Former Soviet Premiere Mikhail Gorbachev Calls on Russian President Vladimir Putin to Resign

The interesting thing is that the Soviet Union disintegrated exactly 20 years ago today.

See Telegraph UK, "Mikhail Gorbachev calls for Putin to resign."

Also at London's Daily Mail, "Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev calls on Putin to resign as 50,000 take to the streets of Moscow to protest over vote-rigging claims":

Mikhail Gorbachev, who resigned as Soviet president 20 years ago Sunday, has urged Prime Minister Vladimir Putin to follow his example and step down.

Gorbachev said if Putin resigned now, he would be remembered for the positive things he did during his 12 years in power.

The former Soviet leader spoke on Ekho Moskvy radio yesterday after a new wave of protests against alleged election fraud drew tens of thousands to Moscow's streets.

It was the largest show of public outrage since the protests in 1991 that brought down the Soviet Union.

Bombs Raise Stakes in Syria

At Wall Street Journal, "Assad Regime Blames al Qaeda for Twin Blasts in Damascus, Escalating Conflict" (via Google):

Syria's government blamed al Qaeda for two suicide bomb attacks that rocked Damascus on Friday morning, opening a dangerous phase in the Syrian conflict just one day after an Arab League advance mission arrived in the country under a plan to resolve the spiraling crisis.

"Initial investigations point to al Qaeda," read headlines on Syrian television.

No group claimed responsibility for the attacks. But the government's claim set off waves of speculation among activists and observers over what group could be capable of spectacular strikes on state-security offices at the heart of the capital—Syria's first reported suicide bombings in a decade.

Some security experts said al Qaeda or other insurgents could conceivably be responsible. Others joined Syrian activists in blaming the government itself for staging the attacks, a claim impossible to verify. But many pointed out that the government's claim, grounded or not, could provide cover to mount further crackdowns against the nine-month uprising against President Bashar al-Assad.

The two attacks came within minutes of each other. They killed 44 people—mostly civilians, but also security officers—and injured 166, Syrian state media reported.

State television broadcast images of smoke and bloodied debris at the scene, to sounds of sirens. Men were shown dragging a charred torso into an ambulance. The road was piled with bodies wrapped in sheets and blankets.

And see Legal Insurrection, "Will car bombings save Assad?"

Five Myths About Margaret Thatcher

I was thinking about this the other night, while watching the preview for "The Iron Lady" at the movies.

See Claire Berlinski, at Washington Post.

'The important thing is to ensure the neck snaps and there’s a quick death...'

Well, that's an Althouse-style title for the post, but that's who first came to mind when reading this piece at Los Angeles Times, "India has no shortage of aspiring hangmen." The quote on the "neck snaps" was highlighted at the essay in the hard-copy version, and it still kind of sticks out as so matter-of-fact:

Pawan Kumar is looking for a job. Not just any job; he wants to be India's newest hangman.

Kumar, 50, an apparel salesman from a family of executioners, says it's in his DNA, demonstrating with well-callused hands how to slide a hood over a condemned person's head, grease the noose and wrench the lever so the floor parts like a wave.

He acknowledges that he's never performed a hanging, India's preferred execution method, but says he's witnessed several and practiced using sandbags.

"The important thing is to ensure the neck snaps and there's a quick death," he says.

RTWT.

Tyranny and Indifference

A great piece, as usual, from Bret Stephens, at Wall Street Journal (and Google):

The power of indifference is something I first understood from Havel himself after interviewing him, over a beer, in the gardens of Prague's Czernin Palace. The occasion was a June 2007 conference of international dissidents that he co-chaired with Israel's Natan Sharansky. I asked him about his views on the war in Iraq. He had once supported it, but now he was more tentative. The rationale, he said, had not been "well-articulated." The timing of the invasion was "questionable." As in the 1960s, the U.S. risked becoming an emblem of William Fulbright's "arrogance of power."

Then Havel stopped himself and, as he seemed wont to do, put the train of his thought in reverse. "The world," he concluded, "could not be indifferent forever to a murderer like Saddam Hussein."

