He's Mr. Lucky
Filed under: US Elections
When the history of the 2008 Democrat presidential primary is written, if Barack Obama is the nominee then two key facts will been seen to explain his victory.
First, the North Carolina primary. A red state that went for George Bush in a massive landslide in 2004 (56-43) was allowed to play the pivotal role of destroying Hillary Clinton's hopes for the White House, history will say, and in determining who the Democrats would use to challenge the Republicans in the general election. Obama's victory came because although he was crushed by Clinton among white voters 50% of the state's registered Democrat voters are black, they turned out in droves on election day, and over 90% voted for Obama, a disturbingly Soviet-like majority, to say the least. North Carolina got this position of authority, of course, by sheer happenstance, luck of the draw.
Second, the Florida and Michigan primaries that weren't. Clinton has totally dominated Obama in all the top-ten electoral states except Georgia and Obama's home state of Illinois, sweeping him in all the top three states. There's no reason whatsoever to think that domination wouldn't have continued in both Florida and Michigan, but these two top-ten states chose to violate their party's rules and hold their primaries out of sequence, nullifying their votes. Had they not done so, Clinton might already have sewn up the nomination. Again, sheer random fortune controlled the outcome.
It doesn't quite add up, does it? The candidate who claims to be a racial unifier divides to conquer, articulating his campaign in stark black-and-white terms. Republicans choose for Democrats and Democrats, who screamed to high heaven in 2000 about counting every vote, totally ignore 20% of the ten most significant states in the land, treating places like Detroit and Miami as if they didn't even exist.
Is this how Obama proposes to govern our nation for four years? Dumb luck, mixed with racial polarization? Hmmm . . .
Now think about how every single one of the recent Democrat presidencies have crashed and burned. Clinton, impeached. Carter, one term. LBJ, not even nominated for second term. JFK, blown away, what else do I hafta say?
Does anyone else see a pattern here?
NOTE: To comment on this post for publication, write to: kimzigfeld@gmail.com
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redditOleg Kozlovsky, Arrested Again!
Filed under: Russia
On May 18th, Russia's opposition forces are planning to gather and establish a "National Assembly," which will become a shadow parliament following the true practice of democracy. The Assembly is the brainchild of dissident leader Oleg Kozlovsky, among others, and he was scheduled to play a leading role in the proceedings.
So it hardly comes as a surprise that on May 6th he was arrested by plainclothes police, processed by a kangaroo court and sentenced to 13 day in jail -- meaning he'll be released the day after the Assembly proceedings conclude.
Read all about it on Oleg's new English language blog.
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del.icio.us | digg | technorati | stumble upon | furl | redditMyanmar's Russia Connection
Filed under: Russia
The New York Times reports that casualties in the Myanmar typhoon, originally reported as being in the hundreds by the psychopathic military junta that rules the country, will likely top a ghastly 100,000. The horrifying scene on the ground is shown in the photograph above.
And that's not the worst of it. The junta, unwilling to allow large numbers of foreigners into the country as a key vote on an important referendum on a proposed constitution backed by the military is days away, is obstructing relief efforts. It has dispatched an outrageously small number of helicopters to deliver food supplies and prevented shipments of emergency supplies from entering the country. This means that tens of thousands more may perish from disease and starvation while the regime fiddles away. Thousands of bodies have been observed floating in the flooded delta of the Irrawaddy River.
The Times reports that "the French foreign minister, Bernard Kouchner, said that the United Nations should invoke its 'responsibility to protect' civilians as the basis for a resolution to force delivery of aid to Myanmar, even if over the objections of the military government there." But the regime continues to thumb its nose at the West, laughing at such threats, just as it did when the West protested its barbaric crackdown on protesting monks several months ago (their Facebook page has more than 300,000 members).
Where does the government of a tiny, relatively powerless country get the bravado necessary to flout the authority of the Western world? Well, from the same place that other such entities, from the terrorist rogue regime in Palestine led by Hamas to the lunatic Hugo Chavez in Venezuela to the bloodthirsty fanatics who govern Iran.
They all get it from Vladimir Putin's Russia.
Did you know that in May of last year Putin's Russia agreed to build a nuclear reactor for Myanmar's junta? A reactor just like the one they also agreed to build for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Iran (a man who says his country has no gays)? Just as was the case in Iran, Russia ignored the pleas of the outside world to refrain from subsidizing the malignant junta in Myanmar and giving it reason to flout international authority.
And did you know that in return Myanmar favored Russia with rights to exploit its mineral resources? Given these ties, it's hardly surprising at all to see Russia turn a blind eye to the atrocities unfolding in Myanmar every day in terms of human rights.
All around the world, Russia is forming relationship with rogue states that abuse their citizens and abrogate the basic values of democracy. It's behaving, in other words, exactly as if it were a reincarnation of the USSR -- and that's not surprising, given that Russia is ruled by a proud KGB spy.
