Return to main page

Return to Archives

USA and Freedom Abroad

(posted 6/11/05)

I am going to contrast two seemingly unrelated articles and then comment:

Evangelical Christians Fight for a Church 

6/10/05 MoscowTimes.com 

In 1996, the church was granted a plot on Prospekt Vernadskogo, and spent "many millions of rubles" over the next few years preparing the project, said Alexander Purshaga, who is both Emmanuel's chief pastor and president of the Russian Assemblies of God, an organization that includes 38 other parishes nationwide. <.>The church was then abruptly told that the land had been previously promised to the city government for public use, Alexander Purshaga said. Over the next five years, a series of alternative sites were offered to the church and retracted for various reasons. In 2003, Emmanuel managed to buy a house of culture on Ulitsa Bogdanova in southwest Moscow but was later denied permission to renovate it.

Billionaires Battle For Business

6/10/05 Associated Press LAS VEGAS - On one corner of the Las Vegas Strip, Steve Wynn runs his signature $2.7 billion megaresort and busily plans another. Across the street, Sheldon Adelson is building the Palazzo hotel-casino next to his successful Venetian. Soon to be shimmering near both properties are Donald Trump's gold-glass hotel-condo towers, and Phil Ruffin has ambitious plans for the aging New Frontier casino. Four billionaire-sized egos. A slew of big-budget projects. All within stone's throw of one another.

    Now, why contrast these stories? Because they respectively illustrate why the United States is the richest most powerful country in the world and Russian citizens are, on average, nearly four times poorer than the average American. Who has trouble buying or improving land in Las Vegas? Who gets beaten by police for illegal protests? Could you imagine the Mayor of Las Vegas claiming that the city was too crowded? (Well, actually he could since the thieving Federal Government owns 90% of Nevadan land, but that's besides the point) Each month 7000-6000 people flock into the Las Vegas area in search of the unabridged Freedom it offers. Freedom to develop and own property. Freedom to create wealth free from government, all equal in the eyes of the law. Freedom to give some of your excess wealth to an accountable charity of your choosing. 

    "But.. but.. but.. Why would people go somewhere where it's so unequal?", our friends on the left whine. Because people don't give a damn about inequality if they can improve their lives! If you're improving your life, creating and earning wealth, who cares if people around you are becoming trillionaires? In fact, the same political structure that is making it possible for these billionaires to become billionaires, is making it possible for the average Joe to succeed as well. New millionaires, hundredthousandaires, and tenthousandaires are being created every day in Las Vegas. If you attempted to make Vegas more 'equal' what would happen? You would immediately destroy the business climate that resulted in the massive immigration to Las Vegas. Capital would flow out of the city, businesses would fail, and (gasp!) ordinary people would stop coming! But how can this be? What is good for the big fat rich cats is good for the average Joe too? Of course, the answer is a resounding YES! There are no classes in America, only a political party that would divide us into class. By attempting to use government to make people more 'equal', or provide 'benefits' to the 'less fortunate' (via legalized pillaging), you instead create a wasteland of desolation, like Russia, which, on a side note, probably has a lower international poverty rate than us.
The government of the United States is a device for maintaining in perpetuity the rights of the people, with the ultimate extinction of all privileged classes.

Calvin Coolidge

Protesters Rally against Azerbaijani Government (posted 6/10/05)

6/5/05 Washington Post Two articles added to 'USA and Freedom Abroad Blog grouping" About 10,000 protesters chanting "Freedom!" marched across Azerbaijan's capital Saturday, urging the government of this U.S. ally to step down and allow free parliamentary elections this year. Some of them carried portraits of President Bush. <.> Some observers predict that Azerbaijan could experience a massive uprising similar to those that toppled unpopular governments in three other former Soviet countries -- Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan -- in the past 18 months. Supporters of several opposition parties chanted "Freedom!" and "Free Elections!" while holding placards with such slogans as "Down with robber government!" Placards with Bush's image included the call, "We want freedom!"