Here was the nub of the matter when it came to the invasion of Iraq. Never mind the faulty human or technical intelligence concerning weapons of mass destruction: The real WMD, better known as Saddam Hussein, was always hiding in plain sight. Over the course of 25 years he and his henchmen gassed, assassinated, machine-gunned and otherwise murdered somewhere between one million and two million people. That's a big number, the equivalent of a dozen or so Hiroshimas.

Yet because most of the victims were Kurds, Shiites, marsh Arabs, Iranians and Kuwaitis, the question was why it should matter to the West—anymore than, say, the butcheries in the Congo matter. Opponents of the war argued that it should not: that there was no emergency; that no supreme national interest was at stake; that humanitarian interventions needed to be carried out consistently or not at all. Failing those tests, they concluded, guaranteed that the war was folly from the start.

If Havel's now-celebrated career means anything, however, it is to beware that facile conclusion. In his great 1978 essay, "The Power of the Powerless," written just as his career as a dissident had begun in earnest with his signing of the Charter 77 manifesto, he warned against "the attractions of mass indifference" and the "general unwillingness of consumption-oriented people to sacrifice some material certainties for the sake of their own spiritual and moral integrity." Havel feared that one's indifference to the question of the freedom of others would ultimately result in a well-fed indifference to the question of one's own freedom.

"A big danger of our world today is obsession," he told the conference the day of our interview. "An even bigger danger is indifference."

All this was Havel's way of saying that political extremism—whether of the Leonid Brezhnev, Kim Jong Il, Saddam Hussein or Osama bin Laden variety—would flourish if free people did not actively resist the temptation to acquiesce to it in the name of "peace," or some other go-along-to-get-along slogan.

And remember, while progressives praise folks like Havel, he's right up there with Christopher Hitchens when it comes to standing down progressive terror enablers.

Jang Sung Taek May Prevail in North Korean Succession Struggle

This is fascinating.

At Los Angeles Times, "Powerful uncle may overshadow anointed son":

North Korean media extolled Kim Jong Eun on Monday as the “great successor” and the “outstanding leader of our party, army and people.”

But it’s not so simple. The young man is likely to be overshadowed by a powerful uncle, Jang Sung Taek.

Jang, 65, is married to Kim Jong Il’s younger sister and has spent three decades in the ruling Workers’ Party, holding key positions in the military and secret police and running North Korea’s special economic zones. His family members also hold powerful jobs with the military.

In contrast, the chosen successor has a thin resume. He attended a German-language public high school in Bern, Switzerland, where he was registered as the son of a North Korean diplomat. His classmates described him as crazy about basketball and computer games.

Until September 2010, when the overweight young man with a dimpled face was named a four-star general, he was almost entirely unknown to the North Korean public. Even the exact spelling of his name was a state secret.

More at the link.

And see New York Times, "Young Heir Faces Uncertain Transition in North Korea." (Via Memeorandum.)

Unbelievable Brutality in Egypt's Crackdown on Protesters

Telegraph UK has the story, "Female protestor's beating sparks Egypt outrage."

Protesters clashed with Egypt's security forces in central Cairo yesterday after the humiliating police beating of a veiled woman in Tahrir Square triggered widespread outrage in the country's pro-democracy movement.

At least ten people have been killed in three days of violence as Egypt's generals launched a clumsy and often brutal attempt to end weeks of protests against their rule.

Amid the fresh bloodshed and chaos that turned the centre of the city once more into a familiar scene of mayhem and anger, one incident, captured on film, stoked tensions more than any other.Footage, widely broadcast on the internet, showed helmeted officers charging towards a veiled woman among the protesters in Tahrir Square earlier in the weekend. Dragging her along the ground, they beat her with their clubs and aimed kick after kick at her limp body.

Pulling her veil over her head to expose her bra, one man stamps on her breasts. Nearby, other security officers jump on the body of a man who had tried to help her as furious protesters throw stones to scare them off. Other footage showed an army officer apparently firing his pistol at the demonstrators.

Max Fisher at the Atlantic comments on the indecency of the attack on the woman, "A Photo That Encapsulates the Horror of Egypt's Crackdown." And see the full coverage at New York Times, "Video Shows Egyptian Soldiers Beating and Shooting at Protesters."