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del.icio.us | digg | technorati | stumble upon | furl | redditDemocratic Doings in North Carolina: Annals of Obama the Race Baiter
Filed under: US Elections
It seems that the risk of Democrat voters coming to their senses has passed. As shown above via CNN, in last night's North Carolina Democratic primary, Barack Obama beat Hillary Clinton by more than 13 to 1 among black voters, and Clinton beat Obama by nearly 2 to 1 among white voters. In other words, instead of unifying the races in North Carolina, Obama is polarizing and alienating them, and trading on that division to win the nomination. Black turnout surged and carried Obama to victory by a wide margin. In North Carolina's Forsyth County, for instance, ten times more absentee ballots were received than in a normal election and more than half of them were from black voters. The Winston-Salem Journal reports: "Nearly 500,000 people statewide voted early or cast an absentee ballot before the primary -- more than half the overall number who voted during the 2004 primary."
Six primaries are yet to be contested, with 217 delegates available. Then there are roughly 750 "super delegates" who are two-thirds decided and split evenly between the two candidates, with one-third undecided. So that means about 475 votes are in play. Obama must win 226 of those to clinch the nomination, or just under half. If Clinton can win about 55% of the remaining votes in play, she'll deny Obama the nomination and they'll proceed to a brokered convention.
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Filed under: Letters
RE: Inflation Continues to Ravage Putin's Russia (April 9th)
Dear Publius Pundit,
As someone with a postgraduate university degree in political and economic subjects, who works in risk analysis advising major companies on investments in Russia, I absolutely had to go against my better judgment and comment on this article. it is woefully ignorant and shows a lack of intellectual rigour to attempt to attribute inflation to Putin -- you might as well blame the leader of almost every East European (and the occasional Western) country where inflation is rampant. The reality is that inflation is hitting everyone hard due to global economic issues I won't bother to detail here (you must be aware of them yourself), not to mention oil money etc. Secondly, to suggest that Putin is incapable of any social or economic reforms because he isn't an economist is a blatant misunderstanding of the political system. How many heads of state are trained economists? I guarantee that you can count them on one hand. in any case, you seem to have conveniently forgotten the significant reforms Putin introduced during his first term, and the flat tax (only a distant dream in America) which continues to be praised in the Western media. in fact, contrary to your insinuations, the obvious explanation for inflation is that it is taking place because the economy is doing well, not poorly: as Reuters reported, in 2006 "GDP reached $1 trillion in nominal terms, propelling Russia into the world's top 10 economies". Finally, to compare Putin and Mugabe is simply untenable, and typical of US commentators' inclination to portray Russia in an unjustifiably negative light -- whereas most of the country's problems stem from the various impractical recommendations made by Western institutions and the rapacious gangster capitalism that inevitably took hold after the total destruction of the previous system. Putin is not an ideal leader, but he has not done exclusively bad things as somany so-called 'pundits' would like to believe. I hope that in future you will think twice about misinforming the public with your clearly biased and strident opinions.
Very truly yours,
Anna Marron (vervana@googlemail.com)
Publius Pundit responds after the jump.
del.icio.us | digg | technorati | stumble upon | furl | redditPutin Invades Georgia
Filed under: Russia
Vladimir Socor of the Jamestown Foundation reports that "from April 29 through May 3, Russia sent additional troops to Georgia's Abkhazia region on the pretense of 'peacekeeping' and ostensibly on behalf of the Commonwealth of Independent States." In fact, however, the claim of international action is a sham. Socor reports:
This operation has been a purely Russian one from 1994 to the present. Since 2002 CIS meetings have abandoned even the pretense of discussing this operation, let alone prolonging its "mandate." Nor did Moscow seek CIS member countries' approval of the CIS-labeled Russian troop deployment since April 29. Similarly, Moscow had not bothered to consult with CIS member countries last month when it officially removed the 1996 CIS economic restrictions on Abkhazia. Russia had hardly ever observed those CIS restrictions in practice. The CIS in any case is not authorized to mandate peacekeeping operations. Moscow has not consulted with any CIS country before its latest deployment of Russian troops under the CIS label. No CIS country would willingly approve Russia's move.
So it's a unilateral Russian action, and it's massive and shockingly offensive to international norms. Socor writes: "Georgian and international media showed footage of tanks and other armored vehicles, artillery and troop columns crossing--and, thus, violating--the internationally recognized Russia-Georgia border, staging a show of force in downtown Sukhumi and stationing themselves apparently near the Abkhaz-Georgian demarcation line."
It's not "peacekeeping" in any way, shape or form. Socor points out that "peacekeeping" operations "require consent by the sovereign state on the territory of which they are deployed" and Georgia hasn't consented. Moreover, Russia has refused to provide for the safe return of refugees after ethnic Georgians were cleansed from the region with Russian support in 1994, another basic violation of the peacekeeping mandate. And Russia has "mass-distributed Russian passports to residents of Abkhazia and South Ossetia" and then claimed a right of intrusive protection of its own citizens, thus becoming an active party to the conflict rather than a neutral peacekeeper.
Socor concludes:
Georgia has considered several times in recent years the possibility of exercising its sovereign right to declare this "peacekeeping" operation illegal and demand its termination. Anxious Western governments advised Tbilisi each time to refrain from doing so. But they have failed to offer any alternative options. Georgia followed the advice of its Western partners each time, though never ceasing to call for the transformation of Russian "peacekeeping" into genuine international peacekeeping. It seems that Georgia has been very poorly rewarded for its forbearance.
