Two democracies collapsed in South America today - Venezuela’s, where Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez has now crowned himself ruler by decree, and Ecuador, where rabid red-shirted mobs aligned with President Rafael Correa, drove the democratically elected opposition congress out of power and into the streets, leaving only Correa with any power and who, as of this writing, is also a dictator in the Chavez-Hitler mould.

Is it any coincidence, then, that Hugo Chavez has seized absolute power on almost exactly the anniversary of Hitler’s assumption of power? What a coincidence.

Amid this democratic horror show in South America, at the eye of the storm surrounding it, Colombia stands, calm and alone. It’s nevertheless in great danger. Leftists in the U.S. want to strip it of resources to fight the war on drugs and the fearsome Marxist narcotrafficantes, whose sole aim is Castroite dictatorship. Meanwhile, to the south, Colombia is being encircled by hostile neighbors - among them are Venezuela and Ecuador. Bolivia is also hostile, and not that far away.

Colombia, truly, is in the eye of tyranny’s hurricane, and it’s a very big one swirling around it on all sides.

But what is Colombia? Daniel of Venezuela paid the country his first visit in 30 years, and was deeply taken with the sweet peace and safety and freedom he saw on the streets of Bogota. He was struck by the absence of filth, the absence of communist propaganda, the absence of graffiti, and the lively, warm shops and streets where houses no longer had fences and kids were free to go out and play.

It was so sweet it hurt to read it.

We must do everything in our power to support Colombia, absolutely everything, and then some, too. This beautiful country has really done something good with itself, pulled itself out of the screaming cesspit of hell and rose to the sunshine and planted flowers. Colombia is a truly great nation.

Daniel’s account of his unspeakably sweet encounter with Colombia is one of his best pieces ever. It’s seriously topical and an absolute must-read here.

P.S. - I will have a big post up tonight about the disasters in Ecuador and Venezuela.

Joshua Frost from Registan writes in TCS Daily that, following the death of the all powerful Turkmenbashi, next month’s presidential election offers a shining opportunity to bring the country’s ÄnowÅ more dynamic political elite into America’s sphere of influence. After all, Turkmenistan is an incredibly strategic important country. To cite a few examples that he gives, it lies between both Iran and Afghanistan, not to mention on top of 260 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. Not to mention that Turkmenbashi’s repression may lead to a surge of interest in radical Islam in the country, there are at least three good reasons why the United States needs to be interested.

Joshua explains why this gas is so important in the context of the Russian energy near-monopoly, and how a pro-America Turkmenistan can alter the geopolitical landscape of the region:

Russian energy monopoly Gazprom recently elected to cut off former Soviet states from its gas shipments unless they yield to 400% rate increases. Most recently, Belarus refused and shut down oil shipments to Europe, causing a minor panic as Germany and Poland had to run off their strategic reserves. Across the EU, legislators are wondering at their over-reliance on Russia energy.

In response to its own Gazprom crisis last year, Ukraine has decided to stop importing oil from Russia and go entirely with Central Asian sources — mostly Turkmen and Kazakh. Both the Duma and President Putin singled out Ukraine President Yushchenko over his “turning away” from the Kremlin and toward America. His country was, in essence, punished for not being sufficiently pro-Moscow.

A big part of the reason Gazprom could get away with all this thuggery was that it had established a favorable working relationship with Turkmenbashi. Though Turkmeni gas still flows through the Russian gas pipeline system (through the massive Central Asia-Center pipeline), it is much cheaper than Russian gas????????about $65 per 1000 cubic meters compared to Russia’s $230. That being said, most former Soviet states negotiated with Gazprom to buy a blend????????in Ukraine’s case, a $95 blend of mostly Turkmeni gas. Put differently, Russia can re-sell Turkmeni gas at a comfy profit, allowing it to partially subsidize its own energy while overcharging for what comes from Turkmenistan. Breaking this relationship would radically reshape energy politics across the Former Soviet Union, as Russia would have to compete on its own terms, and Turkmeni gas could price Gazprom out of several markets.

A pro-America Turkmenistan would be a boon to both American interests as well as to the interests of the Turmeni people. In this day and age, American influence has yielded democratic reforms in the long-term, while Russian influence has harbored entrenched statism. The problem, however, is not one of wishful thinking but of geography. Central and Eastern Europe, while close to Russia, were easily able to integrate into western political institutions due to their European proximity. Turkmenistan, on the other hand, is in an all-around bad neighborhood. This ultimately limits America’s ability to influence and negotiate with the Turkmeni government.

The biggest problem in such a consideration is made apparent in the article itself. While Turkmenbashi transported the country’s natural gas through Russia’s pipelines into Europe, I would say that such a move is more by design than by choice. Russia owns basically all of the pipelines in the entire region now, so Turkmenbashi really has no choice but to do so. At the price that the Turkmeni government sells its gas for, as stated by Joshua, it could easily beat down Russian gas in any market situation; yet the Russian monopoly on pipelines nullifies this.

With such mounting Russian leverage, it would appear impossible that anything could bring Turkmenistan into America’s fold. Incentives are key here, but few exist. Take a look though at the following image of existing and proposed pipelines for the region. What do you see?

The newly inaugurated BTC pipeline runs through the Caspian, completely cutting Russia out of the equation. A proposed pipeline runs right from Turkmenistan in order to hook up with the BTC line. Turkmen gas could then flow as far as Ankara, in which another pipeline would have to be built from Turkey through the rest of the European Union. In essence, such a pipeline system, if protected from Russian financial and political interests, would serve as an alternative to the Russian strangehold on natural gas that currently exists, allowing for Turkmen gas to reach Western markets at its lower price. Russia has already foreseen this threat and is already trying to prevent such an occurrence.

As I already said, incentives must be offered in order for this to happen. The United States should not act alone in this, especially given the dire energy security situation for Europe.

My proposal, therefore, is to approach the problem with a much greater institution. Given that the process is two-fold — the pipeline from Turkeminstan to the BTC line as well as from Turkey to the EU — it is imperative to work on both so that the end-result is achieved. In order to do this it would be much easier to use NATO rather than the EU as the appropriate institution. First of all, Turkey is already a member, so diplomatically it casts a different light around the situation than does the contentious situation over Turkey’s possible EU membership. Second, NATO is a security organization that has been discussing a large overhaul to include energy security. Its unified approach and institutions are appropriate for undertaking the task while EU institutions are not yet fully developed in this regard and are ineffective in blazing a future path.

What NATO must then do is take the lead in developing the proposed pipelines. In Turkmeni government, odious as it is, will have to be worked with, possibly with billions of dollars thrown in its direction to support such a project. Nobody in their right mind thinks that Turkmenistan will become a democracy anytime soon, so avoiding this issue on moral grounds is an error in stupidity. Surely, if such a task is undertaken, it would have the secondary effect of liberalizing the Turkmen economy and hopefully even send shockwaves through Russia’s own authoritarian regime. Turkey will be a lot easier to work with under NATO, making the second half of a new pipeline much easier to create.

Unfortunately, for Russia, the belief will come about again that it is once again NATO versus them; the continuation of a historic battle. Fortunately, the Kremlin’s perception of such a situation is meaningless because it already perceives things that way. Breaking its monopoly on energy transportation lines will do monders in breaking President Putin’s power in Russian politics, help bring Western influences into Turkmenistan, and restore the balance of energy security for Western European countries.

Breaking news - Russia’s elite spetznaz goons uses poisoned Russian ex-spy Alexander Litvinenko’s photo at the center of their targets during shooting practice. The Times of London has the story here.

But they’re still denying that they had anything to do with killing Litvinenko. My my, how hollow their elaborate protestations of noninvolvement in Litvinenko’s poisoning death ring today!

These Putinites lie like thugs.

On October 13, 2006, Human Rights Watch reported on a Russian trial court’s ordering the closure of an organization based in the Russian city of Nizhny Novogorod and known as the “Russian-Chechen Friendship Association.” The RCFA is a nongovernmental organization established by Russians to inform the public about the dire plight of Chechnya and Russian human rights abuses there. The decision came just after the group announced its intention to conduct its own formal investigation into Russian war crimes in Chechnya. Time magazine reported that Amnesty International had characterized the Kremlin’s action as one that “appears to be the latest move in a carefully calculated strategy to get rid of an organization that has been outspoken on behalf of victims of human-rights violations in Chechnya.” In 2004, the RCFA was the recipient of the International Helsinki Foundation’s Recognition Award for service to the cause of human rights in Chechnya.

Eight months earlier, after KGB officers raided the RCFA’s offices, the organization’s executive director, Stanislav Dmitrievsky (pictured, above), had been convicted of “inciting racial hatred” (Article 282 of the Russian Federal Criminal Code) for publishing articles in the RCFA newspaper Pravo-Zaschita (”Guardian of Rights”) about alleged human rights violations in Chechnya by Russian security forces. In 2006, Dmitrievsky was the winner of Amnesty International’s Special Award for Human Rights Journalism Under Threat. Anna Politkovskaya testified at his trial (click here to read an interview of Politikovskaya by Dmitreivsky from Pravo-Zaschita). Human Rights Watch reviewed the two statements that were the basis for the charges against Dmitrievsky and found that they did not contain any language that could legitimately be prohibited under international human rights law. Russian rights organizations also took up his cause. Dmitrievsky received a one-year suspended sentence, which seemed lenient at the time. It then turned out that the conviction was merely a pretext for not merely muzzling but liquidating the entire organization in a classic neo-Soviet act of censorship.

The Kremlin had already tried, unsuccessfully, to destroy the RCFA the year before. In 2005, the local tax inspectorate attempted to shut it down on charges that it did not pay taxes on a grant. The use of local authorities to carry out the national agenda is commonplace in Russia: Last year, as Publius Pundit reported, a blogger named Vladimir Rakhmankov was prosecuted by local authorities, supposedly just for violations of local ordinances, after he referred to Vladimir Putin as the “nation’s phallic symbol.” Of course, the Kremlin’s manipulation of the tax code for crass political purposes is well known, as it infamously used those provisions to jail oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky just after he started making noises about seeking the presidency. The assault on the RCFA was not limited to the use of judicial power. On several occasions, leaflets calling for attacks on various RCFA staffers were circulated in their neighborhoods, and the local prosecutor refused to take action. Dmitrievsky’s home was also broken into and searched by unidentified parties.

After Dmitrievsky’s trial, during which the pro-Kremlin youth cult “Nashi” (”us Slavic Russians”) organized protests against the writer outside the court, Radio Free Europe reported on his conviction: “Aleksandr Podrabinek, a former dissident and head of the Prima news agency, which reports on human rights abuses, mostly in the former Soviet Union, spoke to RFE/RL shortly after the trial had ended. ‘This is yet another defeat for Russian justice and perhaps the most powerful attack in recent years on freedom of speech and freedom of the press in Russia,’ Podrabinek said. ‘The sentence is clearly politically motivated. In my opinion, Dmitriyevsky is a man who deserves public gratitude not a conviction.’”

The charge of “inciting racial hatred” was based on a legal reform carried out in July of last year entitled a law “on combating extremist activities.” At the time it was enacted, many worried that it was a harbinger of a major crackdown on civil dissent in Russia, and those predictions seem to have been fully justified based on the treatment of the RCFA. Under the law, the RCFA had five days following Dmitrievsky’s conviction to disavow his statements and break its ties with him; failing to do so meant prosecutors could charge it with having adopted the statements, thus subjecting the organization to enforced closure.