French Leaders Launch Outspoken Public Attacks on Britain

At Telegraph UK, "French leaders declare a war of words on Britain":

French leaders have launched outspoken public attacks on Britain, calling for the UK to lose its AAA credit rating and comparing its economy with that of Greece.

Christian Noyer, the governor of the Bank of France, said that Britain faced larger national debts, higher inflation and slower growth than France.

François Baroin, the finance minister, said Britain was “marginalised” and faced “a very difficult economic situation” because of Coalition policies.

The blunt remarks are the latest sign of Anglo-French tension following David Cameron’s refusal last week to back a new European treaty drawn up in response to the eurozone crisis.

George Osborne, the Chancellor, also provoked anger in France recently by suggesting it could be the next eurozone economy to experience a debt crisis. France and Germany want a new treaty to create a “fiscal union” of eurozone members, to control their deficits and reassure the markets.

Mr Baroin told the French parliament that the pact had been backed by every country in Europe, “with the singular, now solitary, exception of Great Britain, which history will remember as marginalised”.

Plus, from a couple of days ago at Der Spiegel, "The End of Old Europe: Why Merkel's Triumph Will Come at a High Price."

Strong Support for Israel is Litmus Test for Conservatives

See David Bernstein, at Volokh, "Israel as a Litmus Test for Conservatives."

It's an interesting discussion of how support for Israel is becoming generally more widespread on the right side of the political spectrum. Bernstein also addresses Ron Paul's Israel problem. See: "Ron Paul Tells Newsmax: I Support Israel." And Jonathan Tobin, "No Need for the RJC to Invite Paul to Forum":

People like Ron Paul have taken the valuable libertarian creed of opposition to intrusive government and support for individual freedom and twisted it into a belief system that doesn’t view U.S. security abroad or the life of a besieged democratic Jewish state as something Americans should care about. Far from respecting Israel’s sovereignty, Paul is willing to watch with complacence as its very existence is called into question without the U.S. feeling obligated to lift a finger. His “respect” for Israel is little different from the sentiments voiced by an earlier generation of isolationists — the “America First” group — whose admiration of Nazi Germany and indifference to the fate of the Jews restrained the country’s initial response to both Hitler and the Holocaust.

And that is why I wrote two posts hammering Doug Mataconis at Outside the Beltway. We went around on Twitter for a while and he was unable to defend his opposition to Israel. Faced with the fact that "Palestinians" repeatedly call for Israel's destruction, Mataconis was relegated to calling me names like "nutjob" and "Pamela Geller loon."

See: "Newt Gingrich Attacked By Weasels," and "Newt's Backtracking on Palestinians as 'Invented People'?"

Newt Gingrich on Palestinians at GOP Debate in Iowa: 'These People Are Terrorists'

Here's the video:

Somebody oughta have the courage to tell the truth: These people are terrorists. They teach terrorism in their schools...

Previously: "Newt Gingrich Attacked By Weasels," and "Newt's Backtracking on Palestinians as 'Invented People'?"

Veena Malik Claims She Was Wearing Hotpants in Controversial FHM Nude Cover

Okay, bringing you the important news in comparative politics and international relations!

I saw this story previously at Foreign Policy, "Nude Veena Malik cover stuns Pakistani Twitterverse," and "The India subtext in the Veena Malik nude cover controversy."

Hey, even foreign policy specialists need some Rule 5 diversions.

But see London's Daily Mail, "'The stress added ten years to my age': FHM India's 'naked' covergirl claims she was threatened after claiming shoot was doctored."

Newt's Backtracking on Palestinians as 'Invented People'?

Newt Gingrich is absolutely correct. The "Palestians" are Arabs who lived on territory of the former Ottoman Empire, an area technically known as the Southern Levant. And the word "Palestinian" is derived from the "Philistines," the people who occupied the area during the Roman Empire.

And now this? At New York Times, "Damage Control From Gingrich on Palestinians."

You know, Gingrich isn't my man, but the backlash is completely typical of the Israel annihilation industry. See Wall Street Journal, "Gingrich’s Palestinian Comments Draw Flak":

According to the AP, Palestinian legislator Hanan Ashrawi said that Mr. Gingrich had “lost touch with reality” and that his comments were “a cheap way to win (the) pro-Israel vote.”