Do you dare to imagine Russia's reaction if NATO tanks and troops crossed the Russian border and took up a similar "peacekeeping" role in Chechnya? It's simply inexplicable how Russians can demand that the world stay out of Chechnya and yet feel itself free to inject Russian forces into Georgia whenever it sees fit. A powder keg is brewing in Georgia and the Western governments are about to light the fuse. If they don't immediately send a message loud and clear to Russia that it must respect Georgian borders, there will be an explosion.
Putin has two goals in Georgia: First, to destabilize it internally so that it does not qualify for NATO membership. Second, to nibble away at Georgia's frontiers until Georgia is forced to respond militarily, then to invade and re-annex Georgia as a part of Russia, just as it was in Soviet times. After that, Ukraine will be the next target as Putin, a proud KGB spy, systematically seeks to recreate the USSR.
The world has seen all this before. As the saying goes: "Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me!"
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del.icio.us | digg | technorati | stumble upon | furl | redditA Call for Olympic Divestment from Russia
Filed under: Russia
My latest installment on Pajamas Media is a review of the recent litany of failure by Russia in attempting to prepare for the Sochi Olympiad in 2014, games which should never have been awarded to Russia in the first place, as I've previously argued on this blog. Isn't it about time the world wised up and divested these games from Russia before it's too late? Russia is no more qualified or fit to host the Olympics than it is to sit on the G-7, and if we allow it to do so then we must be prepared to suffer the consequences.
I, for one, am not.
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del.icio.us | digg | technorati | stumble upon | furl | redditRushbo and Billary Under the Sheets
Filed under: US Elections
Things are getting interesting in the U.S. presidential election cycle this year. Rush Limbaugh and Hillary Clinton are in bed together, just for starters.
People are attacking the pair for the same reason, they don't want to support their parties' frontrunners. Rushbo says John McCain isn't conservative enough, and Billary says Barack Obama is to liberal -- indeed, maybe to just-plain-crazy. People are telling them to just step aside and let McCain and Obama do battle. They warn that if they don't, the result could be their worst nightmare, the election of their rivals to power.
These critics are, of course, totally un-American and seemingly traitors to their own causes. Is Barack Obama really such a weak candidate that a primary challenge from Hillary can deny him the nomination? If so, what kind of president would he be?
Can John McCain really be laid low in a general election against freakish agents of disaster like Hillary or Obama just because a radio talk show host won't support him? If so, McCain has far bigger problems than good old Rushbo to worry about.
It's amazing how some Americans believe in democracy only insofar as it doesn't deny their own personal choices. The whole point of democracy is to validate the choices of others, both because others might be right and because others have "natural rights" you can't take away even if they are wrong.
And it's highly ironic here that by far the worst offenders are the so-called "Democrats" on this issue. Many of them, placing partisan politics over the values of democracy, are trying to drive an actual candidate out an ongoing race. Rush Limbaugh, of course, isn't running for anything, so attempts to censor him are hardly comparable. Hillary has won all three of the largest states in terms of electoral votes, and cruised to an double-digit victory in the most recent contest. That makes recent screeds like Tim Noah's in Slate travesties of democratic values. Hillary is closer to catching Obama than he is to winning the nomination. She's far more electable, and she has millions of ardent supporters. Support for the two candidates in Congress is evenly divided. To argue that the race is already over is an outrage and those who suggest it are pure partisan hacks, betraying America and her core values.
Perhaps we need truth in advertising laws for political parties? Or, at least, for their names?
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del.icio.us | digg | technorati | stumble upon | furl | redditOur Truth is Marching On!
Filed under: US Elections
These should be be best of times for the leftists, and yet they are the worst of times.
Recently it was announced that George Bush has a higher unfavorable rating than any other president in American history (though his favorability number remains higher than both Truman and Nixon at their lowest ebbs). American leftists would love to celebrate, but they can't.
They are mired in a pathetic primary collapse, unable to select a nominee and faced with a brutal brokered convention followed by wholesale defections in the general election.
Worse, their key talking point ("it's the economy, stupid") is taking on water fast. The most recent data shows the jobless rate is down and the dollar and stock markets are both up. GDP growth is measurable, no recession -- and all despite the radical upswing in gas prices, a breathtaking testament to the power and resiliency of the American economy.
And then came Britain.
In local council and London mayoral elections, British conservatives scored a massive victory, ousting the reviled communist mayor of London Ken Livingstone and grabbing the lion's share of the council contests. In other words, the right showed itself to be every bit as resilient as the American economy.
And that's to say nothing of the recent onslaught of sex scandals involving high Democrat office holders, which has most recently laid low the Attorney General of Ohio.
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del.icio.us | digg | technorati | stumble upon | furl | redditThe Land of the Slaves and the Home of the Craven
Filed under: Russia
Freedom House has released its 2008 report on worldwide press freedom. The United States ranks #21 on the list (classified as "free") , while Russia ranks an appalling #170, tied with Kazakhstan, Sudan and Yemen and more repressive than Venezuela and Afghanistan. Russia is classified as "not free." Only 22 nations on the entire planet, out of 195 under review, have less press freedom than Vladimir Putin's Russia. Only 33% of the reviewed nations are classified as "not free," and Russia is among them. Only three nations out of 33 in Eastern Europe have lower scores for press freedom than Russia (Belarus, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan). Ukraine and Georgia are both much higher-rated, and Russia's arch nemesis Estonia is #1 at the top of the group. Russia is in the bottom 10% of its own region, not even a leader there much less in the world.
Russia can be credited with one truly amazing achievement in press freedom in 2007. It got even worse than in the prior year, when it was already one of the worst in the world. With so little room for decline, truly Herculean effort was undoubtedly required by Mr. Putin to find those last remaining vestigial remnants of freedom and exterminate them. In 2007, Russia ranked #164, so it's position has fallen precipitously in just one year, down 6 places when there was virtually no room left to drop. In 2006, Russia's ranking was #158 and in 2005 it was #145, virtually unchanged from 2004, when it was #147. So, in just the period covering Putin's second term in office, Russia has lost 25 positions on the world press freedom index, dropping a whopping 17% during that time. And Russia was already classified as "not free" when it started out that period.
There are no words which can express the ghastly spectacle of Russia's dictator claiming to be outraged that the Western World views his nation as "a little bit savage" and expecting to be seated at such tribunals as the G-7 while maintaining a barbaric record on repression of journalism such as Freedom House has documented. One expects to hear such lunatic ravings from the "mind" of someone like Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe, but one doesn't. Only from Russia does this kind of jaw-dropping hypocrisy emanate -- and as a result we have seen Russia's system of government totally collapse not once but twice in the past century (three times if you count the transfer of power by Boris Yeltsin to the KGB in 1999).
The Russia report (see page 175 of the PDF document explaining the findings) states: "Media freedom continued to decline in Russia as the Kremlin further restricted independent news reporting and public dissent while preparing for a stage-managed parliamentary election. Vladimir Putin's authoritarian, corrupt and lawless style of rule appeared set to continue at the end of his second term. Although the constitution provides for freedom of speech and of the press, Kremlin has used the country's corrupt and politicized criminal justice system to harass and prosecute independent journalists. Throughout 2007, journalists faced dozens of criminal cases" for publishing stories the Kremlin did not care for."
"Authoritarian, corrupt and lawless." Ouch.
Even though Russians purport to crave international recognition and respect, their every action betrays exactly the opposite desire -- to become an object of scorn and ridicule in the civilized world. The report refers to Russia as "one of the most dangerous countries in the world for media" and neither Russia's government nor its people did or demanded anything to make it safer next year.
Russians expect to be treated with due respect as equals by the United States, despite America's vastly greater economic and military attainment, yet Russians refuse to treat such nations as Georgia and Ukraine as anything other than servile colonies expected to do Russia's bidding. Russia expresses outrage at the "Russophobic bias" shown by independent organizations like Freedom House when they routinely condemn Russian barbarity, yet Russia's response is never to make clear efforts to improve the rating. Instead, Russia chooses to adopt the Soviet-era practice of trying to point out weaknesses in other countries, as if that might excuse Russia's self-destruction. That practice led the unreformed USSR to implode less than 100 years after it was created; if Russia follows the same practice, it should expect the same fate.
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del.icio.us | digg | technorati | stumble upon | furl | redditObama in the Headlights
Filed under: US Elections
It seems that Real Clear Politics has nailed Barack Obama dead to rights on Jeremiah Wright. Though I despise Obama, I can't say I'm pleased about this. It could well bring calls for Obama to back out of the race, putting the more-dangerous Clinton candidacy back in play. He's bottomed out just a few weeks too soon, damn him (though perhaps leftist MSM coverage won't play broad enough and make the connection clearly enough during the primary cycle to finish him off that early)! Then again, this guy is such a dangerous freak that maybe it's better for the nation to take zero chance he will win office.
RCP points out that Wright told the New York Times in March 2007 that he had been "dis-invited" from Obama's announcement of candidacy the month before, and that Obama had told him: "You can get kind of rough in the sermons, so what we've decided is that it's best for you not to be out there in public."
So it's clear that Obama was fully aware of the outrageous, racist nature of Wright's sermons before he even announced his candidacy, and excluded Wright from the announcement proceedings for precisely that reason, in a coldly calculating manner. Boiling mad since then, Wright has now blown the whistle on the betrayal. Even if Obama denies making this statement to Wright, the fact that he was dis-invited does not change. Obviously, his lifelong pastor was not dis-invited (or simply not present) by accident, but because of a political calculation based on Wright's risk factor. And Obama never denied the New York Times quote, which should lay the whole issue to rest.
Hence, when Obama said that he didn't know the content of Wright's sermons, he simply lied. He attended them for twenty years. He's a well-educated, intelligent person. Of course he knew their content. And he traded on it for political gain. For all we know he believed it, applauded it, and still does. And then, he lied about his knowledge of it, and then he threw Wright under the bus when it became convenient to do so.
New kind of leadership? Audacity of hope?
I think not. This is a nasty enough situation that it may merit some spontaneous discussion, so I am opening the comments on this post for those who can responsibly do so and are so inclined.
del.icio.us | digg | technorati | stumble upon | furl | redditA Day of Reckoning for North Korea
Filed under: Asia
A perfect storm is brewing over North Korea.
The price of the nation's staple food source, rice, is soaring on world markets due to panicked speculation (there is no actual shortage of the crop).
As a result, the Peterson Institute for International Economics now says that North Korea is facing outright famine conditions. North Korea has stonewalled on the nuclear question, alienating South Korea, a traditional source of aid in hard economic times. Now, it's neighbor to the south is demanding progress in the negotiations as a prerequisite to aid. China, facing the worst inflation rates of the past decade, has imposed strict new controls on rice exports, in effect also shutting the door on North Korea.
Some in North Korea may have believed it was "safer" to sit silently rather than confront the regime, fearing its draconian punishments. But those attitudes didn't save millions in Russia from being pulverized by Stalin's meat grinder, and the people of North Korea must now see that they cannot find safety in silence. North Korea is hurtling down the same path to total destruction that laid waste to the USSR. It is time for the people of the nation to rise and speak in its defense.
NOTE: To comment on this post for publication, write to: kimzigfeld@gmail.com
del.icio.us | digg | technorati | stumble upon | furl | redditPutin the Girly Man, Afraid of his Own Shadow
Filed under: Russia
Meet Boris Nemtsov.
From March 1997 to August 1998, he was former Russian President Boris Yeltsin's deputy prime minister for energy. Nemtsov made a name for himself when he led a protest action in Soviet Russia in 1986, at the age of 27, to block the construction of a nuclear reactor in his home town of Sochi. He then tried to run for parliament, but was blocked by the Communist Party.
A few years later, as the Soviet regime began to collapse and Mikhail Gorbachev's liberalization policies took hold, Nemtsov tried again to enter parliament, and this time succeeded. When the USSR collapsed, he was appointed the first non-Communist governor of the Nizhny Novogorod region, and subsequently won the first-ever election to that post. This position also meant he entered the Federation Council, the upper house of Russia's parliament. He quickly won international praise for his effective policymaking in Nizhny Novgorod, and was soon brought in to the presidential administration.
Scapegoated by Yeltsin for Russia's economic collapse of the late 1990s, Nemtsov then formed his own political party, the "Union of Right Forces," and they won nearly six million votes in the December 1999 parliamentary elections. Soon, however, proud KGB spy Vladimir Putin was in power and Nemtsov, along with all the other liberal parties, were squeezed out of the parliament.
Nemtsov joined the "Other Russia" opposition protest movement, and on November 25, 2007 he was arrested for taking part in an unauthorized street protest. He declared himself a candidate for president in 2008, withdraw his candidacy in support of liberal former prime minister Mikhail Kasyanov, who was then forced off the ballot by the filing of criminal charges.
A few months ago, Nemtsov also withdrew from the Other Russia group. He did so because he was about to publish a white paper reviewing the accomplishments of the Putin administration during its two terms in office, a document that would include strong criticism of Putin's record, and did not wish to bring the Kremlin's ire down upon the organization.
My blog La Russophobe has translated Nemtsov's paper from the original Russian and made it available in PDF and HTML format. Now, writing in the Moscow Times, author Richard Lourie (A Hatred For Tulips and Sakharov: A Biography) states that "all Russian bookstores have reportedly refused to carry [Nemtsov's work], whose title has been variously translated as 'Putin: The Results' and 'Putin: The Bottom Line.'"
In other words, it's classic Soviet-era censorship. Despite his pretensions of courage and power, Putin is afraid of Nemtsov just the way the Tsar feared Pushkin and the Politburo feared Solzhenitsyn. They're afraid mere words will bring them down. And the only response they can make is crude repression.
The parallels between Soviet Russia and Putin's Russia are indeed frightening. The Moscow Times also reports that a whole new class of dissidents is being created in Russia, and they are fleeing the country to find safe havens in places like Ukraine in order to avoid being jailed or murdered. One example is "Olga Kudrina, 24, [who] was sentenced to 3 1/2 years in prison for a May 2005 stunt in which she and another National Bolshevik [Party] member hung a banner from the now-demolished Rossiya Hotel reading 'Putin, Quit Your Job' and for participating in a 2004 break-in at the Health and Social Development Ministry. She failed to show up for her sentencing in May 2006, instead fleeing to Ukraine."
If you can get three and a half years in a barbaric Russian prison cell for telling Putin to quit, imagine what the sentence would be if you suggested he do something even more unpleasant.
How are these circumstances any different from what we saw occurring in the USSR? How is it possible that Russians can plunge headlong into exactly the same nightmare that has already destroyed them?
What we are seeing is a level of foolishness and outrage that is unprecedented in human history.
NOTE: To comment on this post for publication, write to: kimzigfeld@gmail.com
del.icio.us | digg | technorati | stumble upon | furl | redditThe China Toxin in Zimbabwe
Filed under:
The Times of London reports that "the boycott of a Chinese ship laden with weapons for Zimbabwe has cast new light on the connections between the African country's president, Robert Mugabe, and a secretive Chinese arms-trading firm with a controversial track record from the Congo to Darfur. Company documents show that Poly Technologies, the manufacturer of the weapons on board the ship, is ultimately controlled by a clique from China's preeminent military clans with close ties to the Communist party leadership and army."
Michelle Malkin has more.
NOTE: To comment on this post for publication, write to: kimzigfeld@gmail.com
del.icio.us | digg | technorati | stumble upon | furl | redditObamageddon
Filed under: US Elections
"Obamageddon" is when black New York Times columnist Bob Herbert writes: "A candidate who stands haplessly by as his former spiritual guide roams the country dropping one divisive bomb after another is in very little danger of being seen by most voters as the next J.F.K. or L.B.J. The apparent helplessness of the Obama campaign in the face of the Wright onslaught contributes to the growing perception of the candidate as weak, as someone who is unwilling or unable to fight aggressively on his own behalf. Mr. Obama seems more and more like someone buffeted by events, rather than in charge of them."
In other words, the Obama candidacy is not only terrifying because of the racism or stupidity that clearly lies in his past, but because of the craven weakness that clearly lies before us now. I've warned before that it's the worst thing in the world for America's black polity to put forth their first major candidate without demanding he have real credentials and a real vetting in the early primaries. Now, Obama is setting the cause of black politics back many years.
Obama's response to Wright's recent torrent of hatred? Quoth the Obama: "I may not know him as well as I thought." Can you imagine hearing that from him a few years after he inks a deal with North Korea, Russia or Iran, telling us to "trust him" as he exposes our national security? Gulp.
And let's be clear: The only reason we are hearing Obama back away from Wright now is that he's seeing political consequences from his allegiance. For twenty years he ignored this torrent of hatred -- indeed, he profited from it. It's quite possible that is more outrageous than actually agreeing with Wright's unconscionable racism.
I wrote in these pages just days ago that we would soon see Jeremiah Wright attacking anyone who criticizes him as a racist, and, lo and behold, now he is doing just that. Months ago, when other conservatives were saying Hillary Clinton was the most beatable candidate, I told you that in fact Obama was the prize target. I told you that when the Daily Kos embraces a national candidate, as it did with Howard Dean, it's a sure sign of doom for that candidate. We can only hope it isn't too late for Clinton to scratch and claw her way back into the nomination. Obama has bottomed out even earlier than I dared to imagine.
NOTE: To comment on this post for publication, write to: kimzigfeld@gmail.com
del.icio.us | digg | technorati | stumble upon | furl | redditBig Brotherski is Watching in Putin's Russia
Filed under: Russia
Two months ago, Human Rights Watch published a 75-page white paper reviewing the effect of a 2006 Russian enactment known as the "Law on Extremism." Just as civil rights activists warned at that time, the law has been used, as HRW documents chapter and verse, to support a wave of attacks by the government aimed not at terrorists but at politically oriented non-governmental organizations which dare to challenge the Kremlin on issues pertaining to civil society and democracy.
As HRW reports, the Kremlin has been systematically attacking all independent political action for some time now:
In 2007 Russian authorities cracked down on opposition political movements and on public protests expressing dissent. Police systematically harassed and detained activists planning and participating in a series of peaceful political protests called "Dissenters' Marches." The protests were organized by an opposition coalition called Other Russia and several other opposition groups seeking to protest setbacks in democracy in Russia.10Protest marches took place in Moscow, St. Petersburg, and half a dozen provincial capitals. Authorities refused to allow or severely restricted the demonstrations. On April 14 riot police and special forces used excessive force to break up the Dissenters' March in Moscow, beating numerous demonstrators and detaining hundreds. Authorities prevented observers and activists -- including Other Russia's leader, Garry Kasparov -- from traveling to Samara to participate in a Dissenters' March on May 18.11
In a case reminiscent of the Soviet era, Other Russia activist Artyom Baysarov was forcibly confined to a psychiatric hospital in Ioshkar-Ola on November 23, 2007, one day before the protest he had been planning in that city.12 He was released one month later.
Within the past few days there have been two more vivid examples of this neo-Sovietization of Russian society. On April 22nd, Other Russia reports, the "appeal of a Russian non-profit organization, shut down after failing to comply with strict new registration rules, was been thrown out by the country's highest court. The Judicial Division for Civil Cases of Russia's Supreme Court, led by Viktor Knyshev, upheld an earlier court order that the refugee assistance group be dissolved for failing to file the correct documents in time. A year and a half after the Law Against Extremism went into effect, there are some 227,000 registered NGOs. According to the state-run Rossiyskaya Gazeta, only a quarter of those groups had filed correctly by this year's April 15th deadline."
On the same day, ironically, Other Russia reports that "the website of a popular newspaper in Kirov, Russia suddenly stopped working. As it turned out, the Vyatsky Nablyudatel had been targeted by local law enforcement office for alleged extremism. The site's internet host, the 'Hosting Company,' decided to pull the plug after a formal request from the Kirov Oblast militsiya."
Some of the Kremlin's more base apologists claim that actions of this kind do not have the imprimator of the national government, much less the Kremlin, but rather are only the rogue antics of local czars. As if to specifically humiliate these cretins and remove any doubt as to whether these actions are approved by the Kremlin, three days later Russia's lower house of parliament voted to allow the government vast new powers to restrict and silence the mass media.
Some in today's younger generation may look back with contempt on the actions of their forefathers during World War II when faced with the rise of Adolph Hitler. They may ask how the world could have turned its back for so long on the threat it faced, how things could have been allowed to get so far out of hand. They may think that those times are passed, that a similar thing couldn't happen today, not with NATO and the United Nations in place. But reflecting on the impunity with which Russia's dictator, a proud KGB spy, is rapidly recreating the Soviet system in today's Russia, it's not hard to see how wrong such a conclusion would be.
Even now, just as Neville Chamberlain sought to blind the West in the 1930s to the threat posed by Hitler, the appeasers are desperately seeking to cast Vladimir Putin's successor as a closet liberal. Yet, Dimitri Medvedev has remained silent in the face of the new legislative initiative against the press, silent as a new wave of attacks on independent voices in Russia is launched, silent as Putin reaches out to grab more power in his new position as prime minister.
What we need now is a new Winston Churchill. Perhaps American presidential candidate John McCain, who has called for Russia's ouster from the G-8, will prove to be that leader.
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del.icio.us | digg | technorati | stumble upon | furl | redditTales of Neo-Soviet Russia: The Khodorkovsky File
Filed under: Russia
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del.icio.us | digg | technorati | stumble upon | furl | redditAnd Now an Obama Burst, and Now a Dumbocrat World
Filed under: US Elections
BFFs
"How does one explain campaigning throughout 2007 on a platform of transcending racial divisions, while in that same year contributing $26,000 to a church whose pastor incites race hatred?"
That's the question Charles Krauthammer is asking presidential contender Barack Obama (shown above with his BFF Al Sharpton) in his latest column in the Washington Post.
The answer from Obama: "Real change has never been easy. The status quo in Washington will fight. They will fight harder than ever to divide us and distract us with ads and attacks from now until November."
So, anyone who dares to ask that question, or any other question not approved in advance by His Holiness the Obamacle, is "distracting" us from the truth. How long before such people are deemed racists? How long before "they really should be in prison"? How long before they are?
The nutroots are launching a frenzied attack on ABC for daring to ask Obama these questions during the most recent debate. Naturally, they want to sweep Tony Rezko and Jeremiah Wright and the Weather Underground terrorist William Ayers under the table, not only because of their toxic electoral effect but because Obama botched his responses to the questions so pathetically, bursting his bubble in a millisecond.
Krauthammer: "Take Ayers. Obama makes it sound as if the relationship consists of having run into each other at the DMV. In fact, Obama's political career was launched in a 1995 meeting at Ayers's home. Obama's defense is that he was 8 when Ayers and his Weather Underground comrades were planting bombs at the Pentagon, the U.S. Capitol and other buildings. True. But Obama was 40 when Ayers said publicly that he doesn't regret setting bombs. Indeed, he said, 'I feel we didn't do enough.'" Obama was also fully of age when he refused to put his hand on his heart during a patriotic salute and refused to wear and American flag on his lapel.
Perhaps has important to Obama's sordid role in all these scandalous affairs was his total inability to face the questions honestly. Though he claims to be about "change," he handled the questions in the same dissembling, evasive manner as all those ordinary politicians he loves to attack, and ended the debate with egg on his face.
People like Barack Obama are the reason the American system of limited government was devised. Like a wolf in sheep's clothing, they seek to insinuate themselves into office rather than to be genuinely elected on their core beliefs, and only unveil their actual plans once they have power. They know that their core beliefs would be repudiated by the voters if exposed, but they believe their core beliefs are the only way to save the people for their own good from their own inadequacies. In this way, all the dictators of the past have been born, and America has been spared them because even when they -- like LBJ and FDR -- come to power, they find that the power they've obtained is so limited that they can't effectively wreck the nation.
They say you know you are over the target when you start taking flak. So, listen to the Daily Kos wail and scream about Krauthammer, and you'll know with what precision he's lasered in on Obama.
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del.icio.us | digg | technorati | stumble upon | furl | redditThe Holy Russian Empire
Filed under: Russia
Russia is not required to give freedoms to other religions because Russia is not the United States. People here differ from Americans. I'm not talking about right of a person to have freedom of belief. I mean, instead, the right of an organization to advertise its ideology. Not every country can have the same level of religious freedom as the United States.Most people around me are atheists. Atheism in this country is the most important religion, despite the fact that many atheists call themselves Orthodox. The majority of people, I am sure, are not interested in the struggles among churches for congregations and for what's in the pockets of believers. Never ask me about what the issue is, the issue is money.
If one talks about freedom of conscience in Russia, then: All faiths are equal. But some faiths are more equal than others.
What can I say? In principle, everything in the article is correct. Of course, it's different in different regions, but the general direction of movement is like this. In everything, including the issues dealing with faith, the Soviet dictatorship that is being resurrected wants to point the citizens in the direction it considers the right one. Descending, along with this, to brainwashing or more crude power pressure. All this is obvious and pointless to deny.
The New York Times has offered another installment in its series of long articles about Russia which are translated onto a Russian-language blog and commented upon by Russian readers. Above are four such comments on the new article, which exposes the horrific level of persecution by state-sponsored orthodox Christianity of all protestant religions in the nation. Reporting from the city of Stary Oskyol, the reporter begins:
It was not long after a Methodist church put down roots here that the troubles began. First came visits from agents of the FSB, the successor to the KGB, who evidently saw a threat in a few dozen searching souls who liked to huddle in cramped apartments to read the Bible and, perhaps, drink a little tea. Local officials then labeled the church a "sect." Finally, last month, they shut it down.
The result is that, as shown below, Russian protestants are forced underground into virtual bunkers, hiding from the authorities just as in Soviet times.
Welcome back to the USSR! Russians want to sit on the G-8 panel, but they don't want to extend any of the same democratic values that are the bedrock of that organization's value system in their country. This is fully-fledged neo-Soviet hypocrisy, childish in its ignorance, and it will surely bring Russia once again to catastrophe.
Watch a video report on the crackdown here.
To read more about how the Russian government is using its visa regime to exclude the "wrong" religions from reaching Russia, click here.
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del.icio.us | digg | technorati | stumble upon | furl | redditRussian Oil is Drying Up Fast, No Hope Offshore
Filed under: Russia
We've previously reported on how Russian oil production is falling off fast. Those who hope that Russia can replenish its production by developing offshore fields may be barking up the wrong oil derrick. The energy industry trade publication Upstream Online reported on April 18th:
Russia needs 61 trillion rubles ($2.6 trillion) of investment to develop offshore oil and gas deposits, Rosneft boss Sergei Bogdanchikov has claimed. Exploration alone of offshore regions until 2050 will cost 16 trillion rubles and production 45 trillion rubles more, Bogdanchikov told reporters and government officials in Moscow today.UpstreamOnline also reports:
Russian gas giant Gazprom has booked a a worse than predicted 20% fall in second-quarter net profit, blaming lower sales in Europe and higher operating costs. Net profit fell to 113 billion roubles ($4.62 billion), to International Financial Reporting Standards, from 141 billion roubles in the same period last year and below the average of 129 billion roubles in a Reuters poll of 11 analysts. Revenue rose 5% to 532 billion roubles, in line with forecasts, but the bottom line was hurt by high operating expenses, which jumped 18% year-on-year to 390 billion roubles. Gazprom's total long-term borrowings, including affiliates, rose to 1.105 trillion roubles from 806 billion roubles at the end of 2006.
So Russian gas and oil fields are running dry, trillions are needed to refurbish them, and Gazprom is deep in debt, unable to provide such funds. Blogger Tim Newman, who works in the Russian energy sector, adds:
The $2.6 trillion required by Gazprom and Rosneft is only that amount needed to develop Russia's offshore fields. The onshore developments will need separate funding, as in Upstream Online tells us: "Gazprom Neft, which expects Gazprom to hand over the right to develop all of Gazprom's 11 oilfields within the next two to three years, has said it plans to invest up to $4 billion per year to 2020, or around $50 billion, to boost output." $4bn per year is one hell of a lot of money for a single company to invest in oil and gas projects, if not much beside the $62bn per year that they say they are going to have to come up with to develop the offshore fields. Bear this in mind next time you hear about Gazprom investing in trans-saharan pipelines, Libya, and Nigeria. Despite the political rhetoric and talks of the massive potential and influence of Gazprom, it is Russia's most indebted company. In other words, Gazprom is unlikely to be in much of a position to be financing mega-projects any time soon, and if it is going to sink billions into places like Africa, having never run a major project on home soil let alone in a political minefield like Nigeria, Russians might be waiting a while for their offshore gas receipts.
Russia could, of course, solicit foreign investment to provide the needed sums, but then it would have to share the profits and the control, and it's currently in the process of enacting legislation to make this illegal out of pure neo-Soviet paranoia. The Kremlin imagines that it can simply bleed the nation white, just as was done in Soviet times, using the funds from oil and gas proceeds not to develop the nation or even the energy sector, but to wage a new cold war with the West. Meanwhile, just as in Soviet times, the energy sector and the people themselves get sicker and sicker until finally there is a massive collapse.
Russia replaced the USSR after the most recent collapse. What will replace Russia after the coming one?
Hat tip: Robert Amsterdam
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del.icio.us | digg | technorati | stumble upon | furl | redditDemocratic Doings in Pennsylvania
Filed under: US Elections
The top ten states according to population (in order California, Texas, New York, Florida, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Georgia and North Carolina) control 246 electoral votes for president or 91% of the 270 needed to win the Oval Office. Nine of these states have run their primary election contests so far this year, and Democrat Barack Obama has won only two of them -- Illinois and Georgia -- while Clinton has won all of the top three.
Despite spending truly obscene gobs of cash in Pennsylvania and leading in the overall delegate count, therefore having the wind at his back, Obama was dealt another devastating loss in a major state last night, losing Pennsylvania in woeful, double-digit fashion. Now Democrats are asking: