Category: Politics

The Left's Secret Pact: Subverting War on Terror

Posted on by s1e2t3u4p5

A hard-hitting article that originally appeared on the American Thinker:

The Leftâ??s Secret Pact: Subverting the War on Terror
November 30th, 2005
by Vasko Kohlmayer
The War on Terror has brought on many complex problems and challenges. Perhaps none is more critical than the conduct of the political Left which is apparently set on sabotaging our efforts. Unable to come up with a logical explanation, political observers either throw up their hands in bewilderment or ascribe the Leftâ??s posture to some irrational nihilistic impulse. But such conclusions are neither satisfactory nor correct.
The Leftâ??s sabotage of this war is a deliberate attempt to give relief to the other side. This is because their corresponding views on capitalism and the West make Islamic radicals and the Left natural allies. The Left seeks to weaken us from within in order to help those whose shared worldview binds them in a common pact. Once we understand the nature of this stealth partnership, the reasons behind the Leftâ??s often seemingly inexplicable actions will become alarmingly apparent.
But to do so, we must start at the beginning.

The full article is now available in our columns section.

China: Search Censors Can't Swat A Sparrow

Posted on by s1e2t3u4p5

An interesting article from WebProNews that landed in my inbox today, about China’s censorshiop efforts:
One Chinese blogger stays on the move, uses multiple blogs, and says the demand for non-corrupt political officials is the real foe of censorship.
Li Xinde has no First Amendment to protect him as an investigative reporter in China. But he does have a knack for finding stories of corruption and abuse that make their way even to state-run media outlets, Reuters reported.
“I can still spread news across the whole country in just 10 minutes, while the propaganda officials are still wondering what to do,” Li told Reuters.
He described how he has to work to avoid arrest, by shuttling around to different Internet bars in rural China:
“It’s what Chairman Mao called sparrow tactics. You stay small and independent, you move around a lot, and you choose when to strike and when to run.”
Those strikes have taken down a corrupt deputy mayor in one province, while another claimed a businessman met a brutal death while held in official custody.
On the topic of businesses like Yahoo and Google choosing to yield to censorship requirements in order to operate in China, Li said he understands the business reasons, but, “morally it’s wrong to sell people’s freedom.”
His freedom has become more difficult to maintain over the past two years, the article noted. Though he isn’t famous, he has built enough of a reputation that he is something of a marked man.
Still, he has reason to fear. Evidence prosecutors obtained from Yahoo in China has contributed to the jailings of two journalists, and others who have published stories on the Internet also languish in prison, the report said.
As more Chinese citizens move online, their interest in the habits of politicians could be the ultimate undoing of censorship and media suppression:
Li said Chinese people’s demands for clean, accountable officials, and their salacious curiosity about bad ones, were the censors’ ultimate enemy.
“Our party always said revolution depended on the gun and the pen — the military and propaganda,” said Li, echoing a slogan of Mao’s. “The gun is still firmly in the party’s hands, but the pen has loosened.”
Li’s website, in Chinese: www.yuluncn.com

Muhammad Cartoon Editor Influenced by Ayn Rand

Posted on by s1e2t3u4p5

A new article in the International Herald Tribune suggests that Flemming Rose — the man behind the Muhammad cartoons that have upset Muslims around the world — includes Ayn Rand among his intellectual influences.
The article begins:

The man behind the Muhammad cartoons that have upset Muslims around the world describes himself as “just the cultural editor of a Danish newspaper.” But his critics say Flemming Rose of Jyllands-Posten is a cultural warrior whose outlook was forged in the Moscow of the Cold War years and who knew what he was doing when he opened fire on what he sees as a form of totalitarianism, even if he did not expect the consequences to be global and deadly.

Later in the article:

“My convictions have grown as the days have passed,” he said. “What I did, I did for free speech, and I am not going to apologize.”
Rose, who grew up in a working-class area of Copenhagen, says he was a hippie in his university days. He said he studied Russian literature, played soccer and attended rock concerts. His first job was as a translator and teacher with refugees.
His worldview changed, Rose said, when he went to Russia in the 1980s and saw firsthand the repression of the Soviet regime. He befriended dissidents, devoured books by Solzhenitsyn, Hannah Arendt, and Ayn Rand, and traveled throughout Asia and the Middle East, eventually covering the fall of communism in the Baltics and the war in Chechnya.

See the full article, “Hatred of censorship drove cartoons’ editor,” for more background about this gentleman.

Stopping the Reiner "Preschool for All" Initiative

Posted on by s1e2t3u4p5

Many admirers of Ayn Rand’s writings are also admirers of the Montessori method of teaching. In that vein, some readers of this site may be interested in a new initiative that would deeply threaten the viability of Montessori schools in California.
It is called the “Reiner Initiative,” and you can learn more about it at stopreiner.org:

Hollywood actor/director Rob Reiner wants to change California’s constitution to create a new $2.4 billion government-run preschool program, funded by a massive tax hike.

