Pundita is on vacation until September 16. The following post was originally published in December 2005.
"Dear Pundita:
We were listening to a news show with Moises Naim and Tom Friedman talking about globalization and the need for a global government. I said to Sam, "Those are two of the 900 Lazy Bastards Pundita's always talking about."
Sam said, "The world is too complex for them so they want to make it simple by ruling over it."
I said, "Don't you see? The world is not too complex for them. They're selling a vacuum cleaner they know doesn't work." [...]
Not Born Yesterday in New York"
Dear NBY:
[...] What Pundita hears, when she presses her ear to the ground and listens very closely to Mr. Naím's talk, is Brussels dialing for dollars to help them build up a military that would be as powerful as the US one. What Pundita hears from Mr. Friedman is an attempt to help the Democrat party define something approximating a foreign policy platform.
However, there's more to their talk than that, so we'll take some time with this one. With regard to your comments about Naím and Friedman -- no matter what you think of their views, you need to perk up your ears and listen with great attention and care to what they are saying. That's because you're going to be hearing a lot more, from many quarters, about the views and recommendations presented in the discussion you mentioned.
The views have been around for years, but now they're getting a big push because of mounting concern that once Bush leaves office US foreign policy will fall into a complete muddle.
No matter what foreign governments think of President Bush's foreign policy, his approach was crystal clear by 2003. When things are clear, you can plan around them. It was also clear by then that the State Department was not going along with Bush's policy and instead trying to stick with the Clinton approach, which was strongly oriented to the EU view. But with Bush's reelection, foreign observers could at least predict the tensions and maneuvers between State and the White House. Again, it was something they could plan around.
Yet the past year has given vivid indications that there is considerable dissension in the upper echelons of the Republican party with regard to foreign policy matters. So the growing perception in foreign circles is that Bush's doctrine will be ditched by the GOP, or at least watered down to such extent that it's no longer recognizable, if a Republican wins election in 2008.
When they turn to study the Democrats, foreign observers see a party that has built a foreign policy around opposition to the US invasion of Iraq and what the largest US trade unions think of trade pacts.
None of that is clear indication of what is going to happen to US foreign policy once Bush leaves office. To an American such a question is jumping the gun; we'll face the question in 2008. But foreign governments can't afford to be that shortsighted. They are looking for clear indicators and not finding them. The same for Americans who advise on foreign policy matters.
So the race is on to take control of the situation by trying to define an overarching agenda that is a sophisticated variation on multilateralism. You need to keep the race in mind while considering what Naím and Friedman said. Now I'll let the other readers in on the discussion you mentioned. From A World Without Borders - December 15 PBS NewsHour panel moderated by Ray Suarez:
"A lot of the failed states that you see around the world, the moment that the government fails it is replaced by these [transnational criminal] networks that immediately hone in and develop and exploit an export. Perhaps the only good thing that the country, that the rest of the world has is either logging or is either diamonds or is it drugs and opium or is it people?
And the point is that all of these countries at the end of the day are globalized. And in fact, in many, and the point of [my] book "Illicit" is that is this illicit trade that is reshaping much of the world. There is more going on under the radar than what is going on [at the WTO meeting] in Hong Kong. Illicit traders are reshaping the world in far more important ways than the ministers now meeting in Hong Kong.
...globalization has empowered individuals and weakened governments...the natural habitat of government is inside the country, inside the borders. And what globalization is creating is a world where borders are easier to trespass. And whereas governments are inside, there are all sorts of activities going on across borders that they have a hard time containing. And they are weaker.
I think it's very important to bring government back and to start thinking in which ways can we empower governments and make governments more amenable to deal with these challenges."
-- Moisés Naím
"Moisés is really laying out is there are a whole lot of issues today...that require global governance. We need some kind of global governance regime to deal with global warming, to deal with trade. But there is no global government, and so we're kind of caught between that right now. We suddenly live in a world, a flatter world where we are caught up in these transnational forces that really require someone to provide some rules."
