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Greg Mellen, Orange County Register 12:05 a.m. ET Jan. 26, 2017

Josef Cikmantory abandoned his Trabant after the family escaped East Germany, but acquired another years later that he keeps in display condition for car shows.(Photo: Bill Alkofer / TNS)

Santa Ana, Calif. Its been said that beauty is skin deep, but ugly is to the bone. The late and clearly not lamented communist-era East German Trabant was not only ugly but plug-ugly.

To say it looks like a clown car insults all the other clown cars.

Time magazine wrote of the Trabant, This is the car that gave communism a bad name.

But one mans eyesore is another mans amore. And when Josef Czikmantory sees his much-maligned Trabant gleaming in the Southern California sun, what he sees is freedom. What he sees is an escape from the yoke of Soviet-style socialism. What he sees is something beautiful.

It was a 1975 Trabant 601 that carried Czikmantory and his family from the Eastern bloc to the West in 1986, when freedom seemed an elusive and priceless commodity.

Since moving to the United States, Czikmantory has cashed in on the American dream, working, starting several businesses, buying a home and raising a family. He is also a regular participant in car shows and frequently partakes in Sunday drives with his wife.

Czikmantorys departure from Hungary was no Steve McQueen kind of great escape.

Rather it was a kind guard at the Austrian border who gave the nod to lift the gate.

He said, Good luck with your life, Czikmantory said. I was afraid to breathe. Then I got in my car and went putt-putt-putt across the border.

It wasnt until he was beyond machine-gun range that Czikmantory exhaled.

At a recent car show, Czikmantory explained his connection to the car to a woman wearing a T-shirt from the Kowabunga Van Klan of VW enthusiasts, who definitely knew a Thing or two about ugly.

Lets say there is Chevy guy. He loves all things Chevy. Imagine he is in gulag, says Czikmantory. Then he gets his hands on piece of (junk) Pinto. And he gets away in that car. What then will be his favorite car?

The rhetorical question hews pretty close to Czikmantorys life story minus Chevys, Pintos and gulags.

In 1985, Czikmantory, who is from Transylvania in Romania, was near the top of the social ladder in Hungary. Yet the ambitious, imaginative young family man felt imprisoned by communism. Sure, he was a mechanical engineer and valued at his plant as a kind of machine whisperer. He had the Trabi, a status symbol and highly prized in the Soviet bloc despite all its shortcomings. He had a condo, a good salary and a wife and his 10-year-old son, Akos. He was only 35 but had climbed just about as high as he could in his country.

And it chafed.

I thought, OK, its over, he said. I thought, I can do more and better.

But not in Hungary. Not in a Soviet-style country.

Czikmantory says he tried about 10 times unsuccessfully to part the Iron Curtain.

Until the guard overlooked his lack of proper paperwork and allowed the family to leave.

The little Trabi didnt make it far into the West. After Czikmantory crossed into Austria, he was told he needed car insurance.

So, as many Germans would do later when the Berlin Wall came down, he did the only sensible thing. Czikmantory parked the car in front of a trash container and walked away.

Czikmantory said his family slept on park benches in Vienna on their first night of freedom.

In the U.S., Czikmantory was able to parlay his mechanical wizardry and entrepreneurial spirit into building several small businesses, including Josef Czikmantory Enterprise Ltd., which he now owns. He even designed and built parts for Elon Musks SpaceX company.

Czikmantory didnt necessarily miss his old Trabi. But over the years a certain sentimentality built up.

About 12 years ago, Czikmantorys son, Akos, said his father called him to look at a Trabi up for sale, one of only about 200 in the U.S.

However, after they looked at the car, for which Akos said the seller wanted $4,000, they passed, because it had a number of problems.

So we went home, Akos said. Then I looked on eBay and there was one for $850. So I bought it for my Dad.

Akos and his father both joked that the price was outrageous for a car many former owners literally couldnt give away. Many Trabants can be found moldering in fields in Europe where farm animals have learned the Duroplast siding was actually edible.

After buying the car, Czikmantory paid about $2,000 to ship it from Europe and has since put in another $5,000 to paint it white, the color of the car he escaped in, apply undercoat, overhaul the two-stroke engine and make other improvements.

Wherever he goes, the car is a head-turner, due in part to its amazingly loud rattle and belching smoke clouds. And the IRN CRTN license plate.

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Trabant: The car that gave communism a bad name - The Detroit News

China says Western democracy has reached its limits and has started to deteriorate (alluding to Donald Trumps victory without saying so). Global Communism will take its place, with China supplying new universal values.