The RCFA appealed to the Russian Supreme Court, and meanwhile the West shamefully failed to do adequate reporting on the persecution of the group or to put significant pressure on the Kremlin. Many human rights groups sounded the alarm bells, but the story failed to make headway in the mainstream press and the cause was not taken up by the West’s political leaders. The result was that last week the court ruled against RCFA, ordering it out of existence. In a press release, the RCFA stated:

The proceedings at the Supreme Court were observed by representatives of the European Commission Delegation as well as embassies of the USA, Germany, Austria, Portugal, Lithuania, Denmark, Sweden, and Norway. Representatives of the Amnesty International and Human Rights watch also attended the court session. There were also observers from Russian human rights organizations, including Memorial human rights center, Civic Assistance Committee and For Civic Assistance Foundation. There were several journalists working for foreign media outlets as well as for ???????Echo of Moscow??????? radio. All of them became witnesses of absolute disregard to the law. Although we have expected this outcome, the undisguised farce of ???????considering??????? the appeal at the Supreme Court that the Russian authorities didn????????t hesitate to organize in presence of international observers was absolutely shocking. Although we did our utmost to prevent Russia from losing its face once again at the world scene, no miracle is possible under the current circumstances in Russia. We, the Russian-Chechen Friendship Society, have been liquidated as a Russia-based organization. Thus, the Russian authorities have proved once again that they remain absolutely indifferent to all voices of protest, regardless of what countries people who speak up in defense of liberal values and democracy come from or what is their level of recognition in the world community. We have been supported by more than hundred public figures from some twenty countries, including Austria, Germany, Italy, Spain, the United Kingdom, France, Slovakia, Serbia, Montenegro, Estonia, Czech Republic, Poland, Bulgaria, Romania, Norway, Ukraine, Turkey, Mexico, Belgium, Brazil, Finland, Portugal, Georgia, Moldova, Azerbaijan, the USA, Canada, Malaysia, Philippines, Syria, Zimbabwe. More than one hundred Russian human rights people and journalists have signed their Open Letter to President Putin in support of our organization. We are definitely going to appeal to the European Court on Human Rights in the liquidation ruling as we deal with obvious violations of Articles 10 and 11 of the European Convention.

Russia’s record before the ECHR is abysmal, so RCFA may well find nominal vindication there when its case is finally heard. Russia has received so many convictions before the body for violations of international law that it has been forced to undertake a reorganization and expansion just to deal with the massive Russian caseload. It has been convicted of everything from torture in Chechnya to persecuting religious organiziations like the Salvation Army and the Jehovah’s Witnesses in Russia.

A prestigious consortium of international human rights organizations reacted to the Supreme Court’s ruling as follows:

The International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) and the World Organisation Against Torture (OMCT), in the framework of their joint programme, the Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders, express their deep concern about the decision of the Supreme Court to upheld the decision of the Regional Court of Nizny-Novgorod to close down the Russian-Chechen Friendship Society (RCFS). The Observatory strongly condemns the closure of the RCFS, which represents a further step into the muzzling of civil society, and blatantly contravenes the provisions of the UN Declaration on Human Rights Defenders, adopted by the General Assembly on December 9, 1998, which guarantees every person????????s right ???????to promote and to strive for the protection and realisation of human rights and fundamental freedoms at the national and international levels??????? (article 1), and ???????to form, join and participate in non-governmental organizations, associations or groups??????? (article 5). The Observatory urges the Russian authorities to put an end to any act of harassment against human rights NGOs and their members, as well as to revise their legislation so as to conform with international and regional standards relative to freedoms of association and expression, and to guarantee, in any circumstances, the independence of the judiciary. Finally, the Observatory calls the Russian authorities to conform in any circumstances with the provisions of the Declaration on Human Rights Defenders, adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on December 9, 1998, in particular its article 12.2, which provides that ???????the State shall take all necessary measures to ensure the protection by the competent authorities of everyone, individually or in association with others, against any violence, threats, retaliation, de facto or de jure adverse discrimination, pressure or any other arbitrary action as a consequence of his or her legitimate exercise of the rights referred to in the present Declaration???????.

Congressman Tom Lantos, chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, has also issued an official condemnation of the Kremlin’s action and has sent a bipartisan letter of protest to the Kremlin. But this is closing the barn door after the neo-Soviet horse has bolted. By waiting for the Supreme Court to act, apparently under the rationalization that this would show “respect” for the Russian judicial process, the West has effectively condemned the RCFS to oblivion. Unless the EHCR hears the case on an expedited basis, rules in its favor and this is followed up by some form of dynamic intervention to prop up the RCFS, the organization will have been effectively destroyed by the Kremlin.

The Kremlin has shown itself capable of erasing individual reporters who dared to tell the truth about Chechnya; Anna Politkovskaya, perhaps the greatest Russian patriot who ever lived, is the leading example. Now it shows that it can just as easily wipe out entire NGOs. How long before it moves on to more significant entities, like Anna’s newspaper Novaya Gazeta or the valiant little English language outfit The Moscow Times? How long will the world stand idly by watching it happen? If the world had more actively opposed the Extremism Law when it was being debated in the Russian Duma, and upon its passage had aggressively reached out to protect those like the RCFA who would be its first victims, the RCFA might not have been silenced. The Kremlin might have stayed its hand, or at least a great deal more publicity would have resulted when it acted. More important, the Kremlin would not so easily have been able to send the message throughout Russia that organizations like RCFA have no future in neo-Soviet Russia, thus chilling future such efforts. Now, we must redouble our efforts to see that the Kremlin’s further progress down the neo-Soviet road is inhibited to the maximum extent possible.

Kim Zigfeld publishes the Russia blog La Russophobe.

Australian patriot babes celebrate National Day on Friday
Source: Tim Blair
Hat tip: Instapundit

Australians were told by their nanny-state minders that their beautiful blue Australian flag was nothing more than nasty gang colors and something to be put out of sight, for fear of offending precious Islamofascists and tribal rights special interest groups. Tim Blair in Sydney has one account of this leftwing lunacy right here.

Little did they realize, it was AUSTRALIANS they were talking down to, real Australians, people who value and treasure their freedom above all else, Australians who live in one of the greatest nations on earth and who unapologetically know this.

What did the Australians do? Exactly what the Mrs. Grundys of political correctness told them not to: in their millions, they turned out in bikinis and other Australian flag regalia on a scale never seen in Australian history. Today, millions of Australians are wearing their national emblem of freedom to show their pride in their accomplishments and their love of democracy for National Day.

They just beat the tut-tutters of political correctness right into the ground. Along with the Islamofascists who called them ‘uncovered meat.’ Waving the Australian banner high.

We all have to celebrate with them!

Go Australia!!!

You know the story so far: Russia suddenly drops an oil price bomb on impoverished Belarus, dramatically increasing the price Belarussians are charged because the country was insufficiently slavish in its obedience of the Kremlin, and Belarus responds with a massive tax on Russia’s Belarus oil pipeline transits to Europe, whereupon Russia threatens to cut off all oil shipments to Belarus, and Belarus then bitterly backs down from its tax. Where do we go from here? What does it all mean?

Lionel Beehner, a staff member at the Council on Foreign Relations, has an article on the New Republic website (subscribers only) entitled “Minsk Meat: Why Russia’s Imperialism is Good for the West.” The article follows on the heels of an earlier NewRep piece entitled “Pipe Dream: Moscow’s Growing Resource Nationalism.”

Beehner begins by observing that the Russia’s attempt to weaponize its energy assets is nothing new, and in fact “it is becoming a winter ritual for Russia to get into the ring with one of its neighbors and provoke an energy fight. Last January, a pricing feud between Russia and Ukraine briefly disrupted gas shipments to Europe and raised fresh doubts about Russia’s reliability as a stable energy supplier. Now, one year later, Moscow has taken the gloves off again, this time against a longtime ally, Belarus.”

Beehner argues that Russia’s actions may actually be good for the West, since it presents us with the opportunity to wedge Belarus out of Russia’s sphere of influence and, simultaneously, democratize it. He writes:

Higher energy costs could help unseat Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko. His Stalinist-style regime has been labeled Europe’s last “outpost of tyranny” by the U.S. State Department. Western governments have tried to undermine the mercurial ruler for years, but he has survived thanks to the economic, political, and military support of Moscow. Yet the gas crisis–which lasted for 60 hours before Lukashenko lifted the transit tax–may portend worse relations ahead. A proposed political union–a decade-old plan between Minsk and Moscow to establish open borders, a common currency, and eventual political integration–has been delayed if not permanently derailed. And, without Russian handouts, Belarus’s economy will suffer and Lukashenko’s power may unravel. Meanwhile, his domestic opposition, emboldened by a strong showing at the polls last year, will gain more strength amid such an economic slowdown. In fact, the irony of the whole situation is that Gazprom, normally the Goliath-like bogeyman in energy disputes, may in fact be doing the West a favor. By squeezing Belarus, it is unwittingly installing the conditions needed for greater political change. As The Wall Street Journal put it, “It’s a shame this Russian epiphany didn’t happen before Mr. Lukashenko rigged and bought, with Russian energy, his latest ‘reelection’ last March.”

Beehner believes that higher energy costs will “crack the veneer of stability” that Lukashenko has painted over the the country’s dire economic circumstances by means of economic subsidies from Russia to the tune of $4 billion annually. He writes:

“The so-called stability of Belarus’s economy was the stability of an addict getting cheap drugs,” Belarusian economist Leonid Zaiko told Vremya Novostei, a Russian newspaper. Belarus’s gas tab is expected to exceed $1 billion in 2007, while inflation could more than double. Without Russian support, Lukashenko cannot keep wages high or pensions paid. Faced with these added economic burdens, Belarusians will agitate for greater political change. And, in contrast with previous years, Belarus now boasts a viable opposition candidate, Alexander Milinkevich, a bushy-bearded former physics professor. In his failed bid for president last year, he called for greater openness in government, future membership in the World Trade Organization, and less integration with Russia. With Belarusians blaming Russians for their energy woes, they may be more amenable to Milinkevich’s idea of putting greater distance between Minsk and Moscow.

This reality may “significantly alter Lukashenko’s foreign policy” as Belarus is “forced to look elsewhere for cheaper energy and export markets, perhaps even westward.” He believes that “political relations between Russia and Belarus may be irreparably damaged” and points out that “some analysts say the gas-price hike signals the Kremlin’s growing distaste for Lukashenko’s antics and is aimed more at regime change in Minsk than a more equitable gas price” especially since “Putin can’t stand Lukashenko.” Even if Belarus does not move Westward, he notes, the mess may serve to put the kibosh on any thoughts of union between the two countries. Russia is working on means of circumventing Belarus as a transitway for oil shipments, and dominated by the oligarch class it may end up consuming its oil resources rather than coverting them into military assets. The oligarchs have houses in Europe, they don’t see it as an invasion threat. This means they don’t see Belarus as a crucial buffer state. Thus, Beehner prescribes:

Instead of criticizing Russia, Europe should welcome the economic pressure on Belarus. Of course, Europeans favor unimpeded flows of gas and energy prices unencumbered by Putin’s political whims, but they also would prefer a more democratic and pro-Western government to replace Lukashenko’s regime. Brussels has little leverage over Belarus. But it knows that, if Moscow were to withdraw its political, economic, and military support from Minsk, this might bring about eventual political change. Europe finds itself in the awkward position of, at least privately, condoning Gazprom’s bully-like behavior. A two-day disruption in its oil supply is a small price to pay for the eventual removal of Europe’s last remaining dictator.

Beehner has left two significant factors out of his analysis, which make his thesis all the more compelling.

