Is it un-American to develop reality-based foreign relations?

Historian Mark Safranski, whose evil twin dabbles in the attempt to develop a rational set of rules for assessing threats to the US, shows a street fighting side in his bare-knuckle attack on Washington's Get Putin gang:

...Dick Morris, a former adviser to a Senate majority leader, a President and lately,Viktor Yushchenko, the new president of Ukraine, writes in the influential Capitol Hill paper Roll Call of a "Czar Putin" under whom "... the old Soviet Union will be back on the road to regional domination and the old ambitions of global power will return."

The otherwise sensible National Center For Public Policy Research with solidly Reaganite credentials, maintains a satellite operation called Center for the Future of Russia that is little more than a comical propaganda sheet for the Oligarchs (which makes one wonder if any unusually large checks have floated the National Center's way of late)...

Putin is not the enemy of the United States and he is a determined reformer who is by all reports, honest. Can that be said of Khordokovsky, Berezovsky, Gusinsky and the other Oligarchs who have looted Russia of hundreds of billions of dollars with the help of...crime lords and ex-Communist fixers? These characters do not have clean enough hands for any respectable American conservative to imagine they represent the free market or for any American liberal to pretend that these looters are democrats. In Chicago, we have a term for " businessmen" like the Oligarchs: " Mobbed Up"

These are ruthless men with very, very, large bank accounts and sinister motives who are trying hard to get the ear of official Washington because they would like to see the Bush administration begin to undermine Putin...

Whoever said foreign policy is dry stuff? I have only two quibbles. First, the oligarchs have long since gotten the ear of official Washington; the oligarchs are as much a creation of official Washington (during Clinton's era) as of Boris Yeltsin's clan. Putin was Washington's pet as long as he did what the oligarchs wanted, which was allow them to conduct business as usual.

My other quibble is Mark's statement that Putin is, "...censoring the [Russian] press through pressure, confiscation, intimidation and legal harassment."

The issue of press censorship in Russia is as complex as the influence of the oligarchs and their various foreign (non-Russian) backers on Russian media and the concept of "paid-for press" in Russia. The issue is further complicated for Americans because of the vastly different perceptions that Russians and Americans hold about the concept of censorship. In his analysis Perestroika 20 years later Peter Lavelle writes:

Unfortunately, under Yeltsin, most [of] the country's electronic media turned into a ghastly means for a paid-for-press to strike political enemies. Yeltsin was returned to office for a second term in 1996 because the free media he helped to create had lost much of its relevance.

For Putin, glasnost ("openness" or transparency) serves the purposes of the state--this comes nothing near supporting a Western concept of freedom of speech. It does not mean complete censorship. The almost shrill claims of the Western press about the end of freedom of speech in Russia are premature and exaggerated. Even with the Kremlin's desire to tame and intimidate the media into self-censorship, it is not hard to find print media and Internet content completely out of sync with the new Kremlin line."

But to get a handle on the debate, one needs to understand the Russian perception of censorship. In Lost in Translation: Russia's Political Lexicon Lavelle lists political terms dear to the hearts of Americans and shows how differently Russians interpret the very same terms. Under Censorship he explains:

This is the right and responsibility of the authorities to determine the quality and condition of the public sphere. Censorship has a large following [in Russia], hoping to see the end of paid-for political articles in the media, ending the transmission of pornographic images during primetime television broadcasts, and protecting what are believed to be national values.

Lavelle ends by noting:

"...if the West desires to win the hearts and minds of Russians concerning its own changing political lexicon to create a liberal democracy in its own vision in Russia, it should consider how the its lexicon gives every reason for Russians to resist and reinterpret the same lexicon.

I think it might come as a surprise to many to learn that we have a huge problem right here in the USA with "paid-for political articles in the media." It's just that the problem is not noticeable because the pay is one step removed from the actual media outlets.

Oligarchs (or anyone else, for that matter) with the big bucks to buy in as major donors to respected policy institutes or universities, or to start policy institutes, or hire big-name public relations firms with access to major media, have a direct line to the American public and with attendant influence.

Indeed, that's a big reason why the American public was unaware of the gathering threat from Arab terrorism. Rich Arabs who supported al Qaeda, and with the money to lavish on policy institutes ("think tanks") and public relations campaigns, used their access to the American press to tamp down questions about the rising tide of terrorist acts and divert attention from violent Muslim extremism.

One would think the American press learned their lesson after 9/11, but the same pattern is playing out with the Get Putin movement. I don't think it's McCarthyism for an American reporter to ask a source for a list of their donors and to mention it in the report if the source has financial ties to an Oligarch (particularly those with known ties to organized crime).

And it's time for members of the Get Putin movement to realize that in Russia, much censorship comes not from the government but from mobsters settling scores. For Russians to wrest control of their society from the mobsters and the oligarchs will take more than urging more freedom of speech on them.

The above quibbles aside, I am glad that Mark Safranski has found time away from the esoterics of Rule Set theory to deploy his knowledge of Russia. This is helping his fellow Americans (and one hopes this includes Americans in Washington) make sense out of modern Russia.

The question is how many in Washington are interested in making sense out of Russia, or any other foreign country. American policy has struck out on such a new direction and on so many fronts that Pundita suspects cognitive weariness is setting in. Since 9/11 official Washington has been on a steep learning curve about many subjects. ("What the hell is the difference between a Shiite and a Sunni?" "Are Kurds Arabs?") I suspect weariness is causing some to set up cognitive base camp around the simple, easy-to-grasp notion that all workable foreign policy comes from the barrel of a gun.

Actually, all workable foreign policy is backed up by the barrel of a gun, but the "workable" part requires that policy not get lost in translation. For that, policymakers need to acquire understanding of subtext--what the other side means when they say something. Avoidance of that necessary step brings negative consequences--as Safranksi notes when he reminds the Get Putin gang of what's waiting in the wings, if "Putin's replacement proves to be a hapless stooge and Russia goes off the rails in the direction of a failed state armed to the teeth with nuclear weapons..."

In the face of confusion it's tempting to fall back on what one knows best. But it would be a very bad idea for Washington to attempt to resolve cognitive dissonance by re-starting the familiar groove of the Cold War.

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US-Mexico-Immigration: Lettuce not quibble

"Pundita, re your last two posts about illegals and the war on terror. Do you want to see lettuce go to five bucks a head? Then keep it up. The Yuma lettuce grower's association just told the border patrol in western Arizona to back away from some of the checkpoints because the growers don't have enough illegals to harvest the lettuce.

I think you're one of those people who are cursed with foresight. You would never have gotten on the Titanic. You would have counted the lifeboats and said, "No way." I'd bet $100 you never stepped foot in the World Trade Center. I bet you said, "Too high."

To use your favorite expression, that's not how things work down here on earth. First we crash into the iceberg, then we go back to the drawing board."
[Signed] Caesar in San Francisco

Dear Caesar:
What you mean "we" kemosabe? A popular thesis is that the dinosaurs were wiped out by atmospheric conditions brought on by a meteor or asteroid hit. But then how come the possum survived the same conditions? I always listen carefully to Charlotte--the possum member of my team--because her clan memory goes back over 70 million years. That clan of critters survived virtually unchanged all those years. And they survived living with the dinosaurs.

Popov once tried to lure Charlotte into a taxi by opening a box of lemon Krispy Kremes and eating one donut after another in front of her. Incidentally, this is my enemies: utter ruthlessness. She stood there and watched him eat all the donuts in the box. When I asked why she put herself through that, she replied, "I needed the box."

After he threw the box out of the taxi and took off, she collected the box. As a bonus she got pieces of Krispy Kremes left in the box. She reported that toward the end he wasn't able to finish each donut.

Wildlife have a good grasp of the concept of boundaries, even though the highly abstract concept of "nation" tends to elude them. So when I asked the possum for her fix on the illegals situation, she reminded me of a couple reports I'd mentioned to her a few years back:

Many villages in Mexico are now virtual ghost towns because Mexicans have left to work in the USA. There's not enough Mexicans left to farm and harvest crops in these villages. And the people left in the villages don't want to do the hard farm work because they can collect more from remittances sent by relatives working in the US.

I've spoken with Americans from Pennsylvania and Ohio who tell me there's no work to be had in their regions because all the plants were shipped offshore. These people were losing their mortgages because they couldn't make the payments. They were living on the dole; their unemployment checks had run out a long time before.

Charlotte asked why the jobless Americans don't take up residence in the deserted Mexican villages and support themselves by doing farming.

When you stop and think it through, she has a point. Gringos are welcome in Mexico up to a certain line, which has to do with spending dollars and making jobs for Mexicans. But I doubt the Mexican government is big on the homesteader concept.

Yet that would be a solution, wouldn't it? If hundreds of thousands of broke Americans in the Rust Belt are willing to homestead in Mexico--where's the beef? If Mexicans and US employers don't feel they're really committing a crime by working here illegally, this view should be a two-way street.

Actually, the pay in Mexico that many Mexicans are snubbing for pay here in the USA works out to more money than many Americans are subsisting on right now.

And what about all the broke and starving Africans, Haitians, and so on, who are coming here to work? Many of these people have a serious hard luck story. So, if there's plenty of land and jobs going unfilled in Mexico because so many Mexicans want to live and work here--why can't the Mexican government liberalize their immigration policy? Show a little more compassion toward the truly downtrodden of the world? And actually, Mexico is paradise to people who are fleeing, say, North Korea and Burma.

To put this another way, the Mexican government is full of hot air, and so are the Americans who make a living off advocating for Mexican illegals. They all know that their arguments don't hold up to logic or the American standard of compassion.

If an industry is built on breaking important laws and exploiting the very poorest, that's not business, is it? It's organized crime. For that reason I don't eat lettuce, unless it's locally grown--in Maryland or Viginina--and I know the farmers. And no, they don't charge five bucks for a head of lettuce.

You would win the bet but it wasn't the height of the twin towers that troubled me. It's that the higher you go, the more precautions you should take and this wasn't done. They cut up those towers for offices in the same way they cut up much lower buildings. It seemed to me they needed a lot more exits for such tall structures.

However, that's not why I never entered the towers. It's because I considered them unlucky. When I was a little kid I visited San Xavier del Bac, in Arizona. My mother told me to notice that one of the towers wasn't finished. She told me that the Indians who built the church for a Catholic priest refused to add the final touch.

She said they told the priest that humans can get on the wrong side of the gods when they build something very grand that reaches to the heavens. They explained you should always leave something unfinished, to show the sky gods that you're not trying to take their place.

Pundita doesn't know whether that's the real story behind the unfinished tower but it made a deep impression.

For links to other Pundita essays on Mexico, US-Mexico relations, immigration from Mexico and the Mexico-US border situation/war on terror, see Mexico Desk.

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Mexico-US-War on Terror: Disaster planning for what we know and imagine

Liz and Pundita continue the dialogue started in The bridge ahead and the bridge here now....

"Pundita, you ask what would happen to the Mexicans who depend on work in the US, and their employers, if the unthinkable--a catastrophic terror attack against the US--happened. That's taking the view, "You can pay me now, or you can pay me later."

I agree with your view, wholeheartedly.

Plans don't have to be perfect, or even constructed for a particular disaster scenario, to apply with success--provided the plans are "worked at" and don't sit on the shelf. Basic plans for how to respond to a disaster can be quickly adapted.

For example, Merrill Lynch got their people out of the World Trade Center during the 9/11 attack and maintained operations because they had a disaster plan for a hurricane sweeping up the East Coast and pounding Manhattan.

The Wall Street Journal was able to put out a paper the day after the 9/11 attack because they had vowed to never be subject to a failure of a single location; this came about as a result of an electricity crisis in New York years before.

And the United States Secret Service had a plan for backing up data and proper archival after the Oklahoma City bombing. However, the plan was never funded by the Congress, so during the 9/11 attack their Manhattan office lost precious, probably irreplaceable, evidence for ongoing investigations.

The moral is that disaster plans must be conceived and acted upon, even if imperfectly.

If a disaster from a terrorist attack occurs, there are two possible means I can see to lock down the US-Mexico border; neither is politically acceptable now--though, depending on the nature of the disaster and how clear a trail there is pointing at Mexico, either could become so.

First, we could use military force to create a lethal barrier until a physical one can be emplaced. The military can come from activating the remaining reserves and (especially, even appropriately) federalizing the National Guard. However, this detracts from our ongoing obligations elsewhere in the world, and in the interests of the war, we must not do that. Of course, our enemies probably play a little chess too, from time to time, and may have considered that. This adds to the rationale for finding another option.

The second possibility is to adapt the recent Minutemen project in conjunction with the time-honored Western tradition of citizens at arms protecting what the local government is too thinly spread to do: the local sheriff deputizing an appropriate number of townsfolk, and so forth.

Of course, the federal government has the Constitutional responsibility for foreign policy, and border control is a matter of foreign policy. Therefore, it would seem to me that the federal government would have to charter these forces.

To minimize the inconsistency of enforcement by these new folks, organization and at least some training, establishing a set of Rules of Engagement (ROE), clear means of identification of the real border enforcers, and at least some vetting of volunteers (MS13 need not apply) must all be established. Unfortunately, they would probably need to be established on the fly.

For all those reasons, and the logical consequences of them, I agree with your arguments. Getting Washington to listen is not high in my expectations while Senators are more concerned with stopping an appointment of a second- or third-tier Executive in the EPA to force the outcome of an administrative dispute in a Senator's favor. On the other hand, Ronald Reagan demonstrated that mobilizing the people tends to mobilize the Congress, albeit with varying degrees of alacrity.

Oddly enough, another possible means of changing things in Washington would be to end the gerrymander. While this would probably take too long for our current problems, two items stand out for me:

Some states have established independent commissions to draw district boundaries, and those states do have some moderate turnover in the Congress (more in the House, of course).

And the House, as a whole, has a lower turnover than the British House of Lords. If the legislative branch had its tenure threatened, it might be a tad more responsive to the vox populi.

The second observation represents a longer-term solution, but the American public can move surprisingly quickly when something gets our attention, so I don't rule this out as a possibility, no doubt to be taken in conjunction with other tactics.

Regarding your suggestion that the US exert greater pressure on Mexico to make needed reforms--of course, there will be those who would resent our role in accelerating the reforms, but they are not likely to be our citizens. The resenters would probably be those losing privilege/having to pay taxes for a change, i.e, the wealthy and well-connected of the Mexican establishment. So their resentment should not be a governing factor in US policy toward Mexico.

I think the reforms, and the changes they bring to Mexico, will come sooner or later, because the Mexicans will not stand by forever when they can see other possibilities. If we are proactive in adapting to the changes, we protect ourselves and we may earn goodwill from Mexicans who realize that we nudged the reform process along.
[Signed] Liz in USA

PS: You might be interested in the post-9/11 book, Planning for Survivable Networks. It needs updating, and it deals specifically with keeping cyber networks safe from security disasters and planning for a dependable recovery strategy. However, its premise, which is planning for the unthinkable by planning for what we know and can imagine, is applicable to the points you raised and which I've addressed in this letter."

Dear Liz:
Thank you for an instructive and comprehensive reply. There is a third possibility other than the two you discussed or as adjunct. The San Diego-Union Tribune reports that a little known 1996 law authorizes state and local governments to enforce immigration status. (Hat tip: Bruce Kesler) A California assemblyman, Ray Haynes, has introduced a constitutional amendment in the Legislature that makes use of the law. He's drafted a companion measure, which he intends to offer as a ballot initiative. Both proposals seek the same end: creation of a California Border Police agency to enforce immigration law at the border and in the state's interior:

The goal is to block illegal immigration at its source and crack down on employers who hire undocumented migrants.

"The total mission is the comprehensive, statewide uniform application of federal immigration laws," Haynes says. "That's the only job they have. I want to keep it real simple, real focused, real straightforward."

Haynes concedes that it is not entirely clear how much the state can do without the federal government's permission. The law he cites permits state and federal partnerships under federal control. A pilot project under way in Florida operates under strict rules of engagement.

"Basically, you enter into an agreement with immigration and customs about where you can enforce and what you can enforce," he said. "A lot of that is subject to negotiation."

Haynes...envisions a new agency modeled after the Highway Patrol, with mobile agents patrolling near the border, conducting sweeps of employment centers and investigating employers suspected of hiring undocumented workers. Illegal immigrants picked up by state agents would be held until the federal government took them into custody for deportation.

Haynes holds out little hope that his proposal will be approved in the Legislature, where it would take a two-thirds vote in each house to place it on the ballot. But he has enlisted the help of Rescue California, the political committee behind the 2003 recall of former Gov. Gray Davis, to help him gather signatures....

What's particularly interesting about the proposal is that Haynes has attached it to reality. He points out the obvious, which is that the Mexicans who are being fed into the illegal system of work are horribly exploited while the US and Mexican governments look the other way.

"They are exploited by the traffickers who bring them across the border...They work in substandard conditions for substandard pay. They can't report crimes. They live in constant fear. How can you say that's good for them? Through all of this, the government just averts its eyes and says we don't see this happening."

But if you want to be shocked, read the Union-Tribune's editorial in protest of the Haynes proposal. After a critique that wrongly compares the proposal to Proposition 187, the editorialist writes:

...Until U.S. employers stop hiring illegal immigrants and until all Americans begin to treat those who knowingly hire illegal immigrants with the same contempt that they do other lawbreakers, the United States is going to have a problem with illegal immigrants trampling our borders. And it's going to continue happening at a rate that neither the federal government nor state governments can keep up with. When it comes to illegal immigration, Americans have met the enemy–and, guess what: We're it.

Has this writer never heard of the war on terror? Living on the edge of an active volcano with the ground shaking, the writer's solution to the crowds at the border waits for Americans enmasse to realize we're the enemy.

Earth calling the Union-Tribune: It doesn't even take a terrorist attack on the US to set in motion a disaster for Americans who depend on daily labor by legal and illegal Mexican commuters, and for those Mexicans who depend on the paychecks.

All it takes is a US Code Red security alert extended over many weeks or months and directed at the southern border. There would be no warning of the alert. No time to plan, no time for two-paycheck families that depend on cheap daycare from Mexican workers to find an alternative solution. No time for small businesses to line up other employees.