When I have referred to still-Communist China, some readers have said, in effect, are you kidding? China has become capitalist, what with all of their entrepreneurs and wealth-building. But orthodox Marxism teaches that societies must go through a capitalist phase in order for socialism to emerge. The problem with the Soviet Union and Maos China is that they attempted to go from a feudal economy straight to socialism, which cant really work. Capitalism and with it Western democracy will eventually fall from theirinternal contradictions.

China has come up with a style of Communism that is working, pragmatically. It is centered on economic growth, but state ownership and, what is just as effective, state control of the means of production continues.

Whats new here is Chinas plan to export not just its goods but its ideology around the world. The Communists still think they will bury us.

From China Slams Western Democracy as Flawed, Bloomberg:

Democracy has reached its limits, and deterioration is the inevitable future of capitalism, according to the Peoples Daily, the flagship paper of Chinas Communist Party. It devoted an entire page on Sunday to critiquing Western democracies, quoting former Chairman Mao Zedongs 1949 poem asking people to range far your eyes over long vistas and saying the ultimate defeat of capitalism would enable Communism to emerge victorious.

The unusual series of commentaries in the Peoples Daily mirrors Soviet efforts to promote an alternative political and economic system during the Cold War. The rise of anti-establishment, protectionist politicians like Trump, amid populist winds on several continents, has sent political parties scurrying to shore up their support, helping China to portray itself as relatively steady. . . .

Chinas rising wealth has brought greater global presence, but thats not enough, said Zhang Ming, a political science professor at Renmin University in Beijing. The Communist leaders want that someday China will matter globally for the nature of its political system and create its own universal values.. . .

The Peoples Daily also used Trumps inauguration weekend to tout the benefits of Chinas political system. The emergence of capitalisms social crisis is the most updated evidence to show the superiority of socialism and Marxism, it said.

Western style democracy used to be a recognized power in history to drive social development. But now it has reached its limits, said another article on the same page. Democracy is already kidnapped by the capitals and has become the weapon for capitalists to chase profits.

Illustration from Andrew Kitzmiller, Creative Commons

Read more:
China pushing Communism to replace failing Democracy - Patheos (blog)

In case you were busy with the inauguration, the world dodged a bullet Friday. There was a dark cloud of mystery over whether China would achieve its target of at least 6.5% GDP growth for 2016.

If growth had been announced at 6.4% or, heaven forbid, 6.3%, the consequences for global markets would have been terrible indeed. (Note: 6.2% GDP growth was impossible, as the scale started at 6.3%).

Apartment blocks are pictured on a hazy day in Wuqing district of Tianjin, China, December 10, 2016. REUTERS/Jason Lee.

Thankfully, GDP growth came in at 6.7% year-on-year in the first quarter, 6.7% in the second quarter, 6.7% in the third quarter, and a blistering 6.8% in the fourth quarter. The crushing tension of not knowing the results ahead of time (because how could we?) has been resolved. The credit for this accomplishment goes to:

In 2016, faced with complicated domestic and international environment, under the leadership of the Central Party Committee headed by General Secretary Xi Jinping as the core, the whole country has carried forward the overall plan for promoting all-round economic, political, cultural, social and ecological progress as well as the Four Pronged Comprehensive Strategy in a coordinated way, adhered to the general work guideline of making progress while maintaining stability, followed the new vision of development, insisted on supply-side structural reform as the mainline, appropriately expanded the aggregate demand, advanced reforms, properly responded to risks and challenges and shaped good social expectations.

A bonus: the secondary goal of getting 100 words into a single sentence was also met.

Investment growth plummeted by an entire tenth of a point in the fourth quarter versus the first three. Retail sales saw the same growth in the fourth quarter as the first three. Consumer inflation did, too. Rail freight showed variability, falling over 7% in the first half then recovering to end less than 1% lower for 2016. The industrial production the rails were first not carrying, then were carrying, showed 6% gains throughout 2016.