A pair of Mr. Romney’s surrogates said Mr. Gingrich’s comments were evidence that the former House speaker is a loose cannon who struggles to stay on message.

“I’m not sure that statement gets us any closer to accomplishing an agenda,” former Ambassador Mary Kramer, a Romney supporter, said Friday on a conference call with reporters. “That’s one of the things that makes me a little nervous about Speaker Gingrich.”

Mr. Romney has adopted a choreographed approach to campaigning. “Gov. Romney is much more disciplined in his approach and much more thoughtful about the things he says,” said Renee Schulte, an Iowa State Representative and one of the Romney campaign’s Iowa co-chairs. “This comment is just another example of the difference between the two.”

The Romney people are extremely annoying. And I'm with Pamela on this whole affair:

Finally, the biggest lie of the late twentieth century has been called just that, a lie. And while I have many issues with New Gingrich (Bachmann or Santorum would be infinitely better), Gingrich must be heralded for speaking the truth about Yaser Arafat's enduring annihilationist narrative, the "Palestinian".

And of course, I'm not with Doug Mataconis, who's a leading paleocon member of the Israel annihilation industry: "Newt Gingrich Calls Palestinians an “Invented People”."

There is no "two-state solution" to the Middle East "crisis," because the so-called "Palestinians" don't want one. See Melanie Phillips:

For peace to be achieved, the belligerent has to stop making war. The Arabs have made war on the Jews in their ancient homeland since Israel became a state and indeed for three decades before that. For a solution to be arrived at, it’s necessary correctly to state the problem. The problem is not the absence of a state of Palestine. The problem is that the Arabs want to get rid of Israel.

You got that, Doug?

More at Memeorandum.

Prime Minister David Cameron Stands Up for British Sovereignty

At Telegraph UK, "EU treaty: David Cameron stands as the lone man of Europe":

David Cameron took a decisive step to distance Britain from the European Union on Friday as he became the first prime minister to veto a new EU treaty.

Mr Cameron provoked widespread anger among European leaders by refusing to back a deal to rescue the eurozone, delighting Tories and raising questions about Britain’s future in the EU.

After Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president, led objections to his “unacceptable” demands for legal protections for the City of London, the Prime Minister refused to give Britain’s backing for a new treaty to create a “fiscal union” among eurozone members.

At the end of an acrimonious summit in Brussels, all 26 other EU members signalled they could now support the new treaty, leaving Britain in a minority of one.

Conservative MPs welcomed Britain’s move back towards the traditional Tory stance of “splendid isolation” in Europe — a term for the foreign policy of the late 19th century.

Also at Telegraph, "Eurozone banking system on the edge of collapse."

Looks like a smart call by Cameron.

China's State-Led Model Showing Signs of Trouble

ICYMI, you might want to skim former SIEU chief Andy Stern's op-ed at the Wall Street Journal from earlier this week, "China's Superior Economic Model." I don't begrudge China's economic success, but I've never been one to fall head over heels for China's model, especially as a replacement for the American free-enterprise ideal. Stern's piece reminded me of the "Japan as Number One" school from the late-1980s and early-1990s. Back then I thought more reliance on industrial policy and governmental intervention might be a good thing. Then Japan collapse and by the end of the Clinton years the American economy was booming. Hardly anyone was championing the Japanese "developmental state" by that time. And thus, I mostly yawned when reading Andy Stern, and that was after a little chuckle, considering the former union boss was throwing his lot in with one the most murderous regimes in modern times.

In any case, the editors at Wall Street Journal throw some cold water on the Chinese economic system. See, "China's Hard Landing":

China is a poster child for the Austrian school of economics' theory of the business cycle. After undertaking the biggest stimulus program the world has ever seen in response to the global financial crisis, the country is drowning in unproductive investments financed with credit.

The government spent 15% of GDP largely on public works projects in inland regions, financed with loans from the state-owned banks. Investment as a share of GDP soared to 48.5% in 2010, and the M2 measure of money supply ballooned to 140% that of the U.S.

Now comes the hangover. The public works projects are winding down, unleashing a wave of unemployment and an uptick in social unrest. The banks' nonperforming loans are rising, and local governments are insolvent. The country is littered with luxurious county government offices, ghost cities of empty apartment blocks, unsafe high-speed rail lines and crumbling highways to nowhere.

One effect of negative real interest rates was a nationwide bubble in private housing, with the average price of an urban apartment reaching eight times the average annual income. Real estate is the most popular investment for the wealthy, according to a central bank survey in September. Millions of luxury apartments are vacant, even as there is a shortage of affordable housing for the poor....

There is no easy way to avoid the bust that is coming. The silver lining is that China's increasingly state-led growth model will be discredited, and a debate will begin on restarting the reforms that stalled in the mid-2000s. A financial sector that allocates credit based on politics rather than price signals led China into this mess. Popular pressure to dismantle crony capitalism is building, and the Communist Party would be wise to get in front of it while it can.

Can France and Germany Keep the Euro Alive?

At Telegraph UK:

Can Germany and France reach agreement on radical new rules that would mean a loss of sovereignty over fiscal policy for euro nations - and can they do it in time to save the single currency?

On the same day that the world's main central banks took emergency action to prevent a global financial crash caused by the eurozone crisis and as France warned that war could again return to Europe, a short film was released.

The slick computer-generated imagery shows a beautiful woman coming to life from the frieze of an ancient Greek vase: she is Europa.

Using video technology, the mythical goddess of ancient Greece morphs into an attractive real-life woman wandering magical bridges that link the European continent.

Last Wednesday's film, a seven- minute "informational" from the EU to mark 10 years of the euro, is accompanied by a reassuring female voice-over telling viewers that "Europe inspires hope".

In an unintentionally surreal touch, the film was released at the same time that Alain Juppe, the French foreign minister, warned that the euro's looming collapse could lead to war. On the same day, others were equally downbeat. Herman Van Rompuy, the EU's president, admitted that the eurozone debt crisis had become "systemic" and "full blown". Enda Kenny, Ireland's prime minister, said: "There is a real and present sense of danger."

Continue reading.

PREVIOUSLY: "German Power to Shape Europe's New Rules."

German Power to Shape Europe's New Rules

It's interesting that Angela Merkel is so determined to preserve the Eurozone, even if that means making structural changes that weaken her European partners. The alternative is a collapse of the single currency and perhaps the disintegration of the European Union. The EU began as an effort to tie down France and Germany in a web of mutual cooperation and multilateral institutions. Germany now is the leading state working to prevent a return to balance of power politics on the continent. Strange how things work like that, but in the post-WWII era, no other political regime has undergone a great cultural change than Germany.

See Los Angeles Times, "Germany's hand will be uppermost as Europe writes new fiscal rules."

The Death of European Socialist Welfare States

A massive state sector requires a robust economy, and the peripheral states of the EU can't sustain the socialist project. It's not the end of European socialism, but the left is being pummeled by events, and good thing too.

See Jonathan Blitzer, at The New Republic, "Has the Euro Crisis Killed Off Social Democracy For Good?":

Madrid – Outgoing Socialist Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, of Spain, had until recently been the beneficiary of propitious circumstances. Party infighting enabled him to outmaneuver the establishment favorite in the 2000 primaries. Four years later, he eked out an eleventh hour victory in national elections when a terrorist bombing mere days before voting turned the tide against incumbent conservatives. As he took office, a booming economy—which enjoyed the second largest budget surplus in Europe as late as 2007—paved the way for an ambitious social agenda, which rallied his progressive base.

But if a flair for the unexpected studded his ascent, it was a bruising inevitability that brought him low. A rapidly worsening economic crisis left him with little choice but to announce, in April, that he would not stand for re-election. After months of daily flaying by an emboldened conservative opposition, early elections came as a relief for Zapatero, even as his party blamed him when it was trounced, as expected, two weeks ago.

But Zapatero didn’t fall alone: Center-left governments in Portugal and Greece have also fallen in recent months. All in all, it’s a long-standing trend. Leftist governments in Europe have been teetering now for over a decade. Ten years ago, social democratic governments were at the helm in half the countries of the EU. That number has since dropped to three. But their recent plight is their most dire. The sovereign debt crisis has done more than batter incumbent socialists out of office; it may well have stripped the social democratic movement of its soul in the crisis zone.

Continue reading.

Melanie Phillips: Britain Impotently Warns Iran of 'Serious Consequences'

She's the best.

See, "Hague shakes his puny fist in the thirty years' invisible war":

For some thirty years, Britain and the west have experienced war waged upon them by Iran – but fantastically, have refused to acknowledge this fact. They refused to fight back. They refused therefore also to acknowledge what has been crystal clear for at least the past two decades: that it was never going to be a choice between war or peace with Iran. It was always going to be a choice between fighting that war sooner, when Iran was weaker and the west had more chance of minimising the fall-out, and fighting that war later, when Iran would be much stronger -- and possibly even a nuclear power -- and when the consequences for the west would be that much more terrible.

What the west refused to grasp was that there was never any chance of the Iranian regime seeing sense. That’s because what drives its dominant members at least is not conventional political impulse but an apocalyptic messianism. That means they actively seek to bring about a conflagration -- even if this consumes much of Iran -- since they believe that this apocalypse will prompt the return to earth of a religious messiah figure. They actually want to bring about the end of the world. But the west just didn’t take any of this remotely seriously.

The result has been catastrophic for the world. Iran has been outwitting the west at every turn, aided immeasurably by an American President who extended to these genocidal fanatics the hand of friendship while smashing his fist down on their principal prospective victim, Israel. As a result, Iran has enormously extended its power in the region and become seen there – disastrously -- as the strong horse which must be ridden, while the once-mighty US has become the enfeebled nag that is no longer prepared even to defend itself, let alone anyone else.

RTWT.

Europe at the Brink

A great analysis at yesterday's Los Angeles Times, "In Europe debt crisis, markets and masses wait for Merkel to blink." And at New York Times, "Money Flows, but What Euro Zone Lacks Is Glue."

And now, at The Economist, "The euro zone: Is this really the end?":

EVEN as the euro zone hurtles towards a crash, most people are assuming that, in the end, European leaders will do whatever it takes to save the single currency. That is because the consequences of the euro’s destruction are so catastrophic that no sensible policymaker could stand by and let it happen.

A euro break-up would cause a global bust worse even than the one in 2008-09. The world’s most financially integrated region would be ripped apart by defaults, bank failures and the imposition of capital controls (see article). The euro zone could shatter into different pieces, or a large block in the north and a fragmented south. Amid the recriminations and broken treaties after the failure of the European Union’s biggest economic project, wild currency swings between those in the core and those in the periphery would almost certainly bring the single market to a shuddering halt. The survival of the EU itself would be in doubt.

Yet the threat of a disaster does not always stop it from happening. The chances of the euro zone being smashed apart have risen alarmingly, thanks to financial panic, a rapidly weakening economic outlook and pigheaded brinkmanship. The odds of a safe landing are dwindling fast.

Keep reading.

The authors argue that the European Central Bank needs to provide massive liquidity, and fast.

IMAGE CREDIT: Der Spiegel, "Euro Zone on the Brink: A Continent Stares into the Abyss."

Early Results in Egypt Show Mandate for Islamists

At New York Times:

CAIRO — Islamists claimed a decisive victory on Wednesday as early election results put them on track to win a dominant majority in Egypt’s first Parliament since the ouster of Hosni Mubarak, the most significant step yet in the religious movement’s rise since the start of the Arab Spring.

The party formed by the Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt’s mainstream Islamist group, appeared to have taken about 40 percent of the vote, as expected. But a big surprise was the strong showing of ultraconservative Islamists, called Salafis, many of whom see most popular entertainment as sinful and reject women’s participation in voting or public life.

Analysts in the state-run news media said early returns indicated that Salafi groups could take as much as a quarter of the vote, giving the two groups of Islamists combined control of nearly 65 percent of the parliamentary seats.

That victory came at the expense of the liberal parties and youth activists who set off the revolution, affirming their fears that they would be unable to compete with Islamists who emerged from the Mubarak years organized and with an established following. Poorly organized and internally divided, the liberal parties could not compete with Islamists disciplined by decades as the sole opposition to Mr. Mubarak. “We were washed out,” said Shady el-Ghazaly Harb, one of the most politically active of the group.

Also, from Barry Rubin, "Flash: What, Me Pessimistic? Egyptian Election Outcome is Worse Than I Expected."