Yet we're entering a phase with regard to the war and in particular two enemies--Iran and North Korea--where a Code Red could be issued at any moment. In that event the commuter traffic at the southern border could be slowed to a snail's pace for a long time. Here, "snail's pace" would not be a predictable crawl, where you could factor in an approximate delay time. The delay in getting through the checkpoints for all but the most critical traffic would be highly unpredictable--and deliberately so.

I went through something like that right after 9/11. Not that I'm complaining because I understood the reason for the action but it was a commuter's worst nightmare; I had to abandon that vehicular route, as did many others. At least I could find an alternate route. What I went through would be small chips next to the same scenario applied to the US southern border region.

So everything you've noted has great resonance with me. I just don't understand why many who would be most negatively affected by a border lockdown or slowdown have their heads in 1989, when they study the daily crowds at the border.

If only there was some way to get across to the Mexican government, and the American oil company executives who don't want to rile the Mexican government, that Ayman al-Zawahiri is not Pancho Villa.

For links to other Pundita essays on Mexico, US-Mexico relations, immigration from Mexico and the Mexico-US border situation/war on terror, see Mexico Desk.
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Mexico-US-War on Terror: The bridge ahead and the bridge here now

"Dear Pundita:
I have read your series on Mexico and it made me think. The emigration in search of credit was an aspect I was not aware of, but it makes quite a bit of sense to me, as did the logic of your argument for an "external" approach to the illegal immigrant problem.

Scarcity is the key assumption--the sine qua non--of economics, and the scarcity of major global credit leading to a reallocation as Mr. Wolfowitz assumes his new post is more food for my thought.

Re the external vs. internal approach to our [southern] border: perhaps it's useful, in terms of lowering the emotional level of the argument, to consider the parallels of the War on Drugs. There, too, we have a domestic demand for an illicit product and a foreign supply of same. In both cases, the foreign supply is driven, at least in part, by poor alternatives for the suppliers (no other crop is as remunerative as coca or poppies, not to mention...coercion on the growers by the drug organizations to supply or die). And in both cases, the domestic demand's immoral character has been weakened over time to the point where its existence is accepted as part of the norm of life.

There are alternatives on the demand side, and we [Americans], as a society, have more direct control over that. With respect to drugs, there are alternative means of gratification; with immigrants there are alternative means of getting the work done.

But economics teaches that price matters, too--and as long as there is plenty of supply, the price will not be "too expensive" for many consumers. To change things, we need to change both demand and supply.

Another thing I used to teach my students was that incentives matter. If you change the rules of the game, the players' behaviors will change (sports always makes good examples, but so do Enron, MCI, et al). Change the suppliers' incentives and the quantity supplied at a given price will adjust; the same principle applies to demand. But here we get into another of your recent topics--systems analysis and modeling of projected successful outcomes of a solution. I think this is another one of those areas where we need to think carefully, like a chess player, three or four steps down the line.

If Mexico's banking and regulatory structures change with the effect of increasing the economic opportunities within Mexico, what are the ripple effects? Mexico becomes richer; how will that change its behavior vis a vis the US?

If Mexico doesn't need us as a social safety valve, might one of their responses to their newfound economic independence be a closer relationship with the Castro/Chavez party?

What sort of border problem does that raise, given the existence of many coyotes [smugglers of illegals] with their known routes across the border?

Note that I do not mention these examples as a reason to maintain our current Faustian bargain, but only as a cautionary note to look before we leap.

If Mexico becomes richer, and the economic migrants here head home, what happens to our economy? If labor prices have been artificially reduced, then what's the inflationary impact (until substitution of alternatives kicks in, and it's unlikely to be complete, meaning some amount of price changes will persist)?

If two-income families, managing by hiring out lawn care and housework, no longer have those options, what are the social as well as economic impacts? How many families don't know how to take care of a lawn, how to keep a house clean beyond running the vacuum? I kid you not, there are families in some neighborhoods of my suburb where the kids have never done chores, and I'm not sure their parents ever did, either.

And what happens if Mexico goes halfway then stalls, or regresses, after having excited in the bosoms of its patriots the possibility of change? Are we prepared to relive the first two decades of the last century along the border? Ask the residents of Columbus, NM.

I have no answers -- but I think (with a reasonable amount of conviction but little to no proof) that we will be better off with a prosperous and stable border, north as well as south. But getting there from here, assuming those countries make the changes, will not be pretty.
Signed "Liz" in USA

Dear Liz:
Pundita is very happy with your observations because they address and integrate several themes I've pounded away at. And I think your observations are sound. However, they are made outside the context of war.

Over the course of my arguments for an external solution to the illegals problem, I've brought up so many issues that admittedly it can be hard to keep hold of the thread of my rationale for discussing the problem. But all my discussion is grounded in my best guess as to what will happen to the southern border if a major terrorist strike happens again in this country.

The border will be locked down--all the legal entry points. That's just for starters. A likely scenario will be that trenches will be dug or bombed along the entire stretch of border to make it virtually impossible to circumnavigate the check points.

By the time the legal checkpoints would be reopened, you wouldn't want to think about what happened to millions of innocents on both sides of the border, and to US businesses that depended on legal Mexican workers--not to mention the hardship for the small businesses that depended on illegal employees.

If the border checkpoints are locked down for many weeks or months, it would be akin to the disaster situation after the worst hurricane on US shores in recent memory.

And if the attack is catastrophic, the American local governments directly impacted by the sudden loss of Mexican employees might have to stand at the back of a very long federal funds relief line.

Is there a way to avoid the secondary effects I've sketched? I would say the answer is no. I think the checkpoints would be shut down; no way around that. However, the severity of the hardship generated by the lockdown would depend on factors that we can address now.

There is a way to greatly minimize the secondary effects. That's if the crowds at the border are thinned out previous to the attack. Thinner crowds would allow border police to routinely make the kind of close surveillance that would go with a heightened security alert.

From the above, clearly I'm assuming a terrorist(s) could get through even the best surveillance, as happens in Israel. However, if the best surveillance is already in effect at the time of the attack, then--as with Israel--the US airports and other border checkpoints can be reopened sooner after the attack.

On the other hand, if the surveillance at the southern border is at the current level, it could take a long time before the checkpoints reopen after the attack. In that event you're looking at widescale secondary effects.

So, all of my arguments and suggestions are built on asking how to get the crowds thinned out quickly and permanently at this time, and without locking down the border. I'm saying in effect, "Do it now (thin the crowds now) while there is time to adjust, while the changes brought about by thinning the crowds are not sudden and uniform; i.e., all at once."

"Doing it now" means putting a lot of pressure on the Mexican government to push through reforms that the IMF has called for.

"Doing it now" means extending the pressure to countries that feed many illegal immigrants into Mexico.

"Doing it now" means that the US and the aid institutions and development banks have the time and wherewithal to nurse Mexico and Central American countries through the shock of the changes brought about by reforms.

So I've factored in the cautions you mentioned. I'm saying the cautions should not have weight against catastrophic secondary effects from an act of war.

Again, that observation does not overturn your points. Yes, there is going to be pain, no matter how you stack the situation. But during war one must think in terms of triage. At all costs, at #1 priority, you want to avoid the double whammy of effects from an attack and catastrophic secondary effects from the attack.

I assume the same principle applies for disaster planning of all kinds including hurricane disaster. Frankly, Pundita doesn't understand why few American commentators think along those lines while discussing the illegals problem at the southern border.

Given that we are at war the disaster planning mindset should dominate all discussion about the illegals. Instead there are the Buckleyites, who argue that Americans must simply get used to illegals coming across the border. There are what I suppose could be called the Johnsonites, who look at the problem as a kind of Great Society challenge. There are the Technocrats, who think that if we put enough laws on the books and create enough new forms for US employers to fill out, this will solve the problem.

We've got the hounds of hell after us but Americans wrangle about a universal ID and forms in triplicate, which a crack enemy military unit can counterfeit. The rickety bastards are trying every which way to get past the southern border. The pain and suffering of American teenagers who never learned how to work a lawnmower must be viewed in that context. Yes, there will be pain and suffering for many Americans if Mexicans in droves find happy employment and good banking practices back home. But we're talking about losing a pinkie versus an arm. The pain and suffering will be as nothing, if those crowds at the border are not already thinned out prior to an attack.

Mexico is rolling in dough. It's just that the government, at every level, is crooked and scared and playing ostrich. They've been getting away with putting off changes. This is because the poor and illiterate Mexicans are just like poor illiterate Americans: they don't have a clue about what their government is actually up to.

And also because literate Americans don't follow Mexican news enough to get steamed about the doings of the Mexican government. This means the US government can futz around when it comes to leaning on Mexico's government to make changes.

With regard to having a very unfriendly neighbor--if Lopez Obrador is as described by the US Department of State, and if he's elected in 2006, we're getting another Hugo Chavez no matter what we do with regard to the border situation. All the more reason to act now to thin out the border crowds--a point not lost on Vicente Fox.

I think the proper response to such concerns is that we'll have to cross that bridge when we come to it. The bridge here now has "fortifications" written on it.

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Mexico Desk

Last updated June 15.

(In Order of Publication)

Why Vicente Fox is going straight to hell

Mexico

Truth, lies and damning statistics

Terroristas and banditos...

Pundita clarifies a point

Beep this is a recording

Winter soldier tells of grim toll...

Bruce Kesler responds

The darkness of inattention

Mexico-US War on Terror: The bridge ahead and the bridge here now

Mexico-US War on Terror: Disaster Planning for what we know and imagine

US-Mexico Immigration: Lettuce not quibble

US-Mexico Immigration: Brother, can you spare a half million dollar house?

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Look back in hatred

Note to The Reader: Fifteen minutes after I published the following, I found an email in my inbox that contains a link to a Washington Times opinion piece by Arnaud de Borchgrave. It's not often that I'm in agreement with that particular analyst but not only do I agree, I'm stunned that the Times printed his piece. There is a ray of hope, after all, with regard to US mainstream reporting on Russia. Thanks to Mark Safranski at Zenpundit for alerting me to the piece. I hope that Mark, whose opinion as a Russia historian carries weight, will expand on the points made by de Borchgrave.

"Pundita, dear, I must admit I was touched by your little tribute to the 'Soviet' contribution to winning the [second world] war. A little tribute to those who died because of Soviet rule might help round things out. Now that the festivities are over, any bets on the Khordokovsky verdict?
[Signed] Boris in Jackson Heights"

Dear Boris:
You're such a cynic to imply that the verdict was delayed by the festivities. But when the Kremlin does to Khordokovsky what Eliot Spitzer does to Wall Street pirates, it's not okay with the American press, is it? So how about if we answer your question this way:

How about if we let those Americans whose lives were ruined by pirate companies such as Enron place their bets on the Khordokovsky verdict? Oh but I that's right; such Americans can't place bets because the American media has not seen fit to describe in detail just what Mr Khordokovsky did to get himself arrested.

I was a child of the Cold War; it wasn't until my 20s that I learned that large numbers of Russians died fighting the Nazis. Even then, I had no idea how many Russians had given their lives. The Soviet Union didn't 'win' the second war, but I don't want to think about how many more innocent lives would have been lost in that war, if not for Russia pounding down Hitler's divisions.

So I am very proud that President Bush attended the Russian VE Day memorial, and prouder still that he officially acknowledged the American part in the betrayal at Yalta. As representative of the American government, Bush set a standard for conduct by a nation that China and Japan and many other countries should emulate.

We cannot build the future on evasions; we must build it on truth. Yet the truth has many faces. The Baltic peoples suffered terribly under Soviet rule; another truth is that governments in that part of the world corroborated with the Nazis to massacre Jews. Bush made an attempt to acknowledge all the truths of that terrible time. No national leader could do that neatly, cleanly, in a way that satisfied everyone. Yet Bush's attempt signals the determination to look forward with hope. The alternative is to keep looking back with hate.

I have seen with my own eyes where the alternative leads. In the middle of an ethnic "cleansing" I witnessed, I was served tea by an educated man--educated in America--who matter-of-factly explained why there must be a Final Solution to the "problem" of a minority people in his country. That was his way of agreeing with my plea that a house divided against itself cannot stand. Today that country is in ruins; to the extent there is peace it is the peace of exhaustion, the quietude of despair.

Vladimir Putin, with his trademark sarcasm, is a marked contrast to Bush's idealism, yet both leaders are saying the same thing in their own way. Whereas Bush lectures the Latvians to leave go of old hatreds, Putin snaps at them to stop ranting and start working on constructive solutions to the border dispute with Russia.

Of course it's easy for an American to support the move-on approach; I didn't suffer under Stalin's rule, except indirectly via the drain that the Cold War made on American society. And Putin would do well to take instruction from Bush's attempt to hear and acknowledge Pain and Suffering from the various sides. Sometimes, saying "We're sorry" once is not enough. And sometimes, apologies must be backed up by a gesture, no matter how token it might be.

From the other side, Americans could take instruction from the fact that the US press didn't see fit to report the Latvian call for apology within the context of a border dispute with Russia.

How are we to see our way clearly in East Europe, and indeed the rest of the world, if our news media act mainly as a conduit for agendists? Equal US media time for opposing views extends only to Republican and Democrat domestic positions. When it comes to international affairs, the media tend to act as a mouthpiece for special interests and factions in the government. This is on the excuse that reporters need to keep their access to important sources.

But then how is the American public supposed to arrive at intelligent observations about the world outside our door? Are we supposed to spend all our free hours trolling the Internet, just to scrape together enough data to make reasoned observations? And what about those Americans who don't have Internet access?

I keep hearing about the "Two Americas." I am seeing two Americas emerge--the America representing well-informed news consumers and the America representing news consumers who don't know what century this is.

I have no idea how the Khordokovsky verdict will go. A guilty verdict and serious jail time would send a message to the other oligarchs but I think they've already gotten the drift.

Much could hang on whether Khordokovsky decides to take his mother's advice to heart. Not long before his arrest she warned him that he needed to start thinking some about what was best for Russia. He ignored the warning.

Last night on John Batchelor's show, Victor Gubareff--a Russian who does analysis for Stratfor--called it like it is for Russia. He said that Russia is a society of bandits and oligarchs. It's also a society of very old clan ways. To get from there to a functioning democracy is going to take more than uninformed Americans and West Europeans urging more "freedom" in Russia.

For those who never heard a word about the border dispute, here are two short reports, which fill in several blanks and open a bigger window on the kind of problems Putin is wrestling with.

Russia calls on Latvia to stop ranting...

Russia-Latvia border treaty hangs in mid-air...

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Roses for the matadors and a recipe for lemonade

Pundita doesn't mind certain kinds of rascals but I admit that I don't like Ahmed Chalabi even though I've never met him. In fact, the one thing I have against Paul Wolfowitz is that he allowed Chalabi to parlay their mutual love of math into a garden path, down which Wolfy blindly walked.

I agree with the Iraqi who call Chalabi a drum--makes a big noise but hollow inside. I think he's a phony on top of being a rascal. I grudgingly admit this makes him, as another Chalabi observer remarked, a great politician. So it is with great effort that I heave aside my personal dislike and attempt to plumb King Abdullah's decision to let bygones be bygones about the matter of $300m in bank fraud.

Incidentally, Americans can study Mr Chalabi's career as a banker if they want to feel their way toward understanding why peoples in the developing world don't trust banks. In America when lazy crooks want to scare up quick cash, they rob a bank. In the developing world, the same types start a bank.

But Chalabi will sue anyone who calls him a crook. If the Jordanian government hadn't instituted the silly rule that banks in Jordan must put 30% of their foreign exchange into the central bank, nobody would have gotten upset that there was no money in Jordan's second biggest bank. However, as the (UK) Independent online edition notes with a straight face, "Unbowed, Mr Chalabi went into politics."

There it seems he found his calling. Chalabi's methods of quickly raising large amounts of cash must be weighed against more positive factors: his political skills, his obsessive determination that Iraq will become a great modern country, and his close ties with Iranian royalists and moderate factions inside Iran. By promising everything to everyone in Iraq, Iran and Jordan, Chalabi and his Iraqi National Congress party are part of the reason that Iraq has not fallen into civil war.

Another part is Bush's decision to yank Paul Bremer and put Iyad Allawi in charge of things until an Iraqi government was formed. The decision extended the first hope to Iraqi Sunnis that they would not to be purged from post-Saddam Iraq. The hope, shored by recent appointments of Sunnis to posts in the new Iraqi government, is making the Coalition military's job easier in Iraq.

The relative unimportance of the posts, and their small number, might not sound like much to us but they are a huge deal to the Sunnis--a sign that pragmatism, rather than revenge for the Saddam era, will rule the thinking of the Shia majority government.

Meanwhile, the US military command in Iraq continues their methodical draining of the swamp via Operation Matador. The news that Bill Roggio marshals in his Bringing it On essay might come as a shock due to paltry and highly distorted media coverage of Coalition activities. But the news is evidence that the military's grinding force and careful planning, which makes good use of the heroism and professionalism of the US solider, is paying off.

It's paying off to the extent that King Abdullah of Jordan and Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia have finally come to trust the US military command, which under Bremer's CPA rule were made to look like idiots. That is why the mullahs who report to Prince Abdullah are now encouraging remaining al Qaeda sympathizers in Saudi Arabia to march over there to Iraq and show the Marines what real men are made of.

Oddly, some American observers are reading snowballing success in Iraq as failure. Why they should be doing this, Pundita doesn't know, yet. Of one thing I'm certain: Chalabi's bullish forecast for Iraq is catching. Iraqis as a whole are waking up to the possibilities for their country, if it remains unified, and the chance to write a glorious chapter in the Middle East's history. If Western powers handed them a lemon by glomming together disparate tribes into a nation, they can make lemonade.
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Toward better American news media: More on the EMP story

Pundita received several letters in praise of her analysis of the EMP story; these included a letter from a blogger (Steve at Word Unheard). In a published defense of the seriousness of the EMP threat he added criticism of himself for overlooking the points I raised.

The blogosphere gods tend to visit brain furballs--or worse, Rugby--on Pundita when she displays a puffy head. So I will draw back the curtain to reveal the high level of efficiency, organization, and research behind that blog on the EMP:

Basically, I sent an email to three bloggers-- Dave Schuler , Bill Roggio and Mark Safranski --that boiled down to, "Help! I heard a scary story about EMP from John Loftus on John Batchelor's show last night! Does anybody know anything about EMP and whether Loftus's story should be taken seriously??"

By the end of the day, Mark Safranski had tracked down blogger friend "Dr. Von" (a particle physicist) and offered to write up an analysis of the EMP threat, to the best of his ability, whenever he heard back from him. This meant that Dr. Von set aside his schedule to dash off something about EMP. Then Mark set aside his schedule to do research and write up an analysis.

It was not until I read Mark's blog that I saw my mistake. On the night he broadcast Loftus's report on EMP, John Batchelor had published on his website the May 2 World Net Daily story, which--if I'd read it closely--would have alerted me to the very points I covered in my essay. But I was blindsided by the sheer drama and scariness of Loftus's tale. Yet all Loftus did was repeat what Admiral Woolsey said in testimony before a congressional committee (and which WND duly reported) --although without mentioning the context in which the testimony arose.

Several morals derive from the odyssey I've recounted. Serious bloggers are always on a learning curve in their role as news consumer and blogger. And given the sheer amount of news they take in daily, one can slip by them on occasion.

Steve deserves credit for catching his oversight and discussing it on his blog on the EMP threat. That shows integrity as well as dedication to the empirical viewpoint (as versus the agendist or theoretical ones, which can wreak havoc with news reports).

One of the nice things about the blogosphere 'community' is that it serves as additional eyes and ears (and brain!). I note that my blog wasn't about EMP or even the threat it posed; it was an analysis of media treatment of EMP. I depended on the work done by other bloggers for the analysis of EMP and its potential threat--and for digging up sources on EMP.

Being a news consumer is hard work--particularly during war, when the agendists and propagandists ratchet their rhetoric, and when there's so much news requiring attention. Everybody fogs out and gets caught napping--even the best analysts. But you'll regain your bearings easily if you remember to ask about the context in which the news story arose; e.g., was it part of testimony before a committee or during a press conference? If so, what is the background?

The EMP story is particularly instructive because so much was 'going on' with it. It had different elements mixed together:

> The technical element (the nature of EMP and debates about its threat),

> the very scary and highly dramatic statements about a specific type of threat (an EMP fired at the US from a tramp steamer),

> and the claim that the Iranian missile test "must" have indicated that the Iranians were readying an EMP weapon.

So one has to isolate and untangle the separate elements then analyze them singly--not an easy task for the general public, and not easy for those under pressure to comment quickly on a news story (e.g., bloggers).

Yet that kind of analysis is required, if one is to avoid gross misperceptions. Ideally, we should be able to depend on professional news analysts to do that brain sweat for us. But professional news commentary in the mainstream media is so poor that the serious news consumer has to learn and practice at least the basics of analysis.

Eventually, all that citizen effort will result in demands for better professional new analysis. Right now the professionals are getting off the hook; they divert attention from their incompetence by bringing up the bias argument then concentrating debate around that.

Bias is the least of the problem; most professionals simply aren't trained in news analysis. Part of that is the fault of journalism schools; part of it is the tendency to look for 'personalities' in commentators--people who become professionals by virtue of their writing or speaking ability and appeal with the public.

Another part is the Talking Head phenomenon--the tendency to bring in an expert on the subject matter of a particular news story, rather than someone who specializes in analyzing news as data.

Heavy reliance by the mainstream media on Talking Heads is why it's so easy for the news consumer to lose the thread of a news story. Once experts start debating the technical aspects of an issue, the context in which the issue arose as a news story gets lost in the maze of expert opinion.

That's what happened with the EMP story. To catch hold of the thread, always ask yourself in what context the news story arose. In the case of the EMP threat, the news arose in the context of testimony before a congressional committee. Holding onto that thread will lead you out of the maze of data, exposition, speculation and debate and deposit you at a reasonably objective view of the news of the day.

For readers who despair that the quality of MSM news analysis (and reporting) will improve, never underestimate your power and the determination of those inside the business to make improvements. Over the years, John Batchelor has aired many segments that serve as a primer on defensive news consumption. During the run-up to the gubernatorial recall vote in California, John took Craig Crawford through a step-by-step analysis of a poll that the Los Angeles Times printed about the candidates. Under Batchelor's questions, Craig's 'forensic' analysis was a jaw-dropper; the poll, when closely examined, was very misleading.

Within days of that broadcast, the mainstream media began airing and publishing stories about the media's heavy reliance on polls as the basis for news stories, the different types of polls, and the highly deceptive results of some types of polls.

When Eason Jordan used the World Economic Forum (or the other way around) to launch a sneak attack on the Bush administration, Bill Roggio and a handful of other bloggers closely analyzed Jordan's remarks and the context in which they arose. Their analysis cut so close to the bone that it seems CNN preferred to ditch Mr. Jordan in an effort to tamp down further inquiry. In any case, CNN was served notice that the American news consumer is becoming more sophisticated.

Yet the nature of news in this highly complex war means that no matter how trustworthy we consider a news source, we need to learn the basics of good reporting and apply the standard to important news stories.

For new readers who wonder about the identity of Rugby, Pundita refuses to give that precocious lab rat any more publicity than he's already received on this blog. But if you must know, I suppose you might type "Rugby" into the search engine that Google perches on this page.

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The Matrix and the International Crime Threat Assessment Report

"Dear Pundita, I don't know what to make of Bush's visit to Russia, Georgia and Latvia. It seems he was trying to do many things at one time but I think he managed to upset everyone and satisfy no one.
[Signed] Ann in Cincinnati"

Dear Ann:
The people who wanted to carve up the Soviet Union got their wish. Now Russia is surrounded small dirt-poor countries, none with any experience at democracy; all with deeply entrenched government corruption at the state and local levels, and with age-old internal tribal and clan rivalries--and without the means to compete in the globalized era of trade. And Russia itself is a mess.

But when you ask the freedomists, "Okay, so what are you going to do now that you have brought freedom?" they don't have the answers. All they can do is keep encouraging more freedom, more breakaway regions, more democracy.

Putin managed to get that reality check across to Bush this time around. That's what was accomplished during Bush's trip.

Now in the old days--the days before 9/11--the freedomists didn't have to think because there was a drill in place: First you demand freedom, then you get the World Bank and IMF to figure out what to do, to keep your new country from sinking into quicksand.

But now with The Arab Problem to deal with, and with Tony Blair breathing down Bush's neck about the Africa commission's findings (Blair's pet project) it's a new day. Bank resources won't continue to pour into the sieve of newly independent states in East Europe and Central Asia, not at the rate they did during the 1990s. Ditto for the European versions of the Bank.

To put all this another way, the people who made a killing from the breakup of the Soviet Union and the Soviet state-run enterprises didn't invest their easy USD billions in solving the problems that independence brings. So now there's many mega-messes to deal with.

Just how big the messes, Putin and his technocrats have been learning the hard way. They went gaga over Hernando de Soto's ideas, as did many governments in the developing world. His ideas are sound; for example, the black market is indeed a vampire. But the black market is only one part of a matrix of problems that bedevil every developing country--Mexico, China, India, Vietnam, Georgia, Russia, you name it. You have to go after the matrix.

For example, none of the profits from black market trade are taxed. In Russia alone, the black market accounts for about 40% of business. You can't have a modern government, much less a modern country, if you don't take in enough revenue to build and maintain critical infrastructures.

So Putin said okay, let's go after the black marketeers. But unless you also get control of organized crime then de Soto's point, if implemented, is a disaster. The little guy who did black market trade now has to pay taxes on top of the 30% he has to give mobsters. If he doesn't make those payments on time, he doesn't get a visit from the taxman. He gets his legs broken.

This is the situation in Latin America, as well--everywhere that governments have gone after the black markets. It's a huge problem--just one of many that comes with trying to make democratic government work in regions with no history of democratic government.

That's one reason Putin made the historic trip to Israel. He went in person to ask Sharon a favor. If Sharon's government wouldn't throw out the tax-cheating Russian Jewish oligarchs, could they maybe throw out the Russian mobs?

But that's another part of the matrix. Today's globalized mobsters aren't Al Capone; they don't buy out city governments; they buy out countries. They buy up a big interest in a small country's banking system and financial markets. Israel's been trying for years to extract themselves from that Faustian bargain, as have many other small countries.

Israel wasn't always America's fair-haired child. There were years when the Israeli and American governments were barely on speaking terms. Israel was desperate for cash and had nowhere to turn. Along came Russian mobsters lugging suitcases stuffed with millions of USD to invest.

The hellish part of the deal is that the Russian mobs working in the Middle East touched off wars with mobs connected with the Arab governments in the region.

To pile hell on top of hell, the Iranian military and police have lost many men to fighting the mobs. That's a big reason the awful mullacrat regime stays in power in Iran. The Iranian police state is all that stands between their country being overrun by mob wars.

When Sharon calls them up, they say, "Okay we'll leave. Just give us 10 minutes to cash in our stocks and bonds, the government debt instruments we're holding and withdraw our savings."

Nope, arrests won't work. They keep their nose clean in the countries they park in or do business in such a way that it would take an army of forensic accountants to spot a crime. And realize there are countries that should be called, "Money Laundering, Inc.," so it takes the mobsters only moments at a computer keyboard to transfer funds. And when the auditors show up, the banks simply transfer the funds to another Money Laundering,Inc. then transfer them back when the heat is off.

Nope, tougher banking laws won't work. In the immortal words of one Citibank executive, there's no law you can think up that some Brazilian banker can't find a way around. And if you make the laws too tough, legit corporations and powerful politicians in developed countries set up a howl.

So who do you ring up for answers? Nobody. The policy institutes and academia, the progressives and conservatives--all of them have great strategies for how to bring more freedom. But you get a recorded message when you call and say, "Now clean up the messes that freedom without thought made."

If you have any ideas for how to solve the problem, send them to Vladimir Putin and Ariel Sharon with a cc to George Bush. Before you put on your thinking cap, read the International Crime Threat Assessment Report. The report, published in December 2000, is the first comprehensive inter-agency study of international organized crime and it remains the most informative for the layperson.

Pundita advises that you take a stiff drink before you start reading. Seeing the matrix, all at once, can be a shock.
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A trio of bloggers takes on the Bogeyman and Pundita teaches some old tricks of reporter's trade

We in the media--and the blogosphere counts as media--have a duty to walk on the right side of the fine line between scaremongering and warning. Many in the blogosphere take the duty very seriously. The duty is hard at any time but during war, which generates large amounts of propaganda, counter-propaganda, misinformation and disinformation, it becomes devilishly hard.

Thus, Defense Tech, ZenPundit and Dr. Von are to be commended for setting aside their schedule to look into the hideously complex, highly technical and very scary story on Electromagnetic Pulse weapons (EMPs) that surfaced again last week in World Net Daily, and which was picked up by the John Batchelor Show.

Dr. Von, being the only particle physicist among the lot, gets the last word on the technical aspects of the story.

Defense Tech receives Pundita's special David Letterman Award for calling World Net Daily a Tinhat--short for Tinfoil Hat --publication.

Mark Safranski at ZenPundit is to be commended for somehow pulling together key points made by Defense Tech and Dr. Von and delivering a balanced assessment of how much we should be worrying at this time about an EMP weapon launched at the US from a tramp steamer.

This still leaves open the question, "Why now?" For the answer we must get historical, as Paris Hilton might say, or as Alfred Hitchcock might have said, set up the plot.

It all began one dark and stormy night back in the 1990s, when the CIA received a phone call from a gaggle of unemployed Russian nuke scientists and KGB/GRU defectors.

"Hello? Between us spoke good English. We have knowledge between us to blow galaxy up. If not hiring, we can try Pyongyang."

Happily for the continuation of the historical, the person on the other end of the phone had enough sense not to hang up.

How do you keep a gaggle of Russian defense tech experts and spooks happily and gainfully employed? Here in Washington we have the tradition of setting up a commission to handle delicate human resources situations. But first must come The Book, to introduce credentials and provide the rationale for establishing a commission.

By October 1999 The Book, KGB, had been published and so the Military and Research and Development Subcommittee of the Committee on Armed Services was ready to hear from Russian experts about the threat to military and civilians from an EMP bomb.

That being the trickiest part of the Clinton era, which was never kind to defense expenditures anyhow, it was not until October 30, 2000, that Clinton signed the FY2001 National Defense Expenditure Authorization Act, which brought the Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from EMP Attack (EMP Commission for short) into existence.

Then came the presidential election, then came everybody on the Hill and at the Pentagon sorting through the shock of Bush and Neocons in the White House. Then 19 guys with box-cutters as weapons demonstrated that with some ingenuity, planning and a suicidal bent, you didn't need hi-tech weaponry to launch a catastrophic attack on the USA.

Then came the Department of Homeland Security. At last count the DHS is made up of five million agencies, all of them wrangling with each other over budget allocations. It's just here that we again pick up the tale of the EMP Commission, which Pundita has pieced together by studying recent World Net Daily reports filed by Joseph Farah. All the reports (and the Washington Post op-ed piece by Kyl) can be found by following links in Farah's May 2 report for World Net Daily.

I've bolded every reference to the EMP Commission, so the thread is clear:

Sometime in Early 2005
Peter Fonash, acting deputy manager for the National Communications System in the Department of Homeland Security, says the agency has "determined that there is minimal EMP effect."

March 2005
The EMP Commission is called upon by one congressional committee or subcommittee or another to justify its continued existence. The EMP Commission testifies that the EMP threat is not being taken seriously by the Department of Homeland Security. The commission explains that the Department of Defense has received briefings at the highest levels but that equivalent briefings have not been conducted at DHS "yet."

(Translation: DHS kept saying their briefing schedule was full up.)

April 2005
The Washington Post publishes an op-ed by Senator Jon Kyl (R-AZ), Chairman, the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Terrorism, Technology and Homeland Security. Kyl warns in the direst terms of the threat from an EMP attack and offers that "Iran has surprised intelligence analysts by describing the mid-flight detonations of missiles fired from ships on the Caspian Sea as 'successful' tests."

(In other words, what looked like a test failure was read by experts on the EMP Commission as a sure sign that Tehran was fiddling with making an EMP bomb. A fact that Tehran would know, I might add.)

Kyl finally gets down to brass tacks by noting: "Fortunately, hardening key infrastructure systems [against EMP bomb attack] and procuring vital backup equipment...is both feasible and -- compared with the threat -- relatively inexpensive, according to a comprehensive report on the EMP threat by a commission of prominent experts [EMP Commission].

"But it will take leadership by the Department of Homeland Security, the Defense Department, and other federal agencies, along with support from Congress, all of which have yet to materialize."

May 2, 2005
Joseph Farah reports for World Net Daily:

WASHINGTON – Former CIA chief James Woolsey affirms the work of a special commission [EMP Commission] investigating the threat of a nuclear-bomb generated electromagnetic pulse attack on the U.S. by rogue states or terrorists and is urging the country to take steps necessary to protect against the potentially devastating consequences.

In testimony before the House International Terrorism and Non-Proliferation Subcommittee, chaired by Ed Royce, R-Calif., Woolsey, director of the CIA from 1993 through 1995, referred to the nuclear EMP threat, characterized in intelligence circles, he said, as "a SCUD in a bucket."

Woolsey commended the Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from EMP Attack [EMP Commission] for its years of work on the subject and for its dire report concluding that it is a means of attack that could lead to the defeat of the U.S. by a much smaller enemy and utter devastation of the country.

"That is a very serious threat," he told the committee.... Woolsey, like the commission, specifically mentioned the new dimension a nuclear Iran would add to the risk of such an attack.

"We do not have the luxury of assuming that Iran, if it develops fissionable materials, for example, would not share it under some circumstances with al-Qaida operatives," he said. "We don't have the luxury of believing that just because North Korea is a communist state, it would not work under some circumstances to sell its fissionable material to Hezbollah or al-Qaida."...

From all the above I think it's reasonable to conclude that the EMP Commission is for now safe, by the skin of its teeth, from the budget ax.

Again, I was able to draw that conclusion based on data presented in Farah's reports and the links he provided. Yet The Tale of the EMP Commission is virtually invisible to the eye of the casual reader. It's hidden because the reader's mind is focused on dire predictions about what an EMP bomb can do, descriptions of what it is, and a mixture of speculation and intel regarding recent enemy activities. However, all that exposition tracks back or specifically quotes testimony given before committees and/or subcommitees -- testimony given to defend the work of the EMP Commission.

So what does it all mean? It means that the consumer of news has to learn to think like an old-school reporter--a reporter well-trained in ferreting out the traditional Four W's of a story:

Who (said or did it)?
What (what was said or done)?
Where (where was it said or done)?
When (when was it said or done)?

There is also the "H" (How did it come about?) if the reporter has space for it in the report.

But given the skill of today's disinformation specialists and the general low quality of reporting, I insert an "I" in my list:

Who?
What?
In What Context?
Where?
When?
How?

Asking yourself in what context something is said helps you quickly spot where in the story you've been napping. For example:

Farah's May 2 on EMP is headlined, "Ex-CIA chief warns of EMP nuke threat" and sub-headed, "Woolsey calls on U.S. to defend against devastating 'Scud-in-a-bucket' attack."

So you mentally stop and ask yourself, "In what context did Woolsey give that warning and make that call?"

Farah's report answers the question in the second paragraph:

"In testimony before the House International Terrorism and Non-Proliferation Subcommittee, chaired by Ed Royce, R-Calif., Woolsey, director of the CIA from 1993 through 1995, referred to the nuclear EMP threat, characterized in intelligence circles, he said, as "a SCUD in a bucket."

But back up: What about the first paragraph? Why didn't he mention at the beginning of his piece the Who, What, Where, When and In What Context Woolsey spoke?

Okay, let's look again at the first paragraph:

"WASHINGTON – Former CIA chief James Woolsey affirms the work of a special commission investigating the threat of a nuclear-bomb generated electromagnetic pulse attack on the U.S. by rogue states or terrorists and is urging the country to take steps necessary to protect against the potentially devastating consequences."

The "special commission" is our old friend by now, the EMP Commission. Farah names the commission in the fourth paragraph:

"Woolsey commended the Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from EMP Attack for its years of work on the subject and for its dire report concluding that it is a means of attack that could lead to the defeat of the U.S. by a much smaller enemy and utter devastation of the country. "That is a very serious threat," he told the committee. "

Most of the balance of the report is given to expanding on the dire warnings and predictions. Some of the data he presents easily gives rise the Tinfoil Hat dig. But if you get hung up on that data you tend to forget the context in which Woolsey is speaking.

