An interesting discussion on the significance of Alexander Solzhenitsyn. This summary is from Theodore Dalrymple:

It seems to me that we have asked three fundamental questions:

i) What is the literary standing or status of Solzhenitsyn?

ii) What was his political effect in practice, in the Soviet Union and the West.

iii) Did or do his less attractive opinions detract from one or both of the above?

Let us take the first question first. Will anyone, other than specialists in Soviet and Russian history, read him in a hundred years’ time, for what he tells us about the human condition sub specie aeternitatis? Here it seems to me that he will be in what Somerset Maugham called the first rank of the second-raters (where he put himself). I am reminded of Trigorin’s self-proclaimed epitaph in The Seagull: He was a good writer, but not as good as Turgenev. But it seems unfair to criticize every writer because he is not as good as someone else. Which of us would ever put pen to paper if he were to be compared all the time with Shakespeare? But we wouldn’t want there to be only Shakespeare.

It seems to me undeniable that he had a great effect in the Soviet Union and the West. It is possible of course that this tells us more about the West than about Solzhenitsyn. It seems to me also undeniably true that he told us nothing that we could, and should, have know before. But as Gide remarked, everything has been said before, but it has to be repeated. Solzhenitsyn confronted western intellectuals with evidence in such a way that they could not deny it any longer, and surely he deserves credit for that. The fact that some people suffered even more than he does not make him any the less of a brave man – far braver than I, for example.

Finally, his undoubtedly unsavoury opinions on some subjects. Can he match Dostoyevsky for the viciousness and stupidity of his anti-Semitism, however? Surely not. But who thinks that Dostoyevsky’s insights into human psychology and the real wellsprings of revolutionism are any the less valuable for that? Also, it seems to me that some charity is in order regarding Solzhenitsyn’s age when he espoused Putinism. Not only is judgment sometimes impaired with age, but so too does the fight go out of some people, especially those who have suffered in their own flesh and blood.

In summary: Great as a man? Yes. Flawed? Yes. Of the first rank as a writer? Possibly not. Which of us on the panel equals him?

Some things are as certain as the sun appearing in the morning, so it surprises no-one that Barack Obama is Time’s man – sorry – person of the year 2008. It and the inevitable fawning was so predictable that it is almost not irritating. Almost.

Obama sits down on one of the mesh chairs and launches into a spoken tour of his world of woes. It’s a mind-boggling journey, although he shows no signs of being boggled — unless you count the increasingly prevalent salt in his salt-and-pepper hair. By now we are all accustomed to that Obi-Wan Kenobi calm, though we may never entirely understand it. In a soothing monotone, he highlights the scariest hairpin turns on his itinerary, the ones that combine difficulty with danger plus a jolt of existential risk.

How could we mere mortals, ever understand what Obi-Wan Kenobi calm is. As it happens, Obi-Wan was apparently personally responsible for the death of Darth Maul and General Grievous, and indirectly caused the deaths of Darth Tyranus, Darth Vader, and Darth Sidious. He had a long and tumultuous career that has helped shape the fate of an entire galaxy.

Doesn’t sound particularly calm to me; of course, the modern equivalent, Obami-Wan, goes out for a quick drag now and again: it’s the only thing that stops him running amok killing numerous and sundry Darths and shaping recalcitrant galaxies.

And why do we have to have “existential” dropped into everything: a risk that is not existential is non-existent. Just like the impartiality of Time.

Some things never change. Challenge the rules in a barbaric totalitarian state and you are deemed ‘mad’, confined in a mental institution and administered ‘therapy’ until you see the error of your ways. This was the case in the Soviet Union and it is also the case in Communist China

Local officials in China appear to be increasingly using forcible psychiatric treatment to silence critics, a leading expert said today amid claims that at least 18 complainants were held in a mental hospital in Shandong province against their will.

Authorities in Xintai district committed people who had pursued grievances ranging from police brutality to property disputes, according to the Beijing News, well known for its investigative journalism. Some were force-fed drugs.

“Until the early 90s, the practice of police forcibly sending people to mental asylums without justification was mainly carried out against political dissidents,” said Robin Munro, author of China’s Psychiatric Inquisition: Dissent, Psychiatry and the Law in Post-1949 China.
“Since then we have seen a very different trend – fewer are of that variety, and more and more, they are petitioners or whistleblowers exposing corruption, or simply persistent complainants.

“It’s a covert way to silence people … There is no accountability or oversight. The person disappears, effectively; and with them, whatever evidence they have compiled against officials.”
Once a police or civilian psychiatrist has certified someone as mentally ill, the patient loses all legal rights and can be held indefinitely.

From this, a reasonable case could be made for the proposition that the biggest lunatics at large in some societies are psychiatrists themselves.

A number of years ago, I had the misfortune of finding myself at a party infested with a preponderance of psychiatrists – a hospital party, I think. I had never encountered a larger number of misfits packed into such a confined area. I thought I might have some fun by bringing up the subject of R. D. Laing, a psychiatrist whose theories include such gems as: psychotic behaviour is a valid expression of distress; psychiatry is not a science; schizophrenia should be valued as a cathartic and transformative experience; and psychiatrists themselves are responsible for the madness of many of their patients – hard to argue against that last point. If you know any psychiatrists, mention The Politics of Experience and the Bird of Paradise to see how they react. I ended up having a wonderful time.

Fred Hiltz and the rest of the batty western bishops take note.
From here

The savagery that we see in Africa is not because there’s something funny in the water. It’s not because they’re still hunter-gatherer types at heart and can’t forget some archaic gripe with the neighbours. Africa used to be quite a nice place 40 years ago. But since then, a gigantic volume of aid has wrecked the fabric of civil society. And what has all this aid done to fight African poverty? The UN declared in 1999 that 70 countries – all aid recipients – were poorer than they had been in 1980. The countries that had received the most aid – like Liberia, Zaire and Somalia – had descended in barbarism and anarchy.

Once again, the process by which aid corrupts is blindingly obvious. And yet we keep shovelling the stuff in. As for the trickle that actually buys food for people, every study we have shows how this pushes countries into a terrifying dependency on food imports. I needn’t spell out the devastating effects of this on the domestic economy (which is mainly agrarian) or on their chances of fighting their way to affluence.

The big shame is that we don’t let African farmers sell their food to the US and the EU. Subsidies, tariffs and so on. People who are against free trade in food should be really ashamed of themselves.

The reason Africans don’t have food is civil war. African farmers know how to grow food. Indeed, they know how to grow food so well, that the EU and USA put up trade barriers to stop them from exporting it and undercutting their own farmers. Famine in Africa is rarely caused by natural disasters these days. It’s caused by aid.

Giving poor people food seems to make sense to us in the west. We see a homeless tramp and we direct them to the nearest soup kitchen. But on the scale we’re talking, the economic effect of just giving people food is not good. Suppose your economy relies on producing cars. But it’s in a bad way, not least because rich countries nearby have put up trade barriers to prevent you selling your cars to them. Then they see you’re doing badly. So what do they do? They send you some free cars. The local car manufacturers are none too happy, and the economy is buggered.
Well it’s the same with Africa and food. Forget aid. Africa needs free trade.

And while we’re here we must emphasise free trade rather than the hideous slice of colonialism called ‘fair trade’. Fair Trade is nothing more than a rearguard PR exercise from the greens. They were embarrassed at opposing free trade, so had to do little linguistic fancy foot-work. Fair Trade says, OK the poor can sell their food to the rich world, but only if they are organic farmer (ie. they retain backward, not very productive farming techniques), and we will favour small peasant farms (which are famously no good at producing food efficiently). People who advocate ‘Fair Trade’ are just bastards.