Lex Libertas

The US population is getting more calcified. I, certainly, hold on to the old traditions. Having gone to 16 different elementary and junior high schools, I consider my “hometown” to be where I went to high school - Simi Valley, CA. “Home” is wherever my suitcase is at any given moment.

I did consider St. Petersburg, Russia to be my home for 2.5 years, and in a far deeper meaning than just the place where I currently reside.

Once celebrated for their ability to pack up and move around the country on a whim, Americans are increasingly opting to stay put, according to a report published by the Pew Research Center.

Using polling data and government statistics, Pew found only 13 percent of Americans moved house between 2006-2007, the lowest rate since records began in the 1940s.

“Gitar” by Peter Nalitch

This came out a year ago, but I missed it until recently. Russia’s first big Youtube hit, and it’s coming of age in Runet. The band has released its first album, and you can download all the songs for free. I love the drawn in birch trees (берёзы).

Russia Today did a short piece about them:

A fellow McCain campaigner has started a political blog. He’s in Delaware, and hopefully he’ll get a chance to write about both national and Delaware issues. Welcome to the blogosphere:

The Flying Scotsman

The strongest argument for staying in Iraq has always been the need to create a stable society so that it doesn’t turn into another safe-haven for terrorists, a la Afghanistan. Iraq has become the central battleground in the war on terrorism, as attested to by Al Qaeda themselves. If we leave it to disintegrate, it will turn into Afghanistan Plus. “Plus” because of the amount of energy and organization already put in by terrorists. You can train people a lot better when you have a place to do it. There are a handful of regions on Earth where they can do that now (Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Somalia, etc.), and Iraq would become the grand-daddy of them all. The fruits of that safe space are clear, as evidenced by the terror attacks in Mumbai:

After the battle, one member of India’s National Security Guard, who led one of the assault groups against the terrorists occupying the Taj Mahal hotel, said they were the “best fighters” he had ever encountered.

He said: “They were obviously trained by professionals in urban guerrilla fighting. They used their environment and situation brilliantly, leading us (the NSG) on a dangerous chase through various tiers of the hotel which they obviously knew well. Their fire discipline too was excellent and they used their ammunition judiciously, mostly to draw us out.

There’s really no reason to build a physical barrier, except for building up the case of Abkhazia and South Ossetia joining Russia as a fait accompli. Seriously, does anyone think that their “independent” existence is anything but word play?

“Russia physically destroys physical links between the regions of Georgia,” she [Georgian Foreign Minister Eka Tkeshelashvili] said. “It is blowing up bridges in Gali region so that it is harder for people to go to the neighbouring region of Samegrelo.

“In Zugdidi city, for that matter, they are building a wall which will be not perhaps the size of the Berlin Wall but is something resembling that.

“The same goes for South Ossetia with which the roads and then bridges are being blown up. In physical terms, they try to dismember these regions in such a way that there’s a physical detachment of these regions.

And she warned: “If Russia is allowed to continue along the way, that would damage the process of talks and negotiations.”

That’s understating it. The is no reason to build a wall, none. No security risk, no immigration problem. The only reason is to isolate these regions from any contact with the rest of Georgia. Russia is doing it for the most basic reason known to man, because they can. They know they can get away with it. After all, they got away with invading, occupying, and pillaging Georgia without much in resistance (military or political).

People are still stuck in hotels and held hostage in the Chabad House. We can’t deal with barbarism by running from it. We can only eliminate this by prevailing against the centers of terrorism worldwide. This is a global struggle, affecting us all. We can’t stick our head in the ground and hope it will all go away. Likewise, we can’t think that terrorism in foreign lands isn’t our problem.

Remember and pray for the people who are spending Thanksgiving stuck in their hotel rooms, wondering if the next person to walk through their door will free them or execute them:

Black-clad Indian commandoes raided two luxury hotels to try to free hostages Thursday, and explosions and gunshots shook India’s financial capital a day after suspected Muslim militants killed 104 people. … The attackers, dressed in black shirts and jeans, had stormed into the hotel at about 9:45 p.m. Wednesday and opened fire indiscriminately.

At least seven sites have been targeted across the south of the city by terrorists armed with explosives and automatic weapons. … Gunmen struck at several high-profile tourist areas in the city, including hotels, a popular tourist cafe and a crowded train station. … Alex Chamberlain, a Briton caught in the attacks, told Sky News an attacker asked tourists if they were British or American before opening fire.

Mr Abell said that he had locked himself in his room and is communicating via Blackberry with his business partner, who has done the same. … “I’ve spoken to my wife and children. I’m fine. There are people in much greater danger than this - they’re the people that really need to be talked about. I’m just holed up. Hopefully I’ll be alright.”

Indian commandos and police were evacuating civilians and cordoning off the area apparently in preparation to storm the Chabad House in Mumbai, India, where a rabbi, his wife and several other Israelis were being held hostage

The saga continues for Israelis, who were probably the most psychologically prepared for this kind of incident.

On Thursday morning, Moshe Holtzberg, the toddler son of the Chabad emissaries, was rushed from the house in the arms of one of the Chabad House’s employees, Sandra Samuel. “I took the child, I just grabbed the baby and ran out,” said Samuel, 44, who has worked as a cook for the center for the last five years.

How many more generations will this struggle consume? Moshe is at least the fourth generation of Israelis dealing continuously with an existential threat.

I just stumbled across Trey Ratcliff’s photoblog, Stuck in Customs. It is stunningly beautiful. My favorite picture so far is:

The Airy Doom of the Duomo

Apparently, part of what he’s doing is a technique called High Dynamic Range Imaging. It’s basically a composite of the same scene, taken with several different exposures of varying lengths. This way each part of the picture gets the exposure that is right for it. Wikipedia has a great example of New York City:

New York City at Night HDR

I love the surreal, dreamy look of these pictures. In fact, at first I though they were drawings.

An interesting talk with a Soviet spy who defected to the West. Given in 1985, many elements of it are still relevant today:

Hat tip to Ukraine Blog.

As anyone in America will tell you, Obama promised “Change” and “New Politics” during the election. Indeed, that’s pretty much all he promised, and for legions of Americans, it was enough. Well, now that he’s the president-elect, we can finally see what he actually meant.

A lot of us thought that Change and New Politics meant, at a very minimum, change and new politics. Let’s use Obama’s campaign launch speech as a reference:

“But too many times, after the election is over, and the confetti is swept away, all those promises fade from memory, and the lobbyists and the special interests move in, and people turn away, disappointed as before, left to struggle on their own.

That is why this campaign can’t only be about me. It must be about us — it must be about what we can do together. This campaign must be the occasion, the vehicle, of your hopes, and your dreams.”

Apparently, “us” meant long-time Washington insiders. Aw, how clever. He simply “changed” what he promised. And apparently “New Politics” means ignoring the rules in order to rush through your pet projects . . .

Daschle wrote in a book he released this year … “This issue is too important to be stalled by Senate protocol.”

Oh, would that were the only example. Something else that’s “changed” is his website. Nothing new there, kind of like the old days when history was rewritten in parts of the world . . .

Here’s some change that supporters of President-elect Obama may not want to see: all of the policy commitments on specific issues have been removed from his transition Web site.

On Nov. 7, global health advocates noticed that some of the details of Obama’s “fight global poverty” statement had been removed. Specifically, the site no longer promised to fully fund debt cancellation for the world’s poorest countries or provide the full U.S. contribution to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.

…

By this morning, all of the issue-specific pages on the transition site had been removed from the agenda section. In its place, a statement that mentioned details but provided none at all: “The Obama Administration has a comprehensive and detailed agenda to carry out its policies.”

Silly voters, did you really think Obama was going to stand by, or even pay lip-service to campaign promises? That is so Old Politics!

Most of us have seen the famous Soviet political propaganda posters

… but I recently stumbled across a site that put up a lot of interesting Soviet advertising posters, that show the evil capitalist art of advertising was alive in the communist paradise:

Pelmeni (Russian Ravioli)

Buy Corn in a Can

Mayonnaise!

This last one worked beyond anyone’s wildest dreams. Russians eat everything with mayonnaise!

Back to the Future

I love this picture!

… and the richness of the colors most of all.

Gorbachev calls on Obama to carry out ‘perestroika’ in the U.S. . . . because it worked so well in the Soviet Union!

Does even he believe this version of history??

Gorbachev said that after transforming his country in the late 1980s, he had told the Americans that it was their turn to act, but that Washington, celebrating its Cold War victory, was not interested in “a new model of a society, where politics, economics and morals went hand in hand.”

Let’s be clear on what Perestroika was - an absolute disaster!

The Soviet economy went from stagnation to deterioration. At the end of 1991, when the union officially dissolved, the national economy was in a virtual tailspin. In 1991 Soviet GDP had declined by 17 percent and was declining at an accelerating rate.[citation needed] High inflation was becoming a major problem. Between 1990 and 1991, retail prices in the Soviet Union increased 140 percent.

Under these conditions, the general quality of life for the Soviet people deteriorated. The public traditionally faced shortages of durable goods, but under Gorbachev, food, clothes, and other basic necessities were in short supply.

Now, doesn’t that sound like fun! Since he brings it up, Obama’s plans do have some similarities to Perestroika, as even an Australian child could tell you:

A key part of perestroika was to reduce the amount of money being spent on defense, and to do this Gorbachev felt the Soviet Union should:

* Pull out of Afghanistan.
* Negotiate with the United States about arms reductions.
* Cease interfering in other communist countries (The Sinatra Doctrine).

Obama wants to:
* Pull out of Iraq.
* Unilaterally disarm.
* Cease helping our democratic allies.

Moreover, Obama’s support not only of the bailout, but his desire to prop up the auto industry are echoes of another perestroika policy:

Government spending increased sharply as an increasing number of unprofitable enterprises required state support and consumer price subsidies continued.

I really don’t know why anyone pays much attention to Gorbachev these days. I mean, I understand why he keeps talking. He desperately wants his name to go down favorably in history, as a heroic reformer instead of the man who destroyed the Soviet Union and brought so much economic hardship to so many. But why do we listen to someone with his track record?

The failure of perestroika was exacerbated by Gorbachev’s continual boasting about the results that the reforms would have.

To be fair, he’s not the only one with a history of hot air and propaganda slogans . . .

Вперёд!

Forward to New Successes in Work and Study!

Obama Win Causes Obsessive Supporters To Realize How Empty Their Lives Are