You won't lose your bearings if you remember that Woolsey is talking to a congressional committee that has budget on its mind, and which is wanting to know just what the heck the EMP Commission has been doing for years to justify its existence. In short, he's on a mission to persuade, so of course he's full throttle.

If you tell me it would be helpful if Farah had specifically mentioned that--well, here we come to the need to be a defensive news consumer. Farah doesn't exactly run with people who have excellence in journalism as their top priority. He has an agenda to push. That observation holds true for many who report the news.

I don't know Mr. Farah's career or even whether he's primarily a reporter; he could be an intelligence analyst who also does reporting. I rarely read World Net Daily and only glance at the Counterintelligence Blog, to which Farah contributes--and only when I want to catch wind of defense tech/intel doings on the Hill or at various Washington agencies.

But Mr. Farah's career and his particular skill set are irrelevant to my points. People who earn their living by massaging data into news reports range on a scale from 'average bias'--of the kind you and I and most people bring to studying data--all the way up through highly trained propagandists.

I interject there are several gradations on the scale between those two extremes. One is 'spin doctor'--someone with PR or marketing skills who is good at directing the data consumer's attention to the positive data.

Bad reporting is also one gradation--people who simply have not been adequately trained to report; they're been trained to promote an agenda; e.g., 'watchdogging' the US government.

It's such observations that cause many news consumers to throw up their hands. Many are very cynical about the news media. However, that cynicism is dangerous if it leads to tuning out the news or to a wholesale rejection of a news story. Thomas Jefferson and many others have correctly warned that democracy depends on an informed citizenry. So you need to stay tuned in.

And most news stories are not a pack of lies. They are mixture of analysis and opinion that shades perception of the story by emphasis on certain facts and by omission or addition of facts.

So you've got choices:

> You can sit around and complain about the sorry state of reporting.
> You can tune out the news.
> You can find news sources that don't irritate you, so that you're getting mostly reinforcement for your own views.
> You can learn to think like a good reporter while you're taking in the news.

If you want to go for the last choice, which Pundita recommends, here's a tip: It helps at first to take in the news via print versions or to print out reports you read on the Internet. Then use a magic marker to highlight the Who, What, In What Context, Where, When, and How. After a while, you won't need a physical highlighter; you can do it in your head. Practice.

For more on the EMP commission and a good layman's description of EMP and the various threats it poses, see the Heritage Foundation's August 2004 report .
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Mexico-US: The darkness of inattention

(Many thanks to Bruce Kesler , who alerted me that The San Diego Union-Tribune is a good source for US news about Mexico and sent me the Union-Tribune report that quotes Sidney Weintraub.)

"Pundita, re your essay on the external approach to solving the illegal immigrant problem:

The way I conceptualize the problem is in terms of "pull" forces and "push" forces. Both need to be addressed but while the push forces (the forces pushing Mexican migrants over our borders) are the more important they're also the hardest to address both politically and pragmatically.

The pull forces can be addressed by putting more onus on employers. Leaning on employers in just three states--California, Texas and Illinois--would produce a mighty effect. Coincidentally, those three states have large numbers of electoral votes and presidents (or those who wish they were presidents) are disinclined to do much leaning.

An additional problem in dealing with immigration is that we don't even agree on the terms of the discourse. I'm in the process of preparing a decision diagram on immigration that may make things a little clearer.
Dave in Chicago at The Glittering Eye."

Dear Dave:
Please hurry up with that diagram; it's desperately needed. I am going to assume that by "immigration" you're referring principally to illegal immigration. Now let me see if I understand you correctly: It's hard for Americans to address the actual reasons that drive large numbers of Mexican/Central Americans to illegally enter the US. Ergo, Americans who want solutions to the illegals problem should busy themselves with addressing the price of tea in Outer Mongolia.

If you cry, "Foul!"--well, pragmatic solutions only work if they deal with reality. The reality is that the Mexican government has the US government in a hammerlock because of the oil deal that Fox struck with Bush. Fox's government has taken obscene advantage of the deal. His administration has a tacit program of encouraging Mexicans to illegally immigrate to the USA--a program that's flowed to the state and local levels in Mexico. The upshot: a tidal wave of Mexicans trying to get across the border. According to Georgie Anne Geyer at the San Diego Union-Tribune:

Mexico, as a state, is publicly encouraging its people to go to America – in effect, to break its neighbor's laws – so that (1) it can rid itself of its egregious overpopulation and bring its approximately $12 billion in remittances home every year, and (2) thus also rid itself of ambitious dissidents who politically could threaten the corrupt and inept state they come from.

The Bush administration wants to form a guest-worker program for the estimated 500,000 Mexican workers who cross the border every year. Sidney Weintraub, one of America's most cogent Latin American scholars, now with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, recently pointed out in The Financial Times that what America would really be doing with a guest-worker program is subsidizing companies who can get away with paying foreign workers pittances of what they pay Americans.

At the same time, he pointed out – and these figures can be backed up endlessly with examples of the Mexican government's corruption and haplessness at development – federal tax revenue in Mexico is now less than 12 percent of gross domestic product, one of the lowest ratios in even Latin America.

So one can argue that U.S. taxpayers are not only relieving Mexico of its excess and potentially politically tricky population, but also making good the shortfall from the failure of the country's own tax collection efforts.

So if you won't take it from Pundita or the International Monetary Fund, perhaps you'll take it from Sidney Weintraub. The rich tax deadbeats in Mexico and Fox's government are pulling a fast one, which is why my first essay on Mexico was titled Why Vicente Fox is going straight to hell.

There's no internal or "pull" solution that will deal effectively with a bunch of slicks operating from Mexico's side of the border. And with all due respect, it's naive to propose that the US employers who benefit from Fox's human export program are going to cooperate with US laws meant to break dependence on illegal employees. Such employers will stop hiring illegals only when forced to do so by draconian enforcement mechanisms that would turn this country into a police state. But no fear of that happening because the expense of creating and maintaining that kind of enforcement would crash US state budgets.

Of course laws already on the books should be enforced but the first task is to thin the crowd of illegals so that present US enforcement mechanisms are not overwhelmed. The only way to thin the crowd is to back it away from the border: deal with it at the points of origins; e.g., southern Mexico. But this approach depends on breaking Fox's hammerlock on the Bush administration. This in turn depends on the American voter waking up to the "push" side of the problem.

Realize that Fox's human export program operates under cover of darkness--the darkness of inattention from the American public. The irony is that many educated Americans of Mexican heritage are not blind to what's going on in Mexico, but their voices don't make it onto the US nightly national news.

It's so hard to address the "push" issues simply because Americans haven't the foggiest idea about the issues. That's because for decades our glorious national news media have conceived of Mexico as situated somewhere out in the galaxy between Venus and Saturn. Only a handful of regional (southwestern) US media do daily reporting on Mexico yet that is not enough, given Mexico's importance to the USA and the complexity of the illegals problem and it's connection with post-9/11 defense concerns.

The upshot is that Americans can't talk knowledgeably let alone intelligently about Mexico's problems. So when asked why so many illegals come to this country from Mexico, Americans reply that it's because of poverty and unemployment. Internal or what you term "pull" solutions stack up from there. Yet the entire stack is based on erroneous perceptions, a general view of Mexico that is decades old, and ignorance about recent developments in Mexico.

Because of the knowledge deficit, few Americans are aware that concerns in Washington about Lopez Obrador's growing power in Mexico translate to a glass ceiling for many proposed US measures to deal with the immigration problem.

Because of the knowledge deficit, few Americans know there is a faction in Mexico that intelligently views the illegals problem as Mexico's problem to deal with. This is an extraordinary development. It goes against the long-held Mexican tradition that looks at the illegals as America's problem to deal with--a tradition that Fox's government has promoted.

The faction has set off great controversy in Mexico. So they need all the help and encouragement they can get from Americans, including the Congress. Instead, they're getting obstruction from American activists who work to help illegals assimilate in the US and no attention from the general American public, which translates to no help from Congress.

And because of the knowledge deficit, Americans can't argue to Mexicans who have been unwitting pawns of Fox's human export program that they are pawns. Mexico's ruling class has long encouraged the export of their 'troublemakers' --the Mexicans who have the strongest opposition to corruption and inertia in their government. This set in motion a vicious cycle: the more the really outraged Mexicans flee to the US, the fewer troublemakers left in Mexico to contest bad government. This makes conditions in Mexico worse by further weakening opposition to bad government. This causes yet more Mexicans to flee.

To help break the cycle, Americans must effectively argue to their congressional representatives, the White House and Mexicans that if there was ever a time for Mexicans to stay home and fight for better government, now is that time because of historical forces. Yet Americans can't argue because of their knowledge deficit.

I hope by now I've made my point. Americans concentrate on internal solutions to the illegal immigrant problem because that's all they know--and even their knowledge of technical and legal matters concerning proposed internal solutions is very sparse and often erroneous.

But because of the knowledge deficit, the American window on Mexico only looks out on the US-Mexico border. Thus, Americans fixate on solutions that equate to asking, "How can we stop this flood of Mexicans and Central Americans from crossing the border into the US?"

Just from the security angle that's the wrong question. Once you've got a flood backed up, the most you can do is play Hans Brinker. The right question is to ask how to prevent pools of people from becoming a human tide at a border. The answer is that you use every diplomatic means available, including the US arsenal of policy instruments, to stop the pools from turning into a tide at the border. For a few specific suggestions, read back through my earlier essays on Mexico.

But the World Bank and the IMF have dug in their heels. They've said in effect to Fox's government: Fix the blasted tax code and go ahead with structural adjustments, or forget getting more megabucks WPA-type project loans that we know Mexico will default on anyway.

So what we have is a Mexican Standoff. Is there any way to break the standoff? Yes; there are two ways that I've seen. But much depends on Mexico's political parties and the Fox and Bush administration seeing Americans awakened from their long slumber about Mexican affairs. As with so many other problematical situations around the world, the "illegals problem" has flourished in the darkness of inattention.

I understand that I've thrown a great deal of data at the reader since starting my series of essays on Mexico and the illegal immigrant situation. Much if not all the data is new to Americans who don't live in the southwestern United States and don't follow doings at the World Bank and IMF. I myself am struggling to play catchup regarding Mexico's situation because so much of my attention has been focused the Middle East and Europe since 9/11. But the journey of a thousand miles has to begin. If Americans really want a solution to the illegals problem, we must get better informed about the "push" factors and act on what we learn. Toward this end I look forward to your diagram.
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Happy Birthday, Mr Prime Minister

"I'm glad Tony Blair won reelection but I'm concerned that the vote signals a rejection by the British people of his stand on the Iraq war and Britain's position in the Coalition. What do you think are the foreign policy implications for the USA?
[Signed] Jan in Reston"

Dear Jan:
First let's congratulate Tony Blair for going down in history. He is the only Labor party candidate to win a third term in a row and only the second prime minister in history to win three general elections in a row with a mandate. Today is his birthday, so he has much to celebrate.

Second, it's early hours to be making sweeping assumptions about what the vote means. There were predictions that voter turnout would be low. And Michael Howard's party got strategic advice, which seems to have paid off, from American GOP operatives. So Pundita waits on the breakdown of the vote numbers and technical analysis by British pundits who specialize in such matters.

I will note that the votes weren't even counted before the Left here and in Britain were spinning the numbers to mean a resounding rejection of Blair's decision to stand by the Bush administration's position on Iraq.

Blair is sensibly not disputing the spin, for to dispute it would point to other reasons why the Conservatives made gains in the election. It's to be remembered that Michael Howard and his party took virtually the same position as Blair with regard to supporting the US in the Iraq campaign.

Britain's defense secretary took a more measured view of the vote. According to the Scotsman

Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon acknowledged Iraq had been an issue in the campaign, but insisted it was “nothing like” as significant as the economy and public services.

He told ITV1: “I have not found people saying that Iraq is the most important issue as far as they are concerned.

“I have had some people who have raised it with me but not as a central decision-making factor in how they cast their vote.”

Pundita does not think Mr Hoon was blowing smoke, although his observations might be precise to the point of misleading.

It's to be remembered that while a "majority" of British polled at various times in the past were against Britain joining the Iraq campaign that is not to say a majority is "practically all." Many British did support and continue to support Blair's decision on Iraq. However, what has many British concerned is the way the decision was made--it rested solely with Blair--and what is seen as Blair's stubborn and wrong-headed defense of intelligence on Iraq WMD that was viewed at the time as greatly flawed.

What Pundita finds stubborn is the persistent refusal of Blair's critics to accept the obvious, which is that Britain agreed to support the US war on terror. This support includes accepting the US military command's general strategy on how to fight the war and where the campaigns should be staged. This would include the Iraq campaign.

There is no "Iraq war," as Pundita has noted more than once on this blog--any more than there was an Afghan war. There are operations within the war on terror; Afghanistan and Iraq are but two.

In other words, when Blair stood with President Bush's decision to invade Iraq, he was standing with the war on terror. Thus, he didn't make a liar out of the British people's agreement to support the US war--an irony, given that Blair is accused of being a liar by his critics.

Blair's greatest mistake, and Bush's, was in not stressing in their speeches what I've just noted. However, I think the history books could view their reticence to speak straight not so much as a mistake as an unavoidable tradeoff. Once you start talking about the "war on terror" in fully rational terms, it leads to clarification of the battle plan.

So it doesn't do for a national leader to be terribly clear during war when making public statements about the war. Of course that observation runs against the grain of democracy but there is nothing democratic about war and its prosecution.

Blair and Bush decided to get behind the WMD rationale for invading Iraq and tough out the consequences. It will be up to history to determine the wisdom of their decision.
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Bruce Kesler responds, Pundita argues for external approach

Dear Pundita:
Re: Your comments about my report for the Augusta Free Press on illegal immigration.

Better put than those who commented the other way, that we should just throw up our hands and virtually open the borders, to whatever. In fact, both your "external" and my "internal" approaches are needed. I focused on the "internal" approaches, as we have most immediate control of these, but I do also mention the need for Mexico to get its own act together and the US to push hard for that. Mexico, alone, is the source of half the illegals, and most of the illiterate ones (probably also the hardest working and nicest, and most exploited ones) who are the primary financial burden and slowest assimilators -- Again, thank you for your additional comments.
[signed] Bruce Kesler in Encinitas

Dear Bruce:
Thank you for your reply and thanks to Mark Safranski at ZenPundit for forwarding you my blog on your report. It was on my To-do list to send you a copy--my To-do list now long enough to reach from my house to somewhere in Kansas City.

The problem with the internal solutions is that they're geared toward the way the US was in the year 2000 and assume the enemy we face today is an idiot. But you may trust that the enemy, once across the border, will play things by the book.

If the enemy is smart, and he can be very smart when it comes to doing sneaky things, he will not risk jumping a checkpoint to truck in hazmat, conventional weapons and high value operatives. We must assume he's constantly testing the system at the US southern border so the system needs to become a hard target.

So here's why I am in favor of Americans getting behind the external approach: From the security standpoint, which should be the #1 priority right now for the USG, the US and Mexico need to throw all available resources toward thinning out the crowds at all US-Mexico border checkpoints.

The task is to thin the crowds at the conventional border crossings to the point where guards and covert military observers have time for more eyeballing, and so that there can be more random checks.

The only way to thin the crowds significantly is to thin them at the point of origin. Most of the very poor, illiterate Mexicans who seek work in the USA are from southern Mexico. So stop them from migrating to the north of Mexico. How to do that?

Part of the answer is "Development-bank funded WPA-type projects that employ them at points in southern Mexico." The Mexican government doesn't want to take that approach. They want other types of loans from the World Bank and other development banks. And they fear that attractive work in southern Mexico will only bring more illegals from Central America across their border.

The answer to the last is arm-twisting by the USG for stricter border control measures and a coordinated approach to WPA projects that involves Central America as well.

Here one might ask whether all this wouldn't take years. The answer is that the World Bank can move with jaw-dropping speed when they want and that they are one of the world's most efficient organizations, when they want.

The problem is the infamous "mafias" at the Bank. So called because a certain group(s) of nationals or regionals gets in power inside the Bank and diverts Bank loans to their country or region.

You may trust that once Paul Wolfowitz gets to the Bank, the Arab mafia will gain power and that an Iraqi mafia will materialize almost overnight. This is because the USG wants to make Iraq a showcase and throw resources to addressing The Arab Problem.

So the "Latin American" mafias at the Bank, along with Ukraine and other East European mafias, will be left with crumbs, which is why Yushchenko was here recently glad-handing US senators. He senses the party is over.

The World Bank (and development banks in general) is not the only option, of course, but the idea is for Americans to set up such a howl that the USG uses influence at major development banks to set up a mini-Marshall Plan composed of WPA projects for countries that are hurling waves of immigrants at the southern US border.

That's only one approach I suggest along external lines; another is to arm-twist the Mexican government into adopting reforms that ease "temporary worker" immigrants--the people who are coming here just because they can't get loans at Mexican banks, and so on.

There are many other approaches as well--and once Americans greatly concerned with border security put their attention and ingenuity toward stopping waves of immigrants at the point of origin, many more workable approaches will be devised.

So I'm really suggesting a paradigm shift; I'm calling for Americans to look at the situation from the southern side of the problem and ask, "How can the Mexican government be helped and prodded to stop migrations at the point of origin?"

The USG won't get fully behind the external approach unless prodded by the American voter. The Bush administration is dragging their feet on the external approach because they're playing oil politics with Vicente Fox. Oil politics is serious business, but President Fox is playing oil politics because he can get away with it.

So US firms that employ legal immigrants from Mexico need to make it clear to Fox that they want Mexico's government to step up to the plate and get behind an external approach. Once Fox hears US businesses snapping at him about reform, this will put wind behind the Bush administration's sails. This will translate to the World Bank and other international organizations getting behind the WPA projects. Quickly.

None of this means abandoning the internal approach because quite frankly it won't be abandoned; there's too much political will behind it. But that's exactly the crux of the problem. There is not enough political will behind an external approach. This is despite the fact that the approach aims to actually solve the problem of huge crowds at the border instead of the futile approaches to 'managing' them once they are across the border.

For links to other Pundita essays on Mexico, US-Mexico relations, immigration from Mexico and the Mexico-US border situation/war on terror, see Mexico Desk.