While last week’s eulogy of President Niyazov that I posted was largely sarcastic and bordered on the maniacally gleeful, I did manage to go into some detail of what I thought would occur with regards to the transition from all Turkmenbashi, all the time to whatever form the next government takes. Mentioning the huge amount of natural gas the lies underneath those sands, there will certainly be a power struggle within the country unless its elites create some form of Politburo-style consensus powersharing.

There will certainly be no democratic transition, and this is certainly echoed by every major power that is calling for a “stable” transition. Turkmenistan is run by the big money elite who take beach trips to Europe while the vast majority remain illiterate and impoverished. To summarize, the people have no power. Turkmenistan is comparable to North Korea in this sense. It teeters between chaos or near-survival.

What I did not delve into now is what this means on the international scene, and what these influential actors will do to influence Turkmenistan’s internal politics to their benefit. From what I can tell, there will be no good outcome as the jockeying begins. The United States cannot afford to simply look on as other forces begin to move in, but again, its influence over Turkmenistan has always been weak at best so it may have no choice.

The following, therefore, are what I think the four possible outcomes are followed by a brief explanation:

1. Russia, becoming the world’s foremost gas monopoly, will exert its influence in order to get a pro-Russia leader installed. It simply cannot afford a rough transition that would lead to a decrease in gas supplies flowing from the country. This would be the least that would happen, as I don’t think any leader would be able to ignore Gazprom’s knocking. However, at the most, Russia would want to acquire all of Turkmenistan’s natural gas delivery infrastructure as it has attempted to do throughout all of the former CIS. It’s not enough to simply have a lot of gas — the key is in controlling the infrastructure. If Russia can get even more of it, combined with its attempts to do so in Belarus and even Western Europe, its dominance in the energy sector will be absolute.

2. Do to years of repression, both socio-religious and economic, traditionally secular Islamic Turkmenistan will experience an Islamic revival. If this isn’t a breeding ground for the radical form of this religion, I don’t know what is. For the United States (and even Russia), this would be a major strategic blow in the War on Terror, as a potentially radicalized population goes the way of the Chechens. Turkmenistan, with the world’s 5th largest natural gas reserves, will have a radical Islamic government with a ton of money to throw around. (Possible Iranian influence?)

3. With hundreds of thousands of security personnel, there is the potential for serious unrest in the country as rivals for power scramble in a free-for-all now that Turkmenbashi is gone. In this scenario, lots of people die, gas deliveries get cut off, and the body of the snake whithers now that the head is gone. It turns into a failed state; pure chaos.

4. The elites get together and decide by consensus who will replace Turkmenbashi so that they can all benefit. To me, this is the rational and self-interested position on their part. Due to Turkmenbashi being so paranoid, I would not be surprised if their ended up being a lot more cooperation in government now that he’s out of the way. I’m not sure as of yet if there will be a cleansing of his image, yet the propaganda has been so huge for so long they may have to keep up the myth so that the entire system doesn’t crumble. It is worth noting that since Turkmenistan is run like a business for the benefit of the elites’ personal wealth, I would not expect an expansion of political and civil liberties that would allow people to challenge this power and fortune. However, with more rational actors involved, we may see an expansion of economic freedoms.

Out of all the scenarios, number four is the one I expect the most. There has already been some shuffling in the regime, indicating that those with the most influence have neutralized any potential ambitions, and they have chosen the deputy prime minister as the favored presidential candidate. It seems to be a very stable transition, though as listed above, anything is possible. What was not listed above, however, is the possibility that Turkmenistan can have a successful transition to liberal democracy. I put it in the realm of near-impossibility. There are no structural factors conducive to it, and there are no strategic actors in the country who have the power and ability to effect it. Sad to say, but what we actually want is to hope for scenario four, because it could be the first step on a century-long journey to what could resemble democracy.

Merry Christmas everyone. It’s time for everyone to get some downtime in, and frankly the traffic just isn’t large enough over the holidays to warrant a large amount of posting! I personally am on my way to Madrid where I will spend the time off with my family. So everyone, stay safe and get lots of presents.

When I went to Venezuela late last year, I came back with the impression that it was heading well into Jim Jones territory. There was too much cult of personality there, starting with the gigantic Hugo Chavez billboard that greets you from Caracas airport before you take the highway into the shantytowns, and within the city, all the ‘Chavez IS the people’ posters, with him looking soulful and thoughtful, if not nauseastingly adored by small children gathered around his side. This imagery went well beyond the political and deep into the cultural realm, and beyond even cultural, to the religious realm.

Well, it turns out this may be more than an impression. Hugo Chavez is proposing to name himself the archbishop of his new quasi-Christian evangelical nationalist cult, with all of his ministers named archbishops. It’s like Jim Jones - the leftwing San Francisco Democratic-party machine cultie leader who took his own brand of far leftism deep into Guyana and tried to set up a whole new society there, remaking mankind from mud in 1978, until he ordered them all to commit suicide. It happened right next door to Venezuela. Now, like Jones, Chavez wants to be everything, renouncing history and remaking mankind from scratch. The guy is a nut.

In one way, his move seems to echo the clerisy power the Church once held over all Latin American society, but I think it’s more than that - it’s an effort to remake society in his own image, for his own glorification and it’s so Jim Jones I can’t believe it.

Given what he is doing to Venezuela’s economy, Chavez’s third term won’t just be a passive administration, but now with his bishop thing, a la Jim Jones, have the full Flavr-Aid ending, too. Miguel at Devil’s Excrement has plenty of new evidence for that, in his excellent posts here, here and here.

Jim Jones is back in Venezuela and he’s already serving his purple Kool-Aid!
Source: Radio Cristiandad

Hat tips: Venezuela Today
and Free Republic

The great and illustrious leader of Turkmenistan, Saparmurat Niyazov, died today from a heart attack.

Pretty impressive way to go for a guy who was supposed to live forever in all of his godliness.

Of all the countries in the world, Turkmenistan is perhaps one of the worst in terms of poverty, economic and politics freedoms, and just about every other indicator to the general health of the society. Turkmenbashi was able to create such a utopian society through the careful construction of a massive cult of personality since the end of the Soviet Union. In fact, the man has so warped the country based on his narcassistic ego that if you were to ask, “What is Turkmenistan?” the answer would be: Turkmenbashi.

A list of his crowning achievements, both economic, political, and cultural, since he came to power oh so long ago:

- Successfully renamed the months and days of the week after himself and close family members in order to reflect the ancestral legacy of the country.
- He is an accomplished author, having written a work of nonfiction called the Ruhnama, which has and always will be the best selling book in all of Turkmenistan, beloved by schoolchildren and adults alike!
- His image is constantly craved by the people for all his godliness, so statues and pictures of his face have been placed in every public area, on currency, and on vodka bottles. The people dedicated a 120 foot gold statue in his honor, a monument so beautiful that the sun rotates around it.
- Has upheld the public morality by public music, ballets, and operas.
- Turkmenbashi is so all-knowing that the people give him their greatest confidence, so when parliament meets, they approve all of his plans and even made him president for life.

Turkmenistan also owes the following accomplishments to their great and powerful leader:

- Rank 155 out of 159 on Transparency International’s “most corrupt countries” list.
- The worst score possible for both political rights and civil liberties on Freedom House’s “freedom in the world” list.
- Over 50% of the population is living in poverty.
- All independent media is banned.
- All political parties except for his are banned.
- Most religions are banned.
- NGOs are effectively banned.
- If you can think of it, it’s probably banned.

That Turkmenbashi has created such a huge cult of personality for himself while leaving the country in tatters, much like North Korea, means that his death could bring great political instability to the country unless those under him have a plan for succession. Turkmenbashi, unlike most dictators, was able to centralize so much power to himself that he was a threat to anyone else with power — a cause for much jealousy and ire from those below, which caused him to constantly purge his government.

Given the huge amount of natural gas wealth that is ripe for the extracting, I anticipate that that there will be an immense struggle for power unless there is something of a power-sharing agreement. We will either see the elites tear themselves apart or form a Politburo-style committee of all the major groups that will come to a consensus on who the new leader shall be. If the Soviet Union is any example, we may also see, much like what happened following Stalin’s death, a de-Turkmenbashi-ization in which the entire cult of personality is torn down in favor of a little more function.

Personally, I don’t see how Turkmenistan can become any worse than it already is. If anything, barring a situation where violence erupts, the death of a singular leader based on a cult of personality will lead to a situation where the elites don’t have to be as paranoid, which ultimately would mean a more relaxed policy toward economic and possibly even civil liberties.

In this case, one man’s end could be the beginning of a much better future (at least comparatively!) for Turkmenistan.

RIA Novosti recently reported that from January through September of this year Russia received about $17.4 billion in foreign direct investment (FDI) and slightly more, about $17.9 billion, in the form of international financial organizations’ loans and trade credits. At about $2 billion per month, we can project that Russia will have no more than $24 billion in FDI by year????????s end. Russia is a nation of about 140 million people. That means that Russia has an annual per capita FDI of roughly $170 per person. Virtually all of this investment is attributable to investment in Russia????????s energy sector, specifically foreign attempts to get a piece of Russia????????s oil and gas reserves, and exists only because the price of oil has risen dramatically. Moreover, these are the Kremlin????????s own numbers; in other words, it????????s the most FDI Russia possibly could have, and is likely a vast overstatement.

Russia ranks #123 on the Heritage Foundation????????s Index of Economic Freedom. Only 35 countries in the world have lower scores for economic freedom than Russia. Poland ranks #41 on the survey. In 2005, Poland received $7.7 billion in FDI. Its population is less than 40 million, one-third the size of Russia. Per capita, Poland had over $190 in annual FDI, 12% more than Russia. Having no oil or gas assets to speak of, virtually all of this investment is targeted towards the real Polish economy, businesses that provide jobs and have real meaning to ordinary people, and it doesn’t depend on the vagaries of the oil market. Still, even at its relatively puny level, the amount of cash hapless foreigners have been willing to thrust blindly into the Russian market has been cause for concern as an indication that the world was still to some extent languishing in a rose-tinted haze where Russia is concerned.

Now there are signs that the world is waking up to the reality that investing in Russia, even the energy sector, is a fool????????s errand. Bloomberg analyst Matthew Lynn recently sounded a strong warning against further investment in Russia based on the Kremlin????????s relentless assault on the foreign oil companies who invested in exploration of Russia????????s oil reserves located on the far western Sakhalin Island, especially Royal Dutch Shell. Lynn writes:

Anglo-Dutch oil company Royal Dutch Shell Plc has been threatened with lawsuits from the Russian government, which is tightening its grip on the country’s energy industry. The treatment of Shell is the most shameful episode so far. Shell’s development of the $22 billion Sakhalin-2 oil and gas field off Russia’s Pacific coastline is one of the biggest foreign investments made in the country since the collapse of the communist regime 15 years ago. Sakhalin-2 is the only major oil and gas field in Russia that is wholly foreign-owned, so it was only a matter of time before Russian President Vladimir Putin decided to bring it under state control. The government plans to lodge a claim of at least $10 billion in environmental damages against Shell. State-owned energy company OAO Gazprom is now conveniently positioning itself to buy half of the project. Shell has brought its offshore-drilling techniques to the Sakhalin-2 field. It has invested a huge amount of capital. Now, it looks as if the company will be harassed until it agrees to sell a big chunk of its assets to Gazprom, no doubt at a knock-down price. This way of doing business might be normal in some countries. Yet it has no place among major companies from developed nations. It is an outrageous maneuver by Putin and the Russian government. One wonders why U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair has flown off to make another doomed attempt at bringing peace to the Middle East when he could be deploying his self-proclaimed diplomatic genius to help one of his country’s biggest companies.

He concludes: ???????Russia’s treatment of Shell should serve as a warning. The country may soon become a no-go area for global companies. It is developing a narrow-minded economic chauvinism that even the French would find embarrassing. The best response from big business would be to stay away. Sure, you can make a quick buck in Russia. The trouble is that you can lose it just as fast if the government bullies you out of what you have created. Until Russia starts playing by the rules as part of the global economy, foreign investment should be shifted elsewhere.???????

In other words, it’s theoretically possible for a corporation like Shell to make money by going into a casino and plonking its cash down on the Wheel of Fortune. But Shell doesn’t do so, for obvious reasons, and it’s time the world realized, as Shell is undoubtedly now doing, that Russia is no different than a gambling casino when it comes to FDI. In fact, in some ways it’s worse: After all, very few actual casinos have access to the Soviet Union’s Siberian prison colonies.

