Transformational Change: Mao's Great Leap Forward Led to Murder of 45 Million People

Here's a man who oversaw the murder of 45 million and has admirers in the Obama administration. The brutality revealed here is almost unimaginable.

Mao Zedong, founder of the People's Republic of China, qualifies as the greatest mass murderer in world history, an expert who had unprecedented access to official Communist Party archives said yesterday.

Speaking at The Independent Woodstock Literary Festival, Frank Dikötter, a Hong Kong-based historian, said he found that during the time that Mao was enforcing the Great Leap Forward in 1958, in an effort to catch up with the economy of the Western world, he was responsible for overseeing "one of the worst catastrophes the world has ever known".

Mr Dikötter, who has been studying Chinese rural history from 1958 to 1962, when the nation was facing a famine, compared the systematic torture, brutality, starvation and killing of Chinese peasants to the Second World War in its magnitude. At least 45 million people were worked, starved or beaten to death in China over these four years; the worldwide death toll of the Second World War was 55 million.

Mr Dikötter is the only author to have delved into the Chinese archives since they were reopened four years ago. He argued that this devastating period of history – which has until now remained hidden – has international resonance. "It ranks alongside the gulags and the Holocaust as one of the three greatest events of the 20th century.... It was like [the Cambodian communist dictator] Pol Pot's genocide multiplied 20 times over," he said.

Between 1958 and 1962, a war raged between the peasants and the state; it was a period when a third of all homes in China were destroyed to produce fertiliser and when the nation descended into famine and starvation, Mr Dikötter said.

His book, Mao's Great Famine; The Story of China's Most Devastating Catastrophe, reveals that while this is a part of history that has been "quite forgotten" in the official memory of the People's Republic of China, there was a "staggering degree of violence" that was, remarkably, carefully catalogued in Public Security Bureau reports, which featured among the provincial archives he studied. In them, he found that the members of the rural farming communities were seen by the Party merely as "digits", or a faceless workforce. For those who committed any acts of disobedience, however minor, the punishments were huge.

State retribution for tiny thefts, such as stealing a potato, even by a child, would include being tied up and thrown into a pond; parents were forced to bury their children alive or were doused in excrement and urine, others were set alight, or had a nose or ear cut off. One record shows how a man was branded with hot metal. People were forced to work naked in the middle of winter; 80 per cent of all the villagers in one region of a quarter of a million Chinese were banned from the official canteen because they were too old or ill to be effective workers, so were deliberately starved to death.

Mr Dikötter said that he was once again examining the Party's archives for his next book, The Tragedy of Liberation, which will deal with the bloody advent of Communism in China from 1944 to 1957.

There are still people out there who believe Communism works. Which is why they must be removed from our government.

The 'Good Life Card' Comes to Venezuela

The basket-case that is Venezuela inches closer to a Communist dictatorship, but according to Sean Penn and Oliver Stone's good buddy, living under complete control of the state and getting your food rationed is bizarrely called the good life.

Presented by President Hugo Chávez as an instrument to make shopping for groceries easier, the ``Good Life Card'' is making various segments of the population wary because they see it as a furtive attempt to introduce a rationing card similar to the one in Cuba.

The measure could easily become a mechanism to control the population, according to civil society groups.

``We see that in short-term this could become a rationing card probably similar to the one used in Cuba,'' Roberto León Parilli, president of the National Association of Users and Consumers, told El Nuevo Herald. ``It would use more advanced technological means [than those used in Cuba], but when they tell you where to buy and what the limits of what you can buy are, they are conditioning your purchases.''

Chávez said Tuesday that the card could be used to buy groceries at the government chain of markets and supplies.

``I have called it a Good Life Card so far,'' Chávez said in a brief statement made on the government television channel. ``It's a card for you to purchase what you are going to take and they keep deducting. It's to buy what you need, not to promote communism, but to buy what just what you need.''

Of course this commie blockhead fails to note what happens when the money runs out.

Former director of Venezuela's Central Bank, Domingo Maza Zavala, said this could become a rationing card that would limit your purchases in light of the country's recurring problems with supplies.

``If the intention is to beat inflation, they should find a good source of supply for the entire market and not only for centers that are part of social chains,'' he said. ``To do that, you need to encourage local production with the help of the private sector, since they cannot do it by themselves. The government cannot become the ultimate food distributor.''

Humberto Ortega Díaz, minister for public banking and president of the Venezuelan Bank, minimized such criticism and said that all this measure is trying to do is to improve service at the government supply chains.

``Why can't our Bicentennial chain use a card to make it easier for customers to buy their groceries?'' the minister said in an interview broadcast on a government channel. He said that this type of initiative has been used by private commercial entities.

Yet, critics pointed out that the measure could turn out not as innocent as the minister makes it to be, and they insist that the government control over the supply chain is too broad and depends greatly on imports the government authorizes through its currency exchange system.

In theory, the government could begin to favor the import of products to be sold through the government chains and have more control over the type of products purchased and the people buying them.

Jaime Suchlicki, director of the University of Miami's Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies, said that Venezuela's current problems of scarce supplies are very similar to those Cuba faced when Fidel Castro introduced the rationing card.

``The card emerged when goods began to become scarce,'' Suchlicki said. ``The government had seized many companies that did not work because the government managed them poorly. Then they decided to distribute groceries through those cards.''

'We Thought We Were Being Original'

Sorry, kids, wearing hammer-and-sickle t-shirts isn't exactly original. It's mind-numbingly stupid. Though I can't necessarily blame the kids. When real history is ignored and Communist mass murder is glossed over or ignored entirely, when Che Guevara shirts are seen all over college campuses, why would they believe there's anything wrong wearing a shirt paying tribute to an ideology responsible for the murder of hundreds of millions of people?

You're assigned the color red. Now think of a relevant theme. Communism?

That's exactly what juniors at Irvington High School chose.

And that's when peace crumbled faster than the Berlin Wall.

The class vote was part of the school's Color Wars, to take place next month. A T-shirt was to feature a hammer and sickle on the front and "Isn't it Time You Joined the Party" on the back.

If that phrase made you smile, it was meant to. The students were intending to be funny, even envisioning a party hat perched on the sickle.

If it didn't, not everyone saw the humor.

"I just thought it was very inappropriate and offensive," said 17-year-old Michael Schur, a senior whose relatives died in Ukraine under Stalin's rule and whose mother complained to the principal.

Now the design has gone the way of the Soviet Union, and the juniors have substituted a video game figure, Mario, the intrepid Italian plumber outfitted in red and blue.

"We wanted to do something that was a little bit witty, smart humor," said the class president, Isabel Garcia. "We thought we were being original."

If they wanted to be original in an academic environment maybe they'd wear shirts proclaiming themselves proud conservatives or pro-life. Problem is they'd probably horrify the faculty and wind up suspended from school.

