A Reflection on Modern Russia

The 1st September in any year ending with a nine is always a good time to look back on the war that, 64-70 years ago, claimed millions upon millions of lives. It is also a good time to analyse the thoughts about the War that come from some of its key participants. Out of those nations, the views that stand out the most is those of Russia.

At today's ceremony to commemorate the War, Putin put the blame for the War solely on the Western nations, notably Britain and the US, for making deals with Hitler that led to the start of the War. That is, of course, without mentioning the most important pact of the times - between Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany. Similarly, a Russian documentary last weekend justifies Stalin's invasion of Poland by making the claim that Poland and Nazi Germany actually entered into a secret alliance. (!)

Unfortunately, too many Russians today believe in this nonsensical idea of Russian patriotism - many even look up to Stalin admirably, and use Russian actions in WWII to justify Russian imperialism today.

Which is really a sad reflection on modern Russia.

Videos on the Stimulus

(Hat tip Not PC and Shane Pleasance for links)

Now that the TARP (Toxic Assets Relief Programme) in the US has cost over $27 trillion (according to the inspector-general for the programme), now seems a good time to post some videos on the subject -they often explain more than many essays.

Here's what 1 trillion (let alone 27 trillion) can buy (sorry for the size):



Here's how the thing started in the first place (although it probably doesn't stress the governmental role as much as it should:

The Crisis of Credit Visualized from Jonathan Jarvis on Vimeo.

Ben Bernanke's superb foresight:



And last but not least, Ron Paul in the US Senate, who's currently trying to pass a bill to audit the Federal Reserve.

Iranian Elections

It looks like Ahmedinejad has won.

This election reminded me of a book I read recently -"The Future of Freedom", by Fareed Zakaria, which talks about how liberalism (the rule of law, free markets, free speech, etc) leads to democracy, but how democratic elections in countries without those institutions often leads to dictatorship and the complete abrogation of rights.

Ever since the Iranian election and the rise of Islamic theology, this has been the case in Iran. In times gone by, I've posted pictures here of Iranians accused of being homosexuals being hanged, not an uncommon practise in Iran. The West needs to learn that the rise of Islamic ideology in Iran has led to this, and the continuing descent into absolute dictatorship in that nation.

Zakaria talks about how liberal institutions can act as a deterrant to the rise of extreme Islamism. Although in the short term this can be true, the introduction -by some miracle, no doubt- of liberal institutions in Iran would simply be showing a practical side to Persia. But at the end of the day, Islamic extremism will rise again -no country can be based on a contradiction for too long, and as political institutions merely express an underlying philosophy, they will be the ones to lose out.

This is what I fear is happening in the West, and Western intellectuals need to take note: with the philosophy of altruism still present in every part of Western society (art, politics, and religion being just a few examples), the West is also based on a contradiction, which has nearly spelt its end, in World War II, for instance. Although we are lucky to have survived for so long, we need to be very cautious, especially with economic crisis on our hands, where we tread.

A Culture of Fear

Much to the annoyance of the many conservative bloggers on the Kiwi blogosphere, most libertarian commentators on the internet on this side of the ditch have been out in full force protesting the Drug War. Of course, it makes sense given how the murder of a policeman, shooting of three other people, and 50-hour siege in Napier started, after all, in a "routine drug bust". But one can rant forever on the drug war -it's much deeper than just who's selling what to whom.

Now, in true benefit-of-the-doubt fashion (something akin to "Who is John Galt?"), most people will shrug it off as an isolated incident; after all, this guy did try to shoot 21 people, and opened fire at a friend's house four years ago. The more politically motivated will talk about gun control -we already hear reports about the number of unlicensed guns in New Zealand, and guns being sold freely over the internet. But no one will address the truly pressing concern in New Zealand, and indeed all of Western Society, that led to this siege: the culture of fear -and the accompanying culture of hopelessness- that has penetrated New Zealand society, and how it all leads to tragedies like this. This fear isn't about foreign wars and natural disasters; this is fear of friends, fear of neighbours, fear of government.

The culture of fear has always been present in dictatorships, the Soviet Union being the greatest example. If a neighbour didn't like you, he could simply denounce you -you would be dead soon. If you were caught saying something totally insignificant that the Party didn't like, you would meet a similar fate, and you always had to watch your back.

However, it has always been a rarity throughout the fundamentally optimistic Western World, and New Zealand has never, until recently, had any symptoms of a culture of fear. Similarly, a culture of fear has developed in the United States -observe that a recent cop shooting was over a fear that Obama was going to take away people's guns- Britain and France (riots, and all). To trace the development of the culture of fear seeping through Western society, we need to look at recent political developments.

Let's take Britain, as an example. At the end of WWII and into the 50s and 60s, Britain was hailed as a model society -a society in which you knew your neighbours and would always be happy to help. Its crime rates were some of the world's lowest. At the end of WWII, Lee Kuan Yew, of Singapore went to Britain to find out how they managed to create such a polite society, to try to recreate that culture in Singapore. Nowadays the opposite is true: Britain's crime rates are some of the highest in the Western World, and broken families abound.

In the United States, much the same occurred. In the words of Walter Williams:

"During the 1940s and '50s, I grew up in North Philadelphia where many of today's murders occur. It was a time when blacks were much poorer, there was far more racial discrimination, and fewer employment opportunities and other opportunities for upward socioeconomic mobility were available. There was nowhere near the level of crime and wanton destruction that exists today. Behavior accepted today wasn't accepted then by either black adults or policemen." Indeed, according to a recent documentary,* among the victims of many violent crimes, they will not tell who is was that shot, stabbed or assaulted them!

The same is now occurring in New Zealand. With the exponential growth in government powers in all three countries, a culture of fear is taking flight. So what happened in these last fifty years?
___

In philosophy, we saw a much greater emphasis being placed on the "common good"* through the rise of political correctness, and a move away from an objective, independent reality to the primacy of consciousness -observe how art devolved from being based on human interpretations of an objective, proper reality (romanticism through to art deco), to negating such an idea, putting all emphasis on "feeling" (expressionism through to post-modernism). By therefore negating man's existence into inexplicable feelings, modern philosophy helped to destroy the idea of self esteem, and a moral existence.

This had profound implications on society. What would be the result if human actions were based, not out of value seeking rational individuals basing their actions on production, but out of people who believed that no such thing as a rational individual could exist, and that freedom meant freedom from reality, to be administered, by force, from the producers of the world? The idea of a human became one who survives only by short term actions against one another.

Indeed, modern liberalism bases its ideas on the principle that, as men have to be rational producers to survive, no such thing as total liberty (from force and fraud) exists, and that producers have a duty to feed the non-productive.

The outcome has been, and continues to be, the breakdown of human relations. Men can only live in harmony when they deal with each other as rational beings, through the paradigm of values. At this point, liberals will talk about how the welfare state** and "working together" is the antidote to the culture of fear; conservatives will discuss religion and community. Both will say that selfishness is the cause of the culture of fear, propose collectivist solutions, and call for the heads of the productive to roll.
___

Political developments have reflected this trend in attitude. In centuries past, it would have been completely unthinkable that government should have as much control over private affairs, citizen's money and business that it does today. According to the US Libertarian Party, in 1950 the total money collected by all forms of government was 2% of total income. Nowadays, it is often an entire year's salary for a working family. There are over four million security cameras in Britain (all of which seem hopeless in preventing Islamist attacks, somehow).

When a government subscribes to the culture of fear, it does not trust its citizens with their lives or money. People must be controlled.

These developments in turn isolate the citizenry from those assigned to protect their rights -that's where Jan Molenaar, the man behind the Napier siege, comes in. A culture of hopelessness, increases in crime, and a dramatic decrease in living standards, has always been the result of a culture of fear - often followed by dictatorship, either of the proletariat, the Aryan Race, or some form of supreme leader.