-- Thomas L. Friedman
The links are to a biography, which I hope readers will study if they're under the impression that Friedman is simply a reporter and Naím is simply the editor of Foreign Policy Magazine. These are intelligent people who understand the modern era, and their thinking is highly connective, for want of a better term. "Connective" in this context means that when you take in the day's international news, you first view the news against what governments and the biggest globalized government-backed organizations are doing about the situation. (1) It's a kind of thinking that all Americans of voting age need to get better at doing.
Naím's most recent book (Illicit: How Smugglers, Traffickers, and Copycats are Hijacking the Global Economy.) spells out the grim truth: failing states are now an easy mark for criminal gangs that think and act globally. In the manner of vultures circling dying prey they use hard currencies to buy up the tanking bank system of a struggling country and from there, move to take over the government. They now have it down to a craft, in the manner that corporate raiders have perfected strategies to take over a company.
I haven't had time to read Illicit but from what I've heard about it, I recommend it to anyone who is trying to understand Paul Wolfowitz's statement that corruption is the greatest threat to democracy since communism. Paul is only giving a gentle introduction to a situation that Pundita's blog has pounded away at, and which Naím's book starkly illustrates with examples that amplify on the 2000 International Crime Threat Assessment Report.
Corruption -- bureaucrats and politicians taking bribes -- now has two very different aspects. There is the traditional one associated with getting things done quickly in government and to assure that legislation goes a certain way. Tracking alongside this traditional model is the use of bribes to buy up a government.
This second model is why I took a sudden keen interest in Louisiana. A report connected with the Katrina hurricane turned up that a French Canadian organization started by Maurice Strong reviewed all Louisiana's business contracts with foreign governments.
Strong's connections raise the possibility that North Korea's government had moved in on Louisiana's dock business. Unless you wanted to walk the cat back one step further and say that China's military had moved in.
In that event it would not be simply government-backed organized crime making more inroads, given Strong's hatred of the United States and his stated desire to find means to destroy the power of the USA.
Strong's influence on Louisiana's government has to be examined in light of George Soros' plan for taking the US power down several pegs: balkanize the might of the American nation out of existence; i.e., break up the US union of states into smaller countries.
Do struggling US leftist publications and policy institutes that accept grants from a Soros organization know about the Soros plan, which he's not bothered much to hide underneath his talk about open society? Do Louisiana's legislature and Kathleen Blanco understand what Maurice Strong is connected with, beyond a nice Cajun cultural organization?
The best answer is that when your company or state government is desperate for cash it's hard not to take the attitude of Scarlett O'Hara: I promise to think about such questions tomorrow.
That is what governments are up against today. As the potentially ominous situation with Louisiana suggests, it's not only national governments that are targeted by sophisticated crooks looking to buy up a government. The target is any weak government: central, state, city. So Americans need to understand the stuff Naím talks about because it is not limited to a struggling countries on the other side of the world.
However comma one should remember that Mr Naím labors for Foreign Policy magazine, which is put out by The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. When last I checked, that policy institute had Mikhail Khordokovsky on the board. That's not saying much; he sat on more than one influential policy board during his salad days. Yet wherever there is Mikhail Khordokovsky, by following twists and turns one bumps into card-carrying mobsters, of just the kind Mr Naím warns about.
To put this another way, and without casting aspersions on Carnegie Endowment or Mr Naím's character, you need to make a clear distinction between the information people give you and what they'd like you to do with it.
Carnegie Endowment, as with all influential policy institutes, has a certain point of view, which they push at every opportunity to any editor looking for background on a story of particular interest to the institute.
From his biography, I assume Naím's recommendations for how to deal with globalized crime track closely with plans under consideration at the World Bank-IMF.
Thomas Friedman seems to have a somewhat different orientation, although I have not read any of his books and only a few of his articles for The New York Times. But obviously his latest book (The World is Flat: A Brief History of the 21st Century) is his clearest argument for a one-world governing institution.
From what I have read and from his biography, I suspect Friedman's outlook is steeped in the civil service view: Yes, the vacuum cleaner doesn't live up to its warrantee, but the homeowner can't afford a deluxe model and the clinker is an improvement over broom and dustpan.
I have sympathy with the civil service view. Just as someone's got to shovel manure and haul trash, there have to be people who are tasked with picking up the shortfall in the public's attention to complex governing matters. That unnecessary and unproductive tax burdens and much counterproductive legislation evolves from this work -- what's the alternative? In an era when people are so busy they can only eat breakfast and find time to pay bills while stuck in their daily commute traffic jam?
So I suspect Friedman is taking a pragmatic approach to dealing with serious threats to democracy brought about by globalized problems. I'd guess he's saying, Let's stop clowning around and set up a global central government to sort through the problems before they overwhelm even the mature democracies.
If I am right, it suggests Friedman is task-oriented. He's looking at the number of tasks involved in solving complex cross-border problems and saying that a governing organization has to take charge of prioritizing them. And from what I read of Friedman's early promotion of the US invasion of Iraq, I think his focus is on protecting democracy.
Naím seems altogether more complex in his orientation. I have known a great many people who sound like Naím when they talk. The halls of international institutions are crowded with them. They look at the power of the USA as a fact of the world's existence. Their concern is how to use the American power to maintain order in the world while at the same time de-Americanizing agendas regarding global affairs.
This seemingly contradictory view is not so much anti-American as pro-order. Opposition from many quarters to American agendas makes for disorderly and stalemated official meetings.
So if Friedman represents the rank-and-file civil servant view, Naím represents the view of officials who must negotiate compromises and try to come out with something constructive.
From his biography, Friedman is much too busy to qualify as a 900 Lazy Bastard and besides he has no position in officialdom. But busy pragmatists who look for simple solutions unwittingly clear the path for The 900 Lazy Bastards, who as Charlotte (the possum member of Pundita's team) has assured me, sit around under rocks waiting for humanity to get on a roll.
"Then they come out from under their rocks," explained Charlotte, wrinkling her snout in distaste, "And promise to fix everything you don't like if they can sit on your back."
Yet Friedman's call for a one-world government finds him contradicting the thesis of his book; this is plainly seen from studying the transcript of the discussion. Friedman notes that because of the convergence of technology and the globalized era, individuals and small collections of individuals have gained the power to stand up to officialdom.
How, then, does it follow that a global government will manage to ride herd on the unruly masses in the globalized era?
Naím's thesis runs into the same problem. If transnational crime syndicates run circles around governments, how does a meta-government prevent gangs from running meta circles around it?
As for the great success of the crime syndicates, they've simply been running ahead of communications ability. Yet whether it's in a remote village in the Third World or a crowded neighborhood in Chicago, as soon as people have the means to effectively communicate with each other about matters that alarm them, momentum quickly builds for action.
So a larger truth than the one Naím describes is that police departments around the world have been swamped with tips about crime since cell phones became ubiquitous. And as soon as talk radio comes to a village, the chief's demand for a bribe to do his job gets blabbed all over the region.
It's just that the crooks have been ahead of the implementation of technologies. The 311 system I wrote about is still in its infancy with regard to use and implementation. (See Governing in the Age of Megapopulations.) But it's on the way, all over this country and the world.
And it's getting harder for corruption to be buried. Recently all of India watched in outrage as video of an Indian member of parliament taking a bribe was beamed to their TV sets. The 21st Century's version of Candid Camera.
Many Westerners have never been in an Old World village so they're not entirely clear on they mean when they speak of the global "village." Believe you me, nobody gets away with much in a village. The old people sit around the centrally located well all day and watch everything that happens. In regions where there are monkeys, the monkeys sit around on the village roofs and watch everything that happens. When monkeys don't like a human, they nip him or make a ruckus or get oddly still. So then you start watching the person the monkey doesn't like, to see what's wrong with the person.
Everybody knows everybody else's business in a village. Village life is stifling because of this, but it's also much safer than a city. Very few murders and other big crimes. So we don't need a radio tag injected under our skin at birth or a one-world government to manage the world shrunk by effective communications. We just need human nature and ICT to take their course.
Most humans don't like crooks and graft; most of us just want to get along in the world without doing undue harm to others. And for every crook, there is a human with a hunter's nature who enjoys nothing more than tracking down a crook.
