Blog of Q's

from: Russia Reform Monitor No. 1338, December 30, 2005 American Foreign Policy Council
According to Britain’s Guardian newspaper, the “Delovaya Rossiya”
business lobby is predicting that Russia will lose $400 billion in the
next two decades if the country’s population decline is not dealt with.
The group stated in a report that inadequate government efforts to
encourage immigration, support young families and promote healthy
eating are having a disastrous effect on President Vladimir Putin’s
goal of doubling the gross domestic product. The report concluded that
only drastic measures, such as a 2 percent tax on families without
children, could reverse the trend.

“Delovaya Rossiya” is not alone. The World Bank likewise has warned, in
a study published earlier this month, that Russia, which in January
takes over the rotating Group of Eight presidency for the first time,
will never compete with the other G8 countries if it does not address
its health deficit and demographic decline.

by William R. Hawkins
Any rational analysis of the decisions made at the recent trade meeting
in Hong Kong would conclude that the United States is being played for
a fool — by the “developing world” (which includes China and India), as
well as by the developed world (the Europeans and Japanese). While
every other WTO member country is trying to gain competitive advantage
and advance its national interests, the United States is looking out
for the “good of the international trading system” — a house of cards
built on exporting as much as you can to the American market. Trees
don’t grow to the sky, and American wealth is not unlimited. The system
will eventually collapse, bringing untold misery, unless some reality
and sanity intervene. However, don’t expect current U.S. trade
officials to be the source of that sanity, compulsively wedded as they
are to the abstract theory of free trade.

from Russia Reform Monitor No. 1335, December 21, 2005 American Foreign Policy Council, Washington, DC.
Freedom House has
again placed Russia among the world’s “Not Free” countries in its
annual Freedom in the World survey. “The Putin leadership’s
anti-democratic tendencies appeared, if anything, more pronounced in
2005,” the New York-based human rights group stated in a press release.
Freedom House lowered Russia’s rating from “Partly Free” to “Not Free”
in last year’s survey.