at the same level of corruption as the impoverished African nation of Niger. While some nations with levels of corruption similar to that of Russia have been admitted to the WTO, including Niger itself (member since 1996) those nations do not present the same type of threat to world security that Russia does. If admitting Russia to the WTO would fuel its economy and make it more dangerous, then obviously WTO admission must be rejected.

III. Spurning International Law

On September 13th RIA Novosti reported that Mikhail Kamynin, official spokesman for Russia????????s Foreign Ministry, had announced that ???????Russia is against involving the UN General Assembly in the resolution of long-running conflicts in the former Soviet Union.??????? Russia blocked the issue from being added to the agenda of the General Committee of the U.N. General Assembly for discussion. Kamynin stated: ???????We have from the outset been against politicizing this issue and involving the General Assembly.??????? He rejected the idea of any U.N. involvement in the boiling republics of Abkhazia and South Ossetia in Georgia, as well as the self-proclaimed republic of Transdnestr in Moldova, saying: ???????Russia regards attempts to eliminate the existing mechanisms of resolving the Nagorno- Karabakh, Georgian-Abkhazian, Georgian-South Ossetian and Transdnestr conflicts as counter-productive.???????

These cavalier Neo-Soviet statements, spurning the jurisdiction of the U.N. within Russia????????s sphere of influence in the former USSR, may be a harbinger of what Russia would do as a WTO member: Accept the provisions it likes and benefits from, and reject the others.

Kim Zigfeld publishes the Russia blog La Russophobe.

President Evo Morales of Bolivia was the first Bolivian president ever to skip the famous Expocruz, the Santa Cruz cow show. He did so because he considers its denizens capitalists.

Out in Bolivia’s Butch-and-Sundance territory, nothing’s more important than this show. Miguel Centellas, in this post here, noted that Morales’ absence from the show worried his Cruceno parents every bit as much as renewed violence in the streets. He writes:

But threats by Evo’s supporters to shut down the Feria Expocruz, a small scale regional, industrial “world’s fair” in Santa Cruz has my parents worried (not least, of course, because they live near the fair’s site). I remember attending the event as a kid growing up in Bolivia. It was an opportunity for Santa Cruz businesses of all stripes (agricultural, chemical, industrial, etc.), as well as foreign companies (Chinese, Argentine, Brazilian, etc.) to showcase. In short, it was an annual celebration of the country’s dynamic economic engine. Efforts to disrupt this symbol of the very essence of the comit???? c????vico image of Santa Cruz ???????? “the Bolivia that works” ???????? could be disastrous.

On the front page of today’s La Razon, you can check out for yourself what Morales opted to miss in that annual Santa Cruz cow show:

Santa Cruz’s finest leading export
Source: La Razon, Bolivia

Manfred Nowak, the UN’s chief man on anti-torture, said today that torture in Iraq is worse now than it was under Saddam.

“What most people tell you is that the situation as far as torture is concerned now in Iraq is totally out of hand,” Mr Nowak said in Geneva.

“The situation is so bad many people say it is worse than it has been in the times of Saddam Hussein.”

The State Department is outraged about this, taking the comment as hypbole and moral relativism.

A State Department official in Washington, asked about Professor Nowak’s comments, told The Times: “How anyone could compare state-sanctioned torture under a dictator to the situation today is beyond us.

“We definitely don’t agree with his remarks. We don’t agree with his assessment of the situation at all.”

My personal dislike of the United Nations aside, the State Department’s main concern is where the blame is to be laid. Philosophically speaking, we Americans tend to view violent acts such as torture sponsored by the state as much more reprehensible than those committed by others. It is a mentality ingrained in us since the beginning of this country. So when we think of what happened under Saddam — the rampant torture, genocide, etc. — it is hard to believe that such a thing can happen when the dictator is behind bars.

I don’t think that Nowak was inherently placing blame on the United States for torture that goes on. Abu Ghraib was an isolated incident, and the current Iraqi government is nowhere near as brutal as Saddam Hussein’s regime was.

The torture that is happening in Iraq right now, though, is of a completely different nature. It is decentralized. Sunni insurgent groups and private militias connected to Shia political parties have usurped state power, effectively taking the law into their own hands. If we actually take a look at what Nowak said without being offended by it, we can see that in fact torture is rampant. It’s just being done differently.

According to the UN report, torture is rampant in Iraqi detention centres and in sectarian killings across the country.

Bodies found in the Baghdad morgue “often bear signs of severe torture including acid-induced injuries and burns caused by chemical substances, missing skin, broken bones - back, hands and legs - missing eyes, missing teeth and wound caused by power drill or nails,” the report said.

“You have terrorist groups, you have the military, you have police, you have these militias. There are so many people who are actually abducted, seriously tortured and finally killed,” Mr Nowak said.

“It????????s not just torture by the government. There are much more brutal methods of torture you????????ll find by private militias,” he added.

The problem of torture is exactly that — the militias. People like Moqtada al-Sadr doing as they please. This torture is not happening because the government is too strong, but because it is too weak to stop this from happening. They have been able to infiltrate the government and police forces, setting up torture chambers at times in the Interior Ministry itself. But most of the time it’s just done on the streets.

Everyday there is a new story about dozens of people being found tied up and shot dead in dark alleys. The numbers are staggering: violent civilian deaths in Baghdad reached over 100 a day in Baghdad during July. The ramifications of such brutality at the hands of these militias is disastrous. Society is being torn apart.

Fuck the blame. Whether it is Saddam committing torture or Moqtada al-Sadr’s men, it doesn’t matter. It’s still happening, and the impact is the same. Only now nobody knows who is doing what, and the cycle of revenge killing will go on until Iraq is no longer a country.

If it is to be a stable, democratic, and whole country, it is time to recognize the problem. Stop wasting time making stupid public statements about this and that when Saddam is no longer even an issue. If the State Department is going to talk, it needs to talk about what it can do to stop the rampant torture. Otherwise, buckle down. If the Iraqi government doesn’t start stepping up it’s only going to get worse.