In the subscribers-only article “Meathead Is at It Again,” the Wall Street Journal had this to say on the subject:

Celebrities with a social conscience are a growing breed in Hollywood. But it would be nice if they’d stick to whales and landmines and leave our children alone.
Unfortunately, California parents have no such luck.
Movie-director-turned-child-advocate Rob Reiner recently acquired a million signatures to put his Preschool for All initiative on the California ballot next June, his second attempt to launch a “universal” preschool program. The initiative would impose a 1.7% income tax on couples making over $800,000 a year ($400,000 for individuals) to offer three hours of free preschool for all the state’s 4-year-olds.
This soak-the-rich scheme would put $2.3 billion into the state’s coffers that Mr. Reiner might himself control if he unseats Arnold Schwarzenegger as the next governor of California. (The gubernatorial ambitions of Mr. Reiner — who once played Meathead alongside Archie Bunker in “All in the Family” — are an open secret in the Golden State).

The stopreiner.org web site is a good place to start learning more.
If you care about the Montessori method, please take time to bring this to the attention of your friends and colleagues.

Update on Clements Protest of Kelo Ruling

Posted on by s1e2t3u4p5

In the new article “Group Seeks Souter Eviction as Protest,” the Associated Press provides an update on Logan Darrow Clements‘s efforts to apply the Supreme Court’s recent eminent domain ruling to Judge Souter’s own summer home in New Hampshire:

Angered by a Supreme Court ruling that gave local governments more power to seize people’s homes for economic development, a group of activists is trying to get one of the court’s justices evicted from his own home.
The group, led by a California man, wants Justice David Souter’s home seized to build an inn called the “Lost Liberty Hotel.”
They submitted enough petition signatures only 25 were needed to bring the matter before voters in March. This weekend, they’re descending on Souter’s hometown, the central New Hampshire town of Weare, population 8,500, to rally for support.
“This is in the tradition of the Boston Tea Party and the Pine Tree Riot,” Organizer Logan Darrow Clements said, referring to the riot that took place during the winter of 1771-1772, when colonists in Weare beat up officials appointed by King George III who fined them for logging white pines without approval.
“All we’re trying to do is put an end to eminent domain abuse,” Clements said, by having those who advocate or facilitate it “live under it, so they understand why it needs to end.”

See the full article for more.

Russia's Future without Andrei Illarionov

Posted on by s1e2t3u4p5

The Times Online has a terrific article discussing the problems Russia may face now, attenuant to Illarianov’s resignation:

WHEN Andrei Illarionov joined the Kremlin as an economic adviser in 2000, he and most of the Western world were convinced that Russia was finally heading towards a brighter, freer future.
For five years he advised President Putin and headed Russiaâ??s negotiations with the G8, which Russia joined in 1997 as a reward for its liberal political and economic reforms.
But yesterday â?? five days before Russia takes over the rotating G8 presidency for the first time â?? Mr Illarionov resigned from the Kremlin, saying that his country was no longer politically or economically free.
â??It is one thing to work in a country that is partly free. It is another thing when the political system has changed, and the country has stopped being free and democratic,â? he told reporters. â??I did not go to work for such a country.â?
Mr Illarionov, 44, had been sidelined since he described last yearâ??s forced renationalisation of the oil company Yukos as the â??scam of the yearâ? and was replaced as Russiaâ??s G8 â??sherpaâ? in January.
But his resignation will fuel concern in the West that Russia is not fit to lead the G8 group of leading industrialised nations, comprising Britain, the United States, Japan, France, Germany, Italy and Canada.
Mr Putin wants to use the presidency to reclaim Russiaâ??s status as a world power and to focus the G8 on issues affecting the former Soviet Union â?? energy security, education and health.
The G8 summit in St Petersburg is supposed to be the high point of his presidency, and by the end of the year he hopes to win full membership of the group, whose finance ministers still meet as the G7.
But after recent moves by the Kremlin to curb democracy Western leaders are under pressure to deny Russia full membership, boycott its G8 summit, or even evict it from the club altogether.

The article ends with this laundry list of Russia’s recent grievances against democracy:

1 President Putin has re-established direct or indirect control over all national TV channels and most newspapers
2 The Kremlin scrapped direct elections for regional governors this year
3 Russiaâ??s hardline policies in the North Caucasus, especially Chechnya, are radicalising Muslims in neighbouring republics and around the world
4 The oil company Yukos was effectively renationalised and its founder, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, jailed this year in what was widely seen as punishment for his meddling in politics
5 The Duma passed a Bill last week allowing the Kremlin to shut down NGOs that criticise its policies
6 Russia is helping Iran to build a nuclear reactor and sold Tehran $1 billion of weapons last month
7 Moscow is blocking moves to censure Syria over the assassination of Rafik Hariri, the former Lebanese Prime Minister
8 Kremlin has backed Uzbekistanâ??s auto- cratic regime over the massacre of protesters in the city of Andijan
9 Russia maintains troops in Transdniester, a separatist region of Moldova, despite committing to withdraw them in 1999
10 Moscow is trying to reform the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe to prevent it from criticising rigged elections in the former Soviet Union

High point of the article: the rationalizations the bureaucrats provide for curbing individual rights and free market reforms. What goons.