The Shell saga can be viewed as the end of a war which was declared by the Kremlin when it arrested the founder of the Yukos oil company, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, on trumped-up tax charges just after Khodorkovsky started being talked about as a future presidential candidate (Khodorkovsky was summarily railroaded into prison and will spend a decade freezing in Siberia; compared to others who dared to challenge the Kremlin, like Alexander Litvinenko and Anna Politkovskaya, he could be considered lucky). The saga can also be viewed as the formal beginning of Cold War II between the West and Russia. Robert Amsterdam, one of Khodorkovsky????????s lawyers, uses stronger language than Lynn to describe the Kremlin????????s actions against foreign investors and condemns not only the Kremlin but the weak-kneed Western press that has failed to adequately report the Kremlin????????s actions:

In reviewing the media coverage of Shell and Gazprom????????s ???????business negotiations??????? over the Sakhalin-2 natural gas project this week, one would be led to believe that these were fair and equitable talks, held by two partners within a constructive and rules-based framework. This obscene characterization by the Canadian press in particular is a travesty ???????? a euphemism used to conceal a crime of appropriation without compensation. The fact is that we should all know we are dealing with state-sanctioned criminality here, and while a corporation is held a gunpoint by the opportunists of Gazprom and their friends in the Kremlin, and the media does the business and political community a great disservice by reporting the story the way many of them they are. What we are really witnessing here is essentially a hostage-taking, not business negotiations. We would be closer to reality if we imagined armed troops storming the Sakhalin-2 platforms and pipeline routes ???????? rather than businesspeople sitting at a negotiating table. Can we just call a spade a spade, please?

Amsterdam points out that while some western investors have been eager to access potential profits in Russia’s energy sector, Russian’s own firms have been pulling up stakes in the country for some time now while the KGB has tightened its chokehold on the nation (as Publius Pundit previously reported). Amsterdam writes:

However, this enthusiasm to take on Russian risk is incongruous with the bearish behavior of many Russian firms, which seem to be hedging their bets on future instability in Russia and displaying their unease with the upcoming elections. One of the most high profile of these firms is Sistema, which is seeking a large stake in Deutsche Telekom in exchange for control over MTS - Russia’s largest mobile phone operator. This Russian eagerness to sell their own risk and move their money outside of the country is widespread, demonstrated by other major deals such as Severstal’s failed move on Arcelor, the Vneshtorgbank stake in EADS, and the move of record numbers of IPOs to New York and London. While it is not yet clear what these reverse flows mean for the future of the Russian economy, we should all pay very close attention to these kinds of incongruities. There is a long history of opacity and misinformation in Russia, in regards to both macroeconomic data and production figures from the energy industry - the main engine of growth. Combine this with the demonstrated inability of banks such as ABN AMRO and DKW to clearly communicate political risk to their shareholders, and you have a potentially dangerous situation.

There are two fundamental realities on FDI in Russia, either one of which alone should be more than enough to scare off even the most risk-happy venture capitalists. One is the fundamental, systemic corruption that pervades all levels of Russian society, the absence of the rule of law. Only now are the consequences of this reality becoming fully apparent to the West, although the warning signs have been obvious for a long time (we here at Publius Pundit have been sounding the warning call for months now).

The other fundamental reality on Russian FDI is still less well understood: that it simply isn’t in the Kremlin’s interests. In a “normal” country like Poland, foreign investment is a godsend, and it would certainly be good for Russia’s people, too. But the interests of Russia’s people and those of the Kremlin are, as they have always been, diametrically opposed. The regime exists in a permanent state of conflict of interest with its own people. FDI would create centers of power in Russia that would become independent of the Kremlin’s control. Inevitably, those centers of power would turn into centers of dissent, calling for legal reform and other measures to rein in the arbitrary, lawless actions of the Kremlin that are bad for business. They would also seek to uplift the condition of Russia’s population, which would be their workforce. It’s hard to believe, but just as the Kremlin is capable of seeing FDI as a threat, it’s also capable of seeing any other action that could make the population healthier and stronger as a bad thing. A sick, terorrized population is much easier to control than a healthy, questioning one — and the Kremlin simply doesn’t have the resources to effect the kind of totalitarian measures in effect in the glory days of the USSR. Not yet, anyway. For now at least, it has no choice but to keep the population weak and isolated from foreign influence as best it can, in order to maximize the mechanisms of control that are available to it.

But the Kremlin’s fear of Royal Dutch Shell, and Anna Politkovskaya, can also be its undoing. The weakness it confirms by acting against them is conclusive evidence that a window of opportunity is open for the West to challenge the neo-Soviet regime before it can consolidate its government and consign the world to another decades-long cold war conflict that could explode into disaster at any time. Action would also save the Russians from themselves, since the Kremlin’s crazed policies will ultimately destroy the Russian regime just as they brought down the USSR. Russia is a pale shadow of the USSR, and the cloud-like states that would replace Russia after such a debacle could create a crisis that would make Africa look like a 4-H project.

Kim Zigfeld publishes the Russia blog La Russophobe.

A The Belmont Club Richard Fernandez discusses the propaganda of Islamic radicals who, at the moment, are ten steps ahead of the West in terms of spreading its message. The speed at which the message is spreading, the reach that it is attaining, and the sheer quantity cannot hope to be matched by the bureaucratic structures of Western Europe when terrorists operate fast and free-cell.

The unique nature of the enemy poses a great challenge for the United States in its war in Iraq. While it can never be defeated militarily, it can easily be demolished politically if it doesn’t fight back — and soon. Winning the hearts and minds of the Islamic world has been hard enough, but for them it’s been pie in the sky. Propaganda is now crossing borders in many language, feeding on what seems to be a popular sport these days: Anti-Americanism.

Richard writes about the complexities and complications:

One security analyst I heard speak claimed that practically every insurgent operation in Iraq had a video camera unit attached, but until recently practically all Jihadi video was in Arabic. “Arabic is the language of the ÄSunni SalafistÅ Jihad, and Jihadi videos were not even widely distributed in places like Indonesia or even Pakistan because they were in Arabic.” But that has changed, he said, and now the videos were making their appearance in English, sometimes in American Internet forums, and that for the first time Jihadi propaganda was being produced in German. The connection with Germany was momentarily incomprehensible until the history of the 9/11 attackers came to mind. Et in arcadia ego sum. The overarching purpose of those videos was to demonstrate American mortality and the vulnerability of the West. To spread the word that it is fun and easy to hunt Americans. The American officer who had authored the counterinsurgency lessons learned in Anbar, Capt. Travis Patriquin, himself died in combat, but not before warning that the ideas which eventually killed him were leaping over borders into the wider world.

The virulence of this meme is suggested by the circumstance that, in order to charge it, an unending supply of snuff films was required. And the importance of the media, as a sphere of combat was illustrated by Patriquin’s claim that the kinetic impact of insurgent operations themselves was itself subordinate to collecting the video of the operations. Lastly, the lethality of this meme is highlighted by the fact that those infected by it ‘cannot be coerced — only killed or captured”. A movie producer, confronted by the essentials of this narrative might only be able to depict it in terms of an incurable plague whose progress can only be stopped by quarantine and extinguishment. It would need a science fiction-horror movie script to adequately describe the actual reality of virtual Jihad. The grist needed to feed this dark spirit comes from everywhere. Gaza, Chechnya, Palestine all provide their share of footage.

But coldly regarded the virtual Jihad poses a formidable challenge because it uses the very sinews of an open society as a vector to spread, in particular the media and the Internet. And while physical Jihadis can be effectively met by traditional arms — including counterinsurgency — the West is still casting about for a method to meet the dark spirit of the virtual Jihad with a puissant spirit of its own. Five hundred years ago, a simpler world accused to living in the diurnal cycles would have no trouble accepting the notion of a natural truggle between a Demon and some Angel with a Flaming Sword. But in a modern world that can neither conceive of Demons nor invoke the aid of Angels, what notation is left to describe that aspect of warfare which Captain Patriquin posthumously warned us against? In mathematical history, the solution to a problem often awaited the advent of a notation. The machinery to be able to process a problem. The success of military science against the physical Jihad is owed partially to the existence of vocabulary about how to think about kinetic warfare. But for fighting the virtual Jihad we have no words. No name for the threat it represents, not even a name for our enemies.

The entire debate reminds me of a big news story a few years ago. The American Air Force bombs a wedding party near a Syrian border. Videotapes show people dressed up and celebrating before the destruction occurs. International and domestic outrage is hurled. Only… it wasn’t a wedding party. American military forces had been monitoring the convoy for some time. Having crossed the Syrian border with drugs, money, and weapons, the so-called wedding party was doing business with the insurgents. So they got blown up. However, due to military declassification procedure, it was many days before actual video of the events that took place was released to the media. And by that time, it was no longer a new story. Because the media didn’t make as big a deal out of the truth as it did the propaganda video created, people had one more reason to hate America.

It would be impossible for a centralized structure to find enough smart individuals who can engage in quick and effective counter-propaganda. Such an institution could never compete with the decentralized nature, not to mention the sheer number, of Islamic radicals working hard to make the world hate America just a little more each day. It is especially impossible — within a reasonable amount of time — to do so when its already existing institutions are completely in disarray. It has been revealed that less than a dozen of the staffers at the U.S. embassy to Iraq are even fluent in Arabic!

And the West hopes to win on the information front?…

Richard discusses the impact that blogs make, but even he knows that this is certainly not enough. If anything, they can only help stave the onslaught, as the terrorists find a willing participant in liberal democracy’s birth child, free media, to spread misinfornation and propaganda without batting eyelash or a hardball question. In essence, they are able to use liberal democracy’s best features as a mode for civilizational self-suicide. They are infecting Western society with a virus, much like HIV, that lowers its ability — no, desire — to defend itself from within, at which point it will disintegrate from a crisis of its own making.

There is one way to fight it, however. Radical Islam’s legitimacy is rested on two main principles: firstly the illegitimacy and immorality of the West, and secondly its own superiority. Groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah have bolstered themselves well by applying these two points by constantly propagandizing against the West (but America and Israel in particular), and opening various social services such as schools and clinics where they operate.

The first principle is almost irrelevant. It can only be staved off and hopefully immunized within Western civilization itself, but it is unlikely that such efforts will be successful in the Islamic world at any point in the near future. Giving up as a civilization, therefore living in a way that is suitable to the Islamic radicals, is the only way until they themselves somehow become delegitimized by whatever new ideology arises.

Commenter at the Belmont Club hyperborealis writes:

In her essay on the Nazi propagandist Reifenstahl, Sontag noted that the Nuremberg rallies were staged for the sake of Riefenstahl’s documentary. Likewise, she argued that in some sense Hitler staged the world war for the sake of the films from the front which apparently he would watch obsessively. Wretchard, you are making Lee Harris’ point about Islamic fascism being a fantasy ideology: it is only in the movies, the terrorists’ little videos, that their lives can seem glorious and their beliefs seem real.

This is exactly right, so it is the second point that must be met head on.

I contend that, contrary to many realists and even many advocates who have abandoned their positions in recent months, that democracy is and will always be the answer to the problem of Islamic radicalism. These groups breed in constant opposition; whether to the United States or their country’s own regime. They can do and say whatever they want because their actions and words have no consequences for them politically except to only boost their popularity. However, many of these groups have never been put in the position to lead an entire country. Putting them in the position to do so through free and fair democratic elections is exactly what’s needed.

Of course, the natural argument against this is that it is pointless to hold democratic elections if an undemocratic force comes to power, simply to reverse the process. This is exactly what happened in Palestine, where Hamas has come to power through free elections. In the long-run, this is precisely what needs to happen. Secular Arab-nationalism’s various dictatorships all across the Middle East have discredited themselves through failed policies over the past couple generations, preparing the breeding ground in their wake the alternative ideology of pan-Islamism that is currently taking hold. If an Islamic party such as Hamas is in power through elections, decides to hijack the electoral process recently won by the Palestinian people, and holds power while accomplishing little for them, the same process will unfold. Thus radical Islam, instead of being a virus for the West, will be a virus for itself. Just look at Iran, where generations born following the Islamic Revolution are ready for a secular, democratic republic.

That is the miracle effect that democracy can have on the region. Radical Islam will either die from illegitimacy or reform to the point where they are no different from other moderate political Islamist groups such as those in Kuwait or the Gulf states. Those authoritarian regimes who begin reform now increase the chance that they will maintain participation in any future government without being completely overthrown. Those who do not, will be. Yet either way, when Islamists gain power, they do so at the risk of following the path of their predecessors if they continue their strong-arm tactics.

The process will be long and hard, but worth it. Just as it took nearly a half-century of the Cold War for communism to discredit itself as an alternative to liberal democracy, so too will it take generations for the same to happen to radical Islam. Have hope — in this day of information and technology, I am betting that it will be sooner rather than later.

This is why it is important to continue pushing for democracy in the Middle East. Many gains have been made in the past few years. It would be ridiculous to give up now just because Hamas wins an election and the Muslim Brotherhood score 1/4 of the seats in Egypt’s parliament. This seemingly disastrous result is actually desirable. There is little the West can do directly to fight the ideology on its own turf. Radical Islam must discredit itself. That so many previous advocates of democracy in the Middle East have given up because of this is regrettable. I just hope that they haven’t gained any clout in the Bush administration.

The news of the defeat of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s allies in elections for both local councils as well as the Assembly of Experts is good news to those of us who want to see the influence of the madman diminished. The winners are a general alliance between former President Rafsanajani’s “pragmatic” conservatives and reformists, an alliance which could make way for a slow transition even past where Iran was before Ahmadinejad took power. Here is the Guardian’s article on the subject:

The Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, faced electoral embarrassment today after the apparent failure of his supporters to win control of key local councils and block the political comeback of his most powerful opponent.

Early results from last Friday’s election suggested throughout Iran returning a majority of reformists and moderate fundamentalists opposed to Mr Ahmadinejad.

Compounding his setback was the success of Hashemi Rafsanjani, an influential pragmatist and fierce critic of the president’s radical policies. Mr Rafsanjani - whom Mr Ahmadinejad defeated in last year’s presidential election - received the most votes in elections to the experts’ assembly, a clerical body empowered to appoint and remove Iran’s supreme leader. By contrast, Ayatollah Mohammed-Taghi Mesbah-Yazdi, Mr Ahmadinejad’s presumed spiritual mentor, came sixth.

Analysts attributed Mr Rafsanjani’s resurgence to his newly-found status as a saviour of the reformists, the liberal movement that shunned him as a hated symbol of the establishment when it held power. Mr Rafsanjani has been increasingly identified with reformers since last year’s presidential election and many voters turned to him to voice anger at Mr Ahmadinejad.

Reformists hailed the poll - billed by many as Mr Ahmadinejad’s first electoral test since taking office - as a “major defeat” for the president, but they also warned that the slowness in declaring returns could indicate an underhand attempt to rig the outcome. The interior ministry, which is in the hands of Mr Ahmadinejad’s supporters, oversees the counting of ballots.

The result is not at all surprising for two reasons. The big and obvious one is that during the 2005 presidential election, the liberals and reformists backed out, completely abstaining from the vote. They believed the elections to be rigged, and when Ahmadinejad won exactly the total that Supreme Leader Khamenei predicted, this became obvious. Now that the liberals, reformists, and old guard conservatives are teaming up against him, this alliance of convenience has created a huge victory that should reduce Ahmadinejad’s ability to influence internal politics considerably.

The second reason is very important, and has nothing truly to do with Ahmadinejad’s confrontation with the West over Iran’s nuclear program. It’s all about his internal policies, something that has been destroying the economy. In this Ahmadinejad differs from his predecessors in a very large way, which has provoked the current backlash. Beside being an Islamic fundamentalist, Ahmadinejad is a populist of the Hugo Chavez type. In essence his government is not simply theocratic, but an Islamic dictatorship of the proletariat.

His policies are isolating the Iranian people from the world, pushing whatever business is left to flee. The economy is in shatters and people are losing jobs. So in this sense, he has failed much more than Hugo Chavez to create a perception by the poor that his leadership has raised their standard of living. Because of this many are becoming disillusioned with his campaign promises and seeing hope in the opposing alliance. His support is coming from only the most ideological of the people, a fervent minority that is propping up his power. Ahmadinejad is also empowering the ideological Basij militia, a one-million man morality police that is increasingly loyal to the president.

Besides the disenchanted, the Old Guard that basically facilitated his rise to power is turning on him as well. As if to show that the electoral process in Iran is extremely screwed up, candidates are screened for eligibility beforehand. This means that some reformers, but many fundamentalists, were not allowed to run because of their political allegiances. While I am sure that these fundamentalists would not have increased Ahmadinejad’s count significantly, it is a move that only testifies to the corruption of Iran’s supposed electoral system. It was a move designed to limit Ahmadinejad’s power and prevent the same topsy-turvy revolution that he is exporting elsewhere from radically occurring domestically.

What happens next with this regard will be interesting, as he knows that while he has made many enemies within the system, he is deriving most of his power from without it from diehard supporters and a loyal, deadly militia. Will the sides come to blows eventually? It’s possible. Some reports show that Revolutionary Guards troops have stormed vote counting centers, literally pointing guns at people’s heads unless they falsify the election in Ahmadinejad’s favor. People are becoming extremely suspicious because, even though preliminary results are out, the final count is not being announced by the government while all of this goes on. And to add to the suspicion, it is Ahmadinejad’s buddies who are in charge of the vote counting process.

Whether the reformer/conservative alliance begins to take over or Ahmadinejad holds on through force and falsehoods, there is a domestic crisis brewing in Iran. In the first case, they will try to steer the country away from his most extreme policies and put a corrective course for Iran’s economy. In the latter, the people will know that Ahmadinejad blatantly stole the election when he was unwanted. If this happens, I wholely expect the reformers and conservatives to start a campaign for taking the country back. Whatever that campaign is, whether something secret and grassroots or mass protests in the face of police action, it will happen if they are motivated enough. The Iranian government could be brought to the brink.

Good news (besides the obvious)? Hard fought battles against extremist and authoritarian presidents usually results in some kind of structural reform to the political system, a mouth-watering prospect.

Slavery, and human sacrifices, are the two great historic curses of our hemisphere that took vast amounts of blood and treasure and time to wipe out after great struggles.

But amid these eradications, which were thought to be for good, the seeds of these evils apparently still exist. That’s why we are seeing slavery recrudesce. Who should be the caudillo to first to re-introduce that to our hemisphere? Why, the leader most in touch with his inner barbarism - Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez.

Chavez is proposing to rope in every Venezuelan from ages 18 to 60 to “contribute” free labor to his favored shantytown projects. Whether he wants to or not. It’s not a voluntary program, but a forced one, under the socialist guise of ‘everyone pitch in together’ - something which works but only when it is voluntary, not compulsory. And it will be in the slums, at the direction of the nearest chavista commissar. Don’t like the area you are posted to? Too bad, the biggest dissidents will get the scariest slums, as an unofficial means of executing dissidents through the good offices of Venezuela’s abundant criminals.

Anyone without a bodyguard in those slums, (which Lonely Planet warns even backpackers never to set foot in), is likely to be robbed or killed as the thugs in these shantytowns see the easy pickings. Even the Cuban doctors have fled to the West due to the atrocious crime, and possibly because such a high number has defected, Chavez has decreed that all Venezuelans will donate free, unpaid labor to his pet projects like Mision Barrio Adentro, which is his Cuban doctor-cum-spy program, Mision Robinson, and other education and literacy programs, despite the fact that Venezuelans have paid taxes for years to educate illegal immigrants, who make up the vast majority of shantytown residents who are now Chavez’s favored voting bloc. Now not only must they pay taxes to Venezuela’s do-nothing union teachers, they also must do the teaching of the slum-dwellers themselves, despite the fact that the Chavistas have already declared they have ended all illiteracy. I guess this is as good an admission as any that they have not. Meanwhile, the shantytown dwellers will value this labor for exactly what they paid for it - which is nothing - and Venezuelans forced into these programs will put all the energy into it that unpaid forced chattel labor usually gets.

Meanwhile, don’t think the middle class Venezuelans forced into these “programs” by force will be able to teach the slum dwellers how to read most efficiently - they will be forced to use Marxist texts and Marxist indoctrination, and are likely to be set upon by Chavista repudiation mobs if they don’t - probably even if they do. The whole point of this forced labor is political revenge.

The Chavista move toward forced labor on the working level population is obviously a bid to get back at all his political opponents by enslaving them for a certain amount of time. It’s like being on a hacienda, and forced to pay tribute to the mint-julep-drinking planter in his wide Panama hat, as had happened in the past. Suddenly, everyone’s a peon now, except the wealthy Chavista elite, who claim credit for bettering the lives of the people. Trouble is, they are enslaving people and hypocritically calling it bettering their lives, as if some people are natural slaves, as Aristotle posited, or grosser still, being a slave is a condition a slave likes, as the Southern plantation owners used to claim.

It’s all the same slavery. Chavez has vowed to accelerate the Cubanization of his country with his ‘election,’ and this is a significant step toward it. Chavez calls it ‘revolutionary democracy and here’s who Chavez got the idea from: his own mentor, Fidel Castro, who regularly forces Cubans to donate one day a week in unpaid labor for the glorification of Castro’s island carcel. The place looks like hell, and is known as Cuba.

UPDATE: Bloomberg has even more disgusting detail here.

UPDATE: Miguel at Devil’s Excrement has the first on-the-ground report of this disgusting communist forced program, and its implications. Be sure to check out what he has to say about Viveza Criolla it will make you snicker in a black-humor kind of way, here.

UPDATE: Daniel at Venezuela News & Views has some excellent new material and a translation of a good Venezuelan article by a Venezuelan on this assault on human rights in this post here.

YouTube is a great site. I’ve seen videos thay have ranged from the hilarious to the downright terrible; a feature of user-driven content. Perhaps another feature is that everyone who posts video is merely trying to become the most popular user by appealing to the masses, usually through comedy, which is why it is rare to find incredible quality and depth of message in a site where so much time is dedicated to making people laugh.

Here at Publius, not only did we extensively cover the Cedar Revolution in Lebanon, which revealed a strong desire in its public for a liberal and democratic society, but we predicted its inevitability. Yet, with the Hezbollah-Israeli war and the terrorist group’s rising power, along with that of Syria and Iran (again), the episode unfolding as Lebanon begins to lose its precious and young democracy is nothing short of heart-breaking. Admittedly, I have not written about Lebanon for awhile for this very reason. However…

The following YouTube video is something that everyone should watch. Not just everyone, but every last man, woman, and child in Lebanon who cares about Lebanon. While I’m sure many Lebanese have seen it before the video even made it to YouTube, its a reminder to them that Lebanon, just like an America, is an idea and a dream of the people who live in it, and not just the war-zone that its political leaders have made it into.

The end: “When will we become Lebanese?”

Bolivians resist the destruction of their freedom and property and their eventual forced work in Marxist collectives

How the citizens of Santa Cruz view Evo Morales

Santa Cruz is loaded with pro-freedom anti-communist babes

Indians don’t like their freedoms taken away either, Indians are protesting the Marxist Morales who also is Indian. However, with guys like him around, Morales cannot claim to speak for all Indians. As for Reuters’s headlines, yeah, this guy looks like a real wealthy oligarch all right.

Notice that it’s Bolivians of every color at the march against Morales

Bolivians march for autonomy in productive and outward-looking Santa Cruz, in a freedom movement that is growing rapidly.
Source: AP and Reuters, via Yahoo! News

Today a huge freedom march is happening in Bolivia’s Santa Cruz region. The productive party of the country, which is slimily called ‘wealthy’ by the imbeciles writing headlines at Reuters, is seeking automony from the ruthless caudillo-like oppression of Bolivian President Evo Morales, who is Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez’s little vassal and plaything. Twenty-two people have been wounded, is the latest news. Morales calls the autonomy movement for freedom treason.

I’ll update more later and include blog reports. For now, check the MABB and Ciao! blogs for latest updates, both of the Miguels who write them are going to know about this.

UPDATE: More photos from the march. And check out GatewayPundit’s take on this, he has more.

Bolivians march against communism in Santa Cruz
Source: Reuters, via Yahoo! Brasil, and Opinion, of Cochabamba, Bolivia and AP, via Yahoo! UK & Ireland

UPDATE: Miguel at MABB has an excellent update of the significance of these protests and they are very significant Don’t miss it - Read it here.

When KGB spy Yuri Andropov (pictured above) expired as leader of the USSR after only sixteen months in office, the West breathed a sigh of relief. Power passed from the first KGB spy to rule Russia into the hands of Mikhail Gorbachev, who seemed far less threatening (even though he was a close associate of Andropov’s). When the USSR itself then collapsed without a shot being fired, many breathed a deep sigh of relief at the West????????s good fortune. Little did they think that the Andropov????????s KGB might return to power in Russia in exactly the same manner.

Analyst Pavel Simonov traces the KGB????????s return to power in Russia back to 1998, when ???????a former non-staff assistant of Andropov, the ex-head of Foreign Intelligence, Evgeny Primakov, headed the government. The following spring the former chief of FSB (main successor of the KGB), Sergey Stepashin, replaced him. In parallel, representatives of the democratic camp had almost disappeared from governmental structures; the foreign policy of the state was turning back to the traditional Soviet course. In the autumn of 1999, a former officer of the KGB and ex-director of FSB, Vladimir Putin, became the new head of the cabinet.???????