First, a destabilized Belarus presents a target of opportunity not only for the West but also for Russia, and the oligarchs are not the only political force in the country. There are plenty of neo-Soviet thinkers who rue the day Belarus and Russia were separated, and who would prefer that Belarus return under conditions of subservience. Just as Soviet forces swept into Germany and seized part of it following the fall of Berlin, if the Lukashenko government topples we could easily be faced with a race situation once again for control over Belarus. Beehner’s analysis urges us to be ready to run that race.

Second, opposition to what is happening in Russia today should be a matter of bipartisan unity in the United States. The New Republic is generally thought of as a publication of the left, but you can find just the same concern about Russian energy imperialism being expressed on the right, for instance in the Weekly Standard. So we not only have the opportunity to achieve something vital, but to achieve it by working together on a common goal.

In the “Pipe Dream” piece, NewRep special correspondent Joshua Kurlantzick exposes the connection between neo-Soviet nationalism and Russia’s only viable powerbase, its energy resources. The nationalists may be interested in destabilizing and recovering their “lost asset” in Belarus (to say nothing of Ukraine and Georgia), but also in seeking to upend Eastern Europe itself. When have we ever heard them recognize that their control over the Baltics, Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic and so forth was wrong-headed or immoral? Viewed in this light, and given that Russia’s “president” is a proud KGB spy, European outrage over the Belarus move is entirely appropriate and understandable, even if there is something to be said for keeping it in check so as not to dissuade Russia from further nationalist missteps (on the other hand, foreign opposition might actually encourage the nationalists).

Kurlantzick writes:

In the uproar over the Litvinenko killing, which might signal a renewed foreign presence by Russia’s security forces, European nations may be missing the biggest threat from Russia. As the Putin government has consolidated state control of Russia’s mighty oil and gas sector, it has gained vast leverage over Europe. As I noted last fall, several factors have led to Moscow’s growing resource nationalism. The rising price of oil, which has more than tripled in value since 1999, fills Russia’s coffers with cash. Skyrocketing demand, partly due to the emergence of China and India, and the absence of new discoveries of oil and gas, have made Russia’s gas deposits, the largest in the world, even more valuable. President Vladimir Putin clearly views energy as a weapon Russia can use to claw its way back to global power, and Putin’s recentralization of political control in the Kremlin, which has proven popular with the Russian public, has given him the leverage to crush private oil and gas companies. He followed through, destroying private firm Yukos and tossing its head, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, into a Siberian jail, and then retaking other private companies. Still, until recently, the Russian government seemed wary of dramatically flexing its petroleum muscles outside its borders or with foreign firms. Perhaps it feared it would alienate foreign investment needed to upgrade its oil and gas infrastructure. Perhaps it did not want to ruin its chances to get into the World Trade Organization (WTO), vital to boosting Russian trade. But the Bush administration now backs Russia’s entry into the WTO, decreasing Washington’s leverage over the Kremlin, and Moscow has begun to wield its petroleum weapon more openly. “Russia since last year has been enjoying some feeling of euphoria, that feeling that we have so much money, so many resources that we can do what we want,” Fyodor Lukyanov, editor of the journal Russia in Global Affairs, told The International Herald Tribune.

As a result of this “euphoria,” Kurlantzick observes, nationalism has increased and so its economic expression, nationalizaiton. He notes: “In recent months Moscow has directly threatened foreign oil companies. It has refused to let foreigners acquire a stake in Shtokman, a large northern gas field, and it has declined to let other companies access Russian pipelines. It recently forced Royal Dutch Shell to give up its stake in an exploration project on the eastern island of Sakhalin, the largest single foreign investment in Russia. Shell sold its share to its Russian partner for a below-market price. Perhaps because the West needs Russian oil and gas, Moscow’s financial markets barely budged after this appropriation of the Sakhalin project.”

How long will it be before nationalization fuels the international expression of nationalism, imperialism? Kurlantzick warns: “Europe must pay attention. Gazprom now dominates much of the European market, a chilling realization as Russia becomes more and more authoritarian and less and less predictable. As Vladimir Milov of the Institute of Energy Policy told The Economist, Russian state control Äof gasÅ can also mean ‘irrational behavior and decisions.’ (State control hurts average Russians, too, who do not benefit from outside investment: The Energy Information Administration noted that “Russia’s natural gas sector has been stunted primarily due to aging fields, state regulation, Gazprom’s monopolistic control over the industry, and insufficient export pipelines.”) In fact, a recent analysis by the Financial Times revealed that Gazprom signed deals or entered into negotiations with more than twelve European nations in 2006 alone. By 2010, the FT predicted, Gazprom alone may control 33 percent of the European Union gas market, leaving an entire continent dependent on the Kremlin. Once that happens, the Litvinenko affair, sadly, might look like a minor problem.”

In short, Russia may try to succeed with oil and gas where the USSR failed with nukes and soldiers in consolidating an imperial grip over Eastern Europe, ultimately waging a very literal cold war with Western Europe and the United States. Belarus may be the first battlefield in that struggle, and we can choose whether to fight it there or, like Britain chose to yield ground to Hitler in the early going, wait until the oil and gas bombs start falling all around us.

Kim Zigfeld writes for the Russia affairs blog La Russophobe.

RCTV workers in Caracas today protest Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez’s vow to shut them down
Source: Reuters, via Yahoo! News

Venezuela’s oldest television station is under the gun from the Venezuelan dictatorship of Hugo Chavez. When I say ‘under the gun’ I mean that literally, and you’ll see if you read further. Chavez has vowed to shut down the 53-year old station and throw its workers onto the streets. Never mind what its workers want, what its advertisers want or what its millions of viewers want. Chavez wants this television station destroyed. He not only wants revenge on a political critic, he also wants its airwaves to foist Maoist-style propaganda onto the Venezuelan public. It sounds extreme but it’s all true. I was in Caracas last year and spent a great deal of time watching Chavista television - and believe me, the government fare totally sucked.

If Chavez has his way, then instead of the watching the TV they like to watch, like the popular RCTV, Venezuelans will now watch TV developed by the socialist post office. Gray comrade material, fully infused with socialist propaganda and no entertainment value whatever, except to bitterly laugh at.

Marcel Granier, an honorable Venezuelan who owns RCTV, has begun to defend his station against the expropriation. He has written a superb piece in today’s Wall Street Journal which I post for education purposes. This is democracy’s struggle carried over to America’s shores. Read his essay below:

Remote Control

By MARCEL GRANIER
January 24, 2007; Page A12

CARACAS — The president of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, Hugo Ch????vez, has verbally announced his decision to shut down Radio Caracas Television (RCTV) — our TV station, the oldest in Venezuela as well as the one with the largest audience.

So continues a long series of attacks against journalists, employees, management and shareholders of many independent media companies. The aim of all this is to limit the citizens’ right to seek information and entertainment in the media of their choice, to impede public access to those media where they might express or encounter criticism of the government or their proposals for reform, to stifle the pluralism of opinion in news and talk programs, and to cut off the free flow of information and debate in Venezuela. Instead, the Ch????vez government seeks to install a system that it has described, without apparent irony, as the “communicational and informative hegemony of the state.”

On June 14, 2006, President Ch????vez — dressed in military fatigues — gave a speech on the occasion of the delivery of a batch of Kalashnikov AK-103s to an army battalion. He brandished a weapon, then pointed it at a cameraman and said: “With this rifle, which has a range of 1,000 meters, I could take out that wee red light on your camera.” Moments later, he declared: “We have to review the licenses of the TV companies.”

In the weeks that followed the incident, various government officials repeated the same threat and started to monitor the editorial positions of the media. “There have been qualitative changes in programming, in news selection, and in the editorial line” of some media, an official observed; “ÄbutÅ there are other cases in which we have not seen this change, this rectification . . .” He reminded us all that the government “has the ability not to renew a ÄmediaÅ license.”

On Nov. 3, 2006, a month before the Venezuelan presidential elections, President Ch????vez repeated his threat: “I’m reminding certain media, above all in television, that they mustn’t be surprised if I say, ‘There are no more licenses for certain TV channels.’ . . . I’m the head of state.”

On Dec. 28, 2006, President Ch????vez, again in military uniform, declared that the broadcasting license for RCTV would not be renewed: “The order has already been drafted, so they should start shutting down their studios.” He provided detail: “the license ends in March”; but two weeks later, in the National Assembly, he contradicted himself, saying that our license would end in May. At that same time, he launched a campaign of attack ads in all state-run media, paid for with public funds, aimed at discrediting our station in the eyes of the country.

On Jan. 13, in his annual address to the National Assembly, he changed his tune again and said: “The transmission signal belongs to the Venezuelan people and will be nationalized for all Venezuelans.” He added: “RCTV has only a few days left . . . they can scream, stomp their feet, do whatever they want, but the license is finished. They can say whatever they want, I don’t care, it’s over.”

These verbal threats constitute, de facto, a public decision to silence RCTV. But RCTV has never been informed legally or formally of the measures that are to be taken against it; nor have we ever been told what exactly are the accusations against us, which makes it difficult for us to defend ourselves. President Ch????vez has violated the presumption of innocence and has denied us due process.

The actions against RCTV of President Ch????vez and his subordinates are in violation of the Venezuelan constitution, the American Convention on Human Rights, and the Inter-American Democratic Charter. They are a clear example of abuse of power, and violate the right to work of all those in the media industry, not to mention a violation of the freedom of thought and expression of millions of citizens who seek information and ideas of their own free choice.

We are faced, in effect, with an aggressive campaign to extinguish all thought that differs from that which is officially dubbed “revolutionary.”

In fact, President Ch????vez’s threat to shut down RCTV has even led Jose Miguel Insulza, secretary general of the Organization of American States, to express his dismay publicly: “The shut-down of a large media company is a very rare occurrence in the history of our continent, and has no precedent in the last decades of democracy.”

Organizations such as Human Rights Watch and the Committee to Protect Journalists, among others, have also raised the alarm. But the reaction of Hugo Ch????vez has been typically crude. It’s the way he reacts whenever faced with someone who has the temerity to disagree with him. He says, and has said repeatedly, that there’s nothing to discuss. “RCTV has only a few days left. They can scream, stomp their feet, do whatever they want. But it’s all over.”

Mr. Granier is chairman of Radio Caracas Television. (This piece was translated from the original Spanish by Tunku Varadarajan.)

URL for this article: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB116960498902885814.html

Gisele Bunchen in Esquire, 2004
Source: Thomas Hawk blog

Beautiful Gisele Bundchen of Brazil has always been my favorite supermodel. Her regal good looks, her tall physique, and her unusual grownup features have always made her a natural for the camera and great photographs.

Now she’s given me a reason to really like her - by telling Hugo Chavez he’s repulsive. In fact, she pretty much screwed up her stately nose, narrowed her feline eyes, and sweetly told the fat, leering Venezuelan dictator that he was the Swamp Thing.

The Venezuelan dictator had been ogling her like a pervert, in fact, for years. Apparently emboldened by his recent success kissing drag queens in Rio, he must have assumed everyone loved him back. Gisele said that not only did she not want to meet the Marxist dictator, she also announced, to no one in particular that Chavez is detested by the rest of the world too. Like the lovely Helen Houdova before her, she struck a blow for Venezuela’s beleaguered democrats.

Take that, Hugo!

Two things stand out about that statement.

Number one, she doesn’t want anything to do with this brutal leftist dictator - no pictures, no cavorting, no PR. In that regard, she has simple self respect.

Two, she has declared that dictators are unpopular, something no politician of any stripe could do nearly as effectively as she just did. Gisele is a great fashion figure and party girl, so anything she says, really is the ‘word.’

Right now, she’s struck an impressive blow against totalitarianism by telling the world it’s un-chic and un-hip to have anything nice to do or say about Chavez. The next idiot you see in a Che Guevara t-shirt is going to feel the sting of that statement from the world’s most fashionable babe of fashion. In other words, communism is what funky losers do. Freedom is what pretty fashion babes do. This girl has done her part for world democracy today.

Well done, Gisele!

UPDATE: Go see Venezuela Today’s photoessay on this matter, you’ll laugh your head off!!!

From the time the US and coalition forces deposed Saddam and his Ba’athists, over 25 million newly free Iraqis have had the opportunity to develop a society along a new path; the nature of that path has faced challenges from Iraqi sects, international terrorist groups, and foreign states, and its direction has been hotly debated.

I have believed for some time that Iraqis have been making gradual but clear progress on many fronts in their attempt to rebuild a society — in terms of democratic reform, economic development and reconstruction, and other key elements of civil society. A little over a year ago, I noted signs of economic liberalization including the introduction of a flat tax and openness to foreign investment, which led some to forecast double-digit growth rates — Newsweek ran a story just last month expressing their utter surprise that “Iraq’s economy is growing strong, even booming” at double-digit rates. Iraq had just run another successful election, once more relatively peacefully and without signs of widespread flaws. Reading the news, one felt that despite the serious threat posed by violent radicals, Iraqis themselves were primarily dedicated to rebuilding their lives outside the environment of a psychotic dictatorship.

OK, I should clarify that. There were always significant elements in the media that made the situation out to be on the brink of or beyond total collapse; a number of fringe columnists also portrayed a country so dysfunctional that returning Saddam to the helm would have been an improvement. However, mainstream opinion still treated this view as far-fetched fantasy.

More recently, though, the apocalyptic view of Iraq seems to have gained considerable ground among journalists, politicians, and citizens. More horror stories about violent fanatics came out, some analysts believed the Democrats’ mid-term election gains stemmed from their opposition to the Iraq war, and support for President Bush faded in polls. As I wrote at the beginning of this post, I had believed that Iraqis were making real progress; however, I always considered the possibility that naysayers had a more accurate understanding of the situation than I did, and in the recent run of anti-war sentiment I spent even more time reconsidering the events on the ground.

I personally recollect the moment when I decided to reevaluate the most fundamental aspects of the status of Iraq: I had reached a new level of disgust upon reading in my local newspaper an AP story detailing the destruction of mosques, and people being burned alive, while Iraqi soldiers stood by doing nothing. Surely when even soldiers and whoever else was around at the time — civilians? journalists? — stood by and watched as innocent people burn, one cannot reasonably describe it as a normal society that is rebuilding itself!

Of course, as you probably know by now, it appears that this did not happen. In fact, it appears that many things did not happen. Jamil Hussein, the only putative source for this and other stories, may not even exist. What does exist?

In light of this story in which the bulk of “facts” were made up and published without question, we can look back at the Killian documents fraud at CBS, the Adnan Hajj fraud at Reuters and other similar cases, and it appears that the mainstream media’s journalistic methods simply do not work. In particular, the media companies’ reliance on sources and stringers with dubious motives, and their obstinate defenses in the face of all evidence has led to these news outlets’ complete inability to report on events in a way that I can reasonably expect to be true beyond the vagaries of ordinary human error and uncertainty. Considering the mandate of news media, this strikes me as a major failure.

So what about Iraq? Well, a major media failure does not imply that everything is rosy in Iraq; it’s still clear that violent attacks result in the loss of too many innocent lives. However, in my reexamination of Iraq taking into consideration that the mass of reports covering events on the ground stems from a broken method of journalism that relies on many questionable links throughout the chain of repeaters, I still see Iraq as comprising more people who are intent on creating a society in which they can live their lives than psychopaths bent on destroying that nascent society. Iraq is a budding democracy with significant freedoms in a troubled region that deals in death.

I’ll still maintain an open mind, obviously, and reexamine and update my awareness of the status of Iraq. This will be made easier once journalism is fixed, which becomes more possible as more people realize it’s broken.

As for fixing the news media, while it’s a tough process that may require a considerable reformation, one has to start somewhere. I love Doug Stewart’s idea at Literal Barrage, “crypto journalism”:

Each reporter ought to collect a PGP/GPG key (or a similar analog) from each of their sources, or, in the case of anonymous sources, assign them a key. Each of these sources could collect signatures from various and sundry journalists, other sources, etc. When the time came to post a story, the journalists responsible for the content ought to make the cryptographic key for each of their sources available to the public which would essentially allow the public to check the trustworthiness of a source almost instantly. Even if a source were committed to their anonymity, they could maintain a single key or a series of keys, each of which would obviously have a much lower “trustworthiness rating” than a named source, or at least one that has had enough time to collect a large number of signatures. Essentially, the public would be given a mostly fool-proof way to track not only the reliability of sources, but of the journalists themselves. Those prone to using anonymous sources (or sources with few key signatures) could have their own status as an unbiased observer immediately called into question.

Read the whole thing!

Yesterday’s siege of Beirut by Hezbollah yesterday was a pivotal turning point in the Lebanese story, one so often torn by strife and grief. The fact that the shutdown degenerated rapidly into a showdown shows that they have taken the decided step to escalate tensions in the country to the breaking point. Reports of fist-fights, rock-throwing, and even sprays of automatic gunfire rocked the news. Police reports say that most of these injured were punctured with bullets. Lebanese are once again fighting Lebanese, with over 100 people injured and several dead.

On day two fights broke out in Tripoli. Now, on day three, clashes broke out at Beirut’s Arab University with four killed and over 160 injured; all over political disagreements between Sunni and Shia students in the cafeteria. According to the Lebanon Daily Star, the day looked very bleak.

BEIRUT: Clashes erupted between government loyalists and opposition supporters in Lebanon on Thursday, escalating swiftly and leaving at least three dead and 158 others wounded by the time a rare curfew was imposed on the city at 8:30 p.m. Scenes across the capital were reminiscent of the country’s brutal 1975-1990 Civil War; burning cars, reports of snipers on rooftops and a curfew for the first time since 1996.

Thirteen Lebanese Army soldiers, including four officers, were also wounded while trying to defuse the violence that spilled over from a political argument on a university campus in Tariq al-Jdideh.

Premier Fouad Siniora, speaking from the Paris III donor conference, called for restraint.

“What are we doing? No one can help a country where its own people can’t help themselves,” Siniora said. “We have to set an example for those people who came from all over and are watching Lebanon that we are trying to build a country, not a battlefield.”

He pleaded for the Lebanese to “avoid tension and escalation” and “to calm down and return to their senses.”

For the second time in a week, supporters of the opposition and the government took their disputes to the streets.

“What we are doing doesn’t help anyone but the real enemy,” Siniora said in an allusion to Israel. “Know that my heart is with Lebanon,” he added.

The initial fight Thursday broke out in a cafeteria Beirut Arab University in the Tariq al-Jdideh neighborhood. Two students - one a supporter of the Future Movement and the other a Hizbullah partisan - exchanged insults, with one spitting at the other.

From there, it escalated into a mainly Sunni-Shiite clash, escalating from fists to clubs to gunfire and Molotov cocktails.

The initial fight trapped many people, including local high-school students, in the midst of the clashes until they were escorted out by the army.

Supporters from pro-government Sunni parties and their Shiite counterparts, Amal and Hizbullah, quickly arrived at the scene for a face-off. Both young and old men wielded stones, wrapped chains around their necks and even carried stylized batons - hand-painted and sharpened, with special grips made of tape.

“This is war,” Ali, a Future Movement backer and resident of Tariq al-Jdideh, told The Daily Star as stones flew nearby.

If this is war, then some of America’s greatest cities have suffered from it as well. But it’s close. Simple arguments and exchanges of insults over political views are turning into neighborhood wide street fights. What Nasrallah intended to be an event to strike fear into the hearts of rival politicians, with all his threats of escalation, has caused them to lash back. Go figure?

Here is a list of some of the things I’ve noticed that have changed over the past couple of days since the shutdown, beside the obvious:

• Prime Minister Siniora has actually referred to Hezbollah as terrorists committing terrorist acts, rather than a militia or the opposition. He has also said that they are directly ordered in their doings by Syria and Iran. This marks a huge change to how the government views Hezbollah.
• Nasrallah is in retreat over the shutdown. While he and Aoun promised escalation at first, Nasrallah held off. Today, after the clashes erupted, Nasrallah issued a fatwa telling everyone to cooperate with the army and stay off of the streets during the curfew. Yet despite his public orders all this time, there have still be clashes.
• While Hezbollah built up a lot of street cred because of the summer war with Israel, a lot of people are having a change of heart. Many still agree with its positions overall, but the way that this situation has escalated has put them off from their tactics completely.
• One last thing about Nasrallah; the man has gone bonkers. Between blaming Israel, calling the government a militia, saying that government supporters are causing all the violence, extolling Lebanese sovereignty, and suddenly becoming a peacenik, Nasrallah has shown himself to be afraid of his own creation. His actions caused this and now he is backing away.

What has to be realized by the Lebanese people now is that Hezbollah is nothing more than a criminal gang bent on bringing Lebanon to the brink for his own benefit. With the possibility of civil war looming large, no one stands to benefit from such an outcome. This is why even Nasrallah himself has had to back away. He will be blamed for such a war. Only someone that is truly unLebanese would submit the country to that scenario again.

UPDATE: Michael Totten also thinks that Nasrallah is in a bind, while Charles Malik says that Hezbollah has lost control of its supporters. Glad to see that I’m not the only one hypothesizing this!

Charallave airport west of Caracas
Source: Globovision

I am getting weary of the words ‘expropriation’ or ‘confiscation’ - what’s going on in Venezuela right now is outright stealing.

Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez stole himself an airport today, taking over the Charallave small airplane airport well outside Caracas, which is where all the small planes in Venezuela were diverted after Chavez helped himself to Carlota airport in the center of the city in 2004 or so. Of course he has no intention of paying - he didn’t pay any of the oil companies for his thefts and there’s no way he’s going to pay any of these ‘capitalists’ who own and keep this nice airport in good shape so that people can travel through Venezuela on something other than its bad roads, or visit other countries.

I was at this little airport when I visited Caracas last year. It was a nice airport. It was efficient, friendly, attractive, well-designed, trash-free and had a pleasant cafe for a bite to eat ahead of a flight. Now, it’s about to be ripped off by communists and turned into a Soviet-style air-strip, full of incompetent third-world chavistas only there for their political loyalty, with absolutely no service or efficiency, let alone access to the public.

Chavez is stealing this airport not only because he likes to steal but because he wants to impede freedom of movement in Venezuela. He is beginning to shut the gates to escape. With more and more Venezuelans seeking to emigrate, and asylum applications at record highs right now, Chavez knows he’s losing national talent and seeks to force Venezuelans to accept his communist way without choices. He doesn’t like the dynamic new Venezuelan-American community that is blossoming in Houston, Calgary and Miami. He wants to force Venezuelans to stay inside the carcel of socialism he’s creating and if they do not accept his expropriations, then to simply suffer or be punished, as he goes about creating his hell on earth.

It’s getting very bad in Venezuela right now. The future is black.

Freedom! Some of the 19 Cuban freedom seekers who washed ashore in America this week. Welcome, amigos!
Source: Babalu

Yesterday I had a long conversation with a source in the U.S. foreign policy establishment. I told him Ecuador was making me sick, but I asked him what the foremost concern of the U.S. was in Latin America.

He told me two things: Chavez’s declaration that he would dictate by decree … it was really bothering them … and Cuba. He wanted to know why the media was ignoring Cuba because he said they shouldn’t be.

Those two matters were preoccupying them above all else these days. They were fearful for Venezuela but cautiously hopeful for Cuba.

He said that he hoped the tyranny of Cuba would be addressed in the president’s state of the union message, and at that point, he was waiting to see if it was.

Thankfully, it was. Bush pointedly brought up Cuba, along with Belarus and Burma, and he seemed to put some emphasis on the word ‘Cuba’ even if he only made a short reference.

He ought to.

Nineteen more Cubans washed up on our shores in Florida this week. Val at Babalu blog has a source who was on the scene, who told of the 19 Cubans’ warm reception from the people who found them - including friendly cops, and the Cuban-Americans who took them in. His source described the Cubans’ deep joy and fluttery anticipation of a whole new dawn of opportunities in landing and in breathing free air for the first times in their lives. The 19, united by their voyage, were now one big family.

The Cubans spoke of their dangerous journey and the efforts of the Castroite goons to capture and imprison them. But luck blew in their way, and even though they sailed the high seas in shark-infested waters to an uncertain landing and an uncertain fate in America, they somehow made it. It’s the most joyous and revolutionary day of their lives.

Val has a photo of the boat here and an awesome firsthand account that left me teary-eyed to read of the miracle that just happened on our shores from Cuba this week. Don’t miss it. Read the whole thing here.

During his 2005 State of the Union address, President Bush set forth a bold plan to to make the advancement of freedom and democracy the cornerstone of America’s foreign policy. Under liberal democracies, the Islamic terrorist and statist authoritarian threat would practically vanish from the face of the earth. Sure, there would be conflicts, but no liberal democracy has ever warred with another; and because democracies respond to the will of the people, there is no rich soil for terrorism to plant its roots.

In that speech, he mentioned the word “democracy” seven times and “freedom” nineteen times when talking about the Middle East. This idealism came from a book by former Soviet political dissident Natan Sharansky called The Case For Democracy, which outlined why democracy is what the world needs. Such a foreign policy was revolutionary. Never before had democracy above all else been put at the top of the agenda. It was a time of change. President Bush wore a red tie on that day.

In the two years since then, that idea has faded. The war in Iraq has not gone as planned. Russia, Venezuela, and Iran are exerting their imperial influence, thereby threatening freedom in their respective regions. Freedom House has reported that freedom has actually suffered declined in 2006 due to pushback from such authoritarian regimes.

Tonight, President Bush wears a passive light blue tie. The fact is that among many foreign policy gurus, realpolitik is back on the dinner table because democracy has failed in the Middle East. Third Worldists contend that the Islamic and Arab world in particular simply is not ready for democracy. There are now more skeptics than believers, and even the administration itself has not been so noisy about the subject in the past year.

The fact that President Bush tells us tonight that he still believes, however, is heartening. Yet this State of the Union address has been less about extolling the virtues of democracy than it has been about the enemies of it that have actively come out of the woodwork in the last two years. The Sunni and Shia extremists, along with the others harboring totalitarian ideoligies, are pushing back and trying to sow discord throughout the entire Middle East.

If anything, Bush recognizes this and pinpoints the enemy and what needs to be done. We must reduce our dependence on foreign oil so that these dictatorships no longer have the funds to operate. Here is the excerpt from the speech:

It is in our vital interest to diversify America????????s energy supply ???????? and the way forward is through technology. We must continue changing the way America generates electric power ???????? by even greater use of clean coal technology … solar and wind energy … and clean, safe nuclear power. We need to press on with battery research for plug-in and hybrid vehicles, and expand the use of clean diesel vehicles and biodiesel fuel. We must continue investing in new methods of producing ethanol ???????? using everything from wood chips, to grasses, to agricultural wastes.

We have made a lot of progress, thanks to good policies in Washington and the strong response of the market. Now even more dramatic advances are within reach. Tonight, I ask Congress to join me in pursuing a great goal. Let us build on the work we have done and reduce gasoline usage in the United States by 20 percent in the next ten years ???????? thereby cutting our total imports by the equivalent of three-quarters of all the oil we now import from the Middle East.
Ä…Å
These men are not given to idle words, and they are just one camp in the Islamist radical movement. In recent times, it has also become clear that we face an escalating danger from Shia extremists who are just as hostile to America, and are also determined to dominate the Middle East. Many are known to take direction from the regime in Iran, which is funding and arming terrorists like Hezbollah ???????? a group second only to al Qaeda in the American lives it has taken.

The Shia and Sunni extremists are different faces of the same totalitarian threat. But whatever slogans they chant, when they slaughter the innocent, they have the same wicked purposes. They want to kill Americans … kill democracy in the Middle East … and gain the weapons to kill on an even more horrific scale.

In the sixth year since our Nation was attacked, I wish I could report to you that the dangers have ended. They have not. And so it remains the policy of this government to use every lawful and proper tool of intelligence, diplomacy, law enforcement, and military action to do our duty, to find these enemies, and to protect the American people.

This war is more than a clash of arms ???????? it is a decisive ideological struggle, and the security of our Nation is in the balance. To prevail, we must remove the conditions that inspire blind hatred, and drove 19 men to get onto airplanes and come to kill us. What every terrorist fears most is human freedom ???????? societies where men and women make their own choices, answer to their own conscience, and live by their hopes instead of their resentments. Free people are not drawn to violent and malignant ideologies ???????? and most will choose a better way when they are given a chance. So we advance our own security interests by helping moderates, reformers, and brave voices for democracy. The great question of our day is whether America will help men and women in the Middle East to build free societies and share in the rights of all humanity. And I say, for the sake of our own security . . . we must.

In the last two years, we have seen the desire for liberty in the broader Middle East ???????? and we have been sobered by the enemy????????s fierce reaction. In 2005, the world watched as the citizens of Lebanon raised the banner of the Cedar Revolution … drove out the Syrian occupiers … and chose new leaders in free elections. In 2005, the people of Afghanistan defied the terrorists and elected a democratic legislature. And in 2005, the Iraqi people held three national elections ???????? choosing a transitional government … adopting the most progressive, democratic constitution in the Arab world ??????? and then electing a government under that constitution. Despite endless threats from the killers in their midst, nearly 12 million Iraqi citizens came out to vote in a show of hope and solidarity we should never forget.

A thinking enemy watched all of these scenes, adjusted their tactics, and in 2006 they struck back. In Lebanon, assassins took the life of Pierre Gemayel, a prominent participant in the Cedar Revolution. And Hezbollah terrorists, with support from Syria and Iran, sowed conflict in the region and are seeking to undermine Lebanon????????s legitimately elected government. In Afghanistan, Taliban and al Qaeda fighters tried to regain power by regrouping and engaging Afghan and NATO forces. In Iraq, al Qaeda and other Sunni extremists blew up one of the most sacred places in Shia Islam ???????? the Golden Mosque of Samarra. This atrocity, directed at a Muslim house of prayer, was designed to provoke retaliation from Iraqi Shia ???????? and it succeeded. Radical Shia elements, some of whom receive support from Iran, formed death squads. The result was a tragic escalation of sectarian rage and reprisal that continues to this day.

This is not the fight we entered in Iraq, but it is the fight we are in. Every one of us wishes that this war were over and won. Yet it would not be like us to leave our promises unkept, our friends abandoned, and our own security at risk. Ladies and gentlemen: On this day, at this hour, it is still within our power to shape the outcome of this battle. So let us find our resolve, and turn events toward victory.

President Bush has ideologically always been right on target. Advancing and preserving democracy is and always will be in the best interests of the people of the world as well as of the United States. He recognizes that the enemies of stable and democratic governments in the Middle East are putting all of their resources to making sure this doesn’t happen. The rest of his speech focuses so much on Iraq and Lebanon not just to simply to curry favor with the American public, but to lay out the very fundamental fact that if these people are able to destroy Lebanon and Iraq, democracy in the Middle East could be doomed for our lifetimes. This cannot be allowed to happen.

To the Islamists of both flavors, their dark and murderous totalitarian ideology is worth fighting for, even dying for. Whether or not we in America and the West in general believe that democracy is worth the same to us hangs in the balance. Democracy, and liberty, are principles too sweet to give away. They are values to strive for and live by, not to die by. Western civilization is not a death cult shackled to self-defeating ideology.

That is why we must continue to fight and believe that freedom and democracy are good in and of themselves. American cannot give up on it now.

For months now, Hezbollah has been leading mass protests against the democratically elected government of Fouad Siniora. It’s calculations as to the result were off, to say the least. Judging from how anti-Syria protests in 2005 toppled the government, on the surface it would appear as if the same strategy could work for Hassan Nasrallah. He studied the tactics and pulled off the demonstrations without falter.

Perhaps what he only saw was the surface. The demonstrations in 2005 were against a foreign occupier, not a democratically elected, domestic government. Unfortunately for Nasrallah, things did not go as planned. Despite all of his people — including many non-Lebanese — out there on the streets, all he got was a lot of nothin’. The fact is, Siniora still has a vast majority in parliament and enough street support to stop short any peaceful demonstrations against him.

Note the operative word: peaceful.

Today marked a change of strategy, either with direct or indirect instruction from Nasrallah himself. His supporters have turned to violence. Reuters reports several killed and over 100 injured, while From Beirut to the Beltway reports on the depth of Hezbollah carnage:

Hizbullah is calling this an “intifada”. And indeed, their supporters are now stoning anti-Hizbullah residents of Beirut. March 14 MP Walid Eido says that Beirut is “being occupied by the Hizbullah militia…”.

Update 2. LBC is showing footage of Hizbullah youth throwing rocks at the Lebanese army in Corniche al-Mazraa in true “intifada style”.

Update 3. Fares Soaid is lashing out at the security forces for arresting residents trying to open the roads after the failure of the army to do so. It seems the army’s strategy is to avoid confrontation and clashes at any cost, even if it means letting the protestors maintain roadblocks. In some instances where the army did try to clear rubble and burning tires, they were stoned by “opposition” members.

Update 4. Hizbullah thugs armed with sticks, rocks and in some cases guns are storming Beirut neighborhoods. Some were seen approaching the Future TV news building in Raouche. ISF and army troops trying to stop their advance are being attacked.

Security forces are being extremely lax and unorganized– intervening only when it’s too late.

Future TV reported that vans carrying covered Hizbullah women are supplying the rioters with rocks.

As we know from previous protests, there is nothing that is not organized by Hezbollah’s party leadership. These protestors have held off for so long that they are not going to simply start attacking the army and the people now of all times. (In fact, why am I saying protestors, when so many of them are trained Hezbullah militia men?).

Nasrallah was losing the long-term battle and now, even after preaching non-violence and supposedly being against a new civil war, he has broken the taboo by throwing the first punch. It’s all or nothing now. Lebanese society is running scared and what will determine the country’s fate now is whether or not the army stands up to keep the public order. As From Beirut to the Beltway has reported, the army has done nothing to stop the violence. The next step is to watch it disintegrate along sectarian lines.

It might be appropriate at this time to label the post “Lebanon Civil War Watch.” Tomorrow will be the day to watch. After the precedent of violence in the street has been breached, the days to come will be the most precarious of all. Hopefully there will be no doom and disaster. But I have a feeling that Nasrallah has a surprise for all of us.

The first parliamentary elections since the devolution of Serbia-Montenegro into their own respective countries took place in Serbia on Sunday. Ultra-nationalist Radical Party took home the most votes of any party, with just less than 30% of the vote, but the victory will go to the many Western-oriented, democratically minded parties who will hopefully be able to bang out some sort of coalition in the coming weeks.

Here is the result as reported by ISN Security Watch.

Radicals take home the most votes, but a coalition of democrats could save Serbia from isolation, but not without a great deal of tough political wrangling, as Kosovo’s status hangs in the balance.

By Anes Alic in Sarajevo and Igor Jovanovic in Belgrade for ISN Security Watch (23/01/07)

With some 70 percent of the votes counted from Serbia’s Sunday general elections, it appears that Belgrade will usher in a democratic coalition government which will face its first big test over the UN’s upcoming decision on the status of the province of Kosovo.

But though a coalition of democrats will trump the radicals, who took home the most votes, lengthy negotiations will ensuewith the two main democratic parties wrangling over the post of prime minister. In the meantime, Western officials are urging the parties to expedite the process and ensure that the radicals do not outmaneuver the democrats.

Official election results are expected by the end of the month, while a new parliament must be formed and hold its first session by 25 February. The new government must be formed within three months after the first parliamentary session. If that does not happen, a new election will be called.

Serbia’s ultra-nationalist Radical Party (RS) - which opposes Kosovo’s independence and even declares some territories in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia as part of Serbia - won the most votes, just under 30 percent, but it was not enough for the party to govern alone and its coalition possibilities are weak.

The Western-backed Democratic Party (DS) of President Boris Tadic was second with 23 percent, nearly double its score in the 2003 poll, while the Democratic Party of Serbia (DSS), led by Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica, was third with 17 percent, according to preliminary results.

Of all the candidates, Tadic is the most outspokenly Western-oriented of them all. To see him as the new prime minister would be fantastic. However, this will all depend upon how much leverage either of the two main democratic parties has. If Kostunica shows that he is willing to turn toward a coalition with the Radicals, then the Democratic Party will have to give up the post to him in exchange for the coalition.

Sounds like there could be a lot of backstabbing going on here, doesn’t it? That’s because, just like in so many developing democracies, Serbia’s political parties revolve around strong personalities whose main goal is generally the power. The struggle between Kostunica and Tadic for the country’s most powerful leadership post could prove divisive if they don’t do the democratic thing and compromise.

Whatever the result of such a coalition, however, the result will be not all that different. Geographically, Serbia must integrate into Europe or face isolation. Kostunica realizes this. It’s a fact that’s impossible to avoid. This is why he knows that he should, regardless, go into coalition with the Democratic Party. In party politics, pragmatism generally trumps all, but in personality politics, there is never a guarantee. If a coalition does come to fruition, either leader will result in a Serbia that is closer to the European Union.

Putting its hand into the honey pot, however, is the Kremlin. Russia has said that it will veto any resolution in the Security Council that goes against the wishes of Serbia’s government. This, regardless of the wishes of the people of Kosovo and the fact that Serbia has not controlled the province for more than half a decade. He has assured Kostunica of such an outcome. Russia has strong political and financial interests (and with Russia, they are always intertwined) in Serbia, so it will back whatever Belgrade’s wishes are.

Whether or not a coalition of democratic parties is formed, nationalism is a strain that runs strong still in Serbia. That is why we must not discount the Radicals plurality on Sunday, and why we must know that any decision to separate from Kosovo will not be popular among the public — even among those who support the democratic parties. The status of Kosovo, therefore, will be the splinter that whatever new government must start out with in its foot, an impediment to future negotiations with the European Union.

In the end, I think Serbia will just have to let Kosovo go. A Western-oriented coalition cannot ignore the call of the EU, the UN, and the United States to allow Kosovar independence. Acceptance of it will be crucial to acceptance from these three major institutions. What needs to be realized is that, in the end, both Kosovo and Serbia will end up as part of the European Union anyhow, with the borders between them vanishing. If this simple fact is realized, then perhaps this solution will be workable despite current feelings among the Serbian electorate.

Got a slew of dead-Castro rumors today, this time from people with ties to Washington types who say that the end is extremely near for Castro. The next three days or so will see a new power struggle as communists fight over the dead carcass of Castro in a bid to seize absolute power. What a pathetic scenario the U.S. must prepare for.

The real beauty of a dead Castro will be in the rising revolution in people’s democracy - if it happens. But no one knows what the real Cuban people think, so no one knows what will occur. Will real Cubans, deprived of Internet and new, actually know what is going on? Will they sit by and watch Castroites fight like dogs for the spoils in the wake of Castro’s death? Or will they rise up and demand their human liberty?

Only time will tell.

And ONE of these days, the dead Castro rumors will actually be true. Meantime, see what VenezuelaToday has on its site regarding the pending demise of Castro here.

UPDATE: And RealClearPolitics is out front on this, too, with several incidents collected that suggest this could be the real deal. Check it out here.

UPDATE: Watch this Cuba fund, too, noted on Investor’s Business Daily - it’s a market reading of the situation and it goes up on dead-castro rumors. If you click on the links within the story, you will see that right now it’s soaring.

The Russian media has challenged the Putin regime’s peculiarly atavistic style of governance - its standing practice of rule through murder.

Kim Zigfeld at La Russophobe has professionally translated a long and insightful piece from Novaya Gazeta called ‘Spare Organs’ on the Kremlin’s ruling killers.

If you follow Russia affairs, it well worth a look here.

Komersant has another backgrounder to the current scenario, readable in English, in this post here.

It was not more than a couple of weeks ago that I picked up a copy of Newsweek at the embassy with that same title. It detailed Moqtada al-Sadr’s rise to power; the murders of his Shia rival, the hesitance of American troops to kill or capture him, and his domination of presdent-day Iraqi politics. Overall, not much new information. However, it was the headline that said it all. Moqtada al-Sadr, given either the lack of will or the lack of ability on part of the Iraqi and American ground forces to counter him, has become the most powerful man in Iraq.

He gives the word and thousands of people riot in the street. He gives the word and any man will end up with his hands tied and his head blown to bits. He gives the word and the current government no longer has a majority in the parliament.

Now that’s power.

American ground commanders have learned a lot in the past few years from this hesitance. They’ve learned that raiding mosques for weapons wouldn’t provoke the strong public outcry that they had expected, and if it did the anger subsided rather quickly. They also learned that killing insurgent leaders mya lead to a temporary increase in attacks, but those tapered off relatively quickly. The decision to hesitate in killing Moqtada al-Sadr, then, was likely a bad one. Public disapproval likely would have been high, and unrest should certainly have been expected, but at least he would not be around today creating the havoc that he has.

Since then, and in the period since I read the Newsweek article, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has signed onto the American plan to disband all armed militias, saying that no outlaw, regardless of sectarian orientation, will be given shelter.

Sounds great if you believe him. This is coming from a man who has previously forced American forces to end blockaids aimed at the Shia militias. Judging by his record, Maliki is no different than any other sectarian politician in the country. Yet there is reason to believe.

Today, a top aide and media director named to al-Sadr named Sheik Abd al-Hadi al-Darraji was arrested, and in the past couple of weeks two others top commanders, Abu al-Sudour and Sahib al-Amiri, were killed. As the United States prepared to deploy an additional 20,000 troops to Baghdad, Sunni and Shia militias alike are fleeing the city for their more traditional tribal areas. According to this report, al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army has been ordered to basically blend into the population for now, with many commanders in hiding elsewhere in the country. If anything, the American military should be smelling fear.

The ease with which American forces are slaying al-Sadr’s top men should be an indication of growing intelligence gathering abilities. Night operations used to completely wipe out the leadership would be the best way to clear out the ranks and it appears that the U.S. military will not hesitate in pursuing this to the utmost. Daylight raids using large amounts of troops would need to be used both tactically as well as just for patrolling. In essence, in order to weed out the baseline of al-Sadr’s men, an overwhelming presence of American and Iraqi troops must be available to monitor every corner of Sadr City. This is why the troop increase is so important.

And the troop increase itself leads us to the last question, the very bottom-line reason for having faith in Maliki in the first place. Why is this happening now? As I was putting my thoughts together on this, it happens that TigerHawk got the words right out of my mouth. It’s all about personal security for Maliki and the rest of the politicians.

Having failed to bail out in time, it is very heartening that al-Maliki is now supporting a severe crackdown on the Shiite extremists. He knows that his personal risk increases with every Shiite militia commander he arrests, and eventually he will pass through a door through which he cannot return. Still, he is going after al-Sadr’s thugs. That means that al-Maliki believes, or at least hopes, that (i) the new plan has a chance for success (which suggests that he believes a sufficient number of Iraqis will join in the effort, they having put their markers down), or (ii) even if the United States does withdraw, there are enough Iraqis prepared to take on the extremists of both sects that he stands a good chance of surviving to the finish of the big fight to come.

Since he was elected prime minister, Maliki has never really been able to do his job as a unifier and builder of a nation. The fact is, the only reason he got the job was because Moqtada al-Sadr through his large political support behind him. This accounts for all of the protection he has gotten over the past year. But protecting al-Sadr and his militia means disaster for the future of the country. It would mean civil war with no uncertainty. Saudi troops move in. Iranian troops move in. An absolute bloodbath ensues.

With all of these threats around him, and even from Washington, Maliki needed a way out of this bind. A security net of 20,000 American troops is just what the doctor ordered to make sure that the country’s center of power and government work, Baghdad, is secure enough so that the politicians may actually be able to function and do what needs to be done. With Maliki protected, he can be free to pursue the Mahdi Army without the worry that al-Sadr will give the order to remove his head.

Governments are always most vulnerable at their center of power. The fact that the Mahdi Army was at Maliki’s backdoor made him incredibly vulnerable to doing the wrong thing lest he be killed. It is the reason that every major conqueror goes for the capital. It’s the reason, even, why mass protests like the Orange Revolution in Ukraine’s own capital city of Kiev were able to force the government to give into the protestors’ demands.

If American and Iraqi forces can secure Baghdad, then there is a good chance that this plan will work.

Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez, who now rules by decree
Source: AP, via Yahoo! News

So how’d you like one man making all your decisions for you? He’d pick your legislator, or dump him, as he pleased. He’d decide your food security - what you would eat. He’d decide whether you get housing or whether you’d own what you thought was your own house, you’d not make any such decisions as yourself. He’d decide how much of your money you could keep or he could take, just like that. Anything he said, would go. He’d be the law of the land. Not only no more representative democracy, no participatory democracy either, just one-man democracy. All power would be concentrated in his person and all decisions. You, on the other hand, would just sit there and allow him to take care of you. Like an infant. Except that you wouldn’t be an infant. You’d be in a cage. And this dictator would be your everything, everything you needed to survive. If he decided to let you survive.

Today was a grim day in Venezuela. Hugo Chavez dissolved congress and threw out the constitution. Now, he rules by decree, using the same means and exact same word as Hitler himself used to seize power: ‘The Enabling Act.’ This parallels how Hitler seized Germany’s weak democracy and turned it into a dictatorship. Donald Rumsfeld was scarily right when he compared - to much derision - Chavez to Hitler. Today, that comparison is quite real.

All this dictatorship power has been seized despite there being no crisis in Venezuela, no wartime action, no seige from without. Chavez has seized all power for his own aggrandizement and glory, in an amassing of absolute power Ceaucescu would envy. Absolute power corrupts absolutely, and now we will see how deep the rot will go.

Democracy is gone tonight in Venezuela. The only thing missing is the burning Reichstag. The Thug of Caracas has ascended supreme. The next thing we watch for is the U.S. and OAS response. Will the world’s democracies stand idly by as a thug penetrates their midst and claims to be a familiar? Will the west stand idly by?

Miguel at Devil’s Excrement has a powerful analysis of what’s happening here.

Guillermo at VenePoetics has an excellent translation of a Tal Cual newspaper essay on the failure of socialism and the implications of it for Venezuela, in this post here.

UPDATE: Boz at Bloggings by Boz has a good analysis called ‘An elected dictatorship’ in this post here.

It’s like Gilligan’s Island - in the trappings of Gilligan’s dictator nightmare. But in Venezuela, the nightmare and the dictator are real.
Source: Reuters, via Yahoo! News

Our friend Jim Hoft over at Gateway Pundit continues the amount of information building up showing that extremist Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad may be running out of support at home. Prices are doubling and tripling, unemployment is even worse than it was before, and support is dwindling for him in the parliament. Is it a sign of things to come? Read on:

he government puts unemplyment at 10 per cent but economists say it could be as high as 30 per cent. The government also says inflation is 11 per cent, but experts estimate it at 30 per cent!
Ä…Å
According to reports published by various news agencies, the bills to impeach Mostafa Pourmohammadi (Minister of the Interior) and Mahmoud Farshidi (Minister of Education) will be introduced in Majlis on Wednesday.

Meanwhile, 50 MP????????s have signed a petition requiring President Ahmadinejad to appear in the Majlis and provide explanations to his administration????????s policies. Ahmadinejad is required to appear in the Majlis if 23 more MP????????s sign the petition. The MP????????s plan to question the president on issues such as inflation, unfulfilled campaign promises, management style, and failing to respond to Majlis????????s concerns.

A group of 150 of Iran’s 290 MPs have signed a letter criticizing Ahmadinejad’s fiscal failures. This is leading to speculation that Ahmadinejad may be impeached.

Ahmadinejad, during 2005’s presidential election, said everything that the poor and unemployed underclasses of Tehran wanted to hear. It’s easy to promise people cheaper food, cheaper housing — hell, cheaper everything! But to actually deliver on such promises, against the universal laws of supply and demand? Not to mention the law that incompetent people tend to rule incompetently? That is another story altogether, and Ahmadinejad has proven that he is an incompetent ruler.

The Economists has a smart editorial bashing the idiot.

Already cock-a-hoop over the defeat of Mr Ahmadinejad’s allies in local elections last month, his domestic critics are keen to blame him for the latest round of American sabre-rattling as well as for last month’s sanctions resolution passed against Iran in the UN Security Council. It seems that a clutch of senior figures in the regime, perhaps including the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, have endorsed the criticism.

???????Just when the nuclear issue was about to move away from the UN Security Council, the president’s fiery speeches have resulted in the adoption of two resolutions,??????? said Hamshahri, a popular newspaper in Tehran, the capital. Such comments mark a departure from last year, when it was deemed unwise to challenge the government’s performance on the nuclear issue.

Mr Ahmadinejad’s anti-American bluster has also been attacked in light of his recent visit to Latin America, widely viewed as ill-timed and unnecessary. A reformist daily, Etemaad-e Melli, called the Venezuelan, Ecuadorean and Nicaraguan presidents, who embraced Iran’s president, ???????left-wing friends, good for coffee-shop discussions but not for setting our security, political and economic priorities???????.

During the trip, Mr Ahmadinejad announced he would put $1 billion into an Iranian-Venezuelan fund to help countries ???????free themselves from the yoke of American imperialism???????. That sharpened the more serious criticisms he faces at home over Iran’s economic performance.

A recent statement signed by 150 members of parliament imposed conditions on the president in drawing up the budget for the next Iranian year, which starts in late March. The MPs are now calling on him to defend his record before parliament.

It would not be Mr Ahmadinejad’s first run-in with deputies who supposedly share many of his own convictions. In late 2005, conservative MPs caused a crisis by rejecting several of the president’s nominees for oil minister, the cabinet’s most important post. They have since repeatedly questioned his off-the-cuff economic style, which pleases the masses but is disliked by most economists.

A sudden decision last year to raise the minimum wage had to be reversed when it caused job losses and strikes across the country. On his weekly trips to the provinces, the president is in the habit of dishing out government largesse to petitioners for local causes. And parliament has accused the government of favouritism in giving big contracts to the Revolutionary Guards without going to tender.

This lavish and sometimes whimsical spending has pushed up inflation and made Iran more vulnerable to oil-price fluctuations. MPs are increasingly concerned, not least because they face re-election early next year and fear they will be blamed for the country’s economic woes.

The president seems to thrive on controversy. But he may be in for an unusually rough few months. Taking his cue from the supreme leader, Mr Ahmadinejad may be well advised to dampen his oratory and submit a prudent budget to parliament. But that is not his usual style.

Even in Iran, all politics are local. While foreign policy is important, in many cases does not affect the everyday lives of a country’s citizens, domestic policy does. With prices as they are, with living conditions growing so much worse for the everyday people, Ahmadinejad is losing quickly any support he has had over the past few years. It has been a chance for the traditionalists — those long-entrenched authoritarian rulers who are now less on religious zeal than they are on rhetoric and a desire for power and money — and the reformists who are looking to begin modernizing the country’s socio-political sphere to finally begin regaining their influence.

In fact, the traditionalists headed by former president Rafsanjani, as Jim Hoft pointed out, are quickly turning the tides against Ahmadinejad. It seems that they, along with reformists, will have the most power in terms of running the countries local districts as well as in choosing the next Supreme Leader. Allying at key moments will marginalize Ahmadinejad’s influence dramatically, and this looks like what is going to take place.

Radio Free Europe carries a lengthy piece in which its reporters talk to several Iranian political intellectuals, who note that the right looks like it could break into two or even three separate branches. Here are the key points:

January 15, 2007 (RFE/RL) — Iran’s conservatives regularly maintain that they are united in the broad principles they espouse; just as regularly, reformists argue that there is a persistent division on the right. Could the right-wing electoral defeat in December divide conservatives once and for all?

Iranian conservatives frequently rally around principles that include the “fundamental” values of Iran’s polity, its Islamic credentials, and the paramount position of the supreme leader, currently Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. It is among the reasons they rarely refer to themselves as “conservatives,” but rather “fundamentalists” or sometimes “principled” or “value-oriented” (arzesh-gara) politicians — to highlight their concern for certain principles, not just power.

Reformists contend that there is a persistent division between more radical right-wing forces associated with President Mahmud Ahmadinejad and his allies, on one hand, and pragmatists or traditionalists associated with senior clerics like Expediency Council Chairman Ali-Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani, on the other. Signs of that division include the failure to field a joint presidential candidate in 2005, and more recently, the existence of two conservative lists in the December 15 municipal elections.

Reformists say that municipal voting and balloting for the influential Assembly of Experts, a clerical body that oversees the supreme leader’s office, marked a repudiation of government radicalism and support for moderation.

Azar Mansuri, a deputy head of the reformist Islamic Iran Participation Front, was quoted by ISNA on January 6 saying that “moderate conservatives clarified their divide with radical conservatives.” She added that a “third current” of pragmatic conservatism is taking shape, and said recent elections allowed them to “clarify their frameworks”. Mansuri said that when the Ahmadinejad government came to power in 2005, “this divide in the fundamentalist faction became clearer ÄwithÅ every day.” She predicted that the rift would “continue in the future” if some “singular” conduct by radicals persisted — the latter a presumed reference to presidential tirades and confrontational discourse, as well as a purported bid by radicals to take control of all state institutions.

Mohammad Salamati — the secretary-general of the left-leaning, reformist Islamic Revolution Mojahedin Organization — said according to ISNA just a few days later that such a “third current” exists and began to take shape around the 2005 presidential election.

Three Or More…

Commentators tend to leave references to such a “current” general, rather than identify its personalities or boundaries.

But Salamati speculated that the “third current” would have to form its own political party — thus formalizing divisions within the conservative camp. “Contradictions” in the conservative camp are “essential,” he said, “and cannot be resolved easily.” Salamati went on to claim that “the faction known as ‘fundamentalist’ is not united…and ÄthatÅ there are at least three political groups in that current” with each “going its own way” with its own “material and organizational interests.”

Right-wing journalist Masud Dehnamaki warned in statements quoted by ISNA on January 9 that four broad “currents” could emerge if the political right fails to unite. He described them as a reformist front; traditionalist conservatives; what he called a “new fundamentalist current” associated with Tehran’s mayor, Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, and the secretary of the Expediency Council, Mohsen Rezai; and, finally, supporters of President Ahmadinejad and his government. He predicted Ahmadinejad supporters would suffer if they moved away from the conservative mainstream.

Politically, it appears as if Ahmadinejad will become isolated over the next few months unless he is able to cow he own self-involved personality. He would have to stop berating the West, stop sending billions of dollars abroad in order to buy political support, and finally focus on improving the conditions in his own country. This is a very doubtful scenario.

Yet this is Iran. It is not a democracy, so public and even rival factional opinion may not matter much. Ahmadinejad has spent the past year-and-a-half quickly consolidating the security forces under his control. The Basij militia and the Revolutionary Guards are stronger than ever and owe this in their loyalty to him. If Ahmadinejad becomes isolated, he may seek to hold onto power by force.

There are only two scenarios that the traditionalists and the reformists would be able to work out if this happens. They will oppose him undoubtedly. The first scenario would be the lucky one for them — they isolate Ahmadinejad, retake control of the government because the public no longer supports him and because they have the power to do so, or the more interesting one where Ahmadinejad holds onto power through the security forces. In this scenario, the wealthier traditionalists would align with the reformists in order to fund and organize a people’s revolution against Ahmadinejad’s one-man show. Either situation would usher in a new era for Iran, a way forward to modernity without the extremism that Ahmadinejad espouses. But perhaps the latter may have a different result. It could mean the end of the Islamic Republic as an idea altogether. With the defeat of Iran’s most extremist elements, a more secular and democratic government would be possible.

How hard the Iranian people and Ahmadinejad’s rivals desire to fight against him will determine just how far this can go. If the reformists can gain significant influence in directing such action, perhaps a confrontation between the West and Iran will never be necessary. Iran’s people have shown that they are sick of what their leaders have imposed on them. Translating this into parallel action on their part would mean wonders for democracy there.

In Cuba, instead of using democratic decision-making conventions, like voting, governance is done through the screams and hurled objects of swarming Castroite mobs. Any time a dissident becomes known, the mobs which carry out actos de repudio - acts of repudiation - are right there on the scene, howling communist slogans, throwing rocks, and wielding fists. That’s what passes for governance in Cuba, which calls itself a ‘revolutionary democracy.’ Nature’s bullies never had it better.

Today, that Castroite practice has been imported to Venezuela.

Miguel Octavio, writing on The Devil’s Excrement posts a passage from an article about a terrifying Chavista mob performing an acto de repudio circling and swarming around RCTV, the television station that is already under a death sentence by decree from Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez.

This is what it’s come to in Venezuela. Democracy (as in voting) is no longer in place - mob rule is. The market, (which is the people who like to watch the station of their own free will) is no longer in place - mob rule is. It’s worth it to pay close attention to this barbaric phenomenon, because this demonstrates how democracies die.

Read the whole thing here.

No one relishes the idea of getting into a verbal spat with the likes of Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez. The Venezuelan president is a thug, a dictator, a caudillo and atrociously violent and vulgar with words, not even counting spit flecks and dog breath. Fighting with him is like wrestling a pig - you both get dirty and the pig likes it.

George Bush won’t do it. Condi Rice wouldn’t do it. Neither will Vicente Fox or Felipe Calderon. Alvaro Uribe won’t, and lately, neither will Alan Garcia (although we hope that will change; Alan knows how to mop the floor with Chavez in the verbal - and I bet physical - sphere, when necessary.)

But there are times when the obvious needs to be stated, come hell or high water. That’s why the sudden rise to the occasion of the CANTV chief, openly questioning Chavez’s proposed “nationalization” of Venezuela’s phone company is such a surprise.

The CANTV chief, Gustavo Roosen, a blunt Dutchman of some sort, (maybe of Curacao origin?), questioned the idea of nationalization, citing the decline in telephone service that would inevitably follow a chavista takeover, and the disastrous mess that would mean for all of Venezuela’s people. He’s plainly against the nationalization and he wants to go on the record to say so before Chavez’s filthy red-t-shirted political mobs eventually overrun the once-proud company, Venezuela’s finest.

MarketNews has the story in this link here and note this cool quote from this man who gets it:

“Who wins here, the country or ideology? Aside from telecommunications being a strategic sector, does this serve a government need for control?,” Gustavo Roosen, president of CA Nacional Telefonos de Venezuela (VNT), CANTV, wrote in an oped piece in the El Nacional newspaper.

UPDATE: Miguel has the link to the original piece along with translations of some choice quotes well worth reading here.

I don’t know what will happen to Roosen now that he’s spoke out. Obviously, he’s concluded that nothing worse can happen to him than what’s already happened and therefore he’s taking his chances against the vengeful dictator. His statement pointing out the obvious on nationalization - it’s inevitable trash-heap-of-history failure - is an echo of what we heard from White House spokesman Tony Snow, who said nationalization has been a failure all over the world, everywhere it’s tried.

Something got into this CANTV chief and he’s obviously a man of cojones. Somehow he senses he might be able to shift things by speaking out. If he’s wrong, he’s lost nothing. If he’s right, a disaster will be avoided for all Venezuela. If he’s neither, others will be encourage to speak out, too, something that drives Chavez bonkers. Any way it turns out, this guy has struck a true blow for democracy in the gloom and despair of Venezuela.

Let’s hope that’s what’s going on.

UPDATE!

Brave ExxonMobil and Sincor are resisting Chavez’ nationalization, too! They too are standing up on their hindlegs now that no one else will! Self reliance at work! I hope Chavez has trouble fighting them all! Check out what Rig Zone has here and go to Venezuela Today to check out all the other links on these dramatic matters here.

UPDATE: One of the characteristics of dictatorship is paranoia. Putting on his tinfoil hat, Hugo Chavez now says that CANTV was taping his no-doubt long conversations with people like Castro over the phone lines. I guess he’s got it all figured out now, and he’ll be safe as a bug. Read the whole ludicrous story of the increasingly paranoid dictator, here.

Freedom House has just released its latest edition of “Freedom in the World,” and 2006 doesn’t look to have been a good year for the advancement of freedom. In fact, in many cases, freedom has declined significantly in areas where just a couple of years ago great gains were being heralded. In it’s press release, Freedom House notes where exactly this is happening, and why.

The year 2006 saw little change in the global state of freedom in the world and the emergence of a series of worrisome trends that present potentially serious threats to the expansion of freedom in the future, Freedom House said in a major survey of global freedom released today.

Freedom in the World 2007, a survey of worldwide political rights and civil liberties, found that the percentage of countries designated as Free has remained flat for nearly a decade and suggests that a ???????freedom stagnation??????? may be developing.

The continued weakness of democratic institutions????????even after holding democratic elections????????in a number of countries continues to hamper further progress. ???????Although the past 30 years have seen significant gains for political freedom around the world, the number of Free countries has remained largely unchanged since the high point in 1998. Our assessment points to a freedom stagnation that has developed in the last decade,??????? said Jennifer Windsor, Executive Director of Freedom House, ???????and should lead to renewed policy attention to addressing the obstacles that are preventing further progress.???????

Regionally, major findings include a setback for freedom in a number of countries in the Asia-Pacific region, a more modest decline in Africa, and a solidification of authoritarian rule in the majority of countries of the former Soviet Union. Three countries experienced positive status changes: Guyana moved from Partly Free to Free, and Haiti and Nepal moved from Not Free to Partly Free. Two countries experienced negative status changes: both Thailand and Congo (Brazzaville) moved from Partly Free to Not Free.

Freedom House also noted that the trends reflected the growing pushback against democracy driven by authoritarian regimes, including Russia, Venezuela, China, Iran, and Zimbabwe, threatening to further erode the gains made in the last thirty years. The pushback is targeted at organizations, movements, and media that advocate for the expansion of democratic freedoms.

At the end of the Cold War, state totalitarianism was supposed to be on the decline with liberal democracy the only feasible form of government. In reality the majority of the world was left with tinpot governments either on the brink of collapse or just on the edge of developing prosperity. Those who experienced the greatest leap to democracy were those most affected by the 20th century’s worst imperialist evil — the communist Soviet Union. Central and South Europe reformed, albeit with a little help from the West, and are now full-fledged democratic and prosperous countries.

Many others, however, were either left hanging in the wind or doomed to continued influence from Russia or China. In Latin America, the odds have always been against you, but some stars like Chile have arisen. In Asia, South Korea and Japan have fought to the top. Yet these are just a few examples among many failures. Unfortunately, while many gains in development have been made all over the world in even the past 30 years, political stagnation has taken hold.

Yet even where we have thought it impossible, such as Eastern Europe, some countries have been able to shrug off the yoke of corrupt and repressive authoritarian rule. In 2000, Serbia overthrew Slobodan Milosevic in a people power revolution. In 2003, Georgia overthrew its Russia-backed president in what has come to be known as the Rose Revolution, and Ukraine did the same thing during the Orange Revolution of 2004. Elections and political reforms all over the Arab middle east. Colored revolutions were everywhere, and once again the spread of democracy seemed to be going strong. Inevitable, even.

As Samuel Huntington might say, it was the Fourth Wave, where democracy seemed to flow across borders. And watch out! If you’re a corrupt dictator and your buddy next door goes under, you might be next.

That’s why, in 2006, we have a year of stagnation, and even significant decline, in freedom around the world. It is not simply a trend among certain countries either. Authoritarian government of very powerful countries such as Russia, Venezuela, and Iran are actively seeking to put their influence to as much use as possible in order to ensure that freedom and democracy no longer spreads near their borders.

Russia is consolidating absolute control over energy from Europe to the Orient, and using it to cause political upheavel in its favor. Iran is spreading its Shia revolution through the bayonet rather than the ballot, undoing gains in Iraq and Lebanon. Venezuela, meanwhile, is pushing its communist revolution by propping up Cuba and supporting socialist governments all across Latin America. Their goal? A “multipolar world” where the influence of the United States is no longer a threat to their own power. Translated: the spread of freedom will be more easily halted when this happens.

In order to achieve this goal, one very much born of 20th century totalitarianism, 21st century technology and schemes must be employed. These governments, aflush in oil money, have all the cash they need to support their goal. Yet with so much to look on in the past, they cannot simply turn society on its head and take over. They make themselves look legitimately capitalist and even democratic to the untrained or carefree observer.

The Kremlin has taken control over all important media in Russia, under the guise that it does not own a 100% stake in most companies. Instead, it owns a majority share and appoints government officials and Kremlin-friendly oligarchs to head these companies. Venezuela has duped many in the world into believing that it conducted free and fair elections while and has kept its promises of serving the poor. Nothing is further from the truth, and Hugo Chavez has already begun seizing major companies in the name of his revolution. Iran? Well, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad doesn’t care much for the opinion of anyone, but even his country holds what it portends to be elections. All of them have these things in common, so it may be no wonder that they all make such great buddies. In these common structural conditions they are also able to firmly maintain power in their countries through control and repression. None of them have an interest in freedom and democracy at home, and they certainly don’t want it anywhere near them.

The year 2006, then, can be the marker for the fourth backsliding of democracy. After every previous wave their would be an era of consolidation and pushback. The difference today, however, is that in the geopolitical arena the pushbackers are stronger, more defiant, and more united than ever. Their enemy? Freedom, democracy, and the United States. If freedom is to stop its stall, the American government will have to continue to push for it; stronger than Russia, Iran, Venezuela, and China are pushing against it.

It can be done. While the United States was not directly responsible for many of the gains in previous years, the moral and sometimes technical support was a boon to pro-democracy forces around the world. In the region where it has the most influence for change right now especially, the Middle East, the United States has brought about great changes. It is because of the United States that the Gulf states are holding elections and expanding women’s rights. It is because of the United States that Lebanon got help in freeing itself from Syrian occupation. And it is because of the United States that the Iraqi people get at least one shot to live in freedom and democracy.

In 2006, seeing these rollbacks in democracy and pushback from major authoritarian powers, the Bush administration has not been extolling the virtues of these principles. Many governments no longer see the need to reform because they no longer feel the pressure. They no longer see the United States as strong enough to stand up for them.

Let’s make 2007, and every year after it, a time when we fight hard for what we believe in. If there were ever a New Year’s resolution that needed to be made — by me, you, and every official in the Bush Administration — this is it.

Iran’s Islamofascist barbarians have either come to their senses or caved in to international pressure on the infamous case of Nazanin Fatehi, an unjustly accused Iranian girl whom we’ve blogged about here at Publius as a worthy freedom cause.

Nazanin, age 17, was walking in the park with either her little sister or her boyfriend, when she was beset by a pack of brutal thugs who sought to rape her. By Iranian Islamofascist law, she was supposed to just lay back and enjoy it (being a temptress and all), and then take 100 lashes from the state for getting raped if she was single, or else be stoned, the penalty in Iran for a married women who gets raped.

Instead, Nazanin fought back, stabbing the savage animal with a small knife she was carrying. No one in that land of Islamofascist chivalry (/s) came to her aid as she faced her attackers alone. But by any human standards, Nazanin’s actions were a legitimate act of self-defense and the world spoke out to condemn Iran’s response.

The clown court in Iran spared Nazanin her life but remained unclear on the concept. In insult to injury, the court ordered Nazanin to pay blood money to the family of her attacker to reward them for foisting their brute onto society, sending the unmistakeable message that producing thugs should be a profitable enterprise. Nazanin’s family is appealing that ruling because all she did was self-defense.

If Iran were a civilized society, the dead barbarian’s family would be paying Nazanin damages instead, particularly because she spent two illegitimate years in an Iranian prison and god knows what happened to here there. As it is, international pressure at least spared her the hangman’s noose and Nazanin will in the end live.

One good thing happened in Iran today. Kathryn Jean Lopez at National Review has the whole story - with lots of links - here.

Aussie Girl, the lovely writer of Ukraine affairs at Ultima Thule, including her wonderful coverage of the Orange Revolution, has died this weekend of cancer. She was only 59.

She was one of the sunniest and most insightful presences on the Internet. She was also one of the best bloggers - sharp, to the point and on target. She always was interested in my Russia coverage, which I blogged occasionally on due to my interest in the origins of communism. She always was on target on her observations and she occasionally sent me just the nicest notes.

Losing her is very sad. Thomas Lifson at American Thinker has some lovely recollections of her, as plenty of us do at Publius, too. Check out who she was and why she mattered in this post here. And see the last posted posts on her blog at Ultima Thule here.