And that, I fear, is where we're heading.
___

Notes:

*Many people say that there was actually less emphasis on the individual in the old British Empire than now. However, times of war aside, subjects of the Empire were very astute as to their individual rights which were considered sacrosanct -in effect, going to War, as an example, was to safeguard these rights -not for some purely collectivist reason such as an arbitrary idea of "Britain is good". For a further discussion of this idea, refer to Ayn Rand's essay "Philosophy: Who Needs It".

**Many leftists claim that the reforms of the 1980s and 9os are the cause of the culture of fear. However, economic reforms come and are now going, and the culture of fear can be traced far back before the 1980s. Institutions and cultures are two different things, and capitalism works with a culture of entrepreneurship to accompany it -not a culture of fear.

References:

http://www.capmag.com/article.asp?ID=4770
http://www.capmag.com/article.asp?ID=5012
http://www.lp.org/issues/family-budget
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/6108496.stm“Killadelphia”; Narrator: Louis Theroux
The Economist
A further discussion of the ideas of art discussed here and their philosophical meaning can be found on Not PC, or other Objectivist websites and blogs.

Has Your Country Caught Chicago Fever?

I'm getting so fed up with constant chatter, on all news channels, about the Swine Flu epidemic that has killed, according to the WHO's revised figures, seven people.

To highlight the absurdity, let's focus on something else: Last year, the city of Chicago recorded 510 murders, up from roughly 430-40 every year over the last half decade. So, it would seem that you're far more likely to get killed in Chicago than die from Swine Flu. Indeed, if the entire world were infected by Chicago Fever, once a year approximately 1,219,400 million people will die from it*. Yet, we do not hear the WHO issuing warnings travelers to keep away from Chicago, and certainly no country has temporarily banned all flights into Chicago.

And why should they? Chicago is a fine city -one of the best, in many respects. But the numbers involved in the Swine Flu hysteria are so minuscule, that although certain procedures may be warranted, the amount of time it gets on TV is utterly ridiculous. Yet over 800,000 attended tea parties all over the US two weeks ago, with virtually no coverage in comparison.

Journalism these days!

*To get the sums: Chicago has approximately 2.8 million residents, so dividing 510 by 2.8 gets you 182. The population of the world is approximately 6.7 billion, so dividing 6.7 billion by 1 million gets you 6700. Multiplying 182 by 6700 gets you 1,219,400.

Prince Charles

He's finally gone off the edge.

According to Reuters, he's publishing a book called "Harmony", about how man's recent pursuit of wealth and prosperity (read: the pursuit of happiness) is, in his words, "dangerously disconnected" from the natural world.

What an utterly ridiculous statement from a man in line to become the next King of the nation that led the world in Industrial growth in the 19th Century- thus paving the way to the prosperity enjoyed today, and the nation that first implemented, on a national scale, the ideas of the rule of law, individual rights, and common law, that founded Western politics. A nation without the ideas of which America, and no other Western nation, could exist, let alone develop originally.

So, after the death of Queen Elizabeth, I propose:

-New Zealand immediately declares a Republic;
-The Prime Minister of the time becomes the President of the new Republic; and
-A constitution is drafted similar to the US Constitution, to keep the British ideas of Rule of Law and Individual Rights alive and well.

Luckily, given the recent results of a poll by the Republican Movement, it looks like that may -may- just happen.

A Foolish Mistake Repeats

On his big tour of Europe Barack Obama has landed in Prague, touting much the same message as the anti-nuclear protests in the 1980s did. You know, the refusal to allow a nuclear submarine into port that got us kicked out of ANZUS.

Now, I'm all for disarmament -when Iran, Russia, China, and North Korea also disarm! The fact of the matter is that America (and the European nations with a-bombs) has the right to defend itself against foreign aggressors, and that does mean the possession of nuclear bombs, if necessary (which it is). The sorry state of Western powers means that defense of non-aggressive and non-totalitarian nations rests almost entirely on US action.

I'm sick of the claim that America is an Empire -if that were so, immediately after the fall of Iraq in 2005 the nation would've been annexed by the US, and any form of self-governance banned. Instead, we saw that the Americans had no strategy after the fall of Saddam, and left Iraq in a state of anarchy for two years before peace could be restored by the troop surge. Similarly, when countries like Lebanon, Syria and Iran display an interest in the complete annihilation of Israel -the Middle East's only western democracy- they are only victims, somehow, of Western Civilisation.

That is absurd. Obama, you have no idea what you're getting yourself into.

One Dead (So Far) in London Riots

The riots in London over the G20 meeting have left one protester dead. Frankly, this doesn't surprise me.

The further left you go on the political spectrum, the more violent protests usually are; and in a protest as vehemently anti-capitalist as this one, events were bound to turn violent. Violent protests, far from being a form of free-speech, are in most cases just a lot of angry teenagers and twenty-somethings who:

- have never run a business, let alone the huge businesses they've been protesting against;
-have never had responsibility for their lives assumed by other people. Most protesters are not working-class people with a genuine interest in living independently -they're usually middle class.
-turn not to principles on reality, but the arbitrary to justify their assertions ("everything's relative", "you can't prove reason's relationship with reality", "one man's freedom is another man's chains" etc)
-think their ideas are "rebelling against the system". They think they're "cool" for the lack thereof.

If the protesters are really interested in the plight of the poor, they'll engage in the most noble and greatest of all human actions: the act of production- of which their reckless violence is the opposite.

Daniel Hannan

If you have not already seen him, here is Daniel Hannan, MEP for South-East England, taking on Gordan Brown over his recent economic policies... a great speaker making excellent points.

Edison Hour

In a few minutes Earth Hour will kick off in New Zealand -and, predictably, there's been heaps of hype over it on the TV, radio, and internet. So in retaliation, I will be celebrating Edison Hour -a celebration of industry, progress, and human happiness.

Yet More Stimulus News

On the subject of the latest Obama stimulus (only a few days ago he injected US$1,000,000,000,000 into the US economy) fellow libertarian Paul van Dinther has produced a Google Earth image showing how much area would be taken up by US$100 bills if they were all laid out side by side to make US$1,000,000,000,000.

The result just boggles the mind. (N.B.: Google Earth needed for this to work)

Racial Progress in Europe?

While the NAACP in the US is claiming that banks unfairly targeted black home-buyers with easy credit, a new study conducted in Germany and Eastern Europe has found that fully 5% of German 15 year olds is a neo-Nazi, with larger numbers in the far-right of German politics.

This is why I hate the detractors of America pointing to Europe as an example of racial equality: beneath the clean exterior of European statism, a huge amount of social tension still exists in the continent. In parts of Britain and France, huge numbers of Muslim immigrants live in huge ghettos that the police won't go into, where Islamic violence spreads -almost all Islamic terrorist attacks in Europe are carried out by Muslims who've lived there their whole lives in the countries they hate. In Germany and Eastern Europe, neo-Nazism is on the rise amongst teenagers and young adults, with the accompanying crimes*. In Russia, the situation in Chechnya is all the proof of racial tension in Putin's new USSR.

With racial tensions as bad as they are in Europe, perhaps race relations have in fact improved the most in that most racist of nations, the USA?

*from the article: "Government figures have shown anti-Semitic crimes rose at the end of last year."

How Worse Will It Get?

As expected Obama and Pelosi's 1000 page stimulus package has passed both the US House of Representatives and the Senate, to be signed into law by Obama ASAP.

Let's go over some aspects of it: the bill is some +700 billions dollars of spending in various areas. First off, where will this money come from? They can take it directly from taxes -which the populace will notice directly, and not be happy about. Better to print money instead, and only notice it over a long period of time -when over stimulus can be passed. Glenn Beck shows the increase in the US money supply:



Secondly, what will the money be spent on? Rebuilding American infrastructure, economically, sounds like a good idea. But what's the point of building infrastructure if no one's going to use it? Infrastructure is built to facilitate economic growth now, when it is cost-effective. The sorry state of US infrastructure now is the result of over-enthusiastic government infrastructure building in the 50s and 60s, which couldn't all be maintained at once. Government planning in those days also centred around the suburbs, leading to unnecessary infrastructure projects.

Thirdly, is it moral to take money from those who still have it to use for projects that won't be used? To distort market signals leading to another collapse? Is it wise to take money from the producers who, like Atlas, hold up the American -and World- economy and give it to people whose only business is consuming without producing?

The answer to all these questions is a resounding: NO!

Stimulus V.2

Obama's new US$825b stimulus package passed through the House of Representatives today. Not good news.

He obviously hasn't learnt anything from the Bush US$700b (and now uncounable trillions) bailout, then!

Israel

Israel has decided to remove its troops from Gaza. Wimps -there will be no peace in Gaza until Hamas is completely gone. All we can do is guess how long it takes for the conflict to fire up again.

In the meantime, here is an illustration that sums up the situation -what the world's media doesn't want you to see:


Instead, we keep getting stories of how civilians are dying, yet no one on the world stage raises a finger to point out that Hamas hides among its civilians, and then uses their deaths as propaganda!

Two Articles on Atlas Shrugged

A year after having read Atlas Shrugged, two good articles comparing the events in the book to real life events in this current financial crisis:

'Atlas Shrugged': From Fact to Fiction in 52 Years

Britain, by Ayn Rand

Too sad.

The Gaza Conflict

Predictably, thousands of people around the world have, in recent weeks, been out marching against Israel, condemning every aspect of Israel's existence whilst ignoring the role of Hamas; TV news has been abound with stories about the "destruction" of Gaza, taking for granted statistics given to them by Hamas (such as the death toll); and once again the conflict is presented as an "us vs. them" battle, with Israel having to defend every action and supporters being shouted down.

Yet, all the while nothing is heard of the constant threat that Israelis have lived under for the last several years. In response, the Israelis have built fortifications in their urban areas to protect against rockets fired from Gaza, and are constantly on the move to bomb shelters, and living in fear of the rockets. 15 people have died from these rocket attacks in southern Israel. That may not seem like many, but what it shows is that the Israelis do not want citizens of Israel to be harmed by these rockets.

Hamas, however, does not care -in fact, Gazans dying is good for their publicity. They are more than willing to hide among civilians, which makes them harder to target. Israel targets Hamas bases and vehicles with, usually, immaculate precision -yet people get killed when there's a ton of civilians around, which Hamas uses to their advantage. Not only does it make fighting the war so much harder, it draws sympathy from the Western media.

Which leads us to another fact about Gaza: the median age there is 15. The media makes it look as if Israel is unfairly targeting children. Instead, the toll on the children is a result of the young breeding of the Muslim population.
___________________________________

The World's leaders are calling for an immediate ceasefire between Israel and Hamas. They're forgetting who first broke the last ceasefire, with Israel doing nothing about it until now. No one raised a finger then. Israel should've starting fighting Hamas from the first rocket.

But a ceasefire is never a real option for this conflict -it only allows for Hamas, and the other organisations that won't stop until Israel is wiped off the map, to regroup and re-arm. Instead, Israel should make it its mission to properly subvert Hamas, once and for all, and neutralise Gaza. In fact, if the experience of Arabs living in Israel shows us anything, it's that the people there will be significantly better off under Israeli rule!

*America Alone, Mark Steyn, page XVI

Terror in Mumbai

Over the past three days, terrorist scum in Mumbai have killed 150 people, injured hundreds more, and caused irreversible damage to India's largest city.

This latest attack is not the first of its kind; there have been many such terrorist attacks, committed in the name of Islam, over this century and the last. Terror has been committed in the name of Islam ever since its founding over 1400 years ago, when Muslims took over much of Europe and Arabia. The terrorists weren't poor and desperate; they didn't make demands. They were there to commit an atrocity in the name of Islam.

Yet, the West continues to ignore this. They ignored it during the later half of the twentieth century when America was targeted for allying with Israel, a country who takes the most blows of Islamic violence. They ignored it during 9/11, and in the London, Madrid and Bali bombings. They've ignored it again.

The usual suspects from the left will be crying out about how George Bush's war on terror has caused all the recent attacks in the Middle East. Take note: the Bush Administration always uses phrases like "Militant Islam", "Islamic Extremism", etc. To appease "moderate" Muslims, they make it seem that they're only fighting a small, out-of-the-ordinary group of Muslims. They always avoid using the word "Islam" to describe the ideology -ideology- that these attacks have been committed in the name of.

What we're seeing isn't a random group of people against another group of people, we are seeing a fundamentally ideological fight. The terrorists know that. The West is trying its utmost to evade it -and is paying the price.

The Truth About Recessions

The numerous bailouts of financial institutions and "financial stimulus" packages promised by both George Bush and Barack Obama have not stopped the financial crisis from plunging to ever-lower depths. As more and more money is pumped into the economy, the crisis grows worse.

What officials from governments in the US and around the world don't realise is that attempts to increase consumer spending are exactly what you don't want in a recession. Prices need to fall for the economy to start up again. Recessions are caused by overvaluation of products and services, by using a claim on future production to buy those products and services at current levels. Normally, this would be alright, as money would be diverted from other areas of spending to paying off debt. However, government inflation and expansion of the credit supply have led to artifically increased demand for products, and as thus, price hikes.

A recession is a large market correction, putting the prices of goods and services back at their true levels of demand. Therefore, the last thing government should do is to try to keep prices at their overvalued levels, in the interests of preserving an unsustainale economy.

Instead, with falling prices, businesses have the opportunity to rejuvenate themselves, as not only does demand for consumer goods falls, but also capital, natural and human resources. It also means that failed business and economic models can be replaced with better ideas -this is seen in the fact that many great corporations were formed during a recession. If anything, it means that people can start working from the ground, up.

Over the long term, a recession is a boon to the world economy. There is always short-term suffering (caused by the shortfalls of the inflation-induced boon-and-bust cycle), but it is far better than holding off for an even greater doomsday in the future.

Obama: New Frontiers for the Republicans?

With Obama's election result as the new President of the United States, America's taken a big leap to the Left.

However, this election result isn't about the new found sense of "hope" in American politics; it's a reaction to the smack of conservatism and a lack of willing to make proper free market reforms that have destroyed the Republican Party. It's Bush's budget deficits and Greenspan's policies of inflation, disguised as capitalism, which have triggered a reaction against the Republican Party in this election; and despite distancing himself from Bush rather well, McCain suffered for the same reasons that the NZ Labour Party is doing so.

And it's for precisely that same reason that Ronald Reagan did so much to help his party in the 1980s. America was hurting from the Oil Woes of the 1970s, and could not afford to look weak in front of the Soviet Union. Instead of following the detente policies of Jimmy Carter, he was a charismatic leader who made many substantial reforms, and in doing so made the Republican Party the party of reform.

Now, America is facing another economic crisis, high oil prices, a huge national debt, and a war on terror which has not delivered the results it promised (not that the terrorists shouldn't be hunted down and punished, but the general lack of doing so isn't helping). The Republicans have completely gone back on their principles, crying out about the "greed" on Wall Street* and how we'd all be better if we weren't unselfish. Philosophically, they are no different to the Democrats.

And that's where the problem lies.

So, hopefully, the overall outcome of this election will be good for America, as not only will Obama, providing he does try to keep his promises, prove socialism a disaster, but the Republicans will actually get back to their original principles of small government, and laissez-faire, with recent evidence and anecdotes to base the claims upon. The only question to ask now is, which politician is willing to promote the free market anymore? Best to promote socialism and the "all things to all men" policy under the guise of the free market, and do the same when socialism proves a disaster!

*Where do you not find "greed"?