This said, we are in a very difficult transition period and down the road we face the specter of massive dislocations of human populations because of water shortages. That will lead to more water wars.
One of the greatest worries I have with regard to the Middle East concerns what success in Iraq will do to the region's water supplies. As soon as Iraq's moribund economy gets off the ground and industry builds up -- what are they going to do for water? Many more Iranians and Syrians will migrate to Iraq to find work. The trickle will become a flood of migrants if democracy stays in Iraq.
The biggest nightmare scenario is reverse diaspora if the Bush Doctrine is successful. Imagine a democratic Middle East drawing back millions who fled poverty and oppressive government. And imagine millions of African workers migrating there to serve the industries that rise up once the Middle East economies take off. What are they going to do for water? What are the new industries going to do for water?
Problems of such magnitude leer at our current technologies, so at some point down the road is a very rough patch for humanity. Yet if modern history is the guide, the problems will be best addressed by private industry coming up with engineering solutions and local central governments working in close cooperation.
This does not mean the G8 governments and major international organizations cannot be a help. But right now the G8 are trying to implement solutions through international organizations that are rife with graft, inefficiency, and undue politicking (of the kind contributing to the ongoing plight of refugees in Darfur).
Pundita wants to see an independent audit of the IMF and the World Bank's finances before I will agree to study their recommendations for dealing with globalized corruption and crime. And I want the audit results published on the Internet for all the world's taxpayers to see.
And I want to see every recommendation made by John Bolton for accounting reform at the UN implemented, before I would study their recommendations on dealing with corruption and organized crime.
1) In the spring I gave an example of this kind of thinking when a reader asked me about my opinion of a Time magazine cover story on Jeffrey Sachs' call for an all-out globalized war on Africa's worst poverty.
The second I saw the Time story I thought, "I see Gordon and Kofi are marshaling the troops."
Then I went on to read Sachs' ideas within the context of calls for the developed countries to cancel the debt of African nations, which Gordon Brown wanted at the top of the agenda at the G-8 meeting in the summer. And I pointed Pundita readers to Gordon Brown's speech some months earlier at a big US policy institute, which was a preview of things to come at the Gleneagles summer meeting.
Another example, which I can't recall whether I published, was my first reaction to a National Geographic story on H5N1, which featured on the cover a dramatic close-up photograph of an Asian who had obviously just died in hospital.
I thought, "Uh oh. WHO is dialing for dollars again."
I then slammed on the brake. Since 2004 I'd bemoaned how little attention the media had given to the situation, so I was relieved when the media began pushing the story. The question was how governments were preparing to deal with H2H of mutated H5N1 and how international funds were being spent on such projects.
"I'm seeing a lot of emphasis on pharmaceuticals," I told a friend after I studied WHO proposals and those by major governments for warding off pandemic. "And not enough emphasis on quarantine measures such as human temperature detectors installed at airports."
"That's because it's not possible to cut a temperature detector with water and sell it as flu vaccine on the streets of Bombay and Mexico City" he replied.
I thought of his remark when US customs announced they'd caught a shipment of counterfeit Tamiflu.
Before the days of the globalized Internet and user-friendly search engines such as Google and references such as Wikipedia, it was not easy to learn to make such connections. Not unless you had specialized knowledge of a certain sector or took great pains to keep yourself informed about major international situations.
Today, any American with Internet access can type "Jeffrey Sachs Africa" into a search engine and follow the Yellow Brick Road until coming to G8. After a time making such connections gets faster because you find the same names and situations popping up in connection to certain organizations with global reach.
And as I've advised before you can always stumble into the ballpark by asking yourself, "You're telling me because?"
Poverty across much of Africa has been with us all our lifetime, but if a media uproar suddenly arises that is unconnected with any specific happening in a country, that's the time to pay attention to the known players and look at the calendar.
If thinking in connective fashion sounds a daunting task, it's like anything else; with practice it becomes habitual.
Is there a big trade meeting coming soon? Are we nearing the Spring IMF-World Bank meeting? Who is chairing the G8 meeting this year and what is his pet project? What is the State Department trying to tell us about this country? What's big on the table at Brussels these days? And so on.
Welcome to the world that has been bubbling along for a half century outside the narrow focus of the US major news media. They plop out reports at the time of the meetings, but don't make connections between earlier stories and the meetings. Result: the public does not have a coherent view of foreign affairs.
None of this means issues such as H5N1 and African poverty don't deserve your attention. It means that in the globalized world of today, you need to learn to look for signs about what a powerful faction wants you to do about a situation that has global implications.
This so you don't find yourself three years down the road asking, "How did my tax dollars get involved in this mess?"
What the factions want you to do depends on how they stack the data about a situation. The stack is rarely all good or all bad. Sachs' book about poverty in Africa is informative on range of issues, and the National Geographic cover story about the threat of an Avian Flu pandemic is a decent introduction to the subject. However, canceling Africa's debt across the board, and the UN's idea of how to ward off a pandemic, are not necessarily the best solutions.
Saturday, September 9
Thursday, September 7
Golden Oldie - Mexico-US: The darkness of inattention
Pundita is on vacation until September 16. The following essay, which I've abridged for this post, was originally published in May 2005.
"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:
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.
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 has 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.
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 to 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.)
In addition to diplomacy 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.
"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 it can (1) 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.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.
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.
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.
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 has 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.
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 to 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.)
In addition to diplomacy 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.
Golden Oldie: "There was just so much money to be made"
Pundita is on vacation until September 16. The following essay was originally published in February 2005.
I don't know the total attendance figure for the three day National Intelligence Conference & Exposition but I'd guess it was under 1,000. So even if each attendee and speaker represented, say, 10,000 others working in an area of defense, policing, and private security, and excluding the number of active duty military in democratic nations, they could be characterized as the few who protect the many.
I hasten to add that attendees included a small but vocal minority whose only connection to the defense/security fields was that of Concerned Citizen. Pundita was a proud member of that group and relieved to discover it was represented at the conference. The second day of a conference always finds the ice broken. People you see on the first day remember you the next; conversations strike up, and by the last day Pundita was waving at people who were perfect strangers two days before.
Lunchtime on the second and third days found Pundita chattering like a magpie with people who had shyly avoided conversation with strangers on the first day. By the third day there were no more strangers. The gravity of the conference had sunk in. The theme of this year's Intelcon is "Widening the intelligence domain to include the public" but it could have been subtitled, "The dark side of consumerism in the globalized trade era."
Boomers will recall a fashionable saying during the activist 60s: The enemy is ourselves. Pundita had cause to recall the saying many times during the conference. Somewhere out there was Them during the decade running up to 9/11: the vote-chasing politicians who traded their country's security concerns in exchange for high poll numbers, the appointed officials who for partisan reasons suppressed vitally important issues relating to national defense, the businesspeople who pandered to tyrants in exchange for a piece of 'emerging markets,' the industrial spies and lobbyists who sold to the highest bidder. And of course there was what we call The Enemy: the one who prepared to make war on us.
Yet behind it all stood -- us, and our demands for faster and cheaper, and our refusal to care or even ask about the real human cost of all that efficiency and cost savings.
And so as Russians watched their children shot in the back while fleeing a schoolhouse in Beslan, they couldn't allow themselves to think too hard on the end of the road for a defense industry that sells to despotic regimes which support terrorist armies.
And so as Spaniards retched at the sight of mangled human body parts strewn around a train station in Madrid, they couldn't allow themselves to ponder overmuch the penalty for refusing to look closely at an immigrant community that functioned as Spain's servant class.
And so as civilian volunteers searched the dust of the World Trade Center for traces of the dead, they couldn't allow themselves to think too hard on the real price for cheap Arab oil.
"There was just so much money to be made," explained one of Pundita's lunch companions on the second day of the conference.
He was speaking of the Bubble Years. His firm, as with all other computer firms caught up in the bubble, knew their products had 'back doors' a mile wide that could be exploited by hackers working for industrial spies, unfriendly governments and terrorists. But velocity, not security, was king. The customer demanded products that were easy to use, priced cheap and above all delivered fast. Those who gave the customers what they wanted quickly raised up trade empires; those who didn't went under.
Have things changed all that much since 9/11? Well, that was partly what Intelcon was about: to discuss where we were on 9/11 with regard to intelligence gathering/security issues, how far we have come, and the ground still to be covered.
The people who came from the four quarters to attend the conference represented a vast improvement in priority-setting. Pundita spied a name tag belonging to a worker for the recreational parks services in a western city--a city that wouldn't likely be near the top of the terrorist hit list. So the voters in that city are awake, and demanding that more tax dollars and attention be given security concerns. The lunch companion that Pundita mentioned--after 9/11 his company snapped out of the dream, and they had the money to restructure their products and priorities around security issues.
The other side of the story was neatly summarized by one speaker, who said that for many companies "risk assessment" still equates to hiring MBAs instead of intelligence analysts. And by a Concerned Citizen, who described herself as a Liberal Democrat who refused to watch Fox cable, but who demanded to be kept better informed about the war on terror.
She was hooted down by Fox TV loyalists but Pundita took pity on her stated predicament. After the seminar we told her about the John Batchelor program, which looks at the war from the viewpoint of US national security rather than Democrat and Republican party lines. She replied that she would explore the option but added that her real concern was President Bush's lousy handling of the war on terror.
What would she have Bush do? Bomb nations when they threaten to put up trade barriers because of US demands for better security measures at airports and containerized shipping ports? Cut off diplomatic relations with London, Berlin and Paris because they insist that appeasement works? Ship US congressionals to Gitmo when they put pork barrel demands of constituents ahead of vital national and regional security interests?
And just where does the buck stop for all that? If you're a citizen of a democratic nation, go look in the mirror for the answer.
I don't know the total attendance figure for the three day National Intelligence Conference & Exposition but I'd guess it was under 1,000. So even if each attendee and speaker represented, say, 10,000 others working in an area of defense, policing, and private security, and excluding the number of active duty military in democratic nations, they could be characterized as the few who protect the many.
I hasten to add that attendees included a small but vocal minority whose only connection to the defense/security fields was that of Concerned Citizen. Pundita was a proud member of that group and relieved to discover it was represented at the conference. The second day of a conference always finds the ice broken. People you see on the first day remember you the next; conversations strike up, and by the last day Pundita was waving at people who were perfect strangers two days before.
Lunchtime on the second and third days found Pundita chattering like a magpie with people who had shyly avoided conversation with strangers on the first day. By the third day there were no more strangers. The gravity of the conference had sunk in. The theme of this year's Intelcon is "Widening the intelligence domain to include the public" but it could have been subtitled, "The dark side of consumerism in the globalized trade era."
Boomers will recall a fashionable saying during the activist 60s: The enemy is ourselves. Pundita had cause to recall the saying many times during the conference. Somewhere out there was Them during the decade running up to 9/11: the vote-chasing politicians who traded their country's security concerns in exchange for high poll numbers, the appointed officials who for partisan reasons suppressed vitally important issues relating to national defense, the businesspeople who pandered to tyrants in exchange for a piece of 'emerging markets,' the industrial spies and lobbyists who sold to the highest bidder. And of course there was what we call The Enemy: the one who prepared to make war on us.
Yet behind it all stood -- us, and our demands for faster and cheaper, and our refusal to care or even ask about the real human cost of all that efficiency and cost savings.
And so as Russians watched their children shot in the back while fleeing a schoolhouse in Beslan, they couldn't allow themselves to think too hard on the end of the road for a defense industry that sells to despotic regimes which support terrorist armies.
And so as Spaniards retched at the sight of mangled human body parts strewn around a train station in Madrid, they couldn't allow themselves to ponder overmuch the penalty for refusing to look closely at an immigrant community that functioned as Spain's servant class.
And so as civilian volunteers searched the dust of the World Trade Center for traces of the dead, they couldn't allow themselves to think too hard on the real price for cheap Arab oil.
"There was just so much money to be made," explained one of Pundita's lunch companions on the second day of the conference.
He was speaking of the Bubble Years. His firm, as with all other computer firms caught up in the bubble, knew their products had 'back doors' a mile wide that could be exploited by hackers working for industrial spies, unfriendly governments and terrorists. But velocity, not security, was king. The customer demanded products that were easy to use, priced cheap and above all delivered fast. Those who gave the customers what they wanted quickly raised up trade empires; those who didn't went under.
Have things changed all that much since 9/11? Well, that was partly what Intelcon was about: to discuss where we were on 9/11 with regard to intelligence gathering/security issues, how far we have come, and the ground still to be covered.
The people who came from the four quarters to attend the conference represented a vast improvement in priority-setting. Pundita spied a name tag belonging to a worker for the recreational parks services in a western city--a city that wouldn't likely be near the top of the terrorist hit list. So the voters in that city are awake, and demanding that more tax dollars and attention be given security concerns. The lunch companion that Pundita mentioned--after 9/11 his company snapped out of the dream, and they had the money to restructure their products and priorities around security issues.
The other side of the story was neatly summarized by one speaker, who said that for many companies "risk assessment" still equates to hiring MBAs instead of intelligence analysts. And by a Concerned Citizen, who described herself as a Liberal Democrat who refused to watch Fox cable, but who demanded to be kept better informed about the war on terror.
She was hooted down by Fox TV loyalists but Pundita took pity on her stated predicament. After the seminar we told her about the John Batchelor program, which looks at the war from the viewpoint of US national security rather than Democrat and Republican party lines. She replied that she would explore the option but added that her real concern was President Bush's lousy handling of the war on terror.
What would she have Bush do? Bomb nations when they threaten to put up trade barriers because of US demands for better security measures at airports and containerized shipping ports? Cut off diplomatic relations with London, Berlin and Paris because they insist that appeasement works? Ship US congressionals to Gitmo when they put pork barrel demands of constituents ahead of vital national and regional security interests?
And just where does the buck stop for all that? If you're a citizen of a democratic nation, go look in the mirror for the answer.
Wednesday, September 6
Golden Oldie: Lost in Translation: President Putin's history lecture to President Bush
Pundita is on vacation until September 16. The following essay was originally published February 2005.
Peter Lavelle's latest commentary Putin's "authoritarianism" vs. the 'commentariat' sent Pundita to Wikipedia for a crash history and overview of modern Russian politics. This still left us experiencing cognitive dissonance regarding the word "governor" in point #3 of Lavelle's discussion.
So what kind of democracy did Vladimir Putin inherit from Boris Yeltsin? How could you have a democracy, of the kind America represents, if there was no real sovereign nation? Seeking illumination, Pundita wrote Peter Lavelle. He responded:
Bush is famous for being a fast eater, even at state dinners hosted at the White House, so I suppose if he'd chewed more slowly or dawdled over dessert Putin could have extended the history lesson to include Yeltsin's era. However, I don't think Bush missed too much by leaving off at Stalin's era, at least in terms of governing structure.
As the Soviet Communist party spread from the sophisticated Russian cities, it met with tribal societies and clan governments, which the imperial Russian government had kept at bay with much the same tactics Saddam Hussein deployed in dealing with Iraqi tribes and clans.
Saddam did not remain in power by brute force alone. The Iraqi Baathist knockoff of a centralized western fascist government was window dressing. Behind the trappings was a nomadic tribal society meshed with a traditional decentralized clan society. Thus, Saddam relied on judicious application of bribes and a carefully tended alliances with chieftains.
The Soviet Communist government followed much the same tactic; thus, when the Soviet Union collapsed, so did the window dressing. The aftermath form of government is confusing to an outsider, if you apply the American concepts of nation, governors, democracy, government, etc., to Russia. Yeltsin's "democratic" reforms were more window dressing than democratic government. Another stage show, only this time a democracy stage show. Behind the stage paint was the same old clan system that pre-Revolutionary Russian imperial government had to deal with.
So it's jumping the gun for the Bush administration to launch "a high-level review of relations with Russia in the wake of Kremlin curbs on democracy..." *
First there has to be a sovereign nation, with only one administrative body setting foreign policy. Then there needs to be a national democratic government. Then is the time to start worrying about any perceived curbs on democracy.
All this helps explain an observation under #8 in Lavelle's commentary: "Putin is not a democrat. Putin is a reformer." But still seeking illumination, Pundita asked Lavelle to elaborate. His response:
It's a shame Putin's work to create the foundations for modern government in Russia has been greatly ignored by Washington policymakers. The struggles to reform Russian government from the ground up are very valuable lessons and with application to many societies struggling toward democracy
* From "Bush Reviews Ties to Russia Amid Rising Tensions" 01/26/2005, The Wall Street Journal
Peter Lavelle's latest commentary Putin's "authoritarianism" vs. the 'commentariat' sent Pundita to Wikipedia for a crash history and overview of modern Russian politics. This still left us experiencing cognitive dissonance regarding the word "governor" in point #3 of Lavelle's discussion.
Appointment of governors is part of Putin's “vertical power” agenda to strengthen Russian sovereignty and against internal (oligarchs and corruption) and foreign (governors making foreign policy) threats..."I tried and failed to imagine the governors of Rhode Island, Alabama, New York, Iowa and all the other US governors making up their own foreign policy for the United States. In that event, there would be no United States of America, there would be no country.
So what kind of democracy did Vladimir Putin inherit from Boris Yeltsin? How could you have a democracy, of the kind America represents, if there was no real sovereign nation? Seeking illumination, Pundita wrote Peter Lavelle. He responded:
Regional governors experienced enormous independence from the Kremlin for years because there was little the Kremlin could do about it during the Yeltsin years. For a decade Russia's regions were run as private fiefdoms -- with little pretense supporting democracy. Many of Russia's governors ruled poorly with self interest in mind and in the service of oligarchs. This is something that the Kremlin can no longer tolerate. To modernize the economy, strengthen sovereignty, and serve the interests of citizens living in the regions the Kremlin had to do something. While most of the Western world doesn't agree with theLavelle's clarification puts an exchange between Vladimir Putin and George W. Bush in a new light. In November 2004, at an economic summit luncheon, Bush questioned Putin's decision to eliminate direct elections for regional governors.
Kremlin's move [to appoint governors], most citizens in Russia's regions accept that they deserve better governance.
"Mr. Putin responded by launching into a 20-minute discourse on the history of Russian federalism from the tsars to Josef Stalin, and Mr. Bush didn't pursue the issue, according to both U.S. and Russian officials." *Now to an American who is not knowledgeable about Russia, Putin's answer showed no understanding of Bush's question. But once you understand the Russian form of government, Bush's question showed no understanding of the situation in Russia.
Bush is famous for being a fast eater, even at state dinners hosted at the White House, so I suppose if he'd chewed more slowly or dawdled over dessert Putin could have extended the history lesson to include Yeltsin's era. However, I don't think Bush missed too much by leaving off at Stalin's era, at least in terms of governing structure.
As the Soviet Communist party spread from the sophisticated Russian cities, it met with tribal societies and clan governments, which the imperial Russian government had kept at bay with much the same tactics Saddam Hussein deployed in dealing with Iraqi tribes and clans.
Saddam did not remain in power by brute force alone. The Iraqi Baathist knockoff of a centralized western fascist government was window dressing. Behind the trappings was a nomadic tribal society meshed with a traditional decentralized clan society. Thus, Saddam relied on judicious application of bribes and a carefully tended alliances with chieftains.
The Soviet Communist government followed much the same tactic; thus, when the Soviet Union collapsed, so did the window dressing. The aftermath form of government is confusing to an outsider, if you apply the American concepts of nation, governors, democracy, government, etc., to Russia. Yeltsin's "democratic" reforms were more window dressing than democratic government. Another stage show, only this time a democracy stage show. Behind the stage paint was the same old clan system that pre-Revolutionary Russian imperial government had to deal with.
So it's jumping the gun for the Bush administration to launch "a high-level review of relations with Russia in the wake of Kremlin curbs on democracy..." *
First there has to be a sovereign nation, with only one administrative body setting foreign policy. Then there needs to be a national democratic government. Then is the time to start worrying about any perceived curