February 24: VwV was launched in February of 2008 and one of our first posts was titled, “After Fidel, Cuban bloggers discuss US candidates.” The post compiled Cuban bloggers thoughts on what the new U.S. president would do with the new leader of Cuba and so Obama’s infamous “without pre-conditions” line began, which haunted him throughout the campaign.

March 21: After videos of Obama’s reverend were brought to the public, the now President-elect delivered, arguably, one of the most memorable speeches in history on racism. VwV’s post, “World moved by Obama’s speech on race,” highlights what bloggers throughout the world had to say after hearing Obama’s thoughts on race.

April 17: As the first African-American president of the U.S., it was crucial for VwV to get the thoughts of African bloggers on Obama. In the post titled, “A letter from Africa,” bloggers throughout the large continent shared their opinions on the then, Democratic contender for nomination.

June 9: As America’s summer heated up, so did the presidential campaign but throughout the world. In the post, “Global: The world has a say!” VwV’s editor compiled a list of Web sites that allowed non-Americans to vote who they think is best for the states.

June 19: The rapid growth of technology played a major role in the 21st century presidential campaign. In the post, “Global: I’m voting Republican” covers what world bloggers thought about a controversial film by Charlie Steak.

August 29: This was the day the world was introduced to Sarah Palin – the governor of the U.S. state closest to Russia and John McCain’s Republican running mate. Without much information about the Republican VP pick, bloggers simply commented about McCain’s pick being a woman as compiled in the post, “The world reacts to Sarah Palin’s VP nomination.”

October 10: Race was not only prevalent on the Democratic campaign trail but also on the Republican, as rallies became heated. The post, “Racism on the Republican Trail?” includes just a few of the comments that were fluttering through the blogosphere about remarks made during Republican rallies.

October 24: The rise of technology returns with the post, “Dear American Voter: an international persepective.” The post covers Link TV’s project that allowed non-Americans to send letters to American voters via videos. The post includes just some of the prevalent thoughts of the voices without votes.

November 4: Mainstream media outlets weren't the only ones covering “breaking news.” As soon as word got out that Dixville, New Hampshire, was the first county to close their polls and count their votes, the blogosphere was on it. This post, “Dixville notch makes global blogosphere history” quotes the excitement of some bloggers and skepticism of others.

November 9: And, after it was all said and done…bloggers began to look back and analyze how Obama ran a successful campaign. In the post, “Social media and the making of the president,” analyses were offered by bloggers in three different countries of how social media played such a major factor in the campaign.

On the lighter side of the campaign, our silliest moments include: Tina Fey as Sarah Palin; Sarah Palin’s conversation with “Sarkozy;” And, Joe the unlicensed plumber.

Although the goal of campaign financing laws can count on general support, the laws themselves cannot. Especially conservatives complain that these laws are in breach with the first amendment guaranteeing the freedom of speech.

Ironically, liberals supported the campaign finance reforms Obama and his top donors circumvented successfully last year. Liberals argued for years that Big Money had too much influence. They favored laws that would limit the amount an individual could give to one candidate.

Not only did these donors circumvent campaign finance laws, the WaPo adds that Team Obama new about it and actively used these donors to receive more. He turned to these top-donors ‘repeatedly [...] in financing his campaign, transition and inauguration,’ the article says.

Approximately 100 families and individuals are involved. They donated at least $100,000 each to Obama’s campaign and separate committees ‘independently’ working for an Obama victory. ‘The families gave to as many as five committees, records show, and 27 of the 94 families also bundled money from others, collecting millions of dollars on top of their personal donations.’

‘Among the supporters were well-known families such as the Rockefellers, as well as lesser-known backers such as New Yorker Frank Brosens, a leader in the hedge fund industry, who raised $500,000 for Obama’s campaign and inauguration in addition to the $182,000 he gave with his wife, parents and three sons.’

Although there is certainly nothing wrong with donating to a cause one believes in, the records show that campaign financing laws are ineffective. Clever and savvy rich individuals are able to circumvent the law and can give hundreds of thousands of dollars nonetheless; directly and indirectly.