Once Schur complained, the principal, Scott Mosenthal, told Garcia that the juniors would have to reconsider.

"If it's disrespectful to people in the community, that's a much bigger issue than some kids' not liking the idea," Garcia said. "Generally you listen to the majority, but when the minority has something really important to say, you have to go with them."

Really? Like I said, if Schur showed up with a shirt saying Choose Life, would everyone have to go with him?

You know the answer to that.

As for Schur, did he persuade his schoolmates to view the hammer and sickle differently?

"In the end I really don't think I made my point," he said. "I just aggravated a bunch of people."

Now he'll probably wind up an outcast. I can see the ACLU rushing to Irvington High School today complaining the rights of these moronic kids are being violated.

It Was Twenty Years Ago Today

The man who opened the Berlin Wall
On November 9th 1989, Harald Jäger wanted his night shift at the East Berlin border crossing at Bornholmer Strasse to go quietly. Instead, Jäger opened the first crack in the Berlin Wall and helped make history.

“But then things happened, that I would have never imagined even in my worst dreams,” remembered the former state security officer in a conversation with the DPA new service. His border crossing was the first to open - without an order from above. The hours leading up to the opening were the most dramatic in his life.

“I’m happy that only thing that flowed was fear-induced sweat and not blood,” Jäger said.

In the canteen around 7 pm that evening, he had followed the press conference with the East German official Günter Schabowski, which outlined new travel rules for the country's citizens. Almost offhandedly, Schabowski announced the immediate opening of the border. The impact of the announcement was almost immediately visible, said Jäger.

“At first there were just a handful of East German citizens there, but by the minute there were more. It went from hundreds to thousands, who chanted, ‘Open the gate!,’” explained Jäger, who was in charge of 30 guards and three border posts that night.

“We stood just an arms-length away from the masses, who were separated from us by just a closed crossing gate,” he said, explaining how he was scared of a mass panic. “We no longer had the situation under control,” said Jäger, now 66 years old. He kept trying to phone his superiors for orders. “But higher up, chaos reigned just as it did for us.”

Around 9:40 pm, the order came to allow especially “provocative citizens” through the border, but not to let them back in. But this “ventilation” tactic didn’t help.

“At 11:20 pm, I then ordered the crossing gate to be opened and to allow everyone to leave without inspecting their papers,” said Jäger. About 25,000 people used their new freedom on that evening to cross into West Berlin.


“In the first moment, something was really empty inside me. I didn’t understand the world anymore,” said Jäger. Today, he’s “a bit proud” that he prevented the situation from escalating. He believes that because of his cool-headed handling of the situation, he made some amends for his 28 years of service with the East German border troops.

It was good that “the East Germans didn’t exclude us, instead they embraced us,” said Jäger. The reaction from his then-superiors was also mild. “My knees were shaking when I called up my colonel to report on what was happening. He said only, ‘it’s good, my boy.’”

After Germany reunited, Jäger had to “start from zero.” He was unemployed for two years and then trained to become a taxi driver. He also sold ice cream and newspapers and worked as a security guard. Coming to terms with his past took many years, Jäger said. A series of interviews with Gerhard Hasse-Hindenberg, who wrote a biography of Jäger that was published in 2007, helped considerably.

Today, Jäger lives in the town of Weneuchen in Brandenburg and spends a lot of time in his garden tending cacti. After 20 years, he wants to go back to his former border crossing on the 9th of November and mix with the others there.

But he can’t fully savour the freedom to travel that came with the fall of the Wall: he doesn’t have enough money for the dream trip to Mexico that he’d like to take.

Via The Local

Meanwhile, as Berliners and dignitaries celebrate the Fall of the Wall and remember those who died during their attempt to flee the communist paradise, BarryO won't be there.

In his first year in office, Barack Obama has visited more foreign countries than any other president. He's touched ground in 16 countries, easily outpacing Bill Clinton (three) and George W. Bush (eleven). It's an itinerary befitting a "citizen of the world."

But there's one stop Obama won't make. He has begged off going to Berlin next week to attend ceremonies commemorating the fall of the Berlin Wall. His schedule is reportedly too crowded. John F. Kennedy famously told Berliners, "Ich bin ein Berliner." On the 20th anniversary of the last century's most stirring triumph of freedom, Obama is telling them, "Ich bin beschäftigt" - i.e., I'm busy.

It doesn't have quite the same ring, does it? Obama's failure to go to Berlin is the most telling nonevent of his presidency. It's hard to imagine any other American president eschewing the occasion. Only Obama - with his dismissive view of the Cold War as a relic distorting our thinking and his attenuated commitment to America's exceptional role in the world - would spurn German president Angela Merkel's invitation to attend.

Obama famously made a speech in Berlin during last year's campaign, but at an event devoted to celebrating himself as the apotheosis of world hopefulness. He said of 1989, "a wall came down, a continent came together, and history proved that there is no challenge too great for a world that stands as one."

The line was typical Obama verbal soufflé, soaring but vulnerable to collapse upon the slightest jostling from logic or historical fact. The wall came down only after the free world resolutely stood against the Communist bloc. Rather than a warm-and-fuzzy exercise in global understanding, the Cold War was another iteration of the 20th century's long war between totalitarianism and Western liberalism. The West prevailed on the back of American strength.

But Obama doesn't think in such antiquated, triumphalist terms. Given to apologizing for his nation abroad, he resolutely downplays American leadership. "President Obama is applying the same tools to international diplomacy that he used as a community organizer on Chicago's South Side," the Washington Post notes, approaching "the world as a community of nations, more alike than different in outlook and interest." To the extent that the Cold War doesn't fit this unbelievably naïve worldview, it's an intellectual inconvenience.

Wouldn't Obama at least want to take the occasion to celebrate freedom and human rights - those most cherished liberal values? Not necessarily. He has mostly jettisoned them as foreign-policy goals in favor of a misbegotten realism that soft-pedals the crimes of nasty regimes around the world. During the Cold War, we undermined our enemies by shining a bright light on their repression. In Berlin, JFK called out the Communists on their "offense against humanity." Obama would utter such a phrase only with the greatest trepidation, lest it undermine a future opportunity for dialogue.

Pres. Ronald Reagan realized we could meet with the Soviets without conceding the legitimacy of their system. He always spoke up for the dissidents - even when it irked his negotiating partner, Mikhail Gorbachev. Whatever the hardheaded imperatives of geopolitics, we'd remain a beacon of liberty in the world.

Obama has relegated this aspirational aspect of American power to the back seat. For him, we are less an exceptional power than one among many, seeking deals with our peers in Beijing and Moscow. Why would Obama want to celebrate the refuseniks of the Eastern Bloc, when he won't even meet with the Dalai Lama in advance of his trip to China?

So Obama huddles with Merkel during her visit to Washington and leaves it at that. An American president will skip events marking the end of a struggle to which we, as a nation - under presidents of both parties - devoted blood and treasure for 50 years. For Barack Obama, 1989 is just another far-away year - and the Democratic party of such men as Harry S. Truman and JFK has never seemed more distant.

Rich Lowry is the editor of National Review.

Via RCP

Communist Goods Making a Comeback

The way I figure it, sales of this poster probably helped jumpstart the comeback.

Once the butt of jokes the world over, communist-era East European goods from sweets, to rustic washing machines and clunky cars are all the rage again.

As the world prepares to mark the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, souvenirs such as portraits of Romanian leader Nicolae Ceausescu are now avidly sought at markets. In Belgrade, cafes are named after Yugoslav leader Josip Broz Tito or even the Soviet KGB secret police.

Two decades on, many who then welcomed change now want to turn the clock back by eating Szerencsi chocolate, driving Trabant two-stroke cars or using Frania washing machines to wash carrots.

Nothing is too tacky, the quality never too questionable. For older people there is the nostalgia of the bad old days. Among younger people there is a curiosity to find out how their parents lived.

Many food brands have made a comeback on supermarket shelves using the same packaging that made them look so old fashioned and unwanted between 1945 and 1990.

"For a few years now there has been a tendency to bring back brands from the communist era. It makes us feel nostalgic, reminds us of our youth," said Romanian sociologist Mircea Kivu.

"These products remind me of my childhood. I would much rather eat a Szerencsi chocolate bar than a Mars," said Tamas Pickarczyk, a 27-year-old car salesman in Budapest.

"In my opinion Szerencsi tastes better. It is better quality but most of all it brings back good memories."

Ah yes, fond memories like gulags and mass murder.

The glory days, indeed.

After 50 Years of Misery, Castro Warns of Tough Times Ahead

Naturally, the New York Times lackey reports this with a straight face, failing to note what misery has overrun the island prison since 1959.

Like a true leftwing wacko, Raul Castro spouts the usual bilge about climate change and reminds us Cuba is prepared for the inevitable American invasion that never arrives.

President Raúl Castro used a speech Saturday on the 55th anniversary of the beginning of the Cuban revolution not to unveil any new changes but to call on everyday Cubans to prepare for tough times in the days ahead.

Citing the global economic downturn and the rising cost of oil, Mr. Castro said Cuba and other countries in the developing world face severe challenges that would require belt-tightening and patience.

“We must bear in mind that we are living in the midst of a true world crisis which is not only economic but also related with climate change, the irrational use of energy and a great number of other problems,” he said.

There was speculation that Mr. Castro, who officially took over the presidency in February from Fidel Castro, his older brother, would use Cuba’s important July 26th holiday — which commemorates a failed raid on a military barracks here — to extend the rash of modest changes he had announced in recent months. But he seemed eager to dampen expectations.

“We are aware of the great number of problems waiting to be solved, most of which weigh heavily and directly on the population,” he said, adding later, “Regardless of our great wishes to solve every problem, we cannot spend in excess of what we have.”

Citing one bright spot, he said that tourism had grown 14.8 percent in the first half of this year compared with last year, with nearly 1.3 million people visiting the island.

And the president, a former defense minister, said the country was as prepared as ever for any invasion that might be planned by the United States.

“We shall continue paying special attention to defense, regardless of the results of the next presidential elections in the United States,” he said.

No word who he's endorsing in November, but I have a sneaking suspicion who he prefers.

To show you how bad the reportage from the Times is, even NPR is more honest about what problem Cubans face.

Cuba, which used to be the world's largest sugar exporter, is facing a crisis in agriculture. It is now heavily dependent on U.S. food imports, which have been exempted from Washington's long-standing embargo.

Cuba's infrastructure is crumbling. Raul Castro said the government has plans to rebuild roads, pipelines, houses and railways. But he didn't address whether Cubans might be allowed to freely leave the country or whether they can buy and sell houses. He avoided mentioning the dilemma of Cuba's dual-currency which often forces people to buy necessities in a currency they're not allowed to earn.

Such joy. Now there may be tough times ahead.

Getting Serious About Their Communist Past

Communist crimes should never go
statute-barred - Prague conference
The crimes of Communism should not be subject to the statute of limitations as crimes against humanity are not - this is one of the conclusions the two-day international conference Conscience of Europe and Communism, held in Prague, came to today [Monday, ed.].

"Communism can be qualified as a crime against humanity, as it corresponds to its definition involving ill will, slave labour, deportations and murders for political and religious reasons," Czech MEP Jana Hybaskova told journalists on behalf of the meeting's organisers.

She said the condemnation of Communism must be promoted to the European level in the judicial area, also by the hearings the EC plans to hold about these crimes, Hybaskova said.

On Tuesday, the conference, held in the Czech Senate building, is to discuss the establishment of a European institution to deal with Communism and Nazism.

Miroslav Lehky, deputy head of the recently-established Czech Institute for the Studies of Totalitarian Regimes, today said the persecution of political prisoners and killing of civilians attempting to cross the Czechoslovak border with Austria or Germany were crimes against humanity.

"Any law-abiding state is obliged to prosecute a crime irrespective of when and where it occurred and whoever committed it. If the state fails to do this, it ceases to be a law-abiding state," Lehky said.

He said most crimes of Communism have not been punished due to the country's legal order's continuity following the previous regime.

According to the Czech Institute for the Documentation and Investigation of Crimes of Communism (UDV), 234 people were executed in the Communist Czechoslovakia, more than 560 people died while attempting to escape to the West, at least 10,000 died in concetration camps, 1,800 disappeared and 240,000 people were sentenced for political reasons.

Other than those few transgressions, the benevolence of the communist state can't be denied.

Of the communist leaders. only a few have been given prison sentences.

They include Karel Hoffmann, sentenced in connection with the Soviet-led invasion in 1968, former Prague Communist official Miroslav Stepan, former interior minister Frantisek Kincl and former counter-intelligence head Karel Vykypel.

Still open is the case of Ludmila Brozova-Polednova, a prosecutor in the show trial in which democratic politician Milada Horakova was sentenced to death and executed in 1950.

Via ČeskéNoviny

Havel Hits One Out Of The Park

Europe bears special responsibility for Nazism, communism

Europe bears special responsibility for Nazism and communism and their consequences as both totalitarian systems were first established in it, former Czech president Václav Havel told an international conference, The Conscience of Europe and Communism today.

Havel said Europe had special responsibility also for man's freedom worldwide.

The EU should more radically support those who fight for freedom in countries like Cuba, Belarus and Burma irrespective of any political and economic interests.

Havel warned against pacifism as a step towards appeasement policy.

Good luck! Old Europe is unclear on the concept. New Europe must lead the way.

The communist and Nazi regimes had many things in common, including similar ways of manipulation with the public, establishment of special non-military guards, extensive secret police structures, supervision of people, biased judiciary, executions and censorship, Havel said.

Not to mention that both were representative of Leftist ideology.

Under communism, everybody was somehow the system's victim and also one of its creators.

Ivonka Survilla, head of the Belarusian exiled government, said Russian communist propaganda had devastating effects on her country where many people continue to believe it.

Belarus has become a victim of the Soviet imperial politics, Survilla said.

Russian journalist Alexandr Podrabinek warned against the restoration of communist practices in Russia.

The two-day conference, opening in the Senate today, proposed that August 23 be declared the international day of totalitarian systems' victims.

Via ČeskéNoviny

BBC Slobbers Over Raul Castro

The BBC cheers the Cuban Communist government as they decide to raise some pensions. I mention the Cuban government is Communist for informational purposes only as the BBC editors somehow forgot to mention that in their article.

Cuban president Raul Castro has said he will raise state pensions by up to 20% and increase wages for court employees.

Raul Castro said the increases, which will come into effect next month, were "fair recognition" of workers' effort.

The BBC then break out the pom-poms for the new Communist leader in Cuba

Since taking over the presidency from his brother Fidel in February, Raul Castro has introduced a series of liberalising economic measures.

They include an easing of restrictions on the ownership of mobile phones, lifting a ban on Cubans staying at major hotels, and allowing private farmers more involvement in how they use their land.

So, how much is this wonderful bounty in the workers paradise?

Under the scheme, according to the newspaper, more than 2.1m pensioners will receive increases of about $2 (£1) a month, raising minimum monthly pensions to $9.50 (£4.70).

Two dollars a month, raising the minimum monthly pension to $9.50 ... wow. That works out to a total income of $114 a year.

I invite all American leftwing wackos such as Sean Penn, Alec Baldwin, Tim Robbins and Rev. Jeremiah Wright to move to Cuba if they hate America so much and try living on $114 a year.

Connecting the Zimbabwe Dots

Zimbabwe's economy is imploding and the socialists running the BBC are finally allowing as how there might be some minor difficulties encountered in repairing the damage done by the communist leadership there. But they still don't quit connect the dots.
The BBC starts out bemoaning the election confusion, then gets to the point:

Meanwhile Africa's worst basket-case economy continues to flounder, without a leader to take stock of what needs to be done.

In terms of statistics, Zimbabwe's plight is pretty much immeasurable.

Figures such as a rate of inflation of more than 100,000% and an unemployment rate said to be in excess of 80% are startling, but also largely meaningless.

Meaningless?

To socialists maybe, but to those who understand economics, they are very important statistics. Then the article continues:

After 28 years under Robert Mugabe, emotive terminology such as utter despair and desperate destitution describe the situation in Zimbabwe better than any maths and statistics can ever do.

This is certainly the case for the 700,000 people who have been robbed of everything, even their homes in urban slums that were razed by Mr Mugabe who had deemed them an embarrassment.

The cause, as well as the solution to all this is actually quite simple. The foundation of any prospering, growing economy is the fundamental right to hold, own and protect private property. The takeover and confiscation by the communist Mugabe to enrich his political friends destroyed any incentive by the productive people in his country to take a risk and produce anything.

Imagine for a minute that I impose a 100% income tax on you today (I can just feel Hillary and Obama supporters drooling at the very thought). I instead confiscate all your assets, income and production and dole it out to my buddies as I see fit. What possible motivation would you have to get up the next day and go to work? Of course, there is no such motivation. In fact, you have every motivation to either leave the country or just sit back and hold your hand out for your share of the largesse like everyone else. Since everybody does this, nobody is producing, and then the government has to just print money to pay for all the handouts. Foreign capital leaves the country to avoid being confiscated. And presto-chango! You have destroyed your economy.

The solution is to reinstitute the right to own private property. Then you can have a free market system and capitalism, with the resulting growth and prosperity.

Even with all this damage to the Zimbabwe economy, the editors at the BBC just can't quite let go of their love for communism/socialism. Get a load of this knee slapper buried in the end of the article:

Yet the underlying fundamentals of Zimbabwe's economy, resource base and even parts of the corporate sector remain reasonably robust.

Excuse me!? Zimbabwe's economy is the extract of a heroin addict's nightmare, including 100,000% inflation, 80% unemployment (and they can't even blame Bush for it), life expectancy of 37 years, and the BBC editors think the underlying fundamentals of their economy is robust. But yet they think the U.S. economy is crumbling.

The BBC, documenting their worship of socialism and communism every day.

They'd Get More Letters, But Nobody Can Afford Paper

Reuters is doing their best to prop up the calamitous situation in Cuba.

They actually devote a report to a novel concept washing over the island prison: Letters to the editor.

Let's forget for a moment it's rather unlikely they would ever print anything critical of the brutal Communist regime. But they try and pretend there's a stimulating public debate going on in a country that hasn't tasted freedom in nearly 50 years.

Cubans have a new vehicle to express their opinions: letters to the editor of the ruling Communist Party newspaper Granma.

Letters for and against reforms under consideration by Cuba's new President Raul Castro were published by Granma on Friday.

One writer called for the elimination of the dual currency system, a major source of complaint among Cubans, who are paid in Cuban pesos but must buy many consumer goods in Cuba's hard currency Convertible pesos worth 24 times more.

Publication of the letter was a novelty in a country where the press is controlled by a one-party state that allows no independent media and has a record of suppressing dissent.

Indeed. Ironic how alleged advocates of free speech love to tell us how wonderful Cuba is.

It follows a new trend of stimulating public debate started by Raul Castro since he took over running the government when his brother Fidel Castro fell ill in mid-2006.

For all the talk of debate and freedom of opinion, the irony of this seems to escape these Reuters nitwits.

"The idea is to show the public what people think. It is the people that will write the letter," said a journalist at the newspaper, who asked not to be named.

Joys of the Communist Economic Model

I get some of my heartiest laughs watching Communists trying to manage economies. It now looks like China is going the wishful thinking route on dealing with their inflation problem.

China steps in to curb inflation

China's cabinet says it will temporarily intervene in the market to curb rampant food and fuel price rises.

Retailers and producers will face heavy fines if they increase the price of basic necessities, the government says.

Food prices climbed more than 18% in November, while the price of pork jumped by more than 50%.

*Sigh*

Okay, here's the drill:

Inflation is too many units of currency chasing too few goods; in other words, not enough supply for the demand. So price then escalates to push some demand out of the market and bring things back into equilibrium.

So what you have here is a demand/supply problem, not a "price" problem.

Thinking you can fix this problem by making price increases illegal is just as silly as thinking you can get rid of a fever by making thermometer readings of higher than 98.6 illegal.

What will happen here is supply will drop to near nothing as nobody will want to get fined, and a black market will flourish out the back door.

Go look at Zimbabwe if you don't believe me. Unfortunately, all that will happen here is the Chinese grocery store shelves will soon be barren and prices will skyrocket.

The way to fix this problem is allow price to drive the market, the higher prices will encourage more production, so supply will expand and price will then moderate.

We need to send a copy of Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations to China.

Pining Away For Paradise Lost

Proposal to abolish Czech totalitarian regimes institute at court

Brno- The Czech Constitutional Court (US) has received a proposal to abrogate the law on the basis of which the Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes has been established, CTK has learnt.

The proposal to abolish the state-established facility that is to research into Nazism and communism in Czech history was signed by 57 opposition deputies from the Czech Social Democratic Party (CSSD) and the Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia (KSCM).

They say the institute could politically influence the interpretation of history.

By all means, let us not forget about the influences that stem from the political interpretation of history.

They also object to labelling the whole period of communist rule as totalitarian, it ensues from the proposal.It is difficult to say when the Constitutional Court will rule on the proposal.

The left-wing deputies fear that people will consider the results of the research conducted by a state-established institution as the "official" and sole possible interpretation of history.

"This will factually restrict the constitution-guaranteed freedom of scientific research," the proposal says.

This is beginning to smell of George Soros.

The deputies also object to what they call ideological terminology.

"The law authoritatively describes the section of Czechoslovak history between February 25, 1948 [when Communists seized power in then Czechoslovakia] and December 29, 1989 [end of communist regime in Czechoslovakia] as a period of communist totalitarian power. It does not consider the fact that the period was changeable from the point of view of ways of exercise of state power and was not compact in this respect," the deputies write.

They write that the 1950s saw a real totalitarian regime while in the 1960s the regime was gradually democratised, and they say that it did not fully return to the repressive practices from the times of the cult of personality in the 1950s even after the occupation of Czechoslovakia by Warsaw Pact troops in 1968.

That's why so many Czech ex-pats returned home; overwhelming the borders, just to see the 5000-7000 Soviet tanks that were now in the Czech Lands to guarantee their freedom.

"This state also carried out a number of measures that were generally positive for society, particularly in the social sphere," the deputies write.

They use as "a partial example the deepening of the practical equalisation of women in political, economic and family life, as well the abandoning of the practice of making differences between children according to their origin."

The left-wing deputies recommend to the Constitutional Court to abrogate the law as a whole, or to at least delete the words "totalitarian" from a number of passages of the law.

Nácek a komunista svině would work.

The right justified the establishment of the institute by an effort to concentrate and process the written documents of all security forces of the communist regime.

It said the processing of data and making them available should contribute to the comprehension of the communist regime and at the same time to the prevention of a biased interpretation of history.

The institute's activities will be supervised by a council that has elected historian Pavel Zacek as the institute's first head. He will formally assume his post on January 1.

David Irving was unavailable for comment.

Via ČTK

Same Pig, Different Lipstick

Communists are so predictable. They screw up their economy and then try to camouflage the results.

Zimbabwe is to issue new banknotes in an effort to tackle the serious cash shortages afflicting the country.

From Thursday, notes worth 250,000, 500,000 and 750,000 Zimbabwean dollars will enter circulation.

So how bad is it in Zimbabwe?

Rampant inflation above 8,000%, mass unemployment and shortages of fuel and basic goods have blighted the economy.

Only a Communist (or MSM journalist, but I repeat myself) would think that changing the denomination of the currency would do anything to help fix the above problems.

This same thing was tried in post-WWI Germany, and all it did was increase the inflation.

Yo, Zimbabwe government! The reason why your economy is collapsing is because you are communists! You have promised everybody free everything, and have been confiscating private property in the attempt to pay for it.

That move destroyed the incentive to produce and grow, and the significant producers in the economy left the country. Zimbabwe used to be the breadbasket for Africa. Now it's a disaster.

Rather than monkeying around with the currency denomination, Zimbabwe officials need to stop the free giveaways and re-instill a legal recognition of the right to own and keep private property.

And before anybody out there thinks this cannot happen in the U.S., just take a good close look at what many of the presidential candidates are proposing to do with "universal health care".

Same pig, different lipstick.

You will also notice that the BBC reporter put in not a single word about the destructive Communist polices that have caused this.

Changing the denomination is like moving the deck chairs around on the Titanic.

The Road To Democracy

No More 'Troubles' Under Putin
Russia has its own path to democracy, one that is determined by the country's long history, President Vladimir Putin and his entourage frequently assert. To understand their vision of Russia's future, one must pay attention to their use of the past and to the national myths they create and promote.

Russia is engaged in a political transition now that, even Kremlin insiders admit, is virtually a "crisis." The celebration of People's Unity Day on November 4 and the 90th anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution on November 7 have brought to the forefront crises of the past and models for emerging from them. The pro-Kremlin Unified Russia party and the state media have labored overtime in recent weeks to reduce these historical events to easily understood elements -- chaos, disunity, internal and external enemies, violence, and famine -- and to emphasize that Russia survived them only by rallying around a strong, authoritarian leader-for-life.

Historical Precedent

People's Unity Day is a three-year-old holiday that marks the liberation in 1612 of Moscow from Polish occupation and the end of a decade and a half of discord known by the ominous Russian phrase "Smutnoye vremya," the Time of Troubles. The "smuta," or trouble, was set off when the royal line of Ivan the Terrible came to an end and the country's political elites began a ruthless battle among themselves for power. The period was characterized by factional infighting, famine, and foreign occupation, nearly leading to the collapse of the Russian state. It came to an end only in 1613, when the nobility chose one of their own, Mikhail Romanov, at a Grand National Assembly, founding the dynasty that would rule Russia until 1917. Before the 17th century was out, Mikhail Romanov's grandson, Peter the Great, was in power and the country that had been on its knees was on the verge of becoming a global power.

The new People's Unity Day holiday has developed in two directions in its short history. On the one hand, it is a cause for annual semi-sanctioned "Russia-for-the-Russians" actions, events that serve to remind the public that the country's unity is fragile and that violent confrontation is lurking close to the surface. On the other hand, the holiday is marked by widespread demonstrations in support of the Kremlin and the strong central government. The Unified Russia party has begun the practice of sending representatives into schools and other institutions to make sure that the horrors of the Time of Troubles remain vivid and the lessons of unity and authoritarianism are not forgotten.

[...]

In Praise Of The Iron Fist

The logic of the analogy between the Bolshevik Revolution and the Time of Troubles leads to the conclusion that Soviet dictator Josef Stalin was the strong, authoritarian leader-for-life who pulled the country out of chaos and, through a far-sighted program of industrialization and collectivization, created a country that was capable of withstanding the onslaught of Nazi Germany and of competing in the Cold War for decades. The Kremlin, of course, is wary about direct praise of Stalin, largely because of how such statements are seen in the West. In addition, the means by which Stalin came to power -- infighting, betrayal, show trials, and persecution -- are clearly less savory than the image of the Grand National Assembly that elevated Mikhail Romanov on a wave of national unity.

However, Putin has made enough overtly pro-Stalin statements over the years to have lured away virtually all the Stalinists from the Communist Party. He has restored Stalin-era state symbols and has stated directly that the country has no need to feel guilty about its past. During Putin's years in power, Stalin's reputation has grown steadily, with more and more Russians stating that he played "a positive role" in Russian history. State television commentator Mikhail Leontyev wrote in "Profil" this month: "What Stalin inherited from the Bolsheviks as an object of state -- in fact, imperial -- restoration was an absolutely Asiatic formation that could only be managed by Asiatic methods -- literally those of Genghis Khan. That is, by using 'the masses' as raw material, fuel for the historical process. There were no other means for managing that country, for saving it, for securing it in the midst of an aggressively oriented environment."

[....]

Read it all at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty

Also at A Tangled Web

Your Economy on Communism: Zimbabwe Inflation 'Incalculable'

This is what happens when a Communist government controls, well, everything.

Behold the joys.

Are you leftists listening?

Of course you're not. You don't give a rat's ass about anyone but yourselves.

Zimbabwe inflation 'incalculable'

Zimbabwe's chief statistician has said it is impossible to work out the country's latest inflation rate because of the lack of goods in shops.

"There are too many data gaps," the Central Statistical Office's Moffat Nyoni told state media.

Many staple goods are often absent from shop shelves after the government ordered prices to be halved or frozen in a bid to stem galloping inflation.

September's inflation rate was put at almost 8,000%, the world's highest.

Other reports suggest the rate could be at near 15,000% and the International Monetary Fund had warned it could reach 100,000% by the end of the year.

Mr Nyoni said the Central Statistical Office has delayed the release of the inflation figure until an accurate way of calculating it can be found.

"We went to too many shops to observe and so compilations have not been completed," he said.

Maize meal, bread, meat, cooking oil, sugar and other basic goods used to measure inflation largely disappeared from shops after Robert Mugabe's government ordered prices to be slashed.

Manufacturers have said they cannot afford to sell goods at below the cost of producing them.

Don't worry though. The left will spring into action once there's a complete and catastrophic humanitarian crisis. Then they'll urge us to do something!

Previously on Zimbabwe.

Chavez Loses Lead; Declares Opponents Traitors

Communist thug Hugo Chavez is getting a little nervous now that it appears his "reforms" may be heading for defeat.

Poll says Chavez loses Venezuela referendum lead

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has lost his lead eight days before a referendum on ending his term limit, an independent pollster said on Saturday, in a swing in voter sentiment against the Cuba ally.

Forty-nine percent of likely voters oppose Chavez's proposed raft of constitutional changes to expand his powers, compared with 39 percent in favor, a survey by respected pollster Datanalisis showed.

Just weeks ago, Chavez had a 10-point lead for his proposed changes in the OPEC nation that must be approved in a referendum, the polling company said.

Despite the swing, company head Luis Vicente Leon said he did not rule out a comeback by the popular president.

Chavez has trounced the opposition at the polls on average once a year and can deploy a huge state-backed machinery to get out the vote, Leon said.

Not to mention vote fraud and intimidation. Meanwhile, the jug-eared freak says anyone opposing him is a traitor.

That's nice.

It ought to get very ugly if his idiocy goes down to defeat.

President Hugo Chavez warned his supporters on Friday that anyone voting against his proposed constitutional changes would be a "traitor," rallying his political base before a referendum that would let him seek unlimited re-election in 2012 and beyond.

Brandishing a little red book listing his desired 69 revisions to Venezuela's charter, Chavez exhorted his backers to redouble their efforts toward a victorious "yes" vote in the Dec. 2 ballot.

"He who says he supports Chavez but votes 'no' is a traitor, a true traitor," the president told an arena packed with red-clad supporters. "He's against me, against the revolution and against the people."

His speech followed the recent high-profile defection of his former Defense Minister Gen. Raul Baduel, a longtime ally who called the president's proposed reforms a "coup." Others have also broken with the Chavista movement in recent months, including politicians of the small left-leaning party Podemos.

Chavez's opponents accuse him of concentrating power and seeking to be president-for-life like his close friend Fidel Castro of Cuba. Chavez insists he will only stay on as long as Venezuelans continue to vote for him.

"If you don't approve (the referendum), maybe we'll have time for a parachute jump in five years," Chavez, a former paratrooper, told the crowd. "But if you wish—if you approve the referendum—I will stay as long as God wills! Until the last bone of my skeleton dries out!"

A pleasant thought.

Of course, this beast will always enjoy the support of Hollywood and other assorted idiots here in America, even if his own people turn on him.

Putin's Russia

As the sky above the Soviet Union Russia continues to turn gray as a result of the dictatorship institutions of progressive democracy put forth by Vladimir Paranoid, we present something you'll never read -- much less see discussed -- in the parallel universe known as the Leftisphere, home of the Kooky Kult of Koslam.

Inside The Corporation: Russia's Power Elite
In his mission to restore Russia's pride and prestige, President Vladimir Putin has repackaged the Soviet national anthem, reinvented patriotic pro-Kremlin youth groups, and revived the cult of the suave KGB officer.

The 're-packaged' Soviet national anthem is done in the same way another infamous anthem was 'repackaged' - ignore a stanza or two but, by all means, retain the goddam melody (audio file contains the infamous first stanza).

But despite bringing back these old archetypes, Putin isn't interested in a Soviet restoration. This time around, Russia's path to greatness lies in a modern authoritarian corporate state. Some Kremlin-watchers have even dubbed the country's Putin-era ruling elite "Korporatsiya," or "The Corporation."

"I like using the term 'Kremlin, Inc.,'" says Russia analyst Nikolas Gvosdev, a senior fellow at the Nixon Center. "I think there are a number of boardroom strategies that apply to how policy in Russia is developed."

Since coming to power nearly eight years ago, Putin has carefully crafted an image of himself as the undisputed master of Russia's political universe: a strong, stern, and solitary leader calling all the shots. His most recent moves -- unexpectedly naming the heretofore unknown Viktor Zubkov as prime minister and announcing that he will lead the pro-Kremlin Unified Russia candidate list in December's parliamentary elections -- have only served to solidify this impression.

