Category: Free Speech

“A Regime that Survived through Myth and Fear”

(p. 4) It’s an old Soviet joke.

Three Russians are in the gulag. The first one says, “What are you in for?”
The second one replies, “I called Zbarsky a revolutionary.”
“That’s funny,” the first one says. “I called Zbarsky a counterrevolutionary.”
“That’s funny,” the third one says. “I’m Zbarsky.”
Vern Thiessen’s new play, “Lenin’s Embalmers,” which starts on Wednesday at the Ensemble Studio Theater in Clinton, opens with the ghost of Lenin telling this joke as a parable of the mordant doom pervading the Communist state he created.
In real life the joke wasn’t specifically about Zbarsky. You could insert any of Stalin’s thousands of lackeys turned victims. Certainly Zbarsky would do. Boris Zbarsky was a real person, one of the two biochemists who, after Lenin died in 1924, were ordered by the Kremlin to devise a way of preserving his body forever.
He and his colleague, Vladimir Vorobiev — the play’s main characters — succeeded spectacularly, won fortune and power, then fell from grace into the terror, like many others who served a regime that survived through myth and fear.
. . .
The new work, written as a stylized dark comedy, takes only a few liberties with history. It has Zbarsky and Vorobiev arrested after they’re tricked into betraying each other. In fact Mr. Vorobiev died in a hospital, under mysterious circumstances, in 1937. Mr. Zbarsky was arrested in 1952; he was freed two years later, after Stalin’s death, and died of a seizure soon after. Still, betrayals and trumped-up confessions were common in the era.

For the full review, see:
FRED KAPLAN. “He’s Had Work: Preserving the Face of a Revolution.” The New York Times, Arts&Leisure Section (Sun., February 28, 2010): 4.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the article is dated February 23 (sic), 2010.)

“How Am I Going to Live without Google?”

GoogleChinaFlowers2010-01-25.jpg “A woman examined bouquets and messages left by Google users on Wednesday outside the Internet search company’s headquarters in Beijing.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article cited way below (after the citation to the quoted article, which is a different article).

David Smick in The World as Curved, has suggested that restrictions on the internet in China, limit entrepreneurship, and ultimately economic growth.

(p. 5) BEIJING — At the elite Tsinghua University here, some students were joking Friday that they had better download all the Internet information they wanted now in case Google left the country.

But to many of the young, well-educated Chinese who are Google’s loyal users here, the company’s threat to leave is in fact no laughing matter. Interviews in Beijing’s downtown and university district indicated that many viewed the possible loss of Google’s maps, translation service, sketching software, access to scholarly papers and search function with real distress.
“How am I going to live without Google?” asked Wang Yuanyuan, a 29-year-old businessman, as he left a convenience store in Beijing’s business district.
. . .
Li An, a Tsinghua University senior, said she used to download episodes of “Desperate Housewives” and “Grey’s Anatomy” from sites run by BT China that are now closed. “I love American television series,” she said with frustration during a pause from studying Japanese at a university fast-food restaurant on Friday.
The loss of Google would hit her much harder, she said, because she relies on Google Scholar to download academic papers for her classes in polymer science. “For me, this is terrible,” Ms. Li said.
Some students contend that even after Google pulls out, Internet space will continue to shrink. Until now, Google has shielded Baidu by manning the front line in the censorship battle, said a 20-year-old computer science major at Tsinghua.
“Without Google, Baidu will be very easy to manipulate,” he said. “I don’t want to see this trend.”
A 21-year old civil engineering student predicted a strong reaction against the government. “If Google really leaves, people will feel the government has gone too far,” he insisted over lunch in the university cafe.
But asked whether that reaction would influence the government to soften its policies, he concentrated on his French fries. “I really don’t know,” he said.

For the full story, see:
SHARON LaFRANIERE. “Google Users in China, Mostly Young and Educated, Fear Losing Important Tool.” The New York Times, First Section (Sun., January 17, 2010): 5.
(Note: the online version of the article has the title “China at Odds With Future in Internet Fight” and is dated January 16, 2010.)
(Note: ellipsis added.)

The source of the photo at the top is the online version of:
KEITH BRADSHER and DAVID BARBOZA. “Google Is Not Alone in Discontent, But Its Threat Stands Out.” The New York Times (Thurs., January 13, 2010): B1 & B4.
(Note: the online version of the article has the slightly different title “Google Is Not Alone in Discontent, But Its Threat to Leave Stands Out” and is dated January 14, 2010.)

The reference to the Smick book is:
Smick, David M. The World Is Curved: Hidden Dangers to the Global Economy. New York: Portfolio Hardcover, 2008.

Socialist Chávez Quashes Free Speech in Venezuela

Here is evidence of the continuing relevance of Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom:

(p. A5) CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — A cable television channel that has been critical of President Hugo Chávez was taken off the air on Sunday after defying new government regulations requiring it to televise some of Mr. Chávez’s speeches.

Venezuelan cable and satellite television providers stopped transmitting the channel, Radio Caracas Television, after it did not broadcast a speech by Mr. Chávez on Saturday at a rally of political supporters.
. . .
. . . the cable channel, known as RCTV, said the telecommunications agency “doesn’t have any authority to give the cable service providers this order.” It said in a statement, “The government is inappropriately pressuring them to make decisions beyond their responsibilities.”
The channel switched to cable in 2007 after the government refused to renew its license to broadcast on the regular airwaves.

For the full story, see:
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS. “Cable TV Station Critical of Chávez Is Shut Down.” The New York Times (Mon., January 25, 2010): A5.
(Note: the online version of the article has the date January 24, 2010.)
(Note: ellipses added.)

Reference for Hayek book:
Hayek, Friedrich A. Von. The Road to Serfdom. Chicago: Univ of Chicago Press, 1944.

Global Warming “Consensus” Achieved by Suppressing Skeptical Research

(p. A25) When scientists make putative compendia of that literature, such as is done by the U.N. climate change panel every six years, the writers assume that the peer-reviewed literature is a true and unbiased sample of the state of climate science.

That can no longer be the case. The alliance of scientists at East Anglia, Penn State and the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (in Boulder, Colo.) has done its best to bias it.
A refereed journal, Climate Research, published two particular papers that offended Michael Mann of Penn State and Tom Wigley of the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research. One of the papers, published in 2003 by Willie Soon and Sallie Baliunas (of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics), was a meta-analysis of dozens of “paleoclimate” studies that extended back 1,000 years. They concluded that 20th-century temperatures could not confidently be considered to be warmer than those indicated at the beginning of the last millennium.
In fact, that period, known as the “Medieval Warm Period” (MWP), was generally considered warmer than the 20th century in climate textbooks and climate compendia, including those in the 1990s from the IPCC.
Then, in 1999, Mr. Mann published his famous “hockey stick” article in Geophysical Research Letters (GRL), which, through the magic of multivariate statistics and questionable data weighting, wiped out both the Medieval Warm Period and the subsequent “Little Ice Age” (a cold period from the late 16th century to the mid-19th century), leaving only the 20th-century warming as an anomaly of note.
Messrs. Mann and Wigley also didn’t like a paper I published in Climate Research in 2002. It said human activity was warming surface temperatures, and that this was consistent with the mathematical form (but not the size) of projections from computer models. Why? The magnitude of the warming in CRU’s own data was not as great as in the models, so therefore the models merely were a bit enthusiastic about the effects of atmospheric carbon dioxide.
Mr. Mann called upon his colleagues to try and put Climate Research out of business. “Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues in the climate research community to no longer submit to, or cite papers in, this journal,” he wrote in one of the emails. “We would also need to consider what we tell or request of our more reasonable colleagues who currently sit on the editorial board.”
After Messrs. Jones and Mann threatened a boycott of publications and reviews, half the editorial board of Climate Research resigned. People who didn’t toe Messrs. Wigley, Mann and Jones’s line began to experience increasing difficulty in publishing their results.

For the full commentary, see:
PATRICK J. MICHAELS. “OPINION; How to Manufacture a Climate Consensus; The East Anglia emails are just the tip of the iceberg.” The Wall Street Journal (Fri., DECEMBER 18, 2009): A25.
(Note: the online version of the article is dated DECEMBER 17, 2009.)

“Today You Can Be What You Want to Be”

CzechDemonstrator1989-11-25.jpg“In this Nov. 25, 1989, file photo a Czech demonstrator overcome by emotion after hearing about the resignation of the Central Committee of the Communist Party in Prague.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. A16) . . . Mirek Kodym, 56, a ponytailed former security guard who published illegal political and literary tracts before 1989 and marched on Tuesday as he had 20 years ago, said the Velvet Revolution had been a seminal moment in which a beleaguered nation had finally tasted freedom.

“Today you can be what you want to be and do what you want to do, and no one will interfere,” he said. “The nostalgia for the past is a stupid thing.”

For the full story, see:
DAN BILEFSKY. “Celebrating Revolution With Roots in a Rumor.” The New York Times (Weds., November 18, 2009): A16.
(Note: the online version of the article is dated November 17, 2009.)
(Note: ellipsis added.)

CzechVelvetRevolutionCandles2009-12-20.jpg“The former Czech Republic’s president Vaclav Havel, background center, with a red scarf, placed a candle at a commemoration of the so-called Velvet Revolution, in Prague on Tuesday.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited above.

Castro Agents Beat Up Cuban Blogger

SanchezYoaniCubanBlogger2009-12-19.jpg“Blogger Yoani Sánchez speaks at home in Havana on Monday, days after she says she was beaten by Cuban agents.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the WSJ article quoted and cited below.

(p. A14) Yoani Sánchez, Cuba’s most prominent dissident blogger, was walking along a Havana street last Friday along with two other bloggers and a friend when two men she says were Cuban agents in civilian clothes forced her inside an unmarked black car and beat her, telling her to stop criticizing the government.

The assault, believed to be the first against the growing blogger movement on the island, has cast a spotlight on the country’s record of repression, highlighting how little change there has been in political freedoms during the nearly three years since Raúl Castro took over as president from retired dictator Fidel Castro.
A decline in tourism revenues from the global recession and damage from several hurricanes last year have prompted the island’s government to clamp down even harder on dissent and freedom of speech, according to a recent report by the Inter American Press Association, a watchdog group.
The group said Cuba currently has 26 journalists in jail, and it cited 102 incidents against Cuban journalists in the past year, including beatings, arbitrary arrests and death threats.

For the full story, see:
DAVID LUHNOW. “Beating Rattles Cuban Bloggers.” The Wall Street Journal (Weds., NOVEMBER 11, 2009): A14.
(Note: the online version of the article is dated NOVEMBER 12, 2009.)

“When the Sons of the Communists Themselves Wanted to Become Capitalists and Entrepreneurs”

JanicekJosefPlasticPeople2009-12-19.jpg“Josef Janicek, 61, was on the keyboard for a concert in Prague last week by the band Plastic People of the Universe.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. A10) PRAGUE — It has been called the Velvet Revolution, a revolution so velvety that not a single bullet was fired.

But the largely peaceful overthrow of four decades of Communism in Czechoslovakia that kicked off on Nov. 17, 1989, can also be linked decades earlier to a Velvet Underground-inspired rock band called the Plastic People of the Universe. Band members donned satin togas, painted their faces with lurid colors and wrote wild, sometimes angry, incendiary songs.
It was their refusal to cut their long, dank hair; their willingness to brave prison cells rather than alter their darkly subversive lyrics (“peace, peace, peace, just like toilet paper!”); and their talent for tapping into a generation’s collective despair that helped change the future direction of a nation.
“We were unwilling heroes who just wanted to play rock ‘n’ roll,” said Josef Janicek, 61, the band’s doughy-faced keyboard player, who bears a striking resemblance to John Lennon and still sports the grungy look that once helped get him arrested. “The Bolsheviks understood that culture and music has a strong influence on people, and our refusal to compromise drove them insane.”
. . .
In 1970, the Communist government revoked the license for the Plastics to perform in public, forcing the band to go underground. In February 1976, the Plastic People organized a music festival in the small town of Bojanovice — dubbed “Magor’s Wedding” — featuring 13 other bands. One month later, the police set out to silence the musical rebels, arresting dozens. Mr. Janicek was jailed for six months; Mr. Jirous and other band members got longer sentences.
Mr. Havel, already a leading dissident, was irate. The trial of the Plastic People that soon followed became a cause célèbre.
Looking back on the Velvet Revolution they helped inspire, however indirectly, Mr. Janicek recalled that on Nov. 17, 1989, the day of mass demonstrations, he was in a pub nursing a beer. He argued that the revolution had been an evolution, fomented by the loosening of Communism’s grip under Mikhail Gorbachev and the overwhelming frustration of ordinary people with their grim, everyday lives. “The Bolsheviks knew the game was up,” he said, “when the sons of the Communists themselves wanted to become capitalists and entrepreneurs.”

For the full story, see:
DAN BILEFSKY. “Czechs’ Velvet Revolution Paved by Plastic People.” The New York Times (Mon., November 16, 2009): A10.
(Note: the online version of the article is dated November 15, 2009.)
(Note: ellipsis added.)

“Market Wu” Annoys Maoists and Corrupt Bureaucrats

WuJinnglian2009-10-24.jpg “Wu Jinglian helped to create China’s market economy, and now he is defending it against conservative hardliners in the Communist Party.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. 1) AT 79, Wu Jinglian is considered China’s most famous economist.

In the 1980s and ’90s, he was an adviser to China’s leaders, including Deng Xiaoping. He helped push through some of this country’s earliest market reforms, paving the way for China’s spectacular rise and earning him the nickname “Market Wu.”
Last year, China’s state-controlled media slapped him with a new moniker: spy.
Mr. Wu has not been interrogated, charged or imprisoned. But the fact that a state newspaper, The People’s Daily, among others, was allowed to publish Internet rumors alleging that he had been detained on suspicions of being a spy for the United States hints that he is annoying some very important people in the government.
He denied the allegations, and soon after they were published, China’s cabinet denied that an investigation was under way.
But in a country that often jails critics, Mr. Wu seems to be testing the limits of what Beijing deems permissible. While many economists argue that China’s growth model is flawed, rarely does a prominent Chinese figure, in the government or out, speak with such candor about flaws he sees in China’s leadership.
Mr. Wu — who still holds a research post at an institute affiliated with the State Council, China’s cabinet — has white hair and an amiable face, and he appears frail. But his assessments are often harsh. In books, speeches, interviews and television appearances, he warns that conservative hardliners in the Communist Party have gained influence in the government and are trying to dismantle the market reforms he helped formulate.
He complains that business tycoons and corrupt officials have hijacked the economy and manipulated it for their own ends, a system he calls crony capitalism. He has even called on Beijing to establish a British-style democracy, arguing that political reform is inevitable.
Provocative statements have made him a kind of dissident economist here, and revealed the sharp debates behind the scenes, at the highest levels of the Communist Party, about the direction of China’s half-market, half-socialist economy.
In many ways, it is a continuation of the debate that has been raging for three decades: What role should the government play in China’s hybrid economy?
Mr. Wu says the spy rumors were “dirty tricks” employed by his critics to discredit him.
“I have two enemies,” he said in a recent interview. “The crony capitalists and the Maoists. They will use any means to attack me.”
. . .
(p. 7) In interviews, Mr. Wu says he feels compelled to speak out because conservatives and “old-style Maoists” have been gaining influence in the government since 2004. These groups, he said, are pressing for a return to central planning and placing blame for corruption and social inequality on the very market reforms he championed.
At the same time, Mr. Wu says, corrupt bureaucrats are pushing for the state to take a larger economic role so they can cash in on their positions through payoffs and bribes, as well as by steering business to allies.
“I’m not optimistic about the future,” Mr. Wu said. “The Maoists want to go back to central planning and the cronies want to get richer.”

For the full story, see:
DAVID BARBOZA. “China’s Mr. Wu Keeps Talking.” The New York Times, SundayBusiness Section (Sun., September 26, 2009): 1 & 7.
(Note: ellipsis added.)

WuChinaTimeline2009-10-24.jpgSource of timeline graphic: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited above.

Obama EPA Censors Global Warming Skeptic

CarlinAlan2009-07-05.jpg

“Alan Carlin, 35-year Environmental Protection Agency veteran.” Source of caricature and caption: online version of the WSJ article quoted and cited below.

(p. A11) In March, the Obama EPA prepared to engage the global-warming debate in an astounding new way, by issuing an “endangerment” finding on carbon. It establishes that carbon is a pollutant, and thereby gives the EPA the authority to regulate it — even if Congress doesn’t act.

Around this time, Mr. Carlin and a colleague presented a 98-page analysis arguing the agency should take another look, as the science behind man-made global warming is inconclusive at best. The analysis noted that global temperatures were on a downward trend. It pointed out problems with climate models. It highlighted new research that contradicts apocalyptic scenarios. “We believe our concerns and reservations are sufficiently important to warrant a serious review of the science by EPA,” the report read.
The response to Mr. Carlin was an email from his boss, Al McGartland, forbidding him from “any direct communication” with anyone outside of his office with regard to his analysis. When Mr. Carlin tried again to disseminate his analysis, Mr. McGartland decreed: “The administrator and the administration have decided to move forward on endangerment, and your comments do not help the legal or policy case for this decision. . . . I can only see one impact of your comments given where we are in the process, and that would be a very negative impact on our office.” (Emphasis added.)
Mr. McGartland blasted yet another email: “With the endangerment finding nearly final, you need to move on to other issues and subjects. I don’t want you to spend any additional EPA time on climate change. No papers, no research etc, at least until we see what EPA is going to do with Climate.” Ideology? Nope, not here. Just us science folk. Honest.

For the full commentary, see:

KIMBERLEY A. STRASSEL. “OPINION: POTOMAC WATCH; The EPA Silences a Climate Skeptic.” The Wall Street Journal (Fri., JULY 3, 2009): A11.
(Note: ellipsis in original; italics added by Strassel.)

Ukrainian Memorial to the Millions Starved by Stalin’s Communism

FamineMemorialKievUkraine.jpg “A memorial to the famine, right, opposite a revered cathedral, was dedicated last November in Kiev. A museum is planned there.” Source of photo and caption: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. A6) KIEV, Ukraine — A quarter century ago, a Ukrainian historian named Stanislav Kulchytsky was told by his Soviet overlords to concoct an insidious cover-up. His orders: to depict the famine that killed millions of Ukrainians in the early 1930s as unavoidable, like a natural disaster. Absolve the Communist Party of blame. Uphold the legacy of Stalin.
Professor Kulchytsky, though, would not go along.
The other day, as he stood before a new memorial to the victims of the famine, he recalled his decision as one turning point in a movement lasting decades to unearth the truth about that period. And the memorial itself, shaped like a towering candle with a golden eternal flame, seemed to him in some sense a culmination of this effort.
“It is a sign of our respect for the past,” Professor Kulchytsky said. “Because everyone was silent about the famine for many years. And when it became possible to talk about it, nothing was said. Three generations on.”
. . .
The pro-Western government in Kiev, which came to power after the Orange Revolution of 2004, calls the famine a genocide that Stalin ordered because he wanted to decimate the Ukrainian citizenry and snuff out aspirations for independence from Moscow.
The archives make plain that no other conclusion is possible, said Professor Kulchytsky, who is deputy director of the Institute of Ukrainian History in Kiev.
Professor Kulchytsky is 72, though he looks younger, as if he has somehow withstood the draining effect of so much research into the horrors of that time.
“It is difficult to bear,” he acknowledged. “The documents about cannibalism are especially difficult to read.”
Professor Kulchytsky said it was undeniable that people all over the Soviet Union died from hunger in 1932 and 1933 as the Communists waged war on the peasantry to create farming collectives. But he contended that in Ukraine the authorities went much further, essentially quarantining and starving many villages.
“If in other regions, people were hungry and died from famine, then here people were killed by hunger,” Professor Kulchytsky said. “That is the absolute difference.”

For the full story, see:
CLIFFORD J. LEVY. “Kiev Journal – A New View of a Famine That Killed Millions.” The New York Times (Mon., March 16, 2009): A6.
(Note: ellipsis added.)