Campaign finance laws have been disastrous. They add little to nothing; yet, they infringe on individuals’ right to the freedom of speech. The article shows that abolishing these laws is the best way forward; that way, the playing field will be leveled once again and it will simplify oversight of campaigns.

©2009 PoliGazette. All Rights Reserved.

“I don’t believe it’s too late to change course, but it will be if we don’t take dramatic action as soon as possible. If nothing is done, this recession could linger for years.”

So declared President-elect Barack Obama on Thursday, explaining why the nation needs an extremely aggressive government response to the economic downturn. He’s right. This is the most dangerous economic crisis since the Great Depression, and it could all too easily turn into a prolonged slump.

USA News reports on how the town of Edwardsville, Alabama has put forward proposals for $375 million of spending. Edwardsville has a population of 194m so that is around $2 million per resident.

Their proposed projects include:

• a renewable energy museum (cost: $32.1 million)
• scenic railroad (cost: $37.0 million)
• vineyards (cost: $9.0 million)
• replace streetlights with solar-powered lights (cost: $3,479,200),
• build solar-powered recharging stations for electric golf carts and vehicles (cost: $620,000)
• installing water pipelines beneath roads to soak up the sun’s rays, transferring heat (cost $50.4 million) that will halve the amont of energy required

So far the towns have a combined wishlist of $96.6 billion!

It works as follows: Iranian agents (or businessmen) contact friends or allies in foreign countries. These friends / allies use a company in their country as a front to buy technology from the U.S. When they receive the products, they send it to their Iranian buddies who then use them in bombs and other weapons.

The above is an admitted simplification of quite a complex scheme:

While illegal trafficking in weapons technology has occurred for decades — most notably in the case of the nuclear smuggling ring operated by Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan — the new documents suggest that recent trading is nearly all Internet-based and increasingly sophisticated.

Many of the schemes unknowingly involve U.S. companies that typically have no clue where their products are actually going, the records show.

“The schemes are so elaborate, even the most scrupulous companies can be deceived,” said David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) and co-author of a forthcoming study of black markets for weapons components.

Albright said the deceptions can be even more elaborate when the target is nuclear technology. “That’s where the stakes are the highest,” he said. “If Iran is successful, it ends up not with an IED but with a nuclear weapon.”

Rare details about the illicit markets emerge in court records from the Justice Department’s investigation of Iran’s Dubai network, as well as in the ISIS study, which tracks four years of secret trading by Iranian and Pakistani front groups. The study includes copies of invoices and the contents of e-mails from companies looking to buy Western technology.

The good news is that the U.S. knows that Iran is doing this, and mostly how. The bad news is that this does not make it much easier to prevent Iran from purchasing goods it is not allowed to purchase.

It should be rather obvious that a lot of resources and manpower should be allocated to those intelligence officials and departments who deal with this problem. These weapons are used by terrorists in Iraq; American technology is killing American soldiers.

This too will be a major challenge for an Obama administration, albeit perhaps one he does not have a whole lot of direct influence on himself.

©2009 PoliGazette. All Rights Reserved.

The enormous financial burden of the two wars-Joseph Stiglitz estimates it at $3 trillion--heavily contributed to the financial meltdown in the U.S.A. and disarray in global economy.  Far from being a model for developing world, we now need to heal our own economy. Now it is America's turn to embark on overhauling its financial system, re-structuring its economy, re-inventing a more equitable government, re-examining its foreign strategy and re-thinking its basic assumptions about the world. In short, it is time for perestroika, American style. Call it transformation, as Obama does. But it must be done much better than Gorbachev's perestroika least the U.S.A. goes the way of the USSR.

It cannot be done without thinking out of the box of the Cold War mentality. But, as the war in Georgia has shown, this approach continues to poison U.S.-Russian relations.