But in reality, Russia is run by a collective leadership -- the Kremlin Corporation's board of directors, so to speak. Putin is the front man and public face for an elite group of seasoned bureaucrats, most of whom are veterans of the KGB and hail from the president's native St. Petersburg. Together, they run Russia and control the crown jewels of the country's economy.

All key political decisions in Russia, including Putin’s most recent bombshells, are the result of deliberation and consensus among members of a tight-knit inner sanctum many analysts have dubbed "the collective Putin.”

"These are people who have been with Putin from the very beginning," says Olga Kryshtanovskaya, director of the Center for Elite Studies at the Russian Academy of Sciences Institute of Sociology. "Together they thought up this model of the state and government that is in place now."

The Inner Sanctum

Most Kremlin-watchers place four people with Putin at the epicenter of power: two deputy Kremlin chiefs of staff, Igor Sechin and Viktor Ivanov; First Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov; and FSB Director Nikolai Patrushev.

All are KGB veterans, all are in their mid-50s, and all are St. Petersburg natives. Moreover, Kryshtanovskaya says, this group is ideologically "completely homogenous" and its members view strategy for Russia's development "in exactly the same way."

At the heart of that strategy is the establishment of an enduring political system -- a centralized, authoritarian, vertically integrated and unitary executive that can manage a thorough and comprehensive modernization of Russia.

"They want an authoritarian modernization. They want a strong authoritarian state of the Soviet type without the Soviet idiocy," says Kryshtanovskaya. "The idiotic Soviet economy and the idiotic Soviet ideology were minuses. All the rest they want to bring back and preserve: a state system without a separation of powers."

If they succeed, the West and the world will be dealing with an even more undemocratic, assertive, and aggressive Russia for a long time to come.

Such a Russia would probably cease to even pretend to adhere to democratic norms at home, and would most likely abandon any facade of being a reliable partner of the West in international affairs. It would become more brazen about bullying neighbors, using their dependence on Russia's energy resources as leverage. The Kremlin would continue to try to undermine democratic reform in places where it has taken hold on Russia's borders, like Georgia and Ukraine, and strenuously oppose such liberalization elsewhere in the former Soviet space.

The Czech Republic, Poland, Romania, Lithuania, Estonia, the Slovak Republic and Latvia come to mind.

But to establish their vision of modern superpower greatness, the "collective Putin” first must make sure they remain in power after the March 2008 presidential elections. And this means keeping the group cohesive, managing personal, political, and commercial conflicts among its members, and preventing any one faction in the ruling elite from becoming too powerful. For Putin, this means a delicate balancing act -- and one that he seems singularly equipped to perform.

The Indispensable Putin

As his presidency winds down, Putin isn't acting like somebody who is preparing to go quietly into retirement.

Speaking to a group of Western academics in September, Putin said he planned to remain influential in Russian politics after his presidency ends next year. And in a speech to the pro-Kremlin Unified Russia party on October 1, he gave the clearest indication yet about how he plans to do so.

Putin told cheering delegates that he would head the party's list of candidates for December's elections to the State Duma and that he would consider becoming prime minister in the future. The move sparked a wave of speculation that a new, powerful, super-prime minister's office would soon displace the presidency as Russia's key power center.

Whether or not this is indeed the plan, analysts agree that Putin is the indispensable man in Russia's political system.

Just like a previous indispensable figure: Vladimir Ilyich Lenin.

If Putin wants the system he created to remain in place and develop according to his wishes, he has little choice but to stay in the game -- if for no other reason than to prevent open clan warfare from breaking out in the ruling elite.

"It is clear that some of the prerogatives Putin enjoys are because of who he is as a person, not because of the presidential chair," says Gvosdev. "The worry is that there will be someone else sitting in that presidential chair who doesn't have the same level of trust, isn't able to mediate," he adds.

And there is quite a bit to mediate.

Corporate Power, Political Clashes

In addition to wielding near-absolute political power, Putin’s inner circle, or board of directors, also controls the commanding heights of the Russian economy.

Sechin, for example, is chairman of Rosneft, Russia's massive state-run oil company. Sergei Ivanov heads the newly formed aircraft-industry monopoly United Aircraft Company. Viktor Ivanov chairs the board of directors of both Almaz-Antei, a state missile-production monopoly, and Aeroflot, the national airline. Patrushev's son Andrei is an adviser to Rosneft's board of directors, and his other son, Dmitry, is vice president of the state-run bank Vneshtorgbank.

Just below the top tier of the Putin elite is a group of leading officials who, while not enjoying the same influence and access as the president's inner sanctum, are nevertheless considered key players in the system whose interests must be taken into account.

Among them are Vladimir Yakunin, the chairman of Russian Railways; Viktor Cherkesov, the head of the Federal Antinarcotics Agency; Sergei Chemezov, general director of the arms export monopoly Rosoboroneksport; and First Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, who is also chairman of Gazprom’s board of directors.

And let's not forget Putie's dutiful German stooge, der Gerhard.

Other key figures include Yury Kovalchyuk, chairman of the board of directors of Bank Rossiya; Aleksandr Grigoryev, director of Gosrezerv, the state reserve agency; Dmitry Kozak, the regional development minister (and former presidential envoy to the Southern Federal District, which includes Chechnya and the remaining North Caucasus republics); and Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Naryshkin, who is chairman of the board of the Channel One television station and deputy chairman of Rosneft.

Such a concentration of commercial and political might has led to conflicts, despite the group's ideological homogeneity. This has been most visible recently in Cherkesov's long-standing and bitter feud with Patrushev and Sechin, which went public in early October. Cherkesov has long coveted Patrushev's post as FSB chief. Patrushev and Sechin are wary of Cherkesov's rising clout and Sechin and Sergei Ivanov are also fierce rivals for Putin’s ear and influence in the Kremlin.

Sechin's interests as Rosneft chairman have also clashed with those of Medvedev's at Gazprom. A proposed merger between the two state-controlled behemoths was abandoned in 2005 due to rivalries between the two men's power bases in the Kremlin. The two sides also clashed over the division of the bankrupted Yukos oil company's production assets -- the majority of which were eventually acquired by Rosneft.

Sechin's interests also clash with Yakunin's at Russian Railways -- mainly over whether oil will be transported by pipeline or rail.

"They have problems among themselves," says Vladimir Pribylovsky, head of the Moscow-based Panorama think tank. "They are afraid of each other. They are seeking somebody they can trust with the throne. Everybody trusts Putin. They don't know what will happen with his successor," Pribylovsky adds.

Top-Down Governance

Putin’s Moscow-based team sits atop what Russians call the power vertical, a sprawling pyramid of political and economic might that stretches deep into the country's far-flung regions and republics.

Provincial governors are appointed by the president, and confirmed by elected local legislatures -- which in turn are dominated by Unified Russia. Presidential representatives with sweeping authority keep governors and local officials loyal to the Kremlin line.