The nationwide per capita disposable income of residents grew 6.3% in real terms. The gain for urbanites was 5.6%, for rural citizens 6.2%. Since there is nothing at all odd about any of these numbers, we can embrace as accurate disposable income23,821 yuan, which is less than $3,600 at the average exchange rate for 2016. The closest American equivalent to this figure shows a result ofover $43,000. The anti-China liars who believe the Chinese governments number is understated here (due to unreported income) see the true ratio of the two as only about 1:9, instead of the plainly correct 1:12. China raises the average of global GDP growth. This is very nice for China; it has no inherent benefit to everyone else. For everyone else, China runs a trade surplus, which by definition reduces the GDP of its trade partners as a group. Those who do not understand China properly might also misperceive the money supply situation. The stock of broad money M2 was 155 trillion yuan at the end of last year, over $22.3 trillion. This is $9 trillion more than the US M2 figure, a remarkable achievement given how much poorer Chinese are than Americans. Moreover, the gap in M2 was only $4 trillion as recently as 2011, showing the amazing progress China has made in extending its lead.

Chinas role goes beyond boasting M2 now larger than the US and Japan combined. China certainly does as much to keep global growth stable as any reasonable person could expect. It is said by others to contribute the most to global GDP growth. China raises the average of global GDP growth. This is very nice for China; it has no inherent benefit to everyone else. For everyone else, China runs a trade surplus, which by definition reduces the GDP of its trade partners as a group. Since it runs the largest trade surplus, China can in fact be seen as the biggest inhibitor of the rest of the worlds GDP. President Trump, among others, may want to decline this particular contribution.

Any sarcasm detected would be partly directed at Chinas official numbers and partly at various colleagues in the China economy and finance field commenting on the numbers. While official GDP growth slowed, in perfectly orderly fashion, Chinas macroeconomic performance is in fact generally stronger than a year ago. But the country is very far from being rich, and already massively overleveraged.

Excerpt from:
China's 2016 economic data, or who says communism isn't funny ... - American Enterprise Institute

Islam Defenders Front (FPI) leader Rizieq Shihab has maintained his innocence over allegations that he had attempted to trigger public unrest with his claim that the new Indonesian rupiah banknotes were emblazoned with communist symbols.

Rizieq fulfilled the Jakarta Polices summons on Monday for questioning regarding his recent statement that the newly released banknotes featured a hammer and sickle, the logo of the now-defunct Indonesian Communist Party (PKI), an ideology banned in the Muslim-majority country.

Speaking to journalists after the questioning, the firebrand Islamic teacher said he had brought several new rupiah banknotes, ranging from Rp 1,000 to Rp 100,000 bills, and showed investigators that all of the bills contained a hammer and sickle logo.

I was summoned for questioning on that matter. I told investigators that I did not accuse [the new rupiah banknotes of containing a hammer and sickle logo]. I proved it, giving them all the bills so they could see it for themselves.

Mass organization Jaringan Intelektual Muda Anti-Fitnah (Young Intellectuals Anti-Slander Network, or Jimaf) reported Rizieq to the police, saying that the FPI leaders claim constituted hate speech as it was baseless and could provoke public unrest.

Bank Indonesia Governor Agus Martowardojo earlier rebuffed Rizieqs claim, saying that the logo in question was actually the central banks logo, which was printed in such a way as an anti-counterfeit strategy.

Mondays questioning was overshadowed by a rally from FPI members and sympathizers in front of the police headquarters to protest Rizieqs questioning, which they claim is an attempt to criminalize ulema (Islamic scholars). (ebf)

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FPI leader denies allegations of provoking public unrest with communism symbol claim - Jakarta Post

PARIS: Geopolitics made a rare foray on the Paris catwalks on Sunday when the upstart Chinese brand Sankuanz said the world must wake up to the reversal of the old order.

Rising star Shangguan Zhes collection Destroy included clothes, often made from bio-chemical protection suits, emblazoned with charged slogans such as Immigrant, Natural Selection and most controversially of all, Communism Never Happened. The designer, whose rebel spirit has won him a growing following, said in a week when Donald Trump has become US president he was asking people to take their goggles off and look outside of political correctness and politics at the reversal of an established system. I am not a fighter... I am just telling the world as it is right now, he said.

On his slogan Communism Never Happened, which appeared on the back of two of his coats, he said: It is not really a slogan, it is just my observation. As a young Chinese person this is true for me. China is not communist now, it wasnt when I was growing up, and I dont think it ever was, Zhe added.

With tension high between Washington and Beijing over Trumps attitude to Taiwan and fears of a trade war, he said the only hope, the only opportunity to change this situation lies in rational creations by mankind like chemistry.

Raw-edged military uniforms, jumpsuits and outfits made from Dayglo and synthetic DuPont material dominated his show which he said hinted at a post-apocalyptic world.

Published in Dawn January 23rd, 2017

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'Communism never happened' - DAWN.com