The Russian rebuff to Georgia came after its repeated warnings against NATO expansion, after the bombing of Yugoslavia and the proclamation of Kosovo's independence. But it was Russia that was accused of reverting to the Soviet era Brezhnev doctrine. In fact, in his reckless attack on South Ossetia, Georgia's president Mikheil Saakashvili was inspired by U.S. abandonment, in the post-Communist era, of the strategy of peaceful resolution of conflicts in favor of the "shock and awe" bombardment of non-co-operative adversaries. This strategy has proved not only inhumane but also counter-productive.

Unless President-Elect Obama renounces this reliance on war as a means to achieve security for the United States and its allies, there is little chance that his presidency will produce a better world than the one President Bush left behind. It is incumbent upon European leaders, especially, those who refused to support U.S. in Iraq, to speak up and dissuade U.S. leaders from starting a new war and using bombing as the peace-maker of choice.

Let me now focus on the need to transform U.S. policy toward Russia. First of all, U.S. should abandon the fantasy of unipolar world domination foisted on the Bush administration by the neo-conservatives.  Alas, many of our European allies were cajoled into accepting, however half-heartedly, U.S. hubris. Now we need to scale down U.S. and NATO military involvement abroad and rely on skilled diplomacy and leadership by example, not brute force or economic blackmail. We need to recognize that even though the U.S. is the only superpower, it is far from omnipotent. We need allies and partners, and that includes Russia.

We also need to recognize that many of our current problems with Russia are of our own making. Our failure to do good on the promise to disband NATO is one example. Our expansion of NATO to Russian borders is another. The decision to install an anti-missile "shield" in Poland and the Czech Republic is bound to cause more tensions.

Imposing the free market

We made mistakes even while helping post-communist Russia in its economic reform. In the 1990s, U.S. adopted an approach, espoused by Jeffrey Sachs, Andrei Shleifer, and Lawrence Summers, which amounted to clumsy efforts to impose on Russia the same free-market dogmatism that is at the root of today's global crisis. Under the misleading name of the "Washington consensus" this approach to globalizing Russia dominated the Clinton administration. Yet even in the World Bank there were prominent critics whose advice was ignored.

One was Joseph Stiglitz who challenged the orthodoxy of free-market fundamentalism with an alternative economic philosophy he called "a third way." Cognizant of the benefits of free-market, he has also recognized the important role governments can play in preventing its abuse by tycoon investors and mighty corporations. Stiglitz was squeezed out of the bank because of his views, even while being awarded the Nobel Prize in economics.  Another critic was professor William Easterly who later authored the book with the meaningful title The White Man's Burden: Why the West's Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good.

Free-market Healer, Heal Thyself

While lecturing Russia about the blessings of unfettered free market, we forgot the lessons taught us by Thomas Jefferson . In a letter to John Taylor in 1816, he warned that the "banking establishments," when left to their own devices, " are more dangerous than standing armies." Presciently, he foreswore "the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity" as  "swindling futurity on a large scale."  Jefferson knew that in a democracy the people, through its government, should have regulatory power over irresponsible bankers and investors. As the Bernard Madoff scandal has shown once again there are plenty of those ready to take the country for another Ponzi pyramid ride.

Alas, Shevtsova applied her "liberal view" to Russia only, failing to consider a similar correlation between foreign and domestic policy in Western countries. Did she not hear that after the 9-11 attack Bush tried to rally the West to a "crusade" against Al-Qaida by proclaiming the Stalinesque motto that ‘those who are not with us, are against us'? Does she not know that, on Bush's initiative, The Patriot Act was then passed which has restricted civil liberties in the United States more than during the Cold War when our adversaries were not only considerably more powerful than Al Qaida, but also had much a large following inside the United States?

Scholars advising their governments on international relations must be watchful of the dynamic correlation between foreign and domestic policy even in the most democratic countries. Ancient Greeks knew that any form of government, including democracy, has a tendency to degenerate. We, too, know that the eternal vigilance against enemies of freedom, both foreign and domestic, is the price we have to pay for the blessings of liberty. As Shevtsova seems oblivious of Western concerns with the preservation of liberty , one would doubt her credentials as a "liberal." Her views seem more consistent with those of the neo conservatives.