Those who cross "The Corporation" can expect to feel the full weight of Russia's heavily politicized law-enforcement bodies. For those who are ready to play ball with the Kremlin, however, there are spoils.

Through the governors and presidential prefects, the Kremlin controls a vast network of patronage that Kryshtanovskaya calls "a hierarchy that resembles the Soviet state nomenklatura," in which the Communist Party would dole out coveted posts, privileges, and favors to loyal members.

Putin’s emerging nomenklatura has a distinctive KGB flavor. According to Kryshtanovskaya's research, 26 percent of Russia's senior bureaucrats and business leaders are siloviki -- veterans of the security services or military structures. If the 1990s were dominated by robber-baron oligarchs, then the reigning figure of this decade, according to political scientist Daniel Treisman, a Russia expert at UCLA, is the "silovarch."

Putin’s authority, his inner circle's preeminence, and their common plan to remake Russia all rests on the savvy management of the corporate, political, and personal conflicts inherent in this vast power pyramid, and on Kremlin Inc.'s board of directors remaining cohesive.

If any of the current schisms escalates into open conflict, the system could descend into crisis.

Putin "has created a situation that functions poorly without him. And he needs to continue with this system because are no alternatives," says Moscow-based political analyst Dmitry Oreshkin. "In the framework of this Putin consensus, he now needs to make sure nobody becomes too strong, so that nobody gathers sufficient resources to seize control of the vertical."

Andropov's Children

Shortly after becoming president in 2000, Putin saw to it that a plaque honoring Yury Andropov was restored to the Moscow house where the late Soviet leader and KGB chief once lived.

And in June 2004, to mark the 90th anniversary of Andropov's birth, Putin arranged to have a 10-foot statue of him erected in Petrozavodsk, north of St. Petersburg.

That Putin should take such care to honor the last KGB man to become Kremlin leader is not surprising. In many ways, Putin and his inner circle are Andropov's children.

Putin, Patrushev, Cherkesov, Sergei Ivanov, and Viktor Ivanov all entered the KGB in the mid-1970s when Andropov was at the spy agency's helm. They were strongly influenced by his ideas.

"They thought he was simply a genius, that he was a very strong person who, if he had lived, would have made the correct reforms," Kryshtanovskaya says.

Andropov, who led the KGB from 1967 until 1982 when he became Soviet leader, sought to modernize the Soviet economy to make it more competitive with the West, while at the same time preserving an authoritarian political system in which the KGB would have a leading role. The authoritarian modernization he envisioned, Kryshtanovskaya says, resemble the one that carried out by China's Communist leaders.

"Andropov thought that the Communist Party had to keep power in its hands and to conduct an economic liberalization. This was the path China followed," Kryshtanovskaya says. "For people in the security services, China is the ideal model. They see this as the correct course. They think that Yeltsin went along the wrong path, as did Gorbachev."

Andropov died in 1984, less than 15 months after becoming Soviet leader, and was never able to implement his modernization plan. But two decades after his death, the group of fresh-faced KGB rookies he once inspired are poised to implement it for him.

Operation Successor And Beyond

Speculation is rampant over how Putin’s power will manifest itself next. Will he step straight from the presidency into a new, more powerful prime ministerial post? Or will he temporarily hand over power to a weak and loyal president before reclaiming the post at a later date? No matter the formula, analysts agree that the current elite will remain in power beyond 2008 -- and the current elite along with him.

Putin, says Andrei Ryabov of the Moscow Carnegie Center, "is the undisputed leader of this team, and since there are no serious independent candidates to compete for that role, this means that he will be the main director and architect of the new composition" of political power.

Beyond 2008, analysts say Putin and his team are considering major changes in Russia's political system to minimize the risk of succession crises in the future.

"The dilemma of the succession of power is one of the main problems facing the authorities since it always causes a crisis," says Kryshtanovskaya. "They find troublesome direct elections in which all the people vote. They need either indirect elections through some kind of electors or assembly, or a change in the character of the power structures."

This, of course, would require a major constitutional overhaul. But Dmitry Oreshkin notes that, given the dominant position Putin’s board of directors enjoys, that would not be much of an obstacle.

"Right now this group of people can do anything," he says. "In this situation, who has the resources to oppose them or to disrupt their plans?"

And so goes democracy in a progressive state.

And the Leftisphere speaks volumes with their . . . silence.

Koslings where art thou?

Via RFE/RFL.

Venezuela Circling the Drain

There will soon be no going back for Venezuela.

They're stuck with Hugo Chavez for life in all likelihood now and the last vestiges of freedom are rapidly evaporating.

Expect the ugliness we highlighted yesterday to get even worse.

CARACAS (Reuters) - Congress passed President Hugo Chavez's proposal to scrap presidential term limits on Friday in a package of constitutional changes that Venezuelans are likely to approve in a December referendum.

Polls show many Venezuelans reject the moves to centralize presidential power, but welcome sweeteners the socialist leader has included, such as reducing the work day to six hours and giving social security to unregistered taxi drivers.

I wonder how long the work day will be at the re-education camps?

"Today is a black page in the history of this country," said legislator Ismael Garcia, whose party has broken with Chavez over the reforms.

The package also strips the central bank of its autonomy, gives Chavez control over international reserves, empowers authorities to detain citizens without charge and opens the way to censoring the media in so-called political emergencies.

Where are the leftwing media solons in this country decrying this?

On Getting It

It's funny how those hailing from New Europe can see right through the revamped Democrat Party.

Is Free Speech not guaranteed any more?
The Free Speech is in danger. It is not guaranteed anymore if anyone’s words can be misrepresented even when original text or sound recording exists.

The condemnation of radio host Rush Limbaugh for using a phrase “phony soldiers” is a BAD, BAD joke.

Anyone, who wants to, can go to Rushlimbaugh.com and watch the video and listen to sound clip from the day when the phrase was used, and if you listen to the entire clip you will know what Limbaugh said. Unfortunately some television and radio shows only play the part that more or less supports their claim. It’s also in this clip. The clip can be found at:

http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/daily/site_092807/home.guest.html and if you don’t ever want to visit his site search him at youtube.com.

We usually don’t get involved in anything outside of our little niche, news from Poland, but this time we have to take the stand because of the seriousness of the issue. Because next time it could be us or even YOU. Who can guarantee that next week, or next month what we say or write will not be purposely misrepresented? Either in this country (US), or elsewhere in the World. For many of us, immigrants, it is a nightmare jumping back from a dark place in our history called communism. We know how facts can be misrepresented for the purposes of propaganda. We know, because our protests were presented on TV as criminal behavior aimed at destruction of government or private property. What if this darkness is coming back? What if we stay quiet and it does come back?

Via Polonia News