As long as President Bush Stands with the Iranian people the Iranian People will stand with him

5/22/05 Persian Mirror Thus, surprisingly, unlike in the United States where the presidential race was relegated to a couple of percentage points, in Iran - President Bush won by a landslide. <.> For instance, Pulitzer Prize winner Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times who spent an entire week in the country recently wrote, “Finally, I’ve found a pro-American country. Everywhere I’ve gone in Iran, with one exception, people have been exceptionally friendly and fulsome in their praise for the United States, and often for President George W. Bush as well.” Thomas Friedman another Pulitzer Prize winner and ardent critic of the war in Iraq wrote “young Iranians are loving anything their government hates, such as Mr. Bush, and hating anything their government loves. Iran . . . is the ultimate red state.” The well-documented emphatically pro-Bush leaning in Iran, which is relatively widespread, has perplexed many western technocrats. Perplexing eh? lol!

    You gotta love the Azerbajani slogan: "Down with robber government!" Maybe I'll go to Washington and do the same thing. :) 

In Iran, a PhD means... Pizza Hut Delivery work (Posted 6/1/05)

5/31/05 ME Times Added to 'Arab Governments and the Causes of Terrorism'. The Islamic republic, home to some of the most qualified young people in the Middle East, has been exporting its brainpower at an alarming rate - with an estimated 150,000 frustrated graduates taking flight every year. Many, over a million, have come to the US, where they become prosperous and free, and a few have setup satellite broadcastings (privately funded by Iranian expatriates), which illegally beam into Iran and which were recently blocked by Iran's buddy Cuba. You see, it isn't just the so-called 'American Culture', which is exported abroad, but the culture of any group that comes here and prospers and then returns or influences their homeland. The reason? As emphasized over and over on this site - the Iranians that come here are free to create wealth and keep the wealth they accumulate with their own labor - free from government intervention and with equal protection under the law. With our burdensome tax rate here (if you add up all the sales, income, SS, Medicaid, phone taxes etc..), it tells you how bad things really are in some of these other countries. So what's government like in Iran? "The government needs to prepare the ground for private sector growth to absorb the workforce, but the problem is that 80 percent of the economy is controlled by the government. The government is the biggest rival of the private sector."

Many Africans See US as Distant Savior (posted 5/18/05)

2/21/05 Associated Press A must read article! But while Americans have grown used to being condemned as global bullies, at least one region has people looking to them for salvation. For many of the young people who take to the streets in protest in Lome and other blighted, overlooked capitals across Africa, only one distant power seems great enough to defeat the local forces of tyranny: the U.S. military. It is interesting that countries in Eastern Europe, Central Asia and Africa are the most pro-American countries in the world. These countries have experienced or are experiencing Communism, Socialism, Dictatorship and corruption and therefore look to history to see what country stands against these forces. Only when the US stands with the governments of corrupt countries, like in the Middle East, does the populace, understandably, have an anti-American perspective. The United States has done more good for the world than any other country in the history of the world. An excerpt from John Kerry and Foreign Policy elaborates on this and further states:

    During the recent US military reorganizations, South Korean and German officials came to the United States to lobby against the removal of US troops. When has this happened in the history of the world? In Eastern Europe, citizens feared the Red Army of the Soviet Union and cheered when Soviet troops finally withdrew. All over the world, many countries not only welcome, but often proactively seek to draw American troops to their countries. For example, in the past week US defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld visited Romania:

In a sign of Romania's eagerness for Americans to use the facility, officials renamed one street on the base "George Washington Boulevard," honoring the first U.S. president. If yes, the move would signal closer U.S. ties with its NATO ally and funnel millions of dollars into the Romanian economy. "I hope so, but it's not in our hands," Pascu [Romanian Defense Minister] said. (51)

    Contrast this with the AP article describing African disdain for the French (not mentioned in this article is the Rwandan condemnation of French involvement in that country's genocide). A starker contrast is seen in this article, describing President Bush's recent raucous welcome in the central Asian country of Georgia: Saakashvili, [Georgian President] a 37-year-old U.S.-educated lawyer who speaks fluent English, boycotted the Moscow festivities because the Kremlin refused to bow to his demands for the immediate closure of two Russian military bases on Georgian soil. Moscow has about 3,000 troops in the Soviet-era bases, which Saakashvili has likened to an occupation of his country. The United States has dozens of military trainers in Georgia.

    The Russians are keeping military bases in a country against the will of the people of that country! Yet both France and Russia, after being bribed by Saddam's oilmen, claim the high moral ground in the Iraq war? How can anyone take these countries seriously? People who have suffered and are suffering under Tyranny emphasize with the words of Ronald Reagan: 

    I've thought a bit of the "shining city upon a hill." The phrase comes from John Winthrop, who wrote it to describe the America he imagined. <.> I've spoken of the shining city all my political life, but I don't know if I ever quite communicated what I saw when I said it. But in my mind it was a tall proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans, wind-swept, God-blessed, and teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace, a city with free ports that hummed with commerce and creativity, and if there had to be city walls, the walls had doors and the doors were open to anyone with the will and the heart to get here. That's how I saw it, and see it still.

    And how stands the city on this winter night? More prosperous, more secure, and happier than it was eight years ago. But more than that; after two hundred years, two centuries, she still stands strong and true on the granite ridge, and her glow has held steady no matter what storm. And she's still a beacon, still a magnet for all who must have freedom, for all the pilgrims from all the lost places who are hurtling through the darkness, toward home.

Far-Flung Ethiopian Emigres Begin to Rediscover Their Home as the Business Climate Blossoms (posted 3/8/05)

3/6/05 Washington Post on Ethiopian immigrants who often arrived in the US with little or nothing, but because of the structure of our political system are able to become successful: Last year, Ethiopians in the United States sent home $6 million in remittance money, eclipsing coffee, the country's biggest export, which earned $4 million. <..> At present, there are more Ethiopian doctors living in the United States than in Ethiopia. Corroborating my view that socialism/corruption, two sides of the same coin, are the cause of poverty in Africa, the Ethiopians that return home are attempting to bring the American principles that foster prosperity and wealth creation to Ethiopia: Government officials said at least 1,500 emigres had returned to Addis and that they were launching an aggressive campaign to woo more, offering tax breaks on importing belongings and flexible land ownership laws. (emphasis mine) (for more on this, including other articles about Africa, see the two excerpts from 'Tsunami Tyranny' that deal with Property Rights and Poverty) Additionally, it is always puzzling to hear the constant clamor for government assistance for the poor who already live in the USA, yet since our founding penniless immigrants have consistently succeeded.

Advisor: Reagan Threatened War over Poland (Update 4/8/05)

4/4/2004 Newsmax Despite the saturating media coverage of the Pope's death, this story remains largely untold. Pope John Paul II was the first non Italian pope in over 455 years, and possibly chosen by the Catholic Church for a reason:. he was a native of Poland, which at that time was a stagnating Communist satellite of the Soviet Union. Communists have always suppressed religion (the USSR, China, Cuba, and Cambodia have all massacred Catholic priests and worshipers) and Poland was no exception. Like all the populations of Eastern Europe, the Polish people hated their puppet government, yet feared the Soviet Army, which invaded and brutally suppressed popular uprisings in Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968. However, this time things were different: 

    It began on June 7, 1982 at a private Vatican meeting between President Reagan and Pope John Paul II. The two men were alone for 50 minutes and the subject of their discussion was Poland and the Soviet domination of Eastern Europe. <> Reagan and the Pope agreed to undertake a clandestine campaign to hasten the dissolution of the communist empire …<> The clandestine U.S. support using the Vatican's Catholic network grew to $8 million a year during the mid 1980s. High tech communications equipment was smuggled in along with printing equipment, supplies, VCRs and freedom tapes. <> When the Russians appeared to be on the brink of an invasion, President Reagan's White House made clear the U.S. would not be acquiescent again. Judge Clark [Reagan's National Security Advisor] told NewsMax bluntly, "We in the Reagan administration were prepared to recommend the use of force if necessary to stop such an invasion." [In reality, we can't be sure how serious the Reagan Admin was about this, or its influence on the Soviet Policy, but the loss of Poland was the catalyst for the liberation of a billion people from Communist rule ] In the end, however, Soviet domination of Poland and Eastern Europe ended, along with the Soviet Union itself, without a shot being fired, thanks to the alliance between Ronald Reagan and Pope John Paul II – an alliance formed between two men who understood the evil nature of communism and knew how to bring it down.

    Not that the Soviets didn't recognize the danger John Paul posed. The Washington Times reports: He spent his formative years in Soviet-run Poland under pervasive government spying. The Turkish gunman who shot him in 1981 was suspected of ties to the Soviets, a regime later brought down by forces the pope openly supported.

    However, the most interesting part of the first story is this sentence: Following that [Polish Puppet Communist] government's outlawing of the Solidarity movement, which the Pope had publicly and covertly supported, Reagan suspended Poland's Most Favored Nation trading status, costing cash-strapped Poland some $6 billion a year in sales.

    Why is this interesting? Because it is the exact opposite of what is being done today. As documented throughout this website, the United States, World Bank, IMF, UN, and other countries routinely give aid to the governments of countries which are plagued by authoritarianism and corruption. For example, the United States was once the largest grain donor to North Korea and the Taliban. If history is any indication, we can be assured that Reagan was denounced as being 'cold hearted' and 'cruel' to the Polish citizens (as well as being a warmonger). Of course, this is, again, 180 degrees from reality. Today the Polish people and government are among the most staunchly pro-American in all of Europe. 

    The best way to aid the citizens of poor countries is to threaten their governments, support and, if necessary, arm, democratic and property protecting opposition groups, and give aid to the people via separate organizations that are not controlled by the government. For example, in corrupt and socialistic Africa, the Catholic Church is a force for good:

    The church's influence in Africa goes beyond its congregations. Catholic schools educate millions, counting several current leaders among their alumni. Church-run hospitals and clinics serve far more people than the Catholic population. Catholic charities make the church known even in villages without congregations.

    And from another AP story:

    When missionaries brought Christianity, they also brought education and health care. About 60 percent of the hospital beds in Congo now are in Roman Catholic facilities, he said.

    Not everyone has praise for John Paul II. Iranian state controlled media ran critical stories about the Pope and Israel, along with their traditional anti-Semitic broadcasts.

Revolution Echoes Around Russia (Update 3/30/05)

3/30/05 Christian Science Monitor describes how the recent revolution in Kyrgyzstan is triggering demonstrations and outbursts of people power throughout the former Soviet Republics. Recent days have seen a spate of copycat protests launched by opposition groups that were perhaps hoping their own local authorities might fold and flee under pressure, as did Kyrgyz President Askar Akayev when demonstrators stormed his Bishkek complex last week. <..>Two Russian ethnic republics, Ingushetia and Bashkortostan, have seen mass street demonstrations this week directed against Kremlin-installed leaders. Even in remote Mongolia, the former USSR's Asian satellite, hundreds of protesters gathered last week to "congratulate our Kyrgyz brothers" and demand a rerun of last June's disputed parliamentary polls. In the past year, from Georgia, to the Ukraine, to Lebanon, to Kyrgyzstan, the world's Tyrants have been put on notice: Let them Tremble and Let them Fall! President Bush has made clear that the United States stands with and supports these freedom movements. The United States and it's private citizens have funded and advised many of these movements, resulting in a sort of 'democratic domino effect'. During the cold war the Soviet Union financed communist insurgencies around the world, whilst the US often did not aggressively support democratization efforts for fear of 'provoking the Soviet Union' and maintaining dictatorial allies. Interestingly, liberal US billionaire George Soros, who invested millions in an effort to defeat president Bush, also heavily funds pro-democracy organizations throughout these regions that have worked hand in hand with US government officials. 

    The only way to increase prosperity in impoverished countries is to change their corrupt political systems, which are the only reason they are impoverished. Governmental foreign aid, in the form of loans, grants, food, and healthcare, and are almost always hurtful to the citizens of oppressed countries. Appeasing foreign policies that state we should not support democratic change in the name of stability, or in the fear that Tyrants will crack down even harder on their populations, are flawed. And there is much left to do: About 1,000 people rallied last Friday in the capital of Belarus, where President Alexander Lukashenko runs the last Soviet-style dictatorship in Europe, to demand his resignation. Police quickly dispersed the crowd and dispatched the ringleaders to prison.

BUSH TO SYRIA: SCRAM (posted 3/4/05)

3/4/05 The New York Post interviews President Bush who says of Syrian troop withdrawal from Lebanon: 'This is non-negotiable. It is time to get out'.

This is in response to massive demonstrations after the assassination of anti-Syrian Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. ABC news reports: With shouts of "Syria out!" 25,000 protesters massed outside Parliament in a dramatic display of defiance Monday that forced out Lebanon's pro-Syrian prime minister and Cabinet. <..> It is the first victory, but it will not be the last," opposition leader and former information minister Ghazi al-Areedh told the crowd in a scene broadcast live around the Arab world.

Even more amazing, an Israeli paper reports: Lebanese opposition members have asked Israel to encourage the United States to pressure Syria into withdrawing its troops from Lebanon. <..> Lebanese figures contacted Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz's advisor, Uri Lubrani, among other officials in Jerusalem, and indicated they were determined to keep struggling against the Syrian presence in Lebanon but need American support. An Arab nation asking for Israel's help for the first time in modern history for the purpose of securing the only real pressure that can protect the demonstrators and actually force Syria out: pressure from the United States of America! This is reminiscent of the recent Ukraine protestors, who, again backed by the United States, overthrew the corrupt establishment after a rigged election. 

    In other news, President Bush's push for freedom across the Middle East continues to jolt, albeit slowly, tyrants into action. The autocratic dictatorship of Hosni Mubarak in Egypt recently gave a speech Touting "freedom and democracy," Mubarak told an audience at Menoufia University, north of Cairo, that he asked parliament and the consultative Shura Council to amend the constitution's Article 76 on presidential elections <..> and said multiple candidates could run in the nation's presidential elections, a scenario Mubarak hasn't faced since taking power in 1981. This (2/26/05) article, especially it's headline, is biased because Mubarak really isn't changing anything because of restrictive stipulations around who can run. Laughably, Ayman Nour, who is one of the strongest proponents of an open election and who was arrested by Egyptian police last month, praised Mubarak's announcement in a statement from jail. Nour called it "an important and courageous move" toward "comprehensive constitutional reform," in a statement read by his wife, Gamila Ismael. Horray! 

    In Libya (3/2/05), Dictator Muammar Gaddafi blathered: let "freedoms blossom" "The people power and the direct democracy in Libya came to give an alternative to the worsening political crisis in the world where everywhere outside Libya dictatorship rules," he declared. <..> Gaddafi said the people of the United States, Britain and Italy were living "under the yoke of dictatorships" and invited their politicians, scholars and intellectuals to visit Libya to learn how "the only genuine democracy works". 

At least they are running scared. :)

    Women in black abayas whispered prayers at the sound of a nearby explosion as they waited to vote at one Baghdad polling station. But the mood elsewhere was triumphant, with long lines in many places in the city: civilians and policemen danced with joy outside one site, and some streets were packed with voters walking shoulder-to-shoulder toward polling centers.

    Rumors of impending violence were rife. When an unexplained boom sounded near one Baghdad voting station, some women put their hands to their mouths and whispered prayers. Others continued walking calmly to the voting stations. Several shouted in unison: "We have no fear."

    "Am I scared? Of course I'm not scared. This is my country," said 50-year-old Fathiya Mohammed, wearing a head-to-toe abaya cloak.

At one polling place in Baghdad, soldiers and voters joined hands in a dance, and in Baqouba, voters jumped and clapped to celebrate the historic day. At another, an Iraqi policeman in a black ski mask tucked his assault rifle under one arm and took the hand of an elderly blind woman, guiding her to the polls.