Neo-con's Media Megaphones

Now the neo-conservatives seem to be re-grouping to take charge of U.S. foreign policy under Obama.  In fact, several neo-con columnists were elated by Obama's appointments.  This makes the liberals worry whether Obama will be able to carry out the transformation he promised. Teresa Stack, president of The Nation magazine, the flagship of the liberal-left movement that voted solidly for Obama, reminds its readers: "Neocons and their corporate mainstream media megaphone are prepared to do everything in their power to thwart progressive change.  We can't afford to take change for granted."

Indeed, it was the "mainstream media megaphones" that fanned hysterical russophobia during the Georgian-Russian conflict.  They regurgitated  comparisons of the Russian action to Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 and Hitler's annexation of the Sudetenland in 1938. They also largely marginalized scholars like Mark Almond, a British historian, who found Russia's rebuff to Georgia fully legitimate. With greater justification, he compared the Russian action with Britain's retaliation gave to Argentine aggression in the Falklands in 1982. No great power will retreat forever, he quoted Kissinger. Indeed, after two decades of endless retreats under constant pressure from the West, Russia finally decided it can no longer retreat and hit back.

But hitting back is not a strategy. Neither is U.S. mass media hysteria. That's why Russia, the EU and the United States need to address the common concern for the prevention of armed conflicts along the Russian borders and elsewhere in the world, least they escalate into a major conflagration involving nuclear powers.

Hold Obama to his Promise

Now that Obama is about to be inaugurated, it is important to remind him of the transformation he promised to deliver. It has to be toward a more efficient, fair, and vibrant society at home and a less confrontational, less expensive, but more prudent and cooperative U.S. policy abroad.

The new policy toward Russia must include:

• Abandoning the fantasy of U.S. unipolar world domination and recognizing Russia's legitimate national security concerns;
• Abiding by international law and work within the established organizations such as the U.N., EU, OSCE, WTO, World Bank and IMF until they can be revamped to conform to the new reality;
• Returning to negotiations with Russia on all Cold War legacy issues, such as America's abrogation of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and Russia's repudiation of START II;
• Halting NATO expansion into Georgia and Ukraine or, at least, provide a ten years moratorium on such expansion;
• Cooperating with Russia in halting proliferation of nuclear weapons;
• Coordinating efforts against international piracy and terrorism, as well as against global warming and to protect the Earth's biosphere.

The New York Times described the election of Obama as a catharsis and return to the American dream that was destroyed--politically, economically and socially--under Bush. Obama's new appointments bear little signs of new thinking. They may be pragmatic in the sense of party politics, but lack a vision of the evolving global community and the role the United States and the West should play in it. As Gorbachev's perestroika showed, any attempt at radical transformation is risky. It's better to have the Russians among our cheer leaders and friends, not as our opponents or detractors.

One of the main reasons for the stark assessment is that Obama wants to invest heavily in the U.S. economy during his years in office. The most sober plans anticipate $700 billion in extra investments while many believe the investments will end up in the trillions of dollars. 

Although preparing the American people for major investments and deficits, Obama emphasizes that he plans to spend responsibly. “When the American people spoke last November, they were demanding change — change in policies that helped deliver the worst economic crisis that we’ve see since the Great Depression,” Mr. Obama told reporters at his transition offices. He added, “They were demanding that we restore a sense of responsibility and prudence to how we run our government.”

Many believe government spending to be necessary in the coming years to help the U.S. economy recover. Experts charge that the problems with the economy are structural. This means that the economy will need drastic and structural changes if America wants to be able to compete with Asia in the coming years and decades. “Changes” often cost money.

Republicans and fiscally conservative Democrats are nonetheless worried that Obama’s grand plans mean that government spending will run completely out of hand. They argue that the plans will result in an even less healthy spend-receive balance than at present (which is quite terrible). 

Spending may be considered necessary, but unwise spending is just that: unwise. If history is any guide, and it usually is, major deficits will end up weakening the U.S. economy in the long run rather than improving it. The U.S. economy is in trouble today precisely because it was kept artificially high. Pumping more money in the system in order to once again create a bubble and artificial growth will cause tremendous blowback - if one thinks the situation is bad now, one should look at what one’s children will face if Obama’s plans are put into action.

In the end, the only way for the American economy to truly recover is by letting it go down slowly, after which it will rebuild itself in an improved version. The goal should be to create an American economy 2.0, not a remake of 1.0.

©2009 PoliGazette. All Rights Reserved.

Several months after the initial bailout, these fears seem to become reality; increasingly more sectors are demanding financial support. U.S. automakers requested it in December 2008, quite irrationally arguing that they too were vital to the U.S. economy. If the would fall, they argued, millions of Americans would lose their job and, therefore, their income. Now, in January 2009, the situation has become even more irrational, even entertaining: the porn industry has joined the ranks of bailout partitioners.

Hustler publisher Larry Flynt and Girls Gone Wild CEO Joe Francis said Wednesday they will request $5 billion in aid. “The take here is that everyone and their mother want to be bailed out from the banks to the big three,” said Owen Moogan, spokesman for Larry Flynt. “The porn industry has been hurt by the downturn like everyone else and they are going to ask for the $5 billion. Is it the most serious thing in the world? Is it going to make the lives of Americans better if it happens? It is not for them to determine.”

Francis said in a statement that “the US government should actively support the adult industry’s survival and growth, just as it feels the need to support any other industry cherished by the American people.” He added to CNN: “We should be delivering [the request] by the end of today to our congressmen and [Secretary of the Treasury Henry] Paulson asking for this $5 billion dollar bailout.”

Flynt himself also spoke out about the matter. He admitted that the porn industry is not dying, as such; DVD sales are going down, but Internet revenue is going up. Flynt nonetheless believes that his industry could use a bailout, saying: “This is very unhealthy as a nation. Americans can do without cars and such but they cannot do without sex. With all this economic misery and people losing all that money, sex is the farthest thing from their mind. It’s time for congress to rejuvenate the sexual appetite of America. The only way they can do this is by supporting the adult industry and doing it quickly.”

One wonders whether Flynt et alia are playing a game here, or whether they are serious. If the latter, the answer can be very short: bailout out the porn industry will be deemed immoral by the majority of Americans and it would make no sense economically, since the economic impact of the porn industry is limited. If nothing else, their request proves that the bailout rage is becoming increasingly ridiculous, leading “everyone and their grandmother” to ask the government to bail them out. No government should help all companies, businesses and individuals in trouble: capitalism and free markets mean that some businesses will go broke, they have to, in order to improve the economy as a whole.

Reading Flynt’s remarks, however, gives me the impression that he is, as Hot Air puts it rather well, “using satire to make a political point about the sudden necessity of private enterprise to receive public subsidies.” His goal seems to be to show the U.S. government and the American public that the bailout rage is running out of hand and that who are and who are not bailed out is increasingly decided based on subjectivity. 

If so, his publicity stunt can only be welcomed; it puts the entire bailout rage into perspective and it may even cause proponents of all kinds of bailouts to see that, perhaps, just perhaps, bailout out everyone isn’t the cure for the U.S. economy’s disease.

©2009 PoliGazette. All Rights Reserved.

That does not mean, of course, that I endorse Friedman’s views wholly. One of my caveats with him is, for instance, that he did not truly seem to understand what conservatism is. He described modern day liberals as ‘conservatives’ because they want to keep the system as it is: with a big, intrusive government actively ‘helping’ people.

Friedman came to the above conclusion by arguing that conservatism is about ‘conservatism the present state society is in.’ Although that is correct to a degree, it misses the larger point that conservatism teaches that human nature and the universe itself are governed by certain rules, which we can discover by studying the past. Conservatism teaches that breaking with these rules will prove destructive.

This means that conservatives can very well argue that, if these rules have been ignored for the last 50 years, change has to come. This change is not radical change, however, in so far that it is nothing more than practicing the rules mankind has always been governed by and that our forefathers adhered to, consciously or subconsciously.

©2008 PoliGazette. All Rights Reserved.