Putin Economic Advisor Andrei Illarionov Resigns

Posted on by s1e2t3u4p5

Andrei Illarionov, a vocal proponent of Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, has resigned as Putin’s chief economic advisor:

MOSCOW – An outspoken economic adviser to President Vladimir Putin who has become increasingly critical of a return to inefficient state control of the economy has offered his resignation, complaining that he was no longer able to speak his mind, Russian news agencies reported Tuesday.
Andrei Illarionov, the lone dissenter in a Kremlin dominated by Putin’s fellow KGB veterans, was stripped of his duties as envoy to the Group of Eight leading industrialized nations earlier this year. However, he has remained Putin’s economic adviser.
Last week he charged that political freedom has steadily declined and said that government-controlled corporations have stifled competition and ignored public interests.
“I considered it important to remain here at this post as long as I had the possibility to do something, including speaking out,” the ITAR-Tass news agency quoted Illarionov as saying.
“Until recently, no one put any restrictions on me expressing my point of view. Now the situation has changed,” he added.
Illarionov, 44, a free-market economist who worked in the Russian government in the early 1990s, was appointed an adviser to Putin in 2000.
But he increasingly fell out of favor after he became a vocal critic of moves to restore state control over the strategic energy sector. In particular, he lambasted the effective nationalization of the Yukos oil empire of jailed tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky in 2004 as the “swindle of the year.”
Illarionov said he had a number of reasons for his decision to resign but that his main concern was the development of an increasingly state-controlled economy, with major public companies run by self-interested bureaucrats.
“Six years ago when I came to this post I dedicated my work to increasing economic freedoms in Russia. Six years on, the situation has changed radically,” he said.
“This is a state model with the participation of state corporations, which although they are public in name and status, are managed above all for their own personal interests,” said Illarionov.
Last week, Russia’s biggest carmaker, Avtovaz, elected a new board with top managers representing the state, cementing control of a key company after parallel moves to increase the state’s hold on the energy sector.
Under Putin, Russia has moved to snap up chunks of the strategically important oil sector and the state now controls around 30 percent of the national oil industry.
In December 2004, the biggest oil fields of the embattled Yukos oil giant â?? once Russia’s No. 1 producer â?? were transferred to the state to reclaim billions in disputed tax bills, and this year, the giant gas monopoly Gazprom bought the privately held OAO Sibneft oil company.
Illarionov said last week that after state-owned Rosneft took over OAO Yukos’ main subsidiary, Yuganskneftegaz, the unit’s revenues dropped and costs soared.

Earlier coverage of this subject at the Atlasphere includes the following:

Putin Advisor Illarionov Profiled in WSJ (May 12, 2005)
Putin Demotes Economic Advisor Andrei Illarionov (May 1, 2005)
Spreading Ayn Rand in Russia (April 1, 2005)

I would love to know how to get in touch with Illarionov for an interview. If you have any suggestions, please contact me.
UPDATE: More coverage on this topic is available from AFP.

Putin Advisor Illarionov Profiled in WSJ

Posted on by s1e2t3u4p5

Forwarded to us by Don Hauptman:

Today’s (Friday, Dec 23, 2005) Wall Street Journal, page A13, has a long profile of top Putin economic adviser Andrei Illarionov. First para notes that he “has been preaching no-hold-barred, laissez-faire capitalism in Russia for more than a decade.” Of course, Rand’s enormous influence on his ideas is cited, albeit briefly.
If Russia’s horrible recent regression to communism and fascism is to be averted, he’s one one who will do it. But the article reports, sadly, that his influence is waning. Still, Putin hasn’t yet canned him, so perhaps there’s still hope.

We’ve written before about Illarionov, his connection with Rand, and his tenure in Putin’s cabinet.

C-Span2 Book TV on "The Capitalist Manifesto"

Posted on by s1e2t3u4p5

C-Span2 Book TV will broadcast a recording of Andrew Bernstein’s talk on his new book, The Capitalist Manifesto, which he recently gave at Marist College in Poughkeepsie. The broadcast includes the entire talk and Q&A, and is scheduled for Monday, December 19th, between 5:00am-7:00am EST.
Make sure to set up your DVD or VCR recorder.
Update: The program will be broadcast several additional times through the end of Januray. You can check the C-Span2 Book TV schedule for the times. The program is also available on the Internet during the broadcast, via RealPlayer or Microsoft Media Player.

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