Wheat, Bread, Noodles and Global Competition

By Alan Caruba

My late Mother used to bake her own breads, along with cookies, cakes, and pies. I miss the taste of freshly baked bread and I miss the aroma that floated from the kitchen to the rest of the house. The author of several cookbooks, she knew a lot about the history of foods. Much of history was shaped by the development of agriculture, the growing of grains.

In the Middle East, it wasn’t called the Fertile Crescent for nothing. In Rome there were public ovens. The bakers of ancient Greece had a worldwide reputation. Much later when French peasants could not get bread, it sparked a revolution. “Let them eat cake” cost Marie Antoinette her head!

Great famines have marked history as well. There is a reason why bread is called the staff of life and there is a reason to keep an eye on today’s worldwide market for wheat. It reflects the competition between nations for the sale of this vital commodity.

Casting an eye over the world, one learns that Syria, in the midst of the riots to overthrow the Assad dictatorship, the more mundane business of the country goes on including the announcement that it plans to sell 50,000 tons of durum in extra stock bought from farmers last year.

Wheat Life, a publication of the Washington Growers of Wheat Association, monitors the global wheat market for its readers. Suffice to say that wheat is a major export for the U.S., generating billions in revenue every year. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, U.S. wheat exports will reach 31.3 million metric tons (mmt) in 2011 and 2012.

Farmers, as always, are dependent on the weather and other factors over which they have no control. In the U.S. the environmental movement has often been responsible for shutting off their access to water to “save” some reptile or other species. The EPA is trying to define “dust”, a by-product of farming, as a “pollutant.” This kind of regulation has a serious impact on the availability of all manner of foods at your local supermarket, in restaurants, and bakeries.

Since the growth of all vegetation, including wheat, is dependent on an abundance of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere, the demand by global warming hucksters that emissions of this vital gas be reduced is idiotic, either domestically or worldwide.

But I digress. The fact that the world is now home to seven billion hungry humans will put a lot of pressure on farmers to produce more wheat, rice and other grains.

In 2007 India banned the export of wheat, but “large crops and inefficient storage centers means large quantities of India’s crop is spoiled every year.” India’s politicians are under a lot of pressure to ensure that the price of wheat remains within reach of its millions of poor people. Recently, however, India announced that it would allow private companies to export two million metric tons from its 86 mmt annual yield. That would make India the world’s second largest wheat producer after China.

China, however, is paying a price for the expansion of its wheat production. The Chinese Academy of Sciences says that the overuse of chemical fertilizers for the past thirty years is causing the deterioration of arable soil. When you have more than a billion people to feed, it poses a problem that could translate into political unrest, so the Chinese leadership pays a lot of attention to such things.

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Russia’s export of wheat is expected to quadruple from last year to 16 mmt. In 2010, a hot summer that resulted in poor production led to a ban on wheat exports. The demand for Russian wheat has “outstripped the ability of the ports to handle it.” Former Soviet satellite nations such as Bulgaria and the Ukraine have had a banner year for wheat production.

This in turn has knocked Pakistan’s wheat producers out of the competitive marketplace despite the fact that it is the Middle East’s third largest wheat producer. Its expected exports of 3 mmt have been reduced to 1.8 mmt. Along with all its other problems, the excess wheat is likely to be dumped on the domestic market, driving prices downward.

From nation to nation, wheat, whether in abundance or the lack thereof, affects their internal affairs in ways that only rarely make headlines, but it remains as valuable as oil and other commodities that shape policies.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

Is Barack Obama the Ultimate Sleeper Agent?

By Alan Caruba

Not far from where I live in New Jersey, in Montclair, Richard and Cynthia Murphy were arrested as Russian sleeper agents, allegedly in the employ of the SVR, the successor to the famed Soviet KGB intelligence services that waged a covert war throughout the Cold War.

Much of the media attention was focused on a beautiful redhead, Anna Chapman, a Manhattan socialite who was charged as an unregistered agent of a foreign government, but largely unnoted was Mihail Semenko, a 28-year-old Seton Hall University graduate. I live in the same community where the university is located.

In all, ten people were arrested by the FBI, suspected of carrying out long-term “deep cover” assignments in the U.S. for Russia.

The ultimate “deep cover” agent, however, may well be Barack Obama.

My friend, Henry Lamb, writing on October 8, 2007 at Canada Free Press.com, said, “It is getting increasingly difficult to distinguish between the agenda of the Democratic Party and the agenda of the Communist Party.” He quoted Joelle Fishman, chairman of the Communist Party USA Political Action Committee and chairman of the Connecticut Communist Party.

“Our Party has an important role to play to keep the focus on the fight for a new direction in our country for jobs, healthcare, and an end to the war. This is how the 2008 elections will be won.” Universal healthcare, a major objective of the Obama administration, has since become the law of the land. The emphasis on withdrawal from Iraq and a specific date for withdrawal from Afghanistan has been another objective.

The campaign team, several of whom now serve as advisers to Obama, was composed of people with deep ties to the “progressive”, i.e., communist movement in America. Valerie Jarrett, a senior advisor, was aware that former Green Czar, Van Jones, had a long history of involvement in Communist Party causes. When this was exposed, he resigned.

Jarrett married into a family with Communist Party involvement. Her father-in-law, Vernon Jarrett, worked closely with Obama mentor and a Communist Party leader, Frank Marshall Davis, who was a member of a number of front groups during the Cold War years. It was Davis whom Obama’s grandparents enlisted to mentor him during his formative years growing up in Hawaii.

Political advisor, David Axelrod, has a long history of working for socialist causes. His mother wrote for a New York City tabloid, PM Magazine that often promoted the Communist Party line. Much of the publication’s funding came from Marshall Field, a leftist millionaire who also funded Saul Alinsky’s training school for community organizers.

Carol Browner, the energy and environmental advisor, was a former director of the Environmental Protection Agency under President Clinton. Significantly, she was a member of the Commission for a Sustainable World Society of the Socialist International until that was revealed and her name was scrubbed from the organization’s website on January 7, 2009. Both she and Todd Stern, the Environment Czar, are strong advocates of Cap-and-Trade legislation.

A litany of high level advisors with strong socialist agendas surrounds the President.

Experts in spy craft are not inclined to regard the arrested agents as a small group to be dismissed as bumblers in the employ of the Russian Federation, the successor to the failed Soviet Union. None, however, have been charged with espionage.

Nina Khrushcheva, the daughter of former Soviet premier, Nikita Khrushchev, and a professor of international affairs at the New School in Manhattan, said, “We are pretty sure there are some dark forces overseeing Russian security. That’s how we do things. That’s how we used to do things. And people don’t think that it has changed.”

In a memo to the Murphy’s, their Russian handler reminded them, “You were sent to USA for long-term service trip. Your education, bank accounts, car, house, etc—all these serve one goal: fulfill your main mission, i.e., to search and develop ties in policymaking circles in U.S. and send intel (intelligence reports) to (center).”

Many questions regarding Obama’s past remain hidden. Beyond the issue of whether he is a natural born citizen eligible to hold the office, most of the paper trail concerning his education at Occidental College in Los Angeles, followed by Columbia University and Harvard, and the funding for his tuition, his travel to Pakistan as a youth, and other factors normally made public during a campaign are still kept secret.

In his memoir, “Dreams of my Father”, Obama wrote, “To avoid being mistaken for a sellout, I chose my friends carefully. The more politically active black students. The foreign students. The Chicanos. The Marxist professors…”

Perhaps most telling is his political rise that began in the Chicago living room of former Weatherman domestic terrorists, William Ayers and his wife Bernadine Dohrn, who held a fundraiser for his campaign to become a senator in the Illinois legislature. In a book, “Sixties Radicals”, Ayers described himself, saying “I’m a radical, leftist, small ‘c’ communist.”

Obama and Ayers had spent three years together serving on the board of the Woods Fund. Obama’s campaign claim that he knew the Ayers only because they lived in the same Chicago neighborhood was patently false.

The members of the Russian spy group lived a false life while allegedly serving the interests of their handlers. One can only wonder if Barack Obama’s life has also been devoted to the same communist agenda as the ultimate agent of influence?

© Alan Caruba, 2010

Wheat is more than just a crop

By Alan Caruba

Long ago I was in a class studying history and a professor said something I never forgot. He said that no nation is more than two weeks away from revolution if it cannot feed its people.

We know, however, that dictatorships like the former Soviet Union used famine as a political weapon against the Ukraine, that China has experienced famines, and that North Korea barely manages to feed its people. Food is so essential to political control that all nations pay attention to its provision.

Perhaps no single crop is more essential than wheat. In the 1980s I traveled everywhere in the U.S. as a writer and often visited farmers, learning about what new techniques and products they were using to enhance crop yield. It gave me a lesson regarding the role of agriculture that this suburban New Jersey boy could never have acquired.

With a tip of the hat to Wheat Life, a publication of the Washington Association of Wheat Growers, here’s a quick look at the role of wheat around the world. Though farmers represent only about two percent of America’s population, they produce an abundance of wheat and other crops, enough to feed all of us and to export internationally. They are a major contributor to the nation’s economy.

The share of the world’s wheat market in 2008 showed America’s dominance with 29%. This was followed by 14% from Russia and 12% from Australia.

A word of caution about any foods coming out of China; there have been too many cases of adulterated foods whether it was pet food, milk, or flour. One firm, Yuzhong Food Additive Company, has occasioned a flurry of warnings against doing business with it.

For years, self-anointed environmentalists have warned against the greatest advance in crop growth of modern times, those that have been genetically modified to withstand drought, fend off various insect pests, and increase vitamin A so children in nations where it is not naturally available can benefit. The Canada Wheat Board led the fight against GMO wheat, but has now recognized that a zero tolerance policy makes no sense.

Iceland was in the news when its unpronounceable volcano, Eyjafjallajokull volcano erupted, but scientists worry that another volcano, Katla, could erupt. It is considerably larger and could affect northern hemisphere farming. It erupted in 1918 and is estimated to be a hundred times larger than Katla. Scientists say it is overdue to erupt.

Saudi Arabia is a big importer of wheat because it does not have much arable land to grow it. It has announced that it plans to stop growing wheat in the spring of 2016 and that means US, Argentine, European, and Australian growers will benefit. In 2010-11, it is expected to import two million metric tons.

Iran, when it isn’t secretly trying to produce nuclear weapons and rule the entire Middle East, is a wheat producer and is expected to export two million metric tons to Oman, Egypt, and the United Arab Emirates this year. Its wheat crop is expected to reach nine to twelve million tons. Connect the dots and you will see why its wheat crop influences the decisions of Gulf states.

Despite diplomatic and other differences we may have with Russia these days, Deere & Company, the iconic tractor and implement manufacturer, plans to expand its investment and operations there. Russia has nearly 9% of the world’s arable land, 20% of its forested land, and 8% of its fresh water. The Chairman of Deere says it has the potential of being one of the world’s major food-producing areas.

It doesn’t matter where you look on the globe of the world, wheat, the stuff of bread, cakes, pizzas, pasta, and just about anything you will eat today plays a significant and subtle role in the economies of nations. That means you can count on the governments of the world and its international institutions to always pay it close attention while meddling as much as they can.

With a population of more than six billion people, keeping them fed is fundamental to maintaining peace no matter what other threats exist.

© Alan Caruba, 2010

Calling Iran's Bluff

By Alan Caruba

If the endgame were not so serious, I would confess to enjoying the way the Israelis and much of the rest of the world are getting ready to call the Iranian ayatollah’s bluff as they hope to avoid a military response to their nuclear quest and the threat it represents.

It wouldn’t surprise me that the ayatollahs who have had Iran by the throat since 1979 are beginning to have serious misgivings about embarking on their nuclear mission.

As the Iranian intelligence community watches the comings and goings of their counterparts, it has surely not escaped their notice that two high-ranking teams of American CIA and DIA intelligence officials were conferring with the Israelis this week, shortly after attending a four-nation intelligence summit held in Amman, Jordan. It brought together key players in the U.S., Egyptian, Jordanian, and Israeli clandestine services.

Such cooperation is unprecedented in recent years and it making the Iranians very nervous. Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, said of these comings and going, “Iran is a great world power whose strength is unlimited and on whom no other state would dare impose sanctions.” This is straight out of the late Saddam Hussein’s Book of Hilarious Claims.

Then, too, despite extensive economic ties with Russia, the Iranians are so upset with the delayed delivery of a Russian S-300 air defense system they actually went public with their complaints. It was expected in April.

It is a $1 billion contract and one suspects that the Russians have calculated that the Israelis will attack soon enough, so why waste a perfectly good air defense system that can be sold elsewhere? I hope they got paid in advance.

“Don’t Russian strategists realize Iran’s geopolitical importance to their security,” asked Iranian Chief of Staff, Gen. Hassan Firouzabadi. Yes, they do and so do the Chinese with whom the Iranians also have extensive economic ties, but both nations are hardly in a rush to see a nuclear-armed Iran, run by religious fanatics who might decide to threaten them or worse.

Meanwhile, earlier this month the UN International Atomic Energy Agency announced it found “nothing to be worried about” after a quick, first look at a previously secret uranium enrichment site in Iran. Are you worried? Am I worried? Certainly not, after all, Mohammed ElBaradei is a Nobel Peace Prize winner just like President Obama.

It has been reported that the U.S. has delivered a number of “bunker-buster” bombs, MOABs, to the Israelis and they are designed for use against nuclear facilities buried deep in mountains or underground.

All their bravado and boasting has only managed to get the Iranians further isolated and at considerably greater risk. Instead of sinking billions into their nuclear program, they could have been building oil refineries and other infrastructure of value. Instead, they have to import much of their gasoline. This is a definition of stupid.

The Iranians (by which I always mean the leadership, not the people) have managed to sour relations with Europe by jerking them around in an endless series of “negotiations” concerning their nuclear program. It is not lost on Europe that Iranian missile systems permit them to target much of that continent. Ditto Russia. Ditto China. Ditto the entire Middle East.

The immediate target, of course, is Israel and Israel has a history of destroying nuclear reactors in their neighborhood, first in Iraq and more recently in Syria when the combined talents of U.S. and Mossad intelligence revealed where the Syrians were building a secret nuclear facility.

There is a historic irony in this because ancient Iran, Persia, provided a sanctuary to Jews when they were exiled from Israel and facilitated their return. Modern Iran’s leaders have mocked the Holocaust and threatened the Israelis with nuclear annihilation.

All of which is to say that, if I were an ayatollah in Tehran these days, I would be thinking about opening a dry cleaning business just about anywhere else on planet Earth.

A Russian Warns Americans Against a Communist Takeover

By Alan Caruba

There is considerable irony involved when a Russian warns Americans against what is taking place before their eyes as President Obama seeks to transform and ultimately acquire dictatorial powers by a series of steps that are both bold and obvious.

In April, Stanislav Mishin’s post on his blog, Mat Rodina, was published in Pravda. The title was “American capitalism gone with a whimper."

You can read the commentary at
http://english.pravda.ru/opinion/columnists/107459-american_capitalism-0.

Having lived under Communist rule in the former Soviet Russia, Mishin and his fellow Russians were literally freed by the fall of that regime that began with the overthrow of the Czar in 1917 by the Bolsheviks. What followed was an experiment in Communism that killed millions of Russians as a succession of dictators, starting with Lenin, sought to impose an economic and political system that simply does not work.

Mishin enumerated the ways the path to the present effort to destroy capitalism and our political system has been laid in America.

“First, the population was dumbed down through a politicized and substandard education system based on pop culture, rather than the classics.” There are few that would argue that the American education system is not controlled by the National Education Association, a union, and the American Federation of Teachers, a union. Both have long supported the Democrat Party. Virtually every way one can measure the system reveals its failure to educate the millions passing through government schools.

“Then their faith in God was destroyed, until their churches, all tens of thousands of different ‘branches and denominations’ were for the most part little more than Sunday circuses…” America is a “religious” nation if one looks at the survey numbers of those who say they believe in a supreme being. This, however, is not reflected in the breakdown of moral values as seen in the spread of pornography, the use of illegal drugs, the divorce rate, and the touchstone issue of abortion in America. Our popular culture is drenched in sex and violence.

“The final collapse has come with the election of Barack Obama,” says Mishin. I would argue that the threat Obama poses to the U.S. Constitution and to our economy is indisputable. “His spending and money printing has been (a) record setting,” all pointing to an America that “will resemble the Wiemar Republic and at worst Zimbabwe.” The former preceded the Nazi takeover of Germany in the 1930s and the latter’s money is worthless.

What better way to destroy America than to destroy the value of the U.S. dollar, the standard against which all other currencies are set? If you want to know why Obama has instituted the spending of billions in just over a half year's time and imposed a $9 trillion deficit on the nation, you need look no further for an explanation.

Nor did it escape Mishin’s notice, having lived in a nation in which all industry was under the control of a central government, that under Obama the government now owns General Motors and that the President demanded and got the resignation of the company’s former president. Every other CEO in America got the message. No where in the Constitution will you find permission for public money to be spent in this fashion.

The ironies and the threat to our nation continue. “Prime Minister Putin…warned Obama…not to follow the path to Marxism, it only leads to disaster.”

In brief, here’s the case for free market capitalism as opposed to government-run enterprises and interference.

The U.S. Postal Service was established in 1775. It took 234 years to get it right. It is broke.

Social Security was established in 1935. It has had 74 years to get it right. It is broke. Cost of living increases to recipients will not be enacted for the next two years. It is broke.

Fannie Mae, an intrusion into the housing and mortgage market place was established in 1938. There have been 71 years to get it right. It is broke and it was a major contributing factor in the failure of the mortgage lending system and the present failures of banks across the nation. Likewise, Freddie Mac was established in 1970. After 39 years to get it right, it is broke.

The “war on poverty” set in motion in 1964 was a classic “redistribution of money” as a transfer to “the poor.” Now the nation is, for all intents and purposes, broke.

Medicare and Medicaid were established 1965. After 44 years, both are broke.

The Obama administration is allegedly seeking to “reform” both by rationing medical services to the elderly while expanding the systems to require all Americans to involuntarily purchase insurance. Universal healthcare requires more doctors. Until tort reform is enacted and until doctors can be free to practice in a free market, there will be fewer and fewer doctors.

The trillions of dollars spent by TARP and the Omnibus Appropriations Act of 2009, are showing no signs of working. ACORN, a “community organizing” group received millions and is likely to be given a working role in the forthcoming U.S. Census, a program that is part of the Department of Commerce, but whose management has been transferred to the White House!

“The proud American will go down into his slavery without a fight, beating his chest and proclaiming to the world how free he really is. The world will only snicker,” predicted Mishin.

If the town hall meetings and “tea parties” from coast to coast are any indication, Mishin is wrong that Americans will not fight. A forthcoming September 12 protest gathering in Washington, D.C., is likely to draw more than a million protesters to the capitol.

Obama and his panoply of “czars” have only a few months in which to manufacture a "crisis"as a pretext to transfer all power to the White House. They will fail.

America's Enemies

By Alan Caruba

Listening to President Obama one might think that America doesn’t have a single enemy that could not be turned into a friend if only he was given the opportunity to just talk to them. He is a great believer in diplomacy even though diplomacy has rarely stopped a war if one party was determined to wage it. War doesn’t need the consent of both.

Perhaps because I was born just prior to the outbreak of World War II and grew up aware of terrible things happening in both Europe and Asia, followed by having an older brother who served during the Korean War, plus my own service in the U.S. Army, my attitude about wars has been shaped by a lifetime in which I cannot recall a minute when America wasn’t at war, engaged in a war, or threatened by a war.

To this day I have considerable antipathy for “peaceniks” and war protesters even though, as the ill-fated Vietnam War dragged on, I joined a march or two. If ever there was a wrong war in the wrong place, Vietnam was it. For those unfamiliar with it, it was essentially a civil war into which the U.S. inserted itself due to a “domino theory” that, if Vietnam fell to communism, all the other Asian nations would as well. At the time, the Cold War was still raging since the end of WWII and Chairman Mao was still in charge of China.

Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean someone isn’t plotting against you, so it’s always a good idea to take a very general survey of those nations who wish us ill.

After a slow start, the U.S. is contemplating putting North Korea back on its list of terror-sponsoring nations. I suspect many Americans with no memory of the Korean War during the 1950s dismiss North Korea’s nuclear weapons and missile capability. Not only will this thugocracy sell its WMDs to anyone, but the renewal of the Korean War is never more than 24 hours away. The U.S. is committed to intervene.

Iran, despite being on the other side of the globe, is working toward having its own nuclear weapons and missile delivery systems. As far as the Middle East is concerned, that’s a war just waiting to happen.

Americans seem to have forgotten that Saddam Hussein fought a war with Iran for eight years, settled for a stalemate, and then invaded Kuwait. If ever there was a good reason to fight a war to rid the region of this troublemaker, I cannot think of one. Now the problem has shifted to Pakistan, under attack from an enemy of its own making, the Taliban. Since Pakistan has nukes, it cannot be allowed to fall into the hands of fanatical Islamofascists.

Right next door India keeps a wary eye on Pakistan. Bordering Pakistan to the north is Afghanistan, a nation of tribes that, though occupied over and over again, has resisted all invaders for centuries. Just because 9/11 was planned there doesn’t mean the U.S. needs to maintain a military presence there. The prospect of an effective central government is quite distant despite the money, military manpower, and other efforts the U.S. is making.

So the enemies we can identify include any and all Muslims who support the view that Islam must rule the entire world. There are more than a billion of them.

Russia is no friend to the United States, but Russia is no friend to Europe or China either. Almost entirely dependent on the export of oil and natural gas, its fate rises and falls with the cost of a barrel or cubic foot of both. The fall of the Soviet government and the loss of its satellite nations in Eastern Europe have not significantly brought about a change of attitude in the Kremlin although much of the population would be more than happy to embrace the free market capitalism of the United States.

China is no friend either even though it is highly dependent on its ability to manufacture and export its goods to the United States. Our current economic woes worry the Chinese who own billions in U.S. treasury bills along with the fact that Americans aren’t buying as much of their stuff lately. China has perhaps the largest espionage effort regarding the U.S. of any other nation in the world.

Americans have been slow to respond to yet another enemy, Mexico. The U.S. has been literally invaded by Mexicans though they came looking for jobs and a better life. The result, however, has been enormous financial burdens on all aspects of our society from schools to hospitals to welfare and to crime. There are an estimated 12 million illegal Mexicans and others from south of the border and Harry Reid, the Senate Majority Leaders, wants to push through another amnesty bill.

The last amnesties only resulted in a greater rush to enter the U.S. Only a handful in public office will address the fact that the Mexican government has openly encouraged this invasion because the money sent home is a significant part of its economy. It is a major trading partner, but it looks to become totally controlled by the narco lords.

We have been slow to say or do anything about Venezuela, led by the dictator, Hugo Chavez. This likely has much to do with the oil that nation exports to the U.S. Chavez, however, is closely allied with Hezbollah which, in turn, is allied and controlled by Iran. Chavez has been buying up a lot of weapons of late and it has nothing to do with defense and everything to do with his bad intensions. Once a democracy, Venezuelans are now totally under the control of their government.

The U.S. just got around to arresting two former members of the State Department who had allegedly been spying for Cuba for thirty years. President Obama wants to lift restrictions on that dictatorship that have been in place for at least 50 years. Since the Soviet Union fell in the 1990s, Cuba has fallen on hard times, but it is still an enemy.

Africa is fairly dormant though Somalia has fallen to the Islamofascists. The U.S. has conspicuously done little to relieve the horrors in Darfur, inflicted by the Muslim Sudanese government. Overall, there is little likelihood that the U.S. will become embroiled in a war in Africa. It too is a significant source of oil.

If there is a common theme to our present threat levels, it is oil and, more precisely, the failure since the 1970s of the U.S. to access the abundant reserves of our own oil in the interior of the nation and from its offshore continental shelf. Since the Obama administration is hell bent on covering the U.S. with wind turbines and solar panels, we shall remain hostage to oil-producing nations.

The enemy that is only beginning to make himself known to Americans is President Barack Obama who has swiftly created an administration that ignores its many cabinet departments in favor of “czars” that have been ceded power over all elements of our nation. They rarely hold any press conferences, nor do they seem responsive to the inquiries of Congress. The only function of the cabinet secretaries appears to be to stand behind the President when he makes various announcements. No wonder he greeted Hugo Chavez with a big smile.

Taking control of automobile companies is unconstitutional. Giving bailouts to them is unconstitutional. Permitting the Federal Reserve to print money without regard to the inflationary impact this will have is reckless. Voting for a “stimulus” bill without reading or even debating it is reckless. Running up the national debt is reckless. Putting the value of the U.S. dollar in doubt is criminal negligence.

Trying to take over the nation’s health systems and to require all Americans to purchase health insurance flies in the face of free market capitalism and cedes control over the most intimate aspects of our lives to the government.

We now have a Homeland Security Department that identifies any American who disagrees with the Obama administration as an “extremist.” This includes people who oppose abortions, oppose illegal immigration, support the Second Amendment right to own and bear weapons, and veterans returning from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Terrorism is no longer part of its vocabulary, but “man-caused disasters” is.

If Americans don’t besiege and change Congress to reverse these assaults on the economy and the Constitution, this nation will fail and our liberties will be memories.

Putin v. Obama: Change is Stressful

By Alan Caruba

New times, we’re told, call for new thinking. Out with the old and in with the new. In America’s case, the new is President Obama. For the Russians in charge of the former Soviet Union it means figuring out who the new guy is.

For someone who spent most of his life during the Cold War, I have an almost nostalgic feeling about it. One knew who the enemy was and it was the Soviet Union. With the fall of the Berlin Wall and collapse of the Soviet Union there was a feeling that a new, democratic Russia would replace it and, in many ways a new Russia has emerged.

I have a friend who visited Moscow in 2004 and again in 2008. Jim Camp is an internationally recognized negotiation coach. He described the difference that four years made as that of night and day. It was a grim place in 2004 but by 2008 he felt like he was in New York, a bustling city where Russians in the streets were smiling. CNN, he told me, is watched by everyone and English is a second language to Russians right down to taxi drivers.
(Read his commentary here)

In a recent article published in Yezhednevny Zhurnal, Alexander Goltz asked “Why is Russia’s leadership so annoyed with Obama?” Given his commentary’s open criticism of the Putin regime, one can see that some progress has been made.

Speaking of the televised inauguration of President Obama, Goltz reported that “I observed Russian journalists from the four government-controlled, nationally syndicated channels racking their brains, trying to outdo each other in slinging mud at the inaugural ceremonies.” Americans were described as “airheads” who had been duped by the Obama campaign propaganda. “Which begs the question: how has Obama—who has yet to do anything, good or bad—managed to irritate the Russian elite?”

Even a former foreign minister, Yevgeny Primakov, no fan of the U.S., was “amazed at the fact that nobody in Moscow is rejoicing over the complete absence of Neoconservatives (who swarmed around Bush and informed his foreign policy) in Obama’s circle.”

“As ridiculous as it might seem,” concluded Goltz, “I think it is because he is black.”

Whew! How politically incorrect can you get, but Goltz pushed on to say that the Russian governing elite have “an abiding conviction” that everything in the U.S. is the same as in Russia, i.e., “manipulated elections, strict control over the media, corruption, and nationalism. The Americans are just better at covering it up.”

Putin, like Bush, was operating from a Cold War frame of mind and both, in that respect, thought that they understood each other though Bush became less enamored of Putin over the years. It may account for why the invasion of Georgia caused so little alarm in U.S. foreign policy circles. The Russians were being Russians! And, having invaded Iraq and Afghanistan, the U.S. was in no position to criticize,

It will probably require another generation or two of Russians before they finally let go of their fantasies about America and engage us and the rest of the world as a normal nation among nations. “Trust, but verify” said Ronald Reagan when dealing with the Russians. It’s still a good policy.

Whether President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton can establish some new diplomatic rapport with Putin and his colleagues will be interesting to watch.

A Map of Freedom or the Lack of It

By Alan Caruba

Every July, Freedom House, an organization that tracks the progress or the lack of freedom around the world, releases a map that identifies those nations where freedom exists and where it does not.

Find it here: http://www.freedomhouse.org/template.cfm?page=363&year=2008

A copy of this map should be sent to the incoming Obama administration, starting with the President, because it makes it instantly clear as to where the problems of the world exist and where the enemies of freedom live, scheme, and control the lives of billions.

All of the North American continent and much of the South American continent is free. That is to say its nations practice democracy and exercise the rule of law. Exceptions to the rule are all found south of the U.S. border. Venezuela, Columbia, Bolivia, Ecuador, and Paraguay, are deemed to be “partly free” along with a string of Latin American nations between Mexico and Panama. Cuba, of course, is not free at all.

As one casts one’s eyes over the map, it is abundantly clear that large sections of the world, primarily Russia and China, are deemed “not free.” The entire Middle East with the exception of Israel, Jordan and Turkey is considered “not free.” It will be interesting to see the July 2009 map and its judgment on Iraq. If it is deemed free or even partly free, it will be the first time in at least three decades or longer. Thank you Uncle Sam!

The continent of Africa is a patchwork quilt of nations that are free, partly free, and not free. Those across the northern part, Algeria, Libya, and Egypt are not free. Moving south, you can add the Sudan, Chad, the Congo, Angola, and the most accursed of all, Zimbabwe. Somalia barely passes for a nation these days. The most obvious factor uniting these freedom-hating nations is that all are Muslim.

The least prosperous nations, in terms of how their wealth is distributed among their population, are those under the rule of communism or Islam. Some nations, of course, are “oil rich” but Venezuela stands out as an example of how one can be both oil rich and still have a population rendered dirt poor by communism.

Cuba, once a thriving tourist destination, producer of sugar and fine cigars, could be a lot better off economically if it wasn’t communist. It is barely ninety miles off the coast of Florida. It began its descent in 1959 when Fidel Castro took over. It was previously run by another despot named Batista. With the exception of Haiti, most of the Caribbean nations are relatively free.

The European nations enjoy freedom. Great Britain, the home of the Magna Carta, is free and it is obvious that former British colonies, such as Australia, South Africa, and India, are free nations too. Japan is free because the U.S. conquered it and, after World War II, stuck around to ensure it had a constitution and learned how to apply democracy. We did the same with South Korea.

It took five years, but Iraq looks like it’s on its way to establishing a degree of freedom that does not exist in other Middle Eastern nations. Next door in Syria, the Baath Party is still in power under Bashar al-Asad, the son of the former dictator. Syria continues to threaten Lebanon, a nation that used to be run by a coalition of five powerful families that ensured peace and prosperity. Those days are long gone and Hezbollah, an Iranian puppet group of Palestinian terrorists, controls it today. Both now threaten Israel.

Americans today, who live in freedom because so many of their countrymen were willing to fight and die to preserve and protect it, are often criticized for sending their countrymen to far-off places like Iraq to spread freedom and for maintaining a military presence on the high seas and on bases around the world. It is obvious, though, if one looks at the map, that Americans are the world’s greatest hope of freedom.

It is only by extending freedom, creating and encouraging new functioning republics, aiding struggling, but real republics, and never failing to speak out against injustices in those nations that masquerade as being free, that we will ultimately protect our own freedom.

America is, astoundingly, the oldest functioning republic on Earth. We date our birth from the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776, but the real birthday of America was June 21, 1788 when the Constitution became effective. It became a beacon of freedom when the Bill of Rights, the first ten Amendments, was ratified on December 15, 1791.

The first job of every American is to read, understand, and then demand that our elected leaders act within the limits imposed by the U.S. Constitution. It is not a blank check. It has, quite frankly, been chewed to bits by those we have sent to Congress since early in the last century. If or when it ceases to function as intended, Americans will cease to be free.

The More He Talks, the Worse it Gets for Him

By Alan Caruba

Does it strike anyone as ironic that the more Barack Obama talks, the worse it gets for him?

Here’s a guy who can deliver a teleprompter speech with great power, but who has trouble answering simple questions.

Pastor Rick Warren of the Saddleback Church charitably called his responses, “nuanced.”

Others characterize them as lies.

Barack Obama has a very big problem. He is trying to explain away his radical positions on some issues that are very important to various sectors of the voting public. He won’t say he’s pro-choice on the abortion issue. He dances around favoring gay marriages. He calls for “change” but the change he wants is higher taxes for everyone and as Mr. Straight Talk, John McCain, so bluntly puts it, he’s for “defeat” in Iraq.

We have all met the Barack Obama’s of the world. They are smooth. From the moment they meet you they’re your best friend. If you’re doing business with them and you read the small print, you’re likely to decide you really don’t want the deal.

The small print so far in Obama’s life has been his wife’s hardcore racism when it comes to white people. The small print, with a few exceptions like the revelations concerning Rev. Jeremiah Wright, ex-Weather Underground terrorist, Bill Ayers, and financial supporter, convicted real estate developer, Tony Rezko, does not include his very Muslim family relatives in Kenya and who-knows-who else will crawl out to bite him.

Bill Clinton survived longtime girlfriend and lover, Jennifer Flowers, but Obama is not likely to be so lucky.

Barack Obama’s real problem, however, is that the more people hear him speak, the less inclined they are to buy his “audacity of hope” because, like most of us, there are some serious problems like the cost of filling the car’s gas tank. Blaming “Big Oil” is nowhere near an answer when the obvious one is to drill here in America for our own abundant oil reserves.

“Clean energy” is another one of those catch phrases that no longer resonates with people who have figured out that wind and solar won’t keep the lights on. If "global warming" is mentioned, you will be able to hear the snickers resonate from coast to coast.

Hope does not stop illegal aliens at the border. Hope will not save Social Security or Medicare. Hope will not change Vladimir Putin's ambitions nor those of Mamoud Amadinejad and Hugo Chavez.

As far as the economy is concerned, simply taxing everyone and redistributing the money is not a popular notion these days. Hope is a fine thing, but it doesn't generate jobs.

I, for one, am looking forward to the Democrat Party convention in Denver next week. I want to hear what Hillary Clinton, Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter, John Kerry, Nancy Pelosi, and a roll call of fervent liberals have to say about the future. If these Democrats talk a lot of environmental nonsense or badmouth America, the Republicans hardly need even hold a convention. They will be able to phone it in.

I want to hear what Barack Obama has to say. If it’s more of the same grandiose rhetoric about hope and change, he’s on his way to being a footnote in some future history book. My guess is that Obama thinks he’s smart and that the rest of us are just so stupid that he can talk his way into the White House.

He’s wrong.

Vladimir Putin Elects John McCain

By Alan Caruba

I had the odd thought while watching the news coverage of the Russian invasion of Georgia that Vladimir Putin had locked up the election for John McCain.

Earlier I thought that President Bush had partially handed over the Oval Office when he announced in effect that U.S. troops would begin to come out of Iraq in the foreseeable future. That pretty much took that issue off the table for Barack Obama.

Obama had shot to the top of the Democrat heap of candidates by emphasizing he had been against the Iraq war from the days before he was elected Senator. Then, after that, Barack managed to find it in his heart to vote for every funding bill involving the war. This has come to be called “refining” his views. Indeed, one can witness Obama refine his views on almost any issue between breakfast and dinner.

I am pretty sure that Vladimir Putin wasn’t thinking “This is a sure way to remind everyone we live in a dangerous world, filled with people like myself who actually want to go to war if it involves a very small nation that can’t fight back.”

The net effect of the Russian invasion of Georgia was to remind anyone over the age of 65 that the United States, following World War Two, was locked into a Cold War with Russia for nearly fifty years. During that time, there were a number of hot wars as well.

I have an older brother who served in the U.S. Army during the Korean War and, in 1962, I can remember being in Fort Benning, Georgia, getting ready to don full battle gear in the event the Russians tried to run the Cuban “missile crisis” blockade that President Kennedy had imposed. You don’t forget stuff like that.

And, of course, you don’t forget seven years of the Vietnam War stretching from Kennedy to Nixon. That was a proxy war, albeit a civil war. Even I participated in peace marches around the Washington Monument to get an end to that confrontation.

I have a feeling that Americans have mostly forgotten the fear that gripped us all on 9/11. If you lived or worked in New York, you were always scanning the sky for another wayward jet airliner. Soon enough we were laughing at the Homeland Security alert colors. The problem, however, is that we are still locked into a war with Islamic fundamentalists and are likely to be for a very long time to come.

Yes, there actually is a reason we have troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.

While the conflict in Georgia is occurring someplace most Americans could not find on the map, the video coverage of the long convoys of Russian troop carriers and tanks are a vivid reminder of the ugliness of war and the potential for an attack from anywhere at any time.

Ever since it became obvious that the U.S. had finally begun to win the war in Iraq, all coverage of that conflict disappeared from our television screens and the front pages of our daily newspapers.

The Georgia conflict is the kind of thing that influences voters; as well it should. Somewhere in the back of our minds we all know that McCain is an Annapolis graduate who fought in the Vietnam War and survived brutal treatment as a prisoner. Some of us may even know he comes from a family whose men served our nation in war going back to World War I.

The contrast between the statements issued by McCain and Obama was significant. McCain’s was clearly a strong denunciation of the Russians while Obama whimpered about the importance of the Russians and Georgians sitting down over a cup of tea to work things out.

So, thank you, Vladimir Putin. My guess is you just got John McCain elected.

Pleading the Russian Cause

By Alan Caruba

By August 12 former president of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev’s opinion piece was in The Washington Post and by the next day in my daily newspaper in New Jersey as he pled the case for Russia.

Turns out, the massive troop movement into Georgia, a tiny nation on the border of the Russian Federation, the air assault, and the Russian navy just offshore, was all Georgia’s fault.

“The root of this tragedy lie in the decision of Georgia’s separatist leaders in 1991 to abolish South Ossetian autonomy.” Then, according to Gorbachev, on August 7 “The Georgian military attacked the South Ossetian capital of Tskhinvali with multiple rocket launchers designed to devastate large areas.”

“Russia had to respond.”

Naturally, Russia had to respond with a remarkably well coordinated attack during the Olympic Games while much of the world was distracted, while the U.S. Congress was in recess, and while many younger Americans were trying to figure out where Georgia was and why they should care.

Not to overstate the reasons why the U.S. is also probably to blame for all this, Gorbachev noted that “Georgian armed forces were trained by hundreds of U.S. instructors” and “By declaring the Caucasus, a region that is thousands of miles from the American continent, a sphere of its ‘national interest’, the United States made a serious blunder.”

The United States regarded South Korea, when it was attacked by Stalinist North Korea, a national interest and felt the same about Vietnam. It has protected Taiwan. It liberated Grenada when communists attempted to turn it into another Cuba and it rid itself of a drug lord in Panama who was also that nation’s president. More recently, it felt its national interests were well served by chasing the Taliban out of Afghanistan (they’re back) and deposing the Iraqi despot, Saddam Hussein, best known for starting wars with both Iran and Kuwait.

America has an interest in the entire world. It has been instrumental in helping many nations establish democratic governments. Our military plays a training and protective role in numerous nations.

That old guy, John McCain, a Senator who has actually been to Georgia, issued a lengthy statement regarding the Russian invasion in which he said, "Americans wishing to spend August vacationing with their families or watching the Olympics may wonder why their newspapers and television screens are filled with images of war in the small country of Georgia. Concerns about what occurs there might seem distant and unrelated to the many other interests America has around the world. And yet Russian aggression against Georgia is both a matter of urgent moral and strategic importance to the United States of America.

"Georgia is an ancient country, at the crossroads of Eastern Europe and Central Asia, and one of the world's first nations to adopt Christianity as an official religion. After a brief period of independence following the Russian revolution, the Red Army forced Georgia to join the Soviet Union in 1922. As the Soviet Union crumbled at the end of the Cold War, Georgia regained its independence in 1991, but its early years were marked by instability, corruption, and economic crises.”

http://www.johnmccain.com/Informing/News/PressReleases/Read.aspx?guid=612817d8-e377-44df-9ebe-aca0ea95e945

Reading Sen. McCain’s entire statement will tell you more about the real situation than you are likely to read in any U.S. newspaper since quite a few choose to ignore it.

The real blunder would be to forget the nearly fifty years of the Cold War between the former Soviet Union and the United States or to overlook the way Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has steadily replaced the Soviet Union with a comparable autocratic government that does not hesitate to murder Russian journalists who print the truth or Russian dissidents overseas who might expose it.

We have returned to the Bad Old Days of the Russian Bear doing what it has always done; forcibly subjugating nations on its borders.

What I find disturbing is how swift some U.S. daily newspapers were to publish the “party line” by a former leading participant in Soviet hegemony. The more things change, the more they remain the same.

Russian Pride, Russian Power

By Alan Caruba

“Under Vladimir Putin, Russia has taken a giant step backwards into its Soviet past, and nowhere is this more evident than in the realm of energy politics. Modern Russian politics and energy sources, first oil and then both oil and gas, have been inextricably connected in a way unmatched by any other major power in the history of the world.”

That’s how Michael J. Economides and Donna Marie D’Aleo open their book, “From Soviet to Putin and Back: The Dominance of Energy in Today’s Russia.”

Central to the Russian psyche is its preference for strong leadership and, after what the Russians considered to have been the embarrassment of Gorbachev and Yeltsin, it was Putin who tapped into this centuries old desire for a Tsar. Secondary to that was the massive feeling of wounded pride when the old Soviet Union collapsed. Imagine being raised to believe that Communism was a superior economic and social system, only to discover that it was no match for the capitalism of the West?

The Soviet Union fell because, in the end, it was heavily, if not entirely, dependent on the sale of that nation’s vast oil and gas reserves. The fall in the price per barrel did in the Soviet Union and you can thank Ronald Reagan for that because it was he who hatched the plot with the King of Saudi Arabia to make it happen. Cheap oil thanks to Saudi production in the 1980s kept the price low. Soviet revenues declined.

Pride and the price of oil are surely part of the reason Russian troops are in Georgia today. The Russians want Georgia back under their control and are not unmindful that control of the pipeline that runs through Georgia would increase the power they already hold over Europe as its chief supplier of oil and gas.

Americans are awakening these days to some rude lessons about energy. If, for example, Congress refuses for some three decades to permit drilling where billions of barrels of American oil exists and refuses to permit exploration for more oil off the continental shelf, you end up paying up to $4.00 for a gallon of gasoline because you’re importing 60% or more of what you need from foreign sources.

Not all the corn grown in America could ever replace the amount of gasoline we require for a nation that virtually runs on the wheels of trucks and whose business is conducted by people accustomed to climbing on and off jet airliners. Not all the wind turbines or solar panels will ever provide the electricity we get from “dirty” coal or the 20% we get from “clean” nuclear power.

“The search for, and control of energy resources, have been central to major world conflicts, including both World Wars and other global conflicts and civil wars,” the book’s authors remind us.

The Russians understand that, even if Americans do not. War weary after five years in Iraq, a nation that sits atop the second largest reserves of oil in the Middle East, too many Americans are still too eager to castigate President Bush for ridding that region of the single most destabilizing force in modern times, Saddam Hussein. In the process, the projection of U.S. power has accelerated the degradation of the non-state menace of al Qaeda.

My guess—and that’s all it is—is that Europe and the U.S. will cede Georgia to Russia because there is no compelling reason to go to war over it. The failure to incorporate Georgia into NATO was, in retrospect, poor judgment. One wonders how fast the Ukraine’s application will be processed. The European Union is hardly a military power. The Russians sit on the United Nations Security Council and are not likely to welcome anything more than a weak protest.

The world has returned to the bad old days of the Cold War where two great powers competed, the United States and Russia. The Russians are pumping their own oil and gas reserves, earning handsome revenues in the global marketplace.

Meanwhile, back in the United States, the two Democrat leaders in Congress are more concerned about “saving the planet” from a non-existent global warming than in protecting our national interests. The Democrat candidate for President would be more at home in the Russian Duma discussing the redistribution of wealth and the creation of social programs than in defending the republic.

Georgia On My Mind

By Alan Caruba

Considering what was happening in a secessionist part of Georgia, invaded by Russia, the sight of President Bush and Prime Minister Putin chatting amiably Friday night at the opening of the Olympic Games was fairly astonishing. Russian troops were in the process of invading Georgia and their planes were even bombing Gori, the birthplace of Joseph Stalin.

Of course, it was Stalin who was not much upset when thousands of Georgians starved to death in the course of his advancing the power of the Communist Party over Russia and what came to be known as its satellite nations.

I had a brief mental picture of people running up and down the halls of the NATO headquarters in a panic until I realized that Georgia was not a part of NATO. What this means is that Europeans will watch from the sidelines as Russian tanks reassert their hegemony.

What is not known as this is written is whether the Russians will settle for taking South Ossetia away from Georgia. It is, not surprisingly, just across the border from North Ossetia.

What we do know is that the Russian army is very good at reducing to rubble anything they want. They wanted to retain Chechnya and they still have it. It’s mostly burnt out structural skeletons of buildings, but it still Russian burnt out structural skeletons of buildings.

As for the rest of Georgia, President Bush’s demeanor suggests that Vladimir told him that all those tanks, planes and troops are in South Ossetia purely for the purpose of liberating its people from the evil Georgians and that they—the Russians—don’t intend to grab any more land for now.

So it looks like the dogs of war will not be loosed upon the continent of Europe and the missiles will not be flying as was the fear from the bad old days of the Cold War. Wars are expensive and Russia is living mostly off its oil and gas revenues. There’s simply no point to expand this military adventure.

Moreover, they know the Europeans will stamp their feet and then do nothing. The parliament of the European Union may even convene a meeting for ten minutes or so to discuss the problem and then break for lunch.

Americans who invaded and have occupied Iraq since 2003 are not in a strong moral position to protest too loudly. And, anyway, who ever heard of the city of Abkhazia before last Friday?