From the WSJ:

…(E)vidence is piling up that neither government nor multilateral spending on education and infrastructure are key to development. To move out of poverty, countries instead need fast growth; and to get that they need to unleash the animal spirits of entrepreneurs.

Empirical support for this view is presented again this year in The Heritage Foundation/The Wall Street Journal Index of Economic Freedom, released today. In its 14th edition, the annual survey grades countries on a combination of factors including property rights protection, tax rates, government intervention in the economy, monetary, fiscal and trade policy, and business freedom.

The nearby table shows the 2008 rankings but doesn’t tell the whole story. The Index also reports that the freest 20% of the world’s economies have twice the per capita income of those in the second quintile and five times that of the least-free 20%. In other words, freedom and prosperity are highly correlated…

(Click to enlarge)

One thing not mentioned in the article that stands out to me - all of the top 5 and 8 of the top 10 countries were once part of the British Empire (including the UK itself).

Looked at differently, there are about 330MM people in the world who speak English as a first language. 96% of them live in one of the top 10 economically freest countries. Of the other 6.3B people who are not native English speakers, just 0.9% live in one of the top 10. And more than half of those (32MM) are Americans who speak English as a second language.

Seems a pretty strong case for the British tradition of rule of law, individual rights, limited government and capitalism.

Its hard to believe that just 200 years ago that system was locked in mortal struggle with France - the highest ranking representative of that defunct Empire (excluding French Canada) is France itself, #48. And never mind the Soviet/Communist Empire (Russia comes in #134, Cuba edges out North Korea for 2nd to last at #156).

Not sure which way the causation goes, but its noteworthy that the last time one of the top 10 countries (excluding tiny Singapore and Hong Kong) was engaged in a land war on its own territory was 1883 (War of the Pacific - Chile, Bolivia, Peru, 12,000 casualties). The last time for a top 10 country that is also English speaking was the American Civil War. If you want a war in which an English speaking country had a meaningful number of non-English speaking troops on its territory you’d probably have to go back to the American Revolution (French Troops on British Territory). For a major military engagement before that you’re probably talking 1066 or the Vikings.

Seems these countries are pretty good at avoiding or maybe just not stirring up trouble.

Something to remember next time America (or the UK, or Australia) considers outsourcing its international policy making to the UN, or subordinating our own sovereign rights to international treaties and agreements.

Yesterday was the 39th anniversary of Prague Spring, the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia.

The Russian’s celebrated with veiled threats against their former colonial possession. From Reuters:

Russia’s military chief told the Czech Republic it would be making a “big mistake” to host a U.S. missile defense shield on its soil and urged Prague on Tuesday to delay a decision until a new U.S. president is elected.

The Czech Republic is discussing hosting a radar station which would form part of the U.S. missile shield — a system designed to intercept and destroy missiles from “rogues states” but which Moscow sees as a threat to its security.

“We say it will be a big mistake by the Czech government to put this radar site on Czech territory,” said Yuri Baluyevsky, the Russian military chief of staff, after meeting the Czech deputy defense minister, Martin Bartak.

He said the Czech Republic should hold off making a decision until after the U.S. presidential election, scheduled to take place in late 2008. Incumbent George W. Bush will not be running.

Why its any of Russia’s business what purely defensive preparations the Czech Republic makes is an interesting question in itself.

But maybe more interesting is their view of American domestic politics. For some reason they think that a Democratic President will abandon our NATO commitments.

That’s unlikely. Former Soviet allies Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Poland were admitted to NATO (despite strenuous Russian protests) in 1999 during the Clinton Administration. At the time Clinton said:

Today we welcome Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic, finally erasing the boundary the Cold War artificially imposed on the continent of Europe.

The expansion strengthens an alliance that now clearly is better preserved to keep the peace and preserve our security in the 21st century, by giving the 16 current members three new allies ready to contribute troops, technology and ingenuity.

Approval in the Senate was broad and bi-partisan, the treaty passing 80-19.