Under Putin, the transition to KGB rule has proceeded with alarming speed, so that today ???????one study has concluded that 78% of leading political figures, heads of departments of the Presidential administration, all members of the government and members of both chambers of parliament, heads of federal structures and heads of executive power and legislature in regions, somehow in their career have been connected with the KGB or the organizations that had come to replace it.??????? A stunning 26% of the group actually admits openly to prior KGB service.

Last Tuesday, an article in the Washington Post by Peter Finn laid bare the horrors of the KGB????????s new ascendancy in Russia. Finn wrote:

On Nov. 15, the Russian Interior Ministry and Gazprom, the state-controlled energy giant, announced three new senior appointments. Oleg Safonov was named a deputy head of the ministry. Yevgeny Shkolov became head of its economic security department. And Valery Golubev was appointed a deputy chief executive at Gazprom. All three men had something important in common beyond the timing of their promotions: backgrounds as KGB officers and experience working directly with President Vladimir Putin when he was a KGB operative himself in Germany or later, when he was a rising presence in the local government of St. Petersburg, his home town.

Commenting in Foreign Policy magazine, Yevgenia Albats, one of the world????????s leading civilian experts on the KGB, stated:

Reform of the KGB never really happened. The organization was broken into several agencies in the early 1990s, but the reforms were abandoned,especially after ÄVladimirÅ Putin became president. The KGB????????s capacity to be a political organization is back. And unlike the Soviet era, the secret services are now in full power. ÄPutinÅ was a lieutenant colonel in the FSB Äthe KGB????????s successor agencyÅ and all his major associates and deputies in the Kremlin are former KGB employees. Major Russian monopolies such as Gazprom and the railroad monopoly are controlled by former KGB agents. Overall, some 6,000 former or current intelligence officers are in the executive ÄbranchÅ and legislature.

And The Independent chillingly reminded us:

Shortly after his election as Russian President in 2000, Vladimir Putin was driven to the headquarters of the former KGB in central Moscow to celebrate the anniversary of the founding of the Soviet secret police. The former KGB colonel, a Soviet-era spy in East Germany who later reached the pinnacle of the security services by becoming the first civilian director of the KGB’s domestic successor organisation, the FSB, was returning to his spiritual home. Inside the Lubyanka, the new Kremlin leader addressed 300 of the former KGB’s finest. “Instruction number one of the attaining of full power has been completed,” he dead-panned. Six years on, Mr Putin’s joke looks more like a statement of fact. The poisoning of the ex-FSB agent Alexander Litvinenko in London, which according to at least one Russian commentator has cast relations with the West back to the days of the Cold War, has placed Mr Putin’s links to his former FSB colleagues under fresh scrutiny.

The Independent quoted Jonathan Stern, a Russia expert who is the director of natural gas research at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies, as noting that ???????plenty of former MI5 employees are now in top jobs in British industry.??????? But Stern pointed out a key difference between Russia and Britain: ???????a small group of people are controlling very, very large state assets, and that is a concern.??????? Stern might also have mentioned the fact that Britain has no history of its secret police being used to build and run a ???????gulag archipelago??????? that killed more Britons than Adolf Hitler and ultimately drove the country into oblivion. It????????s also possible that a general education in Britain leaves one a bit more familiar with the basic principles of capitalist economics and better prepared to run a business than does a Soviet or Russian variant. Apologists for Putin are fond of pointing out that George H.W. Bush was a former spymaster too. They ignore, however, that Bush was never a career field operative, and he had been elected to office before becoming president with full public debate or the significance of his role. Putin has never participated in a single debate on any topic, much less his secret resume. In bizarre fashion, these apologists will condemn Alexander Litvinenko for his KGB ties while at the same time letting Putin off scot-free for his own, much deeper ties. Unlike Litvinenko, who defected to the West, Putin still maintains pride in his KGB heritage.

On top of that, as The Independent reported, there is no analogy between the Russian presidency and the American or British counterparts:

According to Olga Kryshtanovskaya, who has studied the Russian elite for many years, the FSB, police and military have become the dominant force under Mr Putin’s presidency. She said in a study published in 2004 that the most marked increase in the “siloviki” had been in the regions, where five out of seven presidential representatives were former KGB or military men. Ms Kryshtanovskaya told The Independent that there was cause for alarm in a political system where the presidency has the preponderant power. “It’s a problem because in the past there was collective decision-making. For example when Äformer president YuriÅ Andropov wanted to invade Afghanistan, there was a collective decision by the Politburo. Now there is no such organ and the president himself decides.” According to some Moscow commentators, Mr Putin is “very hardline” politically, but an economic liberal. But Ms Kryshtanovskaya compares the economic centralisation in Russia to South Korea, which placed big companies under state control. Why is Mr Putin doing this? “Because he wants full control,” she says. Ms Kryshtanovskaya worries that civil society has no input because “the parliament is like a department of the Kremlin. Everything comes from the top. These people don’t want to give up power, they want to concentrate power.

The BBC has also reported on these developments, including a photograph of the ominous new Batman-like logo adopted by the KGB????????s successor entity (pictured below).

The Beeb observes:

???????How different Russia looks from other formerly communist countries in eastern Europe, where there have been attempts to identify individuals who worked for Soviet-era security services, many of which were highly repressive. Some of these individuals have been put on trial for their alleged crimes. But perhaps more significantly, there has been a real effort to keep them out of politics and big business.???????

Russia????????s economy also looks quite different from that of many of those countries ???????? it lags far behind many of them, and without its oil and gas resources would be a third-world state compared to them.

The West now finds itself as if awakening from a pleasant dream where the Evil Empire simply ceased to exist, just because we wished it to be so. Rather than ask ourselves hard questions about whether those in Russia would really just abandon their avowed hatred of the West and its democracy and freedom just because they lost the Cold War, and whether they would seek to reassert their authority, and seeking to block such measures, the West turned a blind eye to developments in Russia (here the Clinton Administration in the U.S. was particularly remiss) when there was an opportunity to avert the KGB takeover that we now see as fait accompli. We were assured by various Russophiles that Russia could “never go back again” to the dark days of the Soviet past, and hence lulled into a false but comfortable sense of security, just as we were when we chose largely to ignore the rise of the Bolsheviks to power in the first place.

Again, we will pay an awful price for our comfort.

Kim Zigfeld publishes the Russia blog La Russophobe.

The State Department has put out a press release detailing new initiatives to support human rights that will begin next year. By and large, the plans focus on supporting NGOs that operate under fierce government repression, thus countering the global trend of cracking down on such organizations from Russia to Venezuela. Here is a list of the three programs:

1) Human Rights Defenders Fund
In countries where tyranny persists, and even in states with some semblance of democratic institutions, human rights defenders are frequently put in jeopardy by the nature of their work. They are harassed, physically threatened or harmed, and many times detained and imprisoned. The creation of a global Human Rights Defenders Fund will enable the U.S. government to respond to human rights defenders???????? emergency needs quickly by providing assistance to activists who are facing extraordinary financial, legal or medical needs as a result of government repression. The Fund will begin with $1 million and will be replenished as needed.

2) NGO Principles
Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are essential to ensuring government transparency and accountability. When NGOs are under siege, freedom and democracy are undermined. The U.S. government is advancing ten core NGO Principles which guide our own treatment of NGOs and which we urge other governments to respect. These principles will be an important tool for the U.S. and other governments in measuring governmental treatment of NGOs. The Principles distill and complement existing United Nations and European Union documents. We hope they will also be a useful tool for civil society groups and the media as they monitor the treatment of NGOs across the globe.

3) Freedom Awards
Beginning in December 2007, The Secretary of State will present two awards annually to recognize those striving to advance human dignity. The Freedom Defenders Award will be awarded to a foreign activist or NGO which has demonstrated outstanding commitment to advancing liberty and courage in the face of adversity. The Diplomacy for Freedom Award will honor the U.S. Ambassador who best advances the President????????s Freedom Agenda by working to end tyranny and promote democracy using the full array of political, economic, diplomatic, and other tools. The Ambassador will be recognized not only for individual achievement, but for his or her leadership in engaging the entire Embassy on implementing the Freedom Agenda.

I think the most important is the first. That kind of money can help keep people out of jail, keep an important and influential independent newspaper going to press, or even save an activist’s life. Given how slowly government usually works, how quickly this emergency money will be distributed in each case and whether or not the situation is transparent is very important if this is to be effective.

To a degree, the money could act as a doube-edged sword. Populist-nationalist regimes such as in Russia, where foreign funding of NGOs has become illegal, criticize NGOs for using money from abroad and aim to turn public opinion against them. A newspaper facing legal fees for printing “lies about public officials” is now suddenly an enemy agent because it received a one-time award from the Human Rights Defender’s Fund. It may not even end up being an issue, but it is important that these people do not in essence become unwilling propaganda tools of the government’s that they’re working to change.

Going from one spectrum to the other, I think the NGO Principles are probably the most useless. While it may be used by the State Department to evaluate how countries treat NGOs, in general, we could likely get a similar idea by taking a look at Freedom House’s index. Here’s a concept: unfree countries tend to treat NGOs poorly, while free ones do not… Even if the State Department begins creating an annual report on such a matter, it’s not as if it isn’t done elsewhere (probably by an NGO, even!), and the outcome likely wouldn’t greatly affect U.S. policy.

The last initiatve, Freedom Awards, is interesting though there aren’t many details provided about it. Recognizing rights activists working under tyrannical governments is important as it highlights their cause. With such international focus on the person, it may even grant them some immunity from undue government prosecution, depending on whether or not the particular government is concerned at all with international legitimacy. Such a thing would not work in Mugabe’s Zimbabwe, but there is always the chance that more mild authoritarian regimes which are not international pariahs would move much more cautiously. A cash prize to go along with that, such as the Sakharov Prize awarded by the European Parliament, carries the risks that I’ve already outlined and could probably be put to better use.

The Diplomacy for Freedom Award is the second award that the State Department will be giving out under these new initiatives, and personally I like the idea. American ambassadors don’t have to worry about the propagandizing effect like the activists do as they are not native to the country they are working in. Such an award is also an incentive to carry out the Freedom Agenda as it would help raise their profiles and careers. There are a lot of good ambassadors out there who are fighting hard for freedom in the countries they work in and giving them a reputation boost for this hard work is deserved. They will then be better able to use their influence both where they work and within the State Department itself to make advancing freedom and democracy a top priority.

Now, since I have reviewed the three initiatives that the State Department will be instituting, the discussion today will focus on what further actions the State Department can take to help individual activists, NGOs, and democracy in general. Does the answer lay in political activism or more generally in building local economies and healthcare/education infrastructure? I think there’s a lot of ways this can go, so let’s hear it.

Venezuela and Russia show remarkable similarities in their social, political and economic systems and levels of attainment, so it is perhaps not surprising to see their two tinpot leaders, Vladimir Putin and Hugo Chavez, seeking ever closer relations. An even more disturbing parallel, though, is that in both countries men who are essentially dictators have won ratification of their power through elections that, while fundamentally corrupt, are still a basic expression of popular support despite the vast majority of the population languishing in poverty while the regimes hoard oil revenue windfalls and obliterate individual liberty. UN data, as outlined below, shows that both regimes are catastrophic failures when it comes to delivering on the promise of civilization for their populations, yet those populations do not hold the regimes accountable. Truly, those who cannot remember history are doomed to repeat it. As such, these two countries represent the acid test for democracy and American resolve (both are hotbeds of anti-Americanism). As in the Soviet era, substituting Chavez for Castro and Russia for the USSR, we see the the larger state providing weaponry and countervailing political support to the smaller in exhange for its outbursts of furious anti-Americanism and its cooperation in a nascent effort towards world domination. In this case, Russia seems to want to build an energy cabal which it can use to threaten the world just as the USSR used its nuclear arsenal. Thus, in a very real sense, we cannot solve the Venezuela problem without solving the Russia problem.

According to the Human Development Report for 2006 issued by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), life expectancy, literacy, nutrition and access to basic utilities have showed no improvement during the last two years in Venezuela. The extreme poverty rate has fallen by 7% in the past year, but 8% of the population continues to live in extreme poverty, with more than 2 million people living on an income of a dollar a day. Venezuela fell two places on the developing country ranking compared to the 2006 UNDP report. Its per capita GDP of just over $6,000 was 25% lower in constant dollars than it was three decades ago. Income inequality grew by 11%. Under eight years of Chavez governance while oil prices boomed, the regime constructed 100,000 fewer homes for the impoverished than the previous administration built in five years of low oil prices. Venezulea recorded over 13% consumer price inflation during just the first three quarters of 2006 despite government-imposed price controls on a basket of of 145 staples, 242 personal care and home cleaning products, as well as public utilities such as power, land phone service and education. Consumers have been facing shortage of some products such as milk, sugar, coffee, and beef, among others. Since Chavez took office, Venezuela????????s homicide rate has doubled, with as many as 10,000 people murdered annually out of an overall population smaller than that of Canada. Venezuela is #4 in the world in homicides per capita with a rate of 0.316138 per 1,000 people.

If we turn to Russia, the picture is eerily similar. It????????s UNDP score is only slightly better than Venezuela, and when we look beneath the surface we see that Venezuela actually exceeds Russia in several important criteria. Venezuela ranks #72 out of 173 countries surveyed by UNDP while Russia hovers just above it at #65; their scores (0.797 for Russia and 0.784 for Venezuela) are virtually identical, and bested by such countries as Mexico, Bulgaria and Malaysia (all of which make it into the lofty category of ???????highly developed??????? nations while both Russia and Venezuela languish as ???????medium development??????? countries). Russia was #62 on the 2005 UNDP report while Venezuela was #75, so over the past year Russia actually got slightly worse on the overall list while Venezuela got slightly better. Like Venezulea, Russia experiences double-digit consumer price inflation on items that matter to ordinary people. The average life expectency in Russia is 65.2 years and it????????s ???????purchasing power parity??????? per capita GDP is $9,902; Venezuela, with 30% less per capita GDP, has an a life expectency of 73, so Russia is behind Venezuela here as well. Venezuela also vastly exceeds Russia in gender equality. Russia ranks 62nd out of 75 countries in the UNDP????????s Gender Empowerment Measure (GEM), while Venezulea ranks 46th. Russia????????s 2006 score on the UNDP study of 0.797 is not radically different than in was in 1990, when it reached 0.818 or in 1995 when it was 0.771. This gives the lie to the Russophile propagandist claim that Russia under Putin is doing dramatically better than Russia under the ???????disastrous??????? kleptocracy of the Yeltsin era. Russia is right behind Venezuela at #5 on the homicide rate list, with 0.201534 per 1,000 people.

Incidentally, it????????s interesting and important to note that the United States is far ahead of the major counties of Europe on the UNDP survey (despite the fact that the UN seems to have nothing but contempt for America), holding place #8 on the list, right behind the Scandinavian countries that lead the world (along with Canada, Japan and Australia). Despite all the seething anti-U.S. propaganda out in the UN, America is doing a far better job than any major European country in making wealth available throughout the population. It should be noted, however, the US is bested on the GEM (it comes in at #12) by Germany (which now has a female head of state).

Despite all this failure, both Chavez and Putin have been returned to office in landslide electoral triumphs. At first blush, this calls into question the value and wisdom of the institution of democracy itself, and for that reason alone is more than enough basis for vigorously opposing what is happening in these two countries; they are discrediting the institution of democracy iself. If Russians will freely choose to hand the reins of power to a proud KGB spy, then perhaps democracy is not the remedy for human strife we might imagine. If Venezuelans will freely choose to allow Chavez to remain in power despite his open provocation of America, by far the world????????s most powerful state both economically and militarily, are the Venezuelan people themselves not directly challenging America and its values? These are vital questions which require searching inquiries and debate.

The situation in Russia is far more grave (indeed, Russian assistance to the Venezuelan leader can be seen as a major cause of the problems in Venezuela). To start with, Venezuela does not possess an arsenal of nuclear weapons aimed at the U.S. Venezuela does not have a recent history similar to Stalin and his ???????gulag archipelago??????? (which killed more Russians than Hitler????????s armies and far more people than Hitler????????s concentration camps) and Chavez is not a proud career member of the secret intelligence services which was dedicated to the destruction of democracy (though his military connections are ominously similar to Putin in many ways). And no matter how crazed the policies of Chavez, their direct results only impact 25 million people; in Russia, the impact is six times greater.

More important, Venezuelans do not have any immediate memory of a direct confrontation with the United States which they lost as Russians have their Cold War recollections. Venezuelans might be forgiven for failing to realize the potential consequences of awakening the ???????sleeping giant??????? described by Admiral Yamamoto prior to Japan????????s Pearl Harbor invasion; Americans have never taken much notice of Venezuela. But Russians have no such excuse. Not only are they barrelling heedlessly down the same failed path of authoritarianism, which is at least arguably their own business, but they are baiting the United States into a new conflict it is hardly likely they can even survive, much less win.

And perhaps Russia????????s internal politics are the world????????s business too, even if there was no cold war threat. After all, we require people to wear their seatbelts even though the risk is only to themselves. Why? Because you won????????t necessarily be killed in that crash you refuse to protect yourself from, you might just receive horrific injuries and you might not have insurance. That might mean society, the rest of us, will have to pay for your recklessness in the form of your hospital bills, and that????????s not fair. If Russia implodes because it is allowed to pursue the failed policies of authoritarianism unfettered, this could create a monumental crisis that would make Africa look like a 4-H project. The world will be left holding the bag for Russian recklessness.

Because Russia is so fundamentally corrupt, we really have no idea how deep Russian support for dictatorship and KGB rule actually is. More important, because we haven????????t seriously opposed it, we have no idea whether Russians would be willing to cling to their barbaric ideas if there was a stiff international price to be paid for doing so. It????????s time to find out. If the Russian people are going to freely choose KGB rule and world confrontation, that will give the term ???????Evil Empire??????? a whole new meaning. We ought to give democracy every chance to work in Russia by forcing the Russian people to confront the consquences of their choices. If we do, who knows . . . maybe they????????ll surprise us. If we find out Russians respond only with more provocation, then we will know we are in for a nastly slog and can begin to prepare for it.

Kim Zigfeld publishes the Russia blog La Russophobe.

Castro’s goon squads beat up Cubans in Havana Sunday
Source: Stefania at Free Thoughts

Their crime? Celebrating human rights day. You heard that right, they were observing human rights day. That’s why they were beat up by Castro’s ‘repudiation’ squads, the barrio thugs who serve as Castro’s illegal enforcers, beating others with impunity in the name of Castroism.

It doesn’t get viler than this. What’s amazing to me is that the ruling Castro brothers don’t seem to be bothered by the irony. What this shows is their essential inhumanity and willingness to strike out at any thinking about human rights. It just goes to show how abysmal, how barbaric, how beastly, how brazen they and their government really are.

These Castroite brutes need the boot.

(Stefania sent me more photos and I will put them up soon as I get time, they don’t transfer easily.)

The Real Cuba has much more about this, and ways you can help these poor dissidents, here

Augusto Pinochet, 1915-2006
Source: CNN

Chile’s former military strongman, Augusto Pinochet, has died in Providencia, Chile at age 91. Half of Chile is rioting in joy and the other half is rioting in rage. It seems about fitting, because not only did this guy do good and bad things through his life, these acts spanned extremes.

1. Pinochet is most famous for his role in the dirty war that left 3200 people dead in Chile. People were grabbed from the streets by creepy little men in grubby leather jackets and without trial, hurled into secret prisons, where many were tortured and died. Many were idealistic leftists, many were just kids, but many also were hardcore leftists, who were already robbing Chileans of their freedoms, permanently, in the name of hammer and sickle collectivism. They had already smashed property rights, allowed Cuban agents into the country to spy on Chileans, begun Marxist indoctrination, and instituted the rationing and shortages characteristic of all communist regimes. In short, they sold their country out to the Soviet Union. Pinochet stopped them, but he was a dark, menacing figure himself, wearing a vampire cape, mirrored sunglasses and lots of scrambled eggs on his uniform. He was neither a democrat nor a sympathizer to freedom.

Not a satire: Pinochet as junta leader in 1973
Source: Chas Garretson of Gamma, via Wikipedia

2. Pinochet also was the critical agent in destroying Argentina’s far bloodier dirty warriors, who murdered as many as 30,000 people, hurling many alive out of airplanes over Bahia Blanca. Britain’s great prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, who has openly expressed her sorrow at Pinochet’s passing today, offered condolences to the Pinochet family. She stood by Pinochet to the very end, because she knew of his critical role in providing the key satellite technology that ultimately won the Falklands War, a nasty invasion from Argy tinpots who, having proven their disrespect for human rights and property rights at home, moved on to conquest of other nations. That venal Argentine junta was despicable and Pinochet was their undoing. Unlike Pinochet in Chile, nobody misses those guys in Argentina.

Pinochet and Lady Thatcher, who together destroyed the Argentine junta
Source: AP, via BBC

3. Pinochet was a moron about respecting political freedoms, but did bring into being respect and understanding for economic freedoms. In this regard, he is unlike 99% of ALL Latin American leaders - spanning from democratic to dictatorial. It was an odd little ray of sunlight about him and he probably didn’t do it intentionally. Pinochet seemed to grasp that if people could have their own savings and retirement accounts, and manage them by their own choices, they would have something of value that would not be squandered. So he broke up virtually all state enterprises (except copper) in the name of free markets. And Chile’s economy has flourished ever since. Pinochet’s institution of social security reform in Chile was the most radical experiment ever conducted in the hemisphere. It still is, even the U.S. has not tried it. With cojones of steel, Pinochet was the first to test the great Milton Friedman’s great theory that individual retirement accounts are the way out of poverty. Friedman knew it would topple him and bulled ahead, knowing full well it would lay a platform for democracy to Chile that would get Pinochet booted. Net result: Chile is the most economically advanced country in Latin America. It’s so advanced it won’t even allow itself to be called ‘Latin’ anymore. It’s the great exception to the rule that all Latin American states are messes. Chile is not, and although the left will scream, this triumph also is Pinochet’s legacy.

Pinochet had little trust in democracy
Source: MSNBC Newsweek

4. Pinochet was corrupt and like all dictators, inefficient. He stole about $18 million, chicken change compared to other dictators - particularly billionaire Fidel Castro, but nevertheless money that was not his to steal. He lied about it, too, saying it was just his sound investment practices. So in this regard he was a fraud. His regime was divisive and dark. He was spiteful and tyrannical. And with people losing their freedoms, there was no market efficiency in that.

And yet, he allowed himself to be voted out of office in 1988, without leaving Chile the smoking ruin that Castro is leaving Cuba. Somehow he left the treasury full, not emptying it in the name of populism or wholesale theft. This in fact, paved the way for Chile’s democracy to grow right alongside its economic growth, both of which are functioning magnificently.

Leftists in action, shedding light on how they triggered the rise of Pinochet
Source: Santiago Llanquin of AP, via CTV

The only thing to say about this guy is that the truth, dark and light, needs to come out. He wasn’t an unalloyed villain as the left, blind to the bounty of the free market, portrays. But he is not the saint his supporters make him out to be, either.

Chile itself, in its government, seems to understand this split legacy and they are allowing Pinochet full military honors at his funeral, but not giving him a full head of state funeral. After all, there is no reason to recognize a dictatorship in a democracy. It was a solomonic decision that will contribute to the understanding that Chile’s divided nation needs to heal.

A procession to honor Our Lady of Guadalupe in Palm Springs
Source: The Desert Sun

At this time of year, millions of people participate in processions like this across the American hemisphere, an event that unites two American continents, Spain and the Philippines. On or around Dec. 10, millions will march for the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe. No, it’s not just a Mexican celebration, although the miracle it commemorates happened near Mexico City in 1517. It’s meant to unite the continent.

This procession, pictured here, happened the other day in Palm Springs.

It’s worth considering in the age of democratic revolutions because its story is so interesting, and since such processions ritually mimic the process of democratic revolution - the spectacle of thousands of people coming into the streets - to mark some transformation. In this case, it’s spiritual rather than political, but the two usually intertwine, because politics is about people.

The march these days addresses the fundamental divide in the Americas, this awful idea that we in the western hemisphere are somehow two worlds, the Latin and the Anglo. These Guadalupe processions - dating from around 1517 - challenge this idea because the very premise is that this is for all nations in the Americas, not just Mexico.

Notice that in the Palm Springs one, the organizers warn at the side of the page, here, that no one is to bring any flags to the procession “to prevent any political misunderstandings.” What they mean, of course, in their delicately worded statement is that no Mexican flags should be waved because they might only enrage the non-Mexican locals and bring on talk about illegal immigrants instead of keep the focus on the interesting mission of Guadalupe itself.

It’s perfectly true that Mexicans are the most fervent celebrators of Our Lady of Guadalupe - they put the image on everything from altars to hubcaps, as this item from OC Weekly notes here. These processions are an exuberant mix of the sacred and the profane, something that parallels the spiritual and the political.

But what might the mission be? It’s in the story. The Spaniards came to Mexico and conquered it, and foisted their religion of salvation onto the Indians, except that they did everything humanly possible to compel the Indians to despise it. The Spaniards were cruel, they were dissolute, they were unkempt barbarians, they didn’t bathe, and they considered the Indians subhuman. There is no better way to make someone loathe your religion than to set a bad example. Of course, the Indians were repelled by the Spaniards’ religion.

Then … Juan Diego, a humble Indian, was walking in the desert one day and got a great vision from Heaven. It was the Lady of Guadalupe, representing the hated Spanish religion, except that instead of a Spanish face, she had an Indian face! Not only did she have an Indian face, she was on THEIR side instead of the odious cruel Spaniards who claimed to speak for her! Can you imagine the impact of that to the Indians?

Not only was she disgusted by these Spaniards who distorted her name, she came down to the Indians to tell them! Then she performed great miracles, strange ones, ones with roses and flower petals. Snows where it didn’t belong and other acts of power.

Juan Diego picked up the fantastical cactus-cloth tilma with our Lady’s image, and took it to his local bishop. The bishop of course, slammed the door in his face multiple times without looking at the amazing image he was bearing. After all, Juan Diego was just a poor Indian, a non-person, in his lordly bishopy eyes, he didn’t have time for rabble like that. But after a few attempts, the poor Indian managed to convince him, and the word of the miraculous tilma got out, and in the end, all of the Americas were converted to Christianity, not because of the Spaniards, but in spite of them!

The New World’s indigenous peoples are central to the revolutionary story
Source: The Desert Sun

It was a divine conversion of the indigenous peoples that forever shifted the momentum and character of this continent. It conveyed the divinely given message that Christianity didn’t particularly belong to the Spaniards just because of their heritage, it belonged to all peoples because of their goodness. Spaniards could be a bunch of racists, but the God who created the Indians in his image was not. The Indians had value, the Indians had a divine mission too. The Indians belonged. The Indians were well within God’s Divine Plan. And so is everyone.

That is one heck of a radical notion to shake the world with - universal human rights - universal human freedoms - universal human specialness - especially in the near-medieval world of 1517 Spain, which got all brutal and creepy because it was fresh from fighting the Crusades, which was a me-over-you battle with Muslims, and had nothing to do with virtue or conscience or anything in its ‘who’s bigger’ contest.

As you can tell from the narrative of the story, it doesn’t really matter if the miraculous event happened or not, because the fact that nearly all the Indians converted to Christianity despite the Spaniards providing every incentive not to, pretty much speaks for itself.

What is relevant is that they believed there was a miracle. And even conquered by Spaniards, they believed that they too were special, God’s sons. That is a powerful historic undercurrent to the Guadalupe miracle, which is why it intersects the political and the spiritual; which is why it’s revolution. And unlike the defining mythology of many other religions, this one happened pretty recently. The Catholic Church accepts this miracle ex cathedra (meaning they aren’t gonna change their minds) and gives it full weight and status in its credo.

What I like about it are the aesthetics of the image on the tilma, and the processions they create across the hemisphere. See?

Different images of Our Lady of Guadalupe presented
Source: The Desert Sun

Aesthetically, I think the tilma’s one of the most amazing examples of artistic perfection I know of. I dare you — put some flowers up to the image — white cattelya orchids, roses, delphiniums, Queen Anne’s lace, tulips, hibiscus - any old flower in the world. Not one would not enhance the image, which to me is very mysterious because there aren’t any other kinds of art or decoration that do not have a few things that would not go with it. The aesthetic universality of the image may be why people respond to it. Any flower you put up next to it looks like it organically belongs there.

Another thing I like about the aesthetic image is that it looks alive. I went and saw it in Mexico City and the eyes of the image seemed to follow me, no matter where I moved in the cathedral. I felt I was in the presence of something, there was power in that image.

The processions are as important as the image.
Source: The Desert Sun

But these are just circumstantial signs and aren’t the important thing. What is important is the impact the image has on people - in Mexico City, people will walk on their knees through glass sharded streets to demonstrate their devotion for miles and miles. It’s a very alive thing and it animates what people do and how they will act. It literally entices people to act.

But it also is an interesting reflection of the ritual of revolution. You see all these thousands of people in the streets following the statue, and it is obviously an ritualized reenactment of some great event that brought people to the streets and transformed them. In that regard, it resembles a democratic revolution, though in religion, the change is from within the individual persons rather than their exterior political body.

Either way, though, it’s strikingly revolutionary.

Peter Mork at Economics with a Face has some intelligent observations about ongoing efforts in certain European cities to eliminate all - repeat ALL - traffic rules in the name of fewer traffic accidents, an idea that scares the heck out anyone who first hears about it. But it turns out, it’s not that crazy an idea at all. Rule-free traffic, seen in some third-world cities, where no one thought to set any rules, turns out to work very nicely. Now Europe’s working on it the concept. Someone apparently went and looked at how well things worked on this matter in the developing world and decided to import it. I bet the Dutch and the Estonians are in on this, I suppose I will have to find out!

Peter has a video link of traffic in Hanoi, Vietnam, whose streets have no traffic rules at all, in what’s an interesting aspect of the supposedly communist regime. Check it out at this post, here.

Watching that brings back all the fun memories I had of riding through that torrent of humanity - and living! Oh that was one of my happiest memories in Hanoi, riding through that traffic, it was like a nice smooth amusement park ride except that it felt much wilder.

Meanwhile, by coincidence, I found a YouTube of Calcutta traffic yesterday, which has the same rule-free features as Hanoi’s traffic. Rule-free traffic works just as well in India as it does in Vietnam. See for yourself, here.

OK, it was a ratbag of a bill. It lumped in everything that possibly could be lumped in, good with bad. Excellent, friendly deserving nations, like Vietnam, Colombia and Peru, (in short, our equals), got much of what they needed. Nations ruled by disgusting, undeserving, ungrateful governments, like Ecuador and Bolivia got plenty too. Messes like Haiti got the golden goose handed to them. Offshore drilling passed. Everyone got something, in what was kind of the last congressional pinata before the Roundheads (Democrats) take over. But boy it was sloppy.

All told, I am happier with things this way than with things the other way, where no one gets anything. It’s the best compromise that can be expected and I am very glad it passed.

What’s in it for us? Cheaper prices at Walmart for one. But plenty of competition for China, it will no longer be the only place we buy stuff from - we will have better choices now, stuff from Peru, Made In Senegal, Vietnam-made, Made In Colombia. Maybe even some of the countries with lousy governments will in the end do well by this agreement. At least their private sectors will retain the means to remain alive - and that’s good news for Bolivia’s battered private sector in Santa Cruz, regardless of Morales’ ingratitude and insults against us for extending the hand of free trade.

In all, I am happy. Here is the just released press release from the U.S. Trade Representative Susan Schwab whose tiny competent little bureaucracy worked so hard to bring these agreements forth, despite the doltishness of U.S. Congress.

U.S. Trade Representative Schwab Welcomes Bipartisan Senate Vote Approving Key Trade Legislation

WASHINGTON ???????? U.S. Trade Representative Susan C. Schwab today made the following statement applauding the Senate’s approval of legislation extending several trade preference programs and authorizing Permanent Normal Trade Relations (PNTR) for Vietnam:

“I commend the strong bipartisan vote in Congress on these important trade initiatives. This bill shows that, contrary to conventional wisdom, Democrats and Republicans, the Administration and Congress, can work together to further our vital trade agenda.

“Senate passage of legislation authorizing the grant of PNTR for Vietnam, following House approval yesterday, begins a new era in our relationship with Vietnam. With this strong bipartisan vote, U.S. exporters and service providers will gain significant new opportunities in one of the fastest growing markets in the world as Vietnam integrates into the global, rules-based trading system. The vote also demonstrates to our trading partners in East Asia, the United States’ commitment to strengthen and deepen our relationships in that region.

“I also welcome the Senate’s solid bipartisan support for extending key trade preference programs that have promoted market-based development, allowing developing countries around the world to sell their products in the U.S. and enabling U.S. consumers to enjoy a wide selection of agricultural and manufactured products.

“I believe this can also lay the groundwork for bipartisan action on trade issues in the next Congress, including passage of the Peru and Colombia Trade Promotion Agreements.”

BACKGROUND

The legislation authorizes the President to terminate application of Jackson-Vanik trade restrictions and provide permanent normal trade relations (PNTR) to Vietnam, ensuring that American companies and consumers are able to secure the benefits of Vietnam’s membership in the WTO.

The legislation will also extend or broaden four trade preference programs that have helped spur economic growth and alleviate poverty in developing countries. First, the bill extends the Generalized System of Preferences (GSP) program, which provides for duty-free import of thousands of items from 133 beneficiary developing countries. Second, the bill continues the Andean Trade Preference Act (ATPA), which is aimed at creating economic incentives to move Andean countries away from the cultivation and production of drugs. Third, the bill amends a provision in the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) related to apparel made in sub-Saharan African countries. Fourth, the bill adds a new provision to the Caribbean Basin Initiative, entitled the Haitian Hemispheric Opportunity through Partnership Encouragement Act (HOPE), which allows duty-free treatment for certain products from Haiti.

Generalized System of Preferences

Congress created the GSP program as part of the Trade Act of 1974 to create economic opportunities in developing countries, while expanding the choices of American industry and consumers. The GSP program provides duty-free treatment for 3,400 products from 133 designated beneficiary developing countries and territories. Least-developed beneficiary developing countries (currently 42 of the GSP beneficiaries) can export an additional 1,400 articles to the United States duty-free under GSP.

The United States imported $26.7 billion of products under the GSP program in 2005, an 18 percent increase over 2004. From January through September 2006 (YTD), the United States has imported $24.1 billion in GSP-eligible products, reflecting a 26.7 percent increase over GSP imports during the same period in 2005. U.S. imports under GSP have comprised 1.8 percent of total U.S. imports YTD 2006, as compared to 1.6 percent for the same period in 2005.

African Growth and Opportunity Act

The African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), enacted in 2000, is the cornerstone of our trade and investment policy with sub-Saharan African countries. Congress has amended AGOA twice before to improve and expand preferential access for beneficiary countries. AGOA rewards reforming countries with preferences that have been proven to help reduce barriers to trade, increase exports, create jobs, and expand business opportunities for African and U.S. entrepreneurs.

In 2005, over 98 percent of imports from AGOA-eligible countries entered the United States duty-free. U.S. imports from sub-Saharan Africa under AGOA increased to $38.1 billion in 2005, an increase of 44 percent relative to 2004. Due, in part, to the improved business environment that AGOA has promoted in many beneficiary countries, U.S. exports to sub-Saharan Africa increased by 22 percent to $10.3 billion in 2005.

AGOA’s third-country fabric provision is a key element of AGOA’s success in the African apparel sector, attracting millions of dollars in investment and creating hundreds of thousands of jobs. Though accounting for only a small share of total U.S. apparel imports (about 2 percent), apparel imports under AGOA accounted for nearly half of non-oil AGOA trade in 2005.

Andean Trade Preference Act

The Andean Trade Preference Act (ATPA) was enacted in December 1991, and authorizes eligible products from four Andean countries ???????? Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru ???????? to enter the United States duty-free. The primary goal of ATPA was to promote economic alternatives to the production, processing, and shipment of illegal drugs by offering Andean products improved access to the U.S. market. ATPA expired on December 4, 2001. On August 6, 2002, the President signed into law the Andean Trade Promotion and Drug Eradication Act, which renewed ATPA trade preferences through December 31, 2006, and authorized the extension of ATPA preferences to additional products.

Total (two way) goods trade between the United States and the four ATPA countries in 2005 was $29.9 billion. U.S. goods imports from ATPA countries totaled $20 billion in 2005, up 29.1% from 2004. U.S. imports from ATPA countries for 2005 were: Colombia ($8.8 billion), Ecuador ($5.8 billion), Peru ($5.1 billion), and Bolivia ($293 million). U.S. goods exports to ATPA countries in 2005 were $9.9 billion, up 17 percent from 2004. Together, the ATPA countries ranked 19th as an export market for the United States in 2005. U.S. goods exports to the ATPA countries for 2005 were: Colombia ($5.4 billion), Peru ($2.3 billion), Ecuador ($2.0 billion), and Bolivia ($218 million). U.S. foreign direct investment in ATPA countries was $8.2 billion in 2005.

Vietnam Permanent Normal Trade Relations

Vietnam negotiated strong and commercially meaningful terms for accession to the WTO and will implement its WTO commitments immediately, with few transitions. It has passed more than 80 laws to implement fully the agreements, including substantial changes to its regime on intellectual property rights protection. Vietnam will become a WTO member in early January.

