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On July 22nd, Atlas hosted its second Liberty Café which focused on Europe and the Financial Crisis. More than 20 guests were in attendance to listen to our guest speakers. It was a joy to see such a mixed audience of young and old, young freedom champions and veterans of the cause. Atlas’s Liberty Café seeks to bring together allies with interests abroad in an informal setting, in order to (1) share perspectives on developments overseas, and (2) provide opportunities for networking and discovering synergies.

Speakers included Alexandre Pesey, Executive Director for Institut du Formation Politique, France, Jeanne Dusseuil - economic journalist, Toqueville Fellow of the Institut du Formation Politique, France, and Marius Gustavson - Project Manager at Civita, Norway and Sound Money Fellow at Atlas.

Stay tuned for the next Liberty Café!

During this past month, ethnic violence between Uzbeks and Kyrgyz has shook the small country of Kyrgyzstan in central Asia, resulting in over 200 dead and 120,000 displaced.  Throughout the chaos Kyrgyz libertarians led a series of coordinated voluntary efforts to provide emergency aid to the victims of the vicious attacks and to promote peace throughout the nation and the region.  Atlas’s Tom Palmer has been in regular touch with our friends there, and on Tuesday evening he talked to Central Asian Free Market Institute (CAFMI) Director Mirsulzhan Namazaliev by Skype, as he was interrupted by a stream of volunteers working late into the night in the CAFMI offices.  He made their resolution clear:

“We are helping those who are suffering, but we are doing more.  For me personally this is not only a fight for life.  It is a fight for freedom.  We don’t want to be ruled by any authoritarian Central Asian or Russian regimes that would exploit this awful violence.  The violence we are suffering is a provocation designed to generate chaos and to overturn the chance for a constitutional regime.  We will not stand for it.  We want peace, we want freedom, and we want a lawful government.”

Palmer was in Kyrgyzstan just last month to work with CAFMI and with the new acting minister of economic development, Emil Umetaliev, a founding member of CAFMI’s board of directors. The CAFMI team includes two Atlas Think Tank MBA graduates - co-founder and director, Mirsulzhan Namazaliev, and operations manager Gulmira Aidaralieva. There was guarded optimism about the country’s future, after the corrupt and increasingly authoritarian regime of Kurmanbek Bakiyev was ousted in an uprising after he tried to suppress demonstrations with deadly force. But there was also fear of Bakiyev’s machinations, especially after the revelation of a recorded cell phone conversation between his son, Maksim, and his brother Janybek (who had given the orders to shoot protesters in April), in which they clearly plot violence to derail a new constitutional process and regain power, even proposing how many “fighters” to hire, arming them with iron bars and other implements, and how much to pay them to launch attacks. The recording was chilling. And with the money they looted from the country, they found the thugs to launch attacks on both Uzbek and Kyrgyz villages, in order to spark revenge attacks. Their plans bore fruit this month, as hundreds were murdered, homes and businesses were burned, and 120,000 people were made refugees.

As Namazaliev remarked, “We will not stand for it.”
CAFMI’s staff and volunteers are almost all under the age of 25. Few have backgrounds in defense or security. But they immediately put the talents they do have to work. CAFMI volunteers worked with others to solicit, gather, and deliver humanitarian assistance for the thousands of people - mainly mothers and children - who had been driven from their homes, and to create a message of communal peace - of Kyrgyz, Uzbeks, Russians, Uighurs, Tajiks and others who were standing together for peace and against murder and hatred.  They called together teams of computer experts, technological wizards, social networkers, and activists to build an umbrella coalition:
“I Want Peace in Kyrgyzstan”  -”Мен Қирғизистонда тинчлик бўлишини истайман!” in Uzbek, “Мен Кыргызстанга тынчтыкты каалайм!” in Kyrgyz, and “Я хочу мира в Кыргызстане!” in Russian.
The “I Want Peace in Kyrgyzstan” campaign has five coordinated elements:

1. Use cell phones, databases, and the internet to organize volunteers effectively and to create and disseminate maps (using Google Maps and other techniques) to guide deliveries of aid to victims and to help people to avoid areas in turmoil, burning buildings, and road blocks and ambushes set up by thugs.
2. Create a modern campaign for peace in three languages (Kyrygz, Uzbek, and Russian) - with a brand, a logo, street graffiti, slogans, t-shirts, stickers, leaflets, hand-written letters from children, radio interviews and public announcements, text messages, and other means to calm tensions and promote peace.  Representatives of the various ethnic groups appear together to pledge peace and to build the rule of law and freedom together.
3. Combat disinformation and misinformation that might fuel ethnic hatred and violence, and respond rapidly to malicious rumors and hate campaigns before they bear their evil fruit.
4. Contain the spread of reprisals and hatred throughout Central Asia, by providing reliable information to media, helping to combat ethnic smears and suppress revenge attacks against minorities in other countries, and quickly rebutting calls in nearby countries for military intervention into Kyrgyzstan, which carries the very real danger of regional war.
5. Create a “Peace Room” (not a “War Room”) in CAFMI’s Bishkek offices to be open 24 hours a day to coordinate the collection and dissemination of information.  Volunteers in the Peace Room utilize cell phones, social networking sites, twitter, text messages, phone trees, and monitor mass media constantly.  The CAFMI office is now fully staffed with volunteers and working around the clock.

The young volunteers and staff of CAFMI are donating their time, risking their lives, and contributing their scarce resources, in a country with a per-capita income of about $2,100. If you’d like to stand with a group of very brave, very determined, and very committed libertarians you can send a tax-deductible donation to the Central Asian Free Market Institute (CAFMI) through Atlas, which has provided support to CAFMI. Please write to Erin.Grant@AtlasNetwork.org and 100% of your donation will be dedicated to CAFMI’s work in Central Asia.  Donations of all sizes are welcome.
It would be a decision you would not regret.  (You can follow CAFMI’s work on its Facebook page and Namazaliev writes in Russian and in English on NewEurasia.net, Twitter, and other media.  He covered the April uprising against Bakiyev’s authoritarian regime in The Independent and was quoted frequently by CNN and many other news organizations. You can also read more about CAFMI’s work on the Atlas website.)
Your support can make a huge difference in Kyrgyzstan’s transition to a peaceful and free country.

“If we can help an indigenous libertarian project, it may mean more to this country, the region, and the world, than hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars poured from one governmental hand into another,” Atlas’s Tom Palmer wrote in an email early this week.

He was referring to the exciting effort spawned last Friday on Facebook where a conversation began on Palmer’s page about the newly established Afghanistan Economic and Legal Studies Organization (AELSO) and his recent visit to their office in Kabul. The conversation turned into an impromptu fundraising campaign which raised $1,200 for internet access for the AELSO office for an entire year.  Now the organization will be able to go live with their website in no time.  At Atlas, we encounter situations like this frequently — where we hear from a partner in Asia or Eastern Europe, Africa or Latin America that a few hundred dollars would fund an intern, pay for a copy machine or internet or the electricity bill — the bare essentials that allow an institute to make an impact.  Thank you to those who helped this young group take such a crucial step in their development.  Check back soon for a link to their new website.

Palmer:

I got back in yesterday after a 13 hour drive through the Hindu Kush from Mazar-e-Sharif, where we presented the Dari edition of Common Sense Economics; What Everyone Should Know About Wealth and Prosperity at the University of Balkh.  Our friends are doing a lot of good work at great personal expense and risk.  I was able to deliver some funds that were donated by friends in the U.S. to help them.  We were so astonished when on Facebook, in response to a simple question, some dedicated liberty-lovers pledged $1,200 to pay for the internet access for the AELSO office, which currently does not have it, as it is expensive for them.  They have a modest office, with a seminar room and library, and I hope to be able to fund the library for the next year, at $400 per month (there is a work room with desks, a seminar/library room with a large conference table and many shelves, and a tea room for smaller discussions and preparation of tea).   It is a short walk from the Kabul University.  They have purchased, all second-hand, a computer, a printer, and a scanner.  I would like to help them buy a second-hand copier, as well.

Click here for pictures of Tom Palmer’s visit to Kabul and Mazar-e-Sharif.

The July 2nd deadline to apply for the Templeton Freedom Awards is just a few weeks away. Be sure to submit your application as soon as possible. Two winners from each category will be chosen and will receive an award of $ 10,000.

Winners will also have the opportunity to take part in the award ceremony at  Atlas’s Liberty Forum and Freedom Dinner on November 9th and 10th in Washington DC. For more information about the awards and to download the application form please visit our website at here.

If you have any questions don’t hesitate to contact Gonzalo Schwarz.

The Committee on Monetary Research and Education met on October 16, 2008 at the Union League Club of New York. The surroundings lent historical background to the discussion. After decades of a sound monetary system, the Secretary of the Treasury, Salmon P. Chase, introduced a national banking system in 1863 to try to shore up the weak finances of the Civil War. In order to try to market US treasuries, banks purchasing the bonds could issue large proportions of credit. The government flooded the US with unbacked Greenbacks. The bankers and bond dealers in 1863 formed Union League Clubs in major cities to join forces to market the bonds in the face of popular opposition to deficit spending. Many of these financiers were wiped out by the Panic of 1873. Meanwhile, Chase who had been appointed by President Lincoln to succeed Roger B. Taney as Chief Justice of the United States voted to declare his Greenbacks as unconstitutional.

The Committee on Monetary Research and Education was founded in the aftermath of the ending of gold backing for US dollar by President Nixon in 1971. The CMRE was a successor to the Economists’ National Committee on Monetary Policy founded in 1933 by Professor Edwin Walker Kemmerer (1875-1945) of Princeton University in response to FDR’s ending of the gold clauses in commercial contracts. Robert A. Taft and other constitutional lawyers sought unsuccessfully to have the US Supreme Court to continue to recognize the principle of Roman Law: pacta sunt servanda (contracts are made to be honored).

Keep Reading →

George H. Nash’s Reappraising the Right: The Past and Future of American Conservatism (Wilmington, Delaware, ISI Books.2009) is a collection of far-ranging essays, ending with “The Prospects for American Conservatism” an address presented October 24, 2008 at Belmont Abbey College (NC) when he received the Richard M. Weaver Prize for Scholarly Letters from the Ingersoll Foundation when Nash was president of The Philadelphia Society. In Part I Nash examines a number of writers: “The Quiet, Libertarian Odyssey of John Chamberlain,” Whittaker Chambers, Friedrich Hayek, Willmore Kendall, Russell Kirk, and Forrest McDonald.

Nash devotes four essays to Herbert Hoover about whose early life he had extensively written. Nash focuses on the relationship between President Calvin Coolidge and Secretary of Commerce Herbert C. Hoover. President Coolidge’s quiet and retiring style clashed with the hyper-active “Great Engineer” in his cabinet. Nash also examines the bad press which Hoover received during and since the Great Depression.

Nash presents five chapters on “William F. Buckley Jr. and the Advent of National Review.” He examines the impact of Buckley’s original blockbuster criticism of his college, God and Man at Yale (1951). In November, 1955 when Buckley’s mentor, Frank Chodorov, had stepped down as editor of The Freeman at the Foundation for Economic Education, Buckley felt free to launch National Review. Buckley had contributed his new fame to assisting Frank Chodorov (then associate editor of Human Events) to promote the Intercollegiate Society of Individualists. Buckley and his editors had broken with the CIA-sponsored Congress of Cultural Freedom for presenting a social democratic rather than a free market face in American outreach to foreign intellectuals. National Review editors were unhappy with the Eisenhower administration’s failure to come to grips with the impositions of the New Deal such as Social Security and the TVA, or its creation of the new Department of Health, Education and Welfare inspired by Nelson Rockefeller. Nash notes the strong role of Catholics in National Review at a time when Catholicism was associated with anti-collectivism and the free market.

To me, the most valuable contribution is Nash’s Part III: “Conservatism and the American Jewish Community.” “Forgotten Godfathers: Premature Jewish Conservatives and the Rise of National Review” deals with seven writers: William Schlamm, Morrie Ryskind, Eugene Lyons, Frank S. Meyer, Frank Chodorov, Ralph de Toledano and Marvin Liebman. Nash says that the side walks of New York were their formative influence. Nash mentions but does not discuss Will Herberg, National Review’s religion editor for a decade. Nash analysis is a valuable contribution.

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The following is an update from an ally of Atlas in Nepal on the situation unfolding in Kathmandu.  It is anonymous for safety concerns.

Dear friends of liberty,

I am writing to update you on the situation in Nepal. Politically, this must be the worst situation in the last three years. In 2006, radical revolutionary Maoists were brought into the political process through a peace deal.  A constitutional assembly election was held as a part of the deal and the Maoists became the largest party (by force, I will add).

They formed a government, ran it for nine months and resigned. Since that time they have been kicking and screaming about establishing an “authoritarian people’s regime” in the country.  As they stepped down from the government, they have not let the parliament function and there has been no progress toward the making of a constitution.

Binod Joshi/AP

The new Nepali constitution is due May 28th. On the 29th of May, Nepal will technically be a country without a constitution. There is no chance that the constitution, which has been in the works for two years, will be ready. Political polarization has increased like never before and the Maoists are demanding that the constitution can only be established if they are leading the government. They have made it clear in the last several months that they will establish their “authoritarian people’s regime” at any cost. They have also communicated clearly that they will use their power in the House of Representatives as well as their power in the streets to capture control of the state.

On May Day (the first of the month) they launched their next phase and the biggest ever campaign to take over government.  They have made it clear that they will not give up until they achieve their mission. An estimated 1.5 million Maoists cadres from across the country took to the streets to stage a strike in hopes that the Constituent Assembly would resign.  The city of Kathmandu came to a standstill.  All schools, businesses, public buildings, party venues, open spaces, houses under construction, floors of department stores, and parks in the capital city were shut down and fully occupied by the Maoists.  All the workers were threatened to be on the streets. Food and fuel were running out, electricity rationed. They forced households to feed and lodge at least four people every day as their duty in “support of the great revolution.”

Extortion to raise funds for this campaign has been rampant and there are several groups of Maoists cadres coming to each entity (big or small) to demand donations and the minimal ask is USD 100 and can be as big as USD 100,000 depending on the volume of business. (Nepal’s per capita income is USD 400) The whole society looked confused about what would happen in the following days!  The state was prepared to take any steps necessary to maintain peace, and gathered about 15,000 forces in the city to resist the 1.5 million fighters in the street.

Fortunately, on the sixth day of the strike at least 20,000 people fought back in a counter-protest calling for end to the Maoist-led strike. The business community, human rights organizations and civil society groups said enough is enough.

After six days, their strike had failed in Kathmandu. But the future is uncertain.  There is political deadlock and the United Communist Party of Nepal (Maoists) is declaring that they will put forth a new “people’s constitution” unilaterally. The situation has improved but it’s only temporary. The whole of last week we have been rallying to build up a greater campaign and coalition.  I am hoping to have more updates by the end of this week.

For more information on the situation, see this article from the Himalayan Times

Mirsulzhan Namazaliev awoke to the sound of gunfire in his downtown Bishkek apartment on a Tuesday night in early April.  By Friday, a new government was in power and he was sharing his opinions of the transition on CNN International.

Since his election victory in 2005, Kyrgyz President Kurmanbek Bakiyev’s administration had become increasingly authoritarian.   Widespread corruption, election fraud, threats to cut off internet access and silence journalists and opposition leaders marred Bakiyev’s term.  His increasing control over the daily lives of the Kyrgyz people culminated in a citizen revolt last month.  Riots in the capital were met with a crackdown that resulted in more than 80 deaths and over 1,000 wounded.

Namazaliev, executive director of the Central Asia Free Market Institute (CAFMI), is familiar with this environment as there have been rallies against Bakiyev in the past.  He was arrested in 2004 for holding a simple sign at a protest stating “I Don’t Believe” in response to a proposed government policy.

This time was different, however, as the opposition dissolved parliament and forced Bakiyev to flee Bishkek.  So when the interim government took power on that Friday following the uprising, CAFMI staff recalled Milton Friedman’s thoughts on social change, “Only a crisis—actual or perceived—produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around.”  They saw the perfect window of opportunity to put forth their bold agenda for reform.  The fine-tuned and well-organized CAFMI team includes Namazaliev and Gulmira Aidaralieva, both graduates of Atlas’s Think Tank MBA management program, Canadian-educated accountant Seyitbek Usmanov, and recently appointed acting Minister of Economic Development, Emil Umetaliev.  Working tirelessly until 2:00AM each night, the team is preparing the Justice and Prosperity Agenda: 11 Steps to Freedom to be unveiled before the national elections in the fall.

Atlas’s Tom Palmer encouraged Namazaliev, Usmanov and Umetaliev  to establish CAFMI at a meeting  in Bishkek in February of 2009. Since then Atlas has supported this institute by advising on strategic planning, providing management training and introducing CAFMI to the broader network of liberty-oriented activists throughout the world.  Umetaliev’s appointment to Minister coincided with a recent visit by Palmer following the unrest.  After a series of strategy meetings with CAFMI, Palmer was invited to make a special presentation to the deputy ministers, advisors, and staff of the Economics Ministry.  With CAFMI active in the public square and Umetaliev’s guidance in office, there is great hope for reducing the power of the state, eliminating waste and creating a prosperous Kyrgyzstan and Central Asian region.

On April 18-22 Atlas’s Russian program InLiberty.ru held a seminar in the beautiful city of Odessa, Ukraine despite major travel restraints due to the volcano in Iceland.  Several participants and speakers were unable to attend (including Professor of Russian Literature and Cultural History at Oxford University, Andrei Zorin).  But as they say, “the show must go on” – and it this case it did with great success.  The event, titled “Ideological Stereotype: Social Mythology in the Post-Soviet Societies,” included in-depth study of nationalism and the treatment of minorities in Russia, the foundational pillars of free societies and the nature of violence.  Seminar participants screened the yet-to-be-released film “Russia 88,” which takes a critical look at xenophobia in Russia by focusing on the skinhead culture in Moscow.

Anya Krasinskaya, editor of InLiberty.ru and organizer of the seminar reported from Odessa:

Travel to Odessa was greatly disrupted by the volcano, but all in all, the event was a success.  We expected 43 participants and 30 were able to attend (most of them arrived by train). Two speakers out of four could not come so we restructured the first day of the event to work as a Socratic discussion: we carefully examined the reading materials that the participants read beforehand and had in-depth discussions. One of the speakers, Professor Chandran Kukathas (London School of Economics), was there with us, so he took care of another lecture that day and it caused a long conversation afterwards. Yuri Kuznetsov was an excellent moderator and really pulled the event together when it seemed like the whole thing might suffer due to travel difficulties.  The following two days went as planned. We managed to run the seminar well under the awful circumstances. Actually the absence of some speakers on the first day challenged participants to speak up and discuss more – which was very encouraging.

To see pictures from this event click here.