I seriously doubt a Democratic administration would mean a change in our NATO policy, but for some reason the Russian’s believe otherwise. For some reason they believe that a Democratic president would abandon a formal ally. For some reason they think they think American treaty commitments are worthless. For some reason they think a little intimidation is all it takes to send the US packing.

Maybe that’s because its exactly what the Dems have been telling the world for the last 4 years. I’ve ascribed it to crass political opportunism that would be set aside if the American people gave them responsibility for our national security. Let’s hope we don’t have to find out.

Bill Clinton is addicted to media attention. He ran his own presidency like a 24hr Bill Clinton Variety Show, even stooping so far as to discuss his underwear on TV for a laugh. And the media loved it - a whole generation of political reporters built their careers writing about Oval Office blowjobs and presidential knickers. I think this is one of the reasons much of the media hates Bush so much - what could be more boring that reporting on a President who only talks about policy issues all the time.

Unlike Reagan, Ford, and Bush I, Clinton doesn’t have class or self control to tone it down at all in his post-presidency. And he’s not above directly undermining our national security to grab a bit more spotlight.

Last week he was in Russia, an increasingly assertive and decreasingly democratic country riding high on its oil fueled, centralized economy. Just a few days before Bush was to meet with Putin in what was certain to be a delicate meeting, Clinton decided to toss a curve ball.

Mr. Clinton came down on the side of Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has attacked U.S. plans for 10 missile interceptors in Eastern Europe as a threat to Russian security. “My facts may be wrong, but my impression is that we are creating a crisis here when none is necessary,” Reuters quotes Mr. Clinton as saying only two days before Mr. Putin’s meeting with President Bush in Maine. Former Presidents once refrained from attacking U.S. foreign policy, especially while overseas or on the eve of a summit with a foreign leader. But Jimmy Carter long ago broke that decorum barrier, and Mr. Clinton is now joining him.

As for the “facts,” the modest radars and interceptors are clearly aimed at the threat from Iran and are desired by the Eastern Europeans. Mr. Clinton also pulled a fast one by contrasting Mr. Bush with Ronald Reagan, who wanted to share missile defenses with the Russians. In fact, the Bush Administration has invited Russia to cooperate on missile defense only to be turned down.

That’s just great. Never mind what people in Poland or Eastern Europe might want (they desperately want it). This simply tells countries like Russia that ever aspect of our defense and foreign policy is up in the air, pending the 2008 election. And Putin can have whatever he wants so long as he does whatever he can to make Bush appear ineffective - incidentally making the next two years unsafe and uncertain for all Americans.

No surprise - various international carbon trading schemes are rife with fraud and corruption. Some recent articles…

From the American Spectator:

When it comes to “doing something” about global warming, two approaches are usually trotted out. One is trading permits to emit carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gases. Yet it now appears that most existing carbon trading schemes are vastly inefficient, open to fraud, or both.

From the Guardian:

The Clean Development Mechanism is one of two global markets which have been set up in the wake of the Kyoto climate summit in 1997. Both finally started work in January 2005. Although both were launched with the claim that they would reduce greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, evidence collected by the Guardian suggests that thus far, both markets have earned fortunes for speculators and for some of the companies which produce most greenhouse gases and yet, through a combination of teething troubles and multiple forms of malpractice and possibly fraud, they have delivered little or no benefit for the environment.

While the CDM is run under the umbrella of the UN, the second market is overseen by the European commission. Before launching, it churned through a mass of figures and produced a maximum number of tonnes of carbon dioxide which could be produced by each nation in the scheme; each nation then handed its big corporations and organisations a set number of permits - EU allocations - defining the number of tonnes of carbon dioxide they could produce between January 2005 and December 2007. But they got their sums wrong.

And the BBC:

The EU’s carbon trading scheme has increased electricity bills, given a windfall to power companies and failed to cut greenhouse gases, it is claimed.

An investigation by BBC Radio 4’s File on 4 programme has found that after two and half years the scheme has yet to cut in carbon dioxide emissions.

The consumer body Energywatch said customers are getting a raw deal…

…And according to one government estimate, that delivered windfall profits of up to £1.3bn to the generators in that year - higher than environmental campaigners had claimed last year.

However, so far the carbon scheme has brought no clear payback in terms of cutting emissions.

You know there’s something shady going on when the Russians jump in. Looks like they’ve found a way to get paid $5B/yr to maintain their pipelines. From Reuters:

Russia this week gave a surprise green light to carbon trading under the Kyoto Protocol to cut greenhouse gas emissions, but needs to start approving actual projects to unlock a multi-billion dollar market…

…Russia could be a cheap source of credits for example by simply plugging holes in its vast network of gas pipelines, which currently leaks a potent greenhouse gas, methane.

Russia could sell up to 500 million tonnes of emissions cuts in carbon dioxide equivalent by 2012, estimated Karmali, which would value the market at $5 billion, assuming current prices.

From CFP:

Formerly leader of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev is now one of the world’s most vocal global warming activists. This is an unlikely role indeed for a man who during his years in power showed no inclination to address environmental issues. This could not have been for lack of opportunity, given that he presided over a country which suffered from extensive ecological damage wrought by years of gross disregard and mismanagement. Had he had the inclination, there was much to do about the lamentable state of his country’s environmental condition. Gorbachev, however, not only did nothing, but brazenly continued the Soviet regime’s ecologically disastrous policies.

But nothing revealed his true attitudes more glaringly than the explosion of a nuclear reactor at Chernobyl. His first reaction was not to launch a clean-up operation, but to conceal the fact. Initially he denied that anything happened at all. Then, when radioactive clouds reached countries hundreds of kilometers away, he claimed that it was only a ‘minor’ accident. It was only under the pressure of growing evidence that Gorbachev finally admitted the truth. While mounting the cover-up, the time and energy that could have been used to contend with the unfolding ecological catastrophe were irretrievably lost. But that was not all, for Gorbachev also decided to sacrifice the lives of thousands whom he refused to evacuate or even notify of the danger…

…Yet today this man is one of the world’s most prominent eco-lobbyists and an ardent proponent of global warming. The question is how we are to reconcile Gorbachev’s past behavior of environmental destructiveness with his present-day activism. We would do well to ponder this, because the answer sheds light not only on a wily personal reinvention, but also on the motives of those responsible for the creation and spreading of the global warming hysteria.

The many interviews and statements made by Gorbachev since the collapse of the Soviet Union offer important clues. What they essentially reveal is that despite the ignominious fall of communism, Gorbachev has not changed his basic ideological convictions. In other words, this life-long party apparatchik remains an unrepentant communist to this day…

…It is not at all surprising that Gorbachev–like so many others on the left–has found environmentalism so attractive given that it in a furtive way tends toward the very essence of socialism. It is precisely this covert quality that makes this brand of activism so palatable to true believers in the post-communist era…

…Environmentalism’s socialist tendencies are already inherent in its starting premise which is that this world is headed for destruction because of the way modern societies conduct their life and affairs. The principal culprits are the business enterprise–whose relentless pursuit of profit has ecologically devastating consequences–and the masses whose excessive and irresponsible consumption exacerbate the already precarious situation. The only way to avert the looming catastrophe, then, is to rein in the greedy business and direct people’s behavior in environmentally conducive ways. This naturally can only be done by a government properly equipped for the great task at hand. The net result of environmental activism is thus an empowered state exercising close oversight over the business and private spheres. In Marx’s parlance, the means of production–and indeed nearly aspects of societal life–are placed under state control. This is nothing if not socialism rising, and since it also happens to be something Gorbachev has been striving for all of his life, it should come as no surprise that he has been an enthusiastic proponent ever since Marxism-Leninism became a byword for failure.

But while even the most basic forms environmentalism have proven themselves to be a potent vehicle for advancing socialist ideals, the potential of global warming has exceeded almost all expectations in this regard. All of the elements of the harrowing scenario it so vividly paints–its global scope, its imminence, its catastrophic potential–point toward the need for immediate and drastic measures on a wide scale. It should not take very long to realize that such a comprehensive response can only be mounted by a state armed with vast powers to decree, to regulate and to tax, powers which the devotees are only too eager to grant.

Hard to excerpt. Read the whole thing.

The writer is Czech. The President of his country has a different view on climate alarmism.

Czech President Vaclav Klaus on Wednesday called for a rational debate on global warming, rejecting what he called “hysteria” driven by enviromentalists…

…He charged that groups other than scientists have now seized on the topic and ambitious environmentalists are fueling a global warming hysteria that has no solid ground in fact and allows manipulation of people.

“It is about a key topic of our time, and that is the topic of human freedom and its curtailment,” Klaus said.

“The approach of environmentalists toward nature is similar to the Marxist approach to economic rules, because they also try to replace free spontaneity of the evolution of the world (and of mankind) with … global planning of the world’s development,” Klaus writes in his book.

I’ll add one observation. Idiots like Paul Ehrlich have been preaching climate alarmism since the 1960s. But it didn’t really go mainstream until the early 90s. That just happened to be coincident with the collapse of the Soviet Union. With several hundred million people killed by commies in China and Russia, and the USSR gone, few western leftists could continue to rally around Marxist collectivism. Suddenly they had a new cause - environmental collectivism.

The FT recently had an article on the business of carbon offsets. Now it appears even the NYT is noticing how stupid this fad is. From their recent article Carbon-Neutral Is Hip, but Is It Green?:

In addition to the celebrities — Leo, Brad, George — politicians like John Edwards and Hillary Clinton are now running, at least part of the time, carbon-neutral campaigns. A lengthening list of big businesses — international banks, London’s taxi fleet, luxury airlines — also claim “carbon neutrality.” Silverjet, a plush new trans-Atlantic carrier, bills itself as the first fully carbon-neutral airline. It puts about $28 of each round-trip ticket into a fund for global projects that, in theory, squelch as much carbon dioxide as the airline generates — about 1.2 tons per passenger, the airline says…

…“The worst of the carbon-offset programs resemble the Catholic Church’s sale of indulgences back before the Reformation,” said Denis Hayes, the president of the Bullitt Foundation, an environmental grant-making group. “Instead of reducing their carbon footprints, people take private jets and stretch limos, and then think they can buy an indulgence to forgive their sins.”

“This whole game is badly in need of a modern Martin Luther,” Mr. Hayes added.

The fact that the Russians are getting in on this should dispel any doubt this whole thing is a big scam. From Budapest Business Journal:

Russia’s giant state-owned natural gas company Gazprom will sell gas to its European Union customers along with carbon credits to offset the emissions from the burning of the fuel…

…Gazprom and other Russian firms are anxious to develop their expertise in international carbon trading markets. Because of the collapse of Soviet-era industry in the 1990s, Russia has an enormous notional surplus of emission reduction credits under Kyoto. Known has ‘hot air’, the resulting credits, accumulating because industrial emissions are far less than they were in the base year 1990, are estimated be worth up to $60 billion if sold to other industrialized countries liable under Kyoto.

Good piece on hyper-collectivist and aspriring economist Jeffery Sachs in today’s Independent:

In one respect there is a consistency between Sachs’ Russian debacle and what he now demands for Africa. He wanted the US to provide much more in aid to the new Russia, and was openly critical when it failed to come up with the sums he thought necessary. It seems incredible to me that such an intelligent man couldn’t see that the same corrupt elites who stole entire industries would appropriate aid dollars with exactly the same attention to detail.

His main academic critic in the US, Professor William Easterly of New York University, is similarly dismissive of Sachs’ view that the solution to Africa’s problems lies principally in an enormous expansion of aid budgets. Easterly, a former development economist at the World Bank, is the author of The White Man’s Burden: Why the West’s Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good, cataloguing the corrupt practices which have ensured that almost two-and-a-half trillion dollars of aid have achieved nothing but economic stagnation in Africa.

Sachs’ retort is that the aid had been spent in the wrong way - and, of course, he knows the right way. Even supposing that he does, there is still the matter of transmitting the money. Perhaps because Sachs is now a special advisor to the United Nations secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, he proposes that this task be allocated to various UN agencies. These, I take it, would be the same bureaucratic geniuses who managed the Iraq Oil-for-Food Programme…

…The Malthusian myth is an unconscionable time a-dying. Sachs’ first lecture was entitled “Bursting at the seams”. Yet humanity has consistently demonstrated that there is no causal link between population growth and increasing poverty. Our numbers are higher than they have ever been - and the average member of our species has never been further from starvation. As Indur Goklany points out, “Since 1950 the global population has increased by 150 per cent, but at the same time the real price of food commodities has declined 75 per cent… average daily food supplies per person in developing countries increased by 38 per cent.”

From the Guardian:

Russia’s next parliament is likely to have no genuine opposition after a court in Moscow yesterday banned a leading liberal party from standing in elections.

Russia’s supreme court announced that it had liquidated the small Republican party, claiming that it had violated electoral law by having too few members. The party is one of very few left in Russia that criticises President Vladimir Putin.

The climate change canard has united collectivists of all stripes. It can be used as a justification for coercive intrusion into pretty much any human activity. Everything is subject to regulation, consfication, management, planning, banning.

Climate change can never be disproved - any seemingly anomalous weather event is taken as confirmation. Flexibility has been increased by deemphasizing specific claims about the ozone layer, global warming, global cooling, and the like in favor of more vague climate change.

Unlike preceeding collectivist formulations, compliance is not framed in terms of supporting the race, class, creed, religion, the children, the proletariat, et cetera. People who resist state encroachments on individual liberty in this case are destroying the planet. There is no such thing as a conscientous objector or protected minority. All is foredoomed, the pruported risk so severe that no corrective measure is too extreme.

No one should have been surprised when Russia pressured Royal Dutch Shell (with trumped-up environmental charges) into a multi-billion$ below market sale of assets to state controlled Gazprom.

Now France is threatening to selectively tax US imports unless we sign the Kyoto Accords. From the NYT:

President Jaques Chirac demanded that the United States sign both the Kyoto climate protocol and a future agreement that will take effect when the Kyoto accord runs out in 2012…

“A carbon tax is inevitable,” Mr. Chirac said. “If it is European, and I believe it will be European, then it will all the same have a certain influence because it means that all the countries that do not accept the minimum obligations will be obliged to pay.”

The demand that the United States sign the Kyoto Accords is ignorant of both recent history and American constitutional law. Clinton already signed the accords, but no treaty comes into force until the Senate ratifies it. Clinton avoided the embarassment of submitting the impossible treaty for ratification, so the Senate pre-empted him, voting 95-0 against ratification.

France has signed the Kyoto Accords but, like most of the EU signatories, has no intention of actually complying. As with the growth and stability pact, France will attempt hold other signatories to their obligations while ignoring its own. For France, Kyoto is, in Chirac’s own creepy words:

(An) unprecedented instrument, the first component of an authentic global governance…to assert control over our fate in a spirit of solidarity, to organise our collective sovereignty over this planet…

(..global governance…assert control…organize…collective….grrrrr)

Recently California’s Attorney General is getting in on the action. In the name of the environment he is suing car companies for making cars. Via the WSJ (sign-in requred):

At issue is a federal lawsuit…asking for billions of dollars worth of damages to be levied against six automakers — General Motors, Toyota, Ford, Honda, Nissan and Chrysler — because their products allegedly create a common-law “nuisance” by contributing to global warming…

…if making a legal product that might contribute to global warming is an actionable offense, why stop with the automakers? How about the publisher of the Los Angeles Times, which deprives the world of a “carbon sink” (aka a tree) to create its daily product? Or how about cattle ranchers, whose flatulent herds emit massive amounts of methane before they become steaks on your dinner table? Methane is a far more potent greenhouse gas than CO2.

In short, there’s scarcely any economic activity imaginable that doesn’t somehow affect the balance of greenhouse gases, which is why a “nuisance” complaint against any single industry doesn’t make sense. It’s also why the judiciary has so far wisely refused to get drawn into this kind of blame game. A New York federal district court has already rejected an attempt by Mr. Lockyer and others to hold the utility industry responsible for global warming, saying it would be wrong “to impose by judicial fiat” CO2 regulations that “Congress and the Executive” have considered and declined to impose.

These shenanigans increase the power of the state over individuals in two ways. The first is the obvious one - suing GM for billions of dollars for the crime of making cars moves capital from the private economy to the government. As a minor side effect GM would probably be forced into bankruptcy, thrusting 300,000 otherwise gainfully employeed people into government dependence.

A second, indirect mechanism is far more powerful. Enforcement of climate change laws is by its nature entirely arbritrary. Which goods will France tax and how much? What company will California sue next for executing a heretofore perfectly legal business model? What private assets are next on Russia’s nationalization list?

These questions will be answered not by science nor by rational markets, but by politics. Nevermind pollution - in a system like this GM will serve its shareholders better by seeking political influence than by making more efficient cars. On follows bribery, graft, and crony capitalism (just as was practiced in the great collectivist states of the 20th century, Nazi Germany, Mainland China, and the USSR).

We know where Hillary stands on the issue of arbitrary property siezures. But I was a bit surprised to see such partisian polarization in this Senate survey. The Dems should have spent less time in public policy classes and more time studying science.

Update:

Unelected Euorcracy announces new class of criminal code concerning “environmental crimes” that supercedes all member-state legislation.

Russia is feeling its imperialist oats again, this time threatening diminutive neighbor Estonia.

First, attempts to settle a border dispute have failed. Maybe no big deal, unless you are a tiny country thats been invaded three times in the last 70 years. From RIA:

Talks on border agreements between the countries have been deadlocked since Russia refused to ratify the document signed in 2005, citing new provisions inserted by Tallinn…

The two countries signed border agreements on May 18, 2005, and the Estonian parliament ratified the documents on June 20, but with additional demands linked to the 1920 peace treaty between Soviet Russia and Estonia.

On September 6, Russia notified Estonia that it was revoking its signature from the treaties because the 1920 document was no longer valid.

Now there’s a dust up over an Estonian town’s decision to move a statue of a Soviet WWII soldier (complete with hammer and sickle commie crest) from their town square to a nearby war cemetery. Via Telegraph:

A Nazi state has been reborn within the European Union and its “blasphemous” leaders are bent on glorifying the Third Reich and insulting Russia. There is talk of sanctions and even of internal armed resistance…

The Bronze Soldier of Tallinn was erected 60 years ago. For the country’s Russian-speaking minority, the statue symbolises liberation and the defeat of Nazism; for the Estonian majority it represents half a century of brutal Soviet occupation…

Sergei Mironov, the speaker of the Russian parliament’s upper house, denounced the law as “the first step towards legalisation of neo-Nazism in that country”.

The ‘Nazism’ reference is strange, since the Soviet’s brutal occupation of Estonia began when the Soviet Union and Third Reich were allies. The 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact divided up Eastern Europe into Soviet and German spheres of influence, handing Estonia to the Soviets. The ‘Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic’ was created in June 1940, a year before the Soviets and Germans had their falling out. Notably, the US and UK never recognized Soviet soverignty over Estonia, calling the occupation that did not end until 1990 illegal.

Estonia is not the only country to suffer from Russia’s petro-fueled surge in nationalist confidence. Russia is now regularly picking fights with its former imperial possessions.