Vietnam will join 149 other members of the WTO. As a WTO member, Vietnam will be required to abide by international trading rules and will provide greater access to its growing market of over 82 million people to all WTO members. Vietnam will also be required to enhance transparency in government processes and increase economic freedoms.

Haitian Hemispheric Opportunity through Partnership Encouragement Act

The Haitian Hemispheric Opportunity through Partnership Encouragement Act of 2006 (HOPE Act) makes Haiti eligible for new trade benefits, in addition to those it currently receives under the Caribbean Basin Initiative (CBI). Under current law, apparel imports from Haiti qualify for duty-free treatment only if they are made from U.S. or Haitian fabric. The HOPE Act will also allow apparel imports from Haiti to enter the United States duty free if at least 50 percent of the value of inputs and/or costs of processing are from any combination of U.S. FTA and regional preference program partner countries. The quantity of apparel eligible for duty-free treatment under this provision is subject to a limit in the first year equivalent to 1% of overall U.S. apparel imports. This limit will expand gradually over five years, reaching 2% in the fifth year.

The HOPE Act also removes duties for three years on a specified quantity of woven apparel imports from Haiti made from fabric produced anywhere in the world. Finally, the HOPE Act will allow automotive wire harnesses imported from Haiti that contain at least 50% by value of materials produced in Haiti, U.S. FTA or regional preference program countries to qualify for duty-free treatment.

###

Anti-communist women from Santa Cruz are detained in Bolivia by police enforcers loyal to the leftist government of Evo Morales, which is showing growing intolerance of political dissent. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez threatened them today for their refusal to support Morales.
Source, all photos: Getty Images

Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez has warned the Bolivian babes of Santa Cruz that he’s coming after them. He declared them people of the ‘extreme rightwing‘ and warned that any refusal to support the oppressive greedy hand of the Evo Morales government, which is characterized by its confiscations, will be met by force - from him. As if the internal affairs of this country were ever any of his business! “We will not remain with our arms crossed,” Chavez said from Montevideo. In short, Chavez is menacing the freedom-loving babes of Santa Cruz, Bolivia, like a gangster.

Chavez’s new use of the term “rightwing extremists” is noteworthy. It probably didn’t come from him, but from his minime in La Paz, President Evo Morales. It has an eerie echo of the Clinton administration’s rhetoric, back when Bill Clinton and Al Gore effectively used it against Newt Gingrich and the battered Miami Cubans in the 1990s.

I find that interesting because Clinton’s recently been seen consorting with and advising Morales about political matters, so this new Chavista use of the word ‘extremist’ as a weapon against political enemies seems to have Clinton’s fingerprints all over it. I suspect Clinton told Morales of the term’s effectiveness and Morales asked Chavez to use it as the magic word to discredit his growing opposition. But unlike Clinton, Morales seeks to consolidate power on the Chavez and Castro model. If my theory is correct, I really wonder why Clinton’s doing this.

Miguel Buitrago at the estimable MABB blog has carefully noted the growing alarm around the Bolivian blogosphere about Morales increasingly dictatorial style.

He notes this excellent, if ominous, essay by Miguel Centellas, at the always reliable Ciao!, and he has links to other blogs, too, even from newly worried people of the left.

The people of Santa Cruz have been holding fearsomely large and growing protests against Morales, a punky syndicalist thug of a president, in a last-ditch effort to stand up for their rapidly evaporating rights.

The fact that the thuggy Chavez has now shown up south of the equator and threatened to use force on Bolivia’s democrats from the eastern provinces does not sound very good at all. A brutal leftist thug of his stripe can only mean to take the country over.

Now that Hugo Chavez has been reelected president by a wide margin, Venezuela is swiftly moving toward a one-party state.

I know, you think I’m just being a rightwing alarmist. I’m just making it up, it’s nothing but some ruse to make Hugo Chavez look bad.

But this isn’t coming from Venezuelans, or from my imagination. It’s not even overtly coming from Chavez’s office, although he may be thinking it. Given Venezuela’s pretense of being a democracy in the eyes of members-only organizations like the OAS, Chavez may have reason to not say he’s moving to a one-party state publicly.

But this news is coming from somewhere - somewhere ugly - it’s coming straight from the Cuban state-controlled press, a 100% Castroite-operated press organ that exists solely to serve the aims of the Cuban Communist Party. They’re the ones announcing that Venezuela is now moving to a one-party state “model” - as if there were nothing were freakishly wrong with that. How’s this for disturbing?

They’ve just announced that Venezuela is about to become another political Cuba.

In other places, this is what’s known as dictatorship. Chavez has said he favors “revolutionary democracy” and the only other place on earth that uses that term is … Cuba, a nation that has not held free elections in more than 47 years.

Nothing to see here, let’s move along.

This is one of the most ominous developments out of the Chavista regime. While honest democrats are resting and quietly celebrating their victory even in defeat, something shadowy is looming over Venezuela, the hideous specter of the one-party state where no independent thought is allowed. If I were Venezuelan, I’d get out.

Meanwhile, BBO Investment Bank has a very gloomy reading on the situation for democracy in Venezuela in its Dec. 8 report that can be read (when it’s up) here.

UPDATE: This beautiful, eloquent essay by Gustavo Coronel, compellingly titled “In Venezuela, a looming battle for freedom” is a MUST-READ here.

Just as we saw after the killing of Anna Politkovskaya, a determined attempt to deflect blame from the Kremlin has issued from the Russophile cabal following the killing of Alexander Litvinenko. It????????s necessary to debunk their ???????arguments,??????? which might mislead the unwary.

As a preface, let????????s ask the Russophiles a question: OK, so you don????????t believe the Kremlin had anything to do with the killing of Anna Politkovskaya, or Alexander Litvinenko (or either of the other two murdered members of the Kovalev Committee investigating the role of the Kremlin in the 1999 Moscow apartment bombings). In that case, please answer this simple question: How many enemies of the Kremlin would have to die before you would admit the Kremlin????????s complicity? One hundred? One thousand? Ten thousand? The lack of any answer to this question is the best proof of how fundamentally baseless the Russophile position really is.

Let????????s also observe this truism: If we err on the side of anti-Kremlin suspicion, we risk alienating Russia????????s affections and perhaps inhibit its development somewhat (if it????????s a good and decent country, we risk nothing more). If we err on the side of pro-Kremlin suspicion, we risk bequeathing a consolidated neo-Soviet Union upon our children. Which is the more rational risk?

Now for their three main arguments:

1. It????????s irrational for the Kremlin to kill Politkovskaya or Litvinenko.

This argument contains two serious flaws.

First, it assumes the Kremlin is given to rational action. Was it rational for Nikita Khrushchev to visit the U.S., take off his shoe, pound it on a podium and declare: ???????WE WILL BURY YOU!??????? In so doing, he galvanized American factions and sealed the fate of the USSR. Was it rational for Tsar Peter I or Dictator Josef Stalin to murder more of their countrymen than Russian enemies did in war under their rule? Is it rational for President Putin to joke in front of a diplomatic mission about the heinous crime of rape (as previously documented on Publius Pundit)? Hardly. Russian history is replete with examples of irrational (even demented)l behavior, and the pent-up frustration of people like Putin over the USSR????????s sensational failure in the Cold War, combined with the intoxicating effects of Russia????????s oil revenue windfall, is more than enough justification for a spate of irrational killings.

Second, the decision isn????????t irrational. To its credit, the world has almost universally recognized the Kremlin????????s obvious complicity in these events, rejecting the Russophile propaganda in an encouraging manner. But what action has the world taken against the Putin regime? Absolutely none. If Putin calculated he could commit these crimes and get away with it, wasn????????t he absolutely right? Let????????s say, just for the sake of argument, that tomorrow morning Putin gave a speech and admitted he gave the order to kill both Litvinenko and Politkovskaya. What would the world do about it? Break off diplomatic relations? Invade? Boycott Russian oil? What indications has the world given Putin that it would take any serious retaliatory action if he admitted these crimes? If none, why should Putin fear such retaliation? And who says Putin wishes not to alienate the West? Such retaliation could seriously strengthen his position at home, making him seem to be besieged by foreign enemies of Russia. If Putin wanted to stay on friendly terms, would he be providing nuclear technology, and missiles to defend it, to Iran? Would he be providing huge quantities of assault weapons to the crazed anti-American leader in Venezuela? Would he be providing assistance of various kinds to Hamas and Hezbollah, infamous terrorist organizations? Putin is presiding over a very precarious economy and social system in Russia; he simply doesn????????t have the resources to create a full-scale totalitarian dictatorship like the one Stalin presided over. In a sense, his position is analogous to that of Osama bin Laden; Putin must rely on terror to some extent in order to maintain his grip on power. And nobody can deny that the Litvinenko and Politkovskaya killings are terrifying, particularly the excruciatingly slow and painful denouement. A mafia done would be proud.

And there????????s another angle: It????????s turned out that the Litvinenko killing has given the Kremlin an interesting opportunity. Britain, seeing a terrifying trail of radioactive material that has contaminated several innocent bystanders, is desperate to get to the bottom of the killing. Coincidentally, Britain is also harboring exiled oligarch Boris Berezovsky, reputed kingpin of Russian organized crime and the Kremlin????????s Public Enemy Number One after he produced a film and book accusing the Kremlin of complicity in the 1999 apartment bombings in Moscow (as previously documented on Publius Pundit), safe from extradition. Russia has now announced that it won????????t fully cooperate with the Litvinenko investigation unless Britain extradites Berezovsky, which Russia is desperate to do. So in hindsight, the Litvinenko killing turns out to be an interesting possible means of getting at Public Enemy #1 where previously none short of assassination were apparent (Berezovsky is a hard target).

2. Litvinenko was a criminal, and worked for a bigger criminal.

Russophiles claim that since Litvinenko is a former KGB spy who got up to dirty tricks on behalf of Russia in the past, and since more recently he was associated with Berezovsky, the Kremlin had a perfect right to kill him.

Again, there are very serious and obvious problems with this line of ???????reasoning.???????

First, it contradicts the first argument in two different ways. It separates the killing of Litvinenko from that of Politkovskaya; nobody can accuse the latter of any type of criminal conduct, so it has no application to her killing. Then, it seems to admit that the Kremlin killed Litvinenko, and the whole point of the first argument was to prove such an action would have been irrational.

To avoid the second contradiction, the Russophiles generate a third: They argue that Berezovsky is so dirty that he probably killed Litvinenko himself, just to make the Kremlin look bad. But not only does this argument embrace exactly the same kind of conspiracy theory analysis that the Russophiles purport to condemn when it is directed towards the Kremlin, it ignores the fact that, if it is true, it means Russia????????s Public Enemy #1 was able to get his hands on a lethal dose of radioactive material from a Russian reactor. It means that the Kremlin covered up the fact that this dose had gone missing. And it means that even though the Kremlin is innocent in the killing, it is nonetheless still obstructing the British investigation of the crime, denying access to key witnesses, and unable to come up with information clearing itself on its own. This picture of the Kremlin may be even more justification for condemning it than if it were actually proved to have ordered the killings.

And there is an even more serious problem: These Russophile critics ignore the fact that Vladmir Putin himself is a former member of the KGB. If Litvinenko must be condemned for his membership, then so must Putin. In fact, one can at least credit Litvinenko with defecting from his organization and then doing what he could to undermine it in the West. Putin, by contrast, has never expressed the slightest tinge of regret for his KGB activities. In that sense, Putin is even dirtier than Litvinenko.

All this, of course, is to say nothing of the questionable morality involved in justifying Kremlin hits around the world against those it (or even we) might identify as ???????criminals.??????? The potential side effects of such policy would be devastating, as the trail of radiation being found around London continues to emphasize. It????????s also to say nothing of the fact that only months ago the Kremlin forced a bill through the Russian parliament authorizing it to make attacks on those who threaten Russia????????s security from outside its borders.

3. Claims that the Kremlin poisoned Yegor Gaidar confirm hysteria and paranoia

The most recent victim of assassination attempt was former Yeltsin economics guru Yegor Gaidar, who was poisoned just days after Litvinenko and hours after his daughter hung a giant sign off a Moscow bridge referring to the Kremlin overlords as scum. Following his recovery, Gaidar himself has stated that he believes ???????enemies of Russia??????? attacked him. The Russophiles claim this is proof that the West has whipped itself up into an anti-Russian hysteria, allowing a paranoid fear of Russian resurgence to blind it to reality. In other words, we????????re back to argument number 1 again.

Now, to be sure, it????????s possible that someone might try to poison the Kremlin????????s enemies just in order to make the Kremlin look bad But in so doing that person would be depleting the very thin ranks of those who are willing to stand up against the Kremlin, so in order to do so they would have to believe a very serious Western reaction, or Russian internal reaction, would follow such attacks, and they????????d have to believe they could conceal their own tracks from both the Russian and Western intelligence forces. Where????????s the rationality in such a view? How can the Russophiles boldly declare the Kremlin incapable of irrationality, yet indict the Kremlin????????s enemies by assuming they would act irrationally?

Why would Gaidar himself blame the Kremlin????????s enemies if he did not actually believe they were responsible? Well, suppose that right after his recovery he got a telephone call from the Kremlin, and was told that if he didn????????t stop trashing them in the West then next time it would be his daughter or wife lying in that hospital bed, or maybe they????????d be lying in the morgue with him right beside them. Suppose the attack on Gaidar was a calibrated warning designed to intimidate not only him but those in his circle (maybe Gaidar is even smart enough to figure it out on his own, without any warning). Yegor Gaidar has no track record, like Politkovskaya, of being willing to risk his life for his principles. He????????s an economics professor, not a hero. Such a tactic might work. Gaidar might start to toe the Kremlin line, starting with blaming the Kremlin????????s enemies for his attack. Time will tell whether Gaidar continues his criticism of the Kremlin. It????????s noteworthy, and very disappointing, that avowed presidential contender Gary Kasparov has been utterly silent in the face of these killings, seeming to drop off the face of the earth.

Then again, there????????s the simple psychological process of rationalization. It????????s a bit more comforting to think that your enemy is just a mafia don, as opposed to a proud KGB spy presiding over a nuclear arsenal. Maybe the Kremlin botched the Gaidar hit and Gaidar simply doesn????????t want to accept that he has such a powerful enemy.

When Gaidar first fell ill, and when the initial diagnosis that Litvinenko had been struck down with rat poison proved false, the Russophiles also claimed the West was guilty of ???????hysteria??????? and ???????paranoia.??????? They claimed that in both cases it was just ordinary food poisoning or other illness. Now, after it is has been conclusively established that both were poisoned, they simply shift their attack to the claim that the Kremlin????????s enemies were responsible. To expose them, just ask them a simple question: Suppose that tomorrow morning President Putin admitted he was responsible for all three attacks, and even bragged about it, threatening Russia????????s other enemies with similar action if they didn????????t shape up. What would you be prepared to do about that?

Then listen to the sounds of silence.

Kim Zigfeld publishes the Russia blog La Russophobe.

Jeanne Kirkpatrick, 1926-2006
Source: Getty Images, via The New York Times

The great Jeanne Kirkpatrick, who was the first to distinguish between totalitarian and authoritarian dictatorships, a key steps toward dividing and conquering the world’s tyrants and winning the Cold War, has died. She was only 80. Her work paved the way for democratic revolutions from the remains of the destroyed dictatorships and she will be forever remembered for that.

She was the great President Ronald Reagan’s capable and effective ambassador at the United Nations, and her wisdom and counsel thwacked sense into the U.N.’s bureaucratic sybarites. One of her leading turns of phrase was identifying and summing up a certain crowd of enemies as “blame America first.” She had Hugo Chavez’s number on that matter. In her era, the 1980s, she turned that UN bar scene from Star Wars upside down and shook out a lot of anti-American cockroaches, striking fear into all the tyrants.

To get an idea of how great a loss this is for those now at the UN who can appreciate here, you now have to go to the Mexican press. John Bolton, who was Kirkpatrick’s successor at the United Nations, and a tough guy in his own right, was publicly seen weeping. UPDATE: He was very close to her. He is the envoy who most nearly resembles Kirkpatrick in clarity and vision and opposition to tyranny in all its forms. The item, in Spanish, is here.

She was always taken seriously by the White House. A lifelong Democrat, she had a magnificent moral authority and standing.

She was one of the greatest democratic revolutionaries and she will be missed.

Scott at Powerline has a lovely short tribute to her, and his own memories of meeting here, in this fine item here.

Norman Podhoretz, the editor of Commentary magazine, which first published Kirkpatrick’s great essays, has written the first beautiful tribute to Kirkpatrick and what she stood for. It can be read here. Hat tip: Lucianne. Wall Street Journal has a beautiful tribute to her here. IBD has an insightful tribute to her here.

My email is down, but soon as it’s back up, I will post an email I got from Jeanne Kirkpatrick. Norman Podhoretz speculates that she withdrew completely from public life after disillusionment with the current direction but that is not true. She fought the good fight up to the very end. The email I got was a mass letter she wrote, pleading with her rightwing friends to please quit splitting the opposition in Nicaragua and to everyone unite behind one candidate, like Montealegre, about a day before the Nicaraguan elections. The most important thing, she said, was keeping the odious Daniel Ortega out. It was a heartfelt note and I am glad I got it. As usual, the great Jeanne Kirkpatrick was right. The Oct. 30, 2006 appeal is here:

Dear Friend:

Americans are justifiably proud of the Reagan legacy in Central America: We stood by courageous democrats in that region to roll back Communism and give democracy and peace an opportunity to take root. Today, elected leaders of these small nations are working together to fortify a promising partnership based on free people and free markets.

Unfortunately, all of what we worked for is “up for grabs,” as Nicaraguans go the polls on November 5th. With the help of support from Hugo Chavez, Sandinista dictator Daniel Ortega is leading in the polls against a divided field. This unreconstructed Marxist can be defeated a fourth time — but only if the decent and able candidate Eduardo Montealegre gets the resources he desperately needs in the next few days to finish a credible and effective campaign. In short, your help is needed again to defend the security and prosperity of our neighborhood.

Most Nicaraguans are eager to look to a brighter future. Tragically, Daniel Ortega and his onetime foe, ex-President Arnoldo Aleman, entered into an infamous “Pact” a few years ago to rig Nicaragua’s fledgling institutions to ensure that these two strongmen can continue together to run the country with impunity.

Ortega has never been held accountable for his human rights atrocities and theft, and convicted felon Aleman faces an international arrest warrant for scandalous corruption. To escape accountability, this “odd couple” has stacked the deck in favor of Ortega by fielding an Aleman crony — Jose Rizo — in order to split the strong anti-Sandinista vote. Of course, Ortega is flush with campaign cash — with Venezuela’s firebrand president pumping in petrodollars to back his Sandinista comrade.

So this is the state of affairs: the most decent candidate — conservative, ethical, pro-American Eduardo Montealegre — has had the least resources to wage a decent campaign. Of course, if he is able to get his message out and demonstrate his viability, we are convinced that Mr. Montealegre can rescue Nicaragua from the two caudillos of the “Pact.”

But, he needs your urgent and generous financial support. Under Nicaraguan law, Montealegre can accept private foreign contributions with no limitations on the amount.

We urge you to join us in backing decent Nicaraguan democrats who are waging a valiant struggle for their future. Their success or failure will determine the future of Central America: We will either have viable, stable partners, or democracy and U.S. interests will suffer a significant setback.

Amb. Jeane J. Kirkpatrick
President of the Helen Dwight Reid Foundation

Here is a link to Jeanne Kirkpatrick’s best-known and still-marvelous work -’Dictatorships and double standards.’ Hat tip: RealClearPolitics.

In the wake of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez’s thundrous electoral victory on Sunday, he’s back in action, legislating new taxes on Venezuela’s battered middle class. For his first move, he’s decided to tax toilet seats as an “inessential item.” I guess the Venezuelans, some of whom elected him, are now supposed to just go without.

Bloomberg reports:

The announcement by the government follows the Dec. 3 re- election of Chavez, who had said in September that a tax on whisky mimics a tax on ééoligarchs.” The top surcharge of 35 percent will apply to whiskey, vodka, cigars, candles and toilet seats.

Update: BBO Investment Bank, a very reliable source, reports that it’s not toilet seats but toilet paper that’s being taxed as a luxury item! Must be read to be believed, soon as the Dec. 8 report is up, at this site here. Or, check out Miguel’s site for confirmation of the same in this post here.

But going on the Bloomberg report, it’s toilet seats! I guess we’ve just learned more than we need to know about Hugo Chavez’s personal hygenic practices. Maybe he uses a coffee can. But it can’t be that, Venezuela’s got coffee shortages.

What we do know is that Chavez considers toilet seats a useless luxury, same as imported whiskey. It’s just one of those escualido baubles he seeks to do away with in the name of collectivism, if not just another yanqui scheme to achieve hegemony and dependence.

So, Hugo’s declared war on imported toilet seats and today slapped a 35% tax on them.

I guess he wanted to keep ahead of the other tax he’s putting on the very poor, the ongoing ‘tax’ that is the roaring inflation on food. Miguel has a chart that shows Venezuela’s soaring 25% food inflation these days, something which hurts people across the board, and particularly the very poor. Less food means less need for toilet seats, a rather ominous message when you think about it.

Given that Chavez considers toilet seats inessential, I guess we now know why he’s continously smelling sulphur.

Eeeeeuw!

Congress has just wrapped up a huge free trade package! They actually are allowing it to go to the floor for a vote around 4 p.m. Eastern! They darn well better pass it!

Not only will Peru, Colombia and Vietnam get some kind of trade relief for the next year (it’s temporary for the first two, but this is better than nothing), pretty much everyone else who wants free trade - The Caribbean, the African states, Ecuador & Bolivia, and Haiti - will get it too! This is fine! Better everyone in than nobody in. If that is what it takes to pass this for Colombia and Peru and Vietnam, count me in.

Even though plenty of these other states are run by odious governments (how ’bout that Bolivia?) every single one of these trade measures strengthens their country’s middle classes. These trade deals aren’t about strengthening odious governments - they are about strengthening their nations’ battered private sectors and giving them the wherewithal to stand up to such tyrants.

We’ve seen these kinds of freedoms expand in China and Vietnam because of their growing middle classes with purchasing power, who’ve gotten that through trade. Now, we will see these freedoms expand in lots of other places, too.

This is good news! No one thought any of this would ever make it to the floor. They were such incompetents in Congress and the White House that no one ever thought it would happen. Now, it is! Viva free trade!!!!

Free trade for everyone!!!

UDPATE: The first hurdle was cleared in the House today, now this omnibus bill is only awaiting clearance from the Senate. Vietnam is almost there!

The nominees for the 2006 Web log awards are out! These are great fun to vote for, and they introduce us all to great new blogs we have not heard of. Check out the new candidates at this site here - and when you can, make your vote.

Here are my own personal endorsements below - what are yours?

Best Blog
Instapundit

Best New Blog
Blue Crab Boulevard
Jules Crittenden

Best Individual Blog
Dr. Sanity
Riehl World View

Best Humor Blog
ScrappleFace

Best Comic Strip
(no opinion)

Best Online Community
Free Republic

Best Liberal Blog
(no opinion)

Best Conservative Blog
Ace of Spades
Michelle Malkin

Best Centrist Blog
Winds of Change
Althouse
QandO

Best Media Blog
Tammy Bruce

Best Technology Blog
(no opinion)

Best Sports Blog
(no opinion)

Best Military Blog
Michael Yon
Op-For

Best Law Blog
Becker-Posner

Best Business Blog
Club for Growth

Best LGBT Blog
Gay Patriot

Best Parenting Blog
(no opinion)

Best Educational Blog
(no opinion)

Best Science Blog
(no opinion)

Best Medical/Health Issues Blog
(no opinion)

Best Photo Blog
(no opinion)

Best Culture Blog
(no opinion)

Best Diarist
(no opinion)

Best Gossip Blog
Perez Hilton

Best Music Blog
(no opinion)

Best Podcast
(no opinion)

Best Video Blog
HotAir

Video Of The Year
(no opinion)

Best Canadian Blog
Small Dead Animals

Best UK Blog
EU Referendum

Best European Blog (Non UK)
Free Thoughts

Best Asian Blog
(no opinion)

Best Middle East or Africa Blog
Rantings of a Sandmonkey

Best Australia or New Zealand Blog
Tim Blair

Best Latino, Caribbean, or South American Blog
(awwww, mannnnn? Do I really have to choose? How do I choose from these?)
Babalu
Blog for Cuba
Venezuela News and Views
The Devil’s Excrement
Mark In Mexico

Best of the Top 250 Blogs
Stop The ACLU

Best of the Top 251 - 500 Blogs
Betsy????????s Page
Confederate Yankee
Sister Toldjah

Best of the Top 501 - 1000 Blogs
(no opinion)

Best of the Top 1001 - 1750 Blogs
WILLisms

Best of the Top 1751 - 2500 Blogs
Cathy’s World

Best of the Top 2501 - 3500 Blogs
The Colossus of Rhodey

Best of the Top 3501 - 5000 Blogs
(no opinion)

Best of the Top 5001 - 6750 Blogs
Sean Gleeson

Best of the Top 6751 - 8750 Blogs
Lonewacko

Best of the Rest of the Blogs (8751+)
(no opinion)