Iraqi authorities have told us there have now been seven suicide bombings [actually 10 total, with over 40 dead and scores more wounded] carried out by men with explosives strapped around their bodies. There has also been a mortar attack in Sadr City in Baghdad which killed four voters.

So militants are doing what they can to carry out their threats to disrupt the poll and shed the blood of voters, but it is also very evident there is a lot of enthusiasm for the vote.

I spoke to the first man to cast his ballot. He emerged with his finger covered in purple indelible ink to prove that he has voted and he came out saying he was 55 years old, that he'd never done anything as important in his life as voting today, casting his ballot.

Ayman Khalas, a student, said that even as the police scraped up the bomber’s remains, the queue re-formed and voting resumed. “Nothing was going to stop us,” he said.

In the dirt-poor town of Sumawa, right on Iraq's southern border, a baby was born in a polling station to an expectant mother determined that nothing would stop her from casting a ballot.

Baghdad's mayor was overcome with emotion by the turnout of voters at City Hall, where he said thousands were celebrating."I cannot describe what I am seeing. It is incredible. This is a vote for the future, for the children, for the rule of law, for humanity, for love," Alaa al-Tamimi told Reuters.

A voter named Saad said he wasn't afraid of insurgents seeing the ink on his index finger. "We are defeating the terrorists as we are coming here," he said, proudly displaying his ink-stained finger.

Two other reinforcing developments emerged. "One was reports from our guys [UN election workers] that when there was any sort of armed incident in line, the people would scatter but when the security people had stabilized the situation, they, instead of going home, would return to the line," she said. The second was evidence that in at least two suicide bombing attacks, people ended up spitting on the bodies of the perpetrators. "In the Middle East, that is a very, very strong act of repudiation, and when I heard about that, I said, 'This is transforming into a trend.' "

All through the day, the bombs kept going off, the explosions audible inside the polling places themselves. Most of the time, the Iraqis did not even bother to look up, so inured were they to violence and so immersed in their democratic moment.

"Do you hear that, do you hear the bombs?" said Hassan Jawad, a 33-year-old election worker at Lebanon High School, speaking over the thud of an exploding shell. "We don't care. Do you understand? We don't care." "We all have to die," Mr. Jawad said. "To die for this, well, at least I will be dying for something." And then Mr. Jawad got back to work, guiding an Iraqi woman's hand to the ballot box.

"I did not sleep all night long," said Yalchin Mohammad Omar, a Turkmen voter in this ethically divided city, about 150 miles north of Baghdad. "I was frightened, but at dawn, I and my wife made a decision to go to the polls. We did our prayers, and then headed for the ballot center despite the threats, and the chaos overtaking Iraq. . . .

    Americans and those of us in free societies would do well to appreciate the price of freedom and the determination of Iraqis. How does this fit in with President Bush's vision of freedom across the Middle East and the defeat of terrorism?

Syria is worried about what will happen after the elections, as Washington continues with its experiment to spread democracy in the Arab world.

Despite the violence and the Sunni boycott (the Association of Muslim Scholars, a main force behind the boycott recently backpeddled in the face of popular support), many Arabs feel that the Iraqi vote will be more democratic than anything they have ever seen themselves.

"The toppling of Saddam Hussein's regime has had a grass roots effect in the region, the status was shaken, a symbol of tyranny was removed, so a lot of people were looking around asking: 'Why can't this happen to us, why can't a free election take place in our part of the world and a fairer political system be established in our country, without a US invasion and in a peaceful manner and democratic manner?'," said Ammar Abdulhamid, a Syrian analyst.

Nonetheless, this historic day was downplayed by a few:

But Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., sounded a note of caution in an interview on NBC's "Meet The (De)Press(ed)."

"It is hard to say that something is legitimate when whole portions of the country can't vote and doesn't vote," Kerry said. "No one in the United States should try to overhype this election."

    In England the BBC reports:

But there was a demonstration earlier on in the day by a group who thinks the voting is anti-democratic. (emphasis mine!)

    Did they protest when Saddam Hussein won 100% of the vote?

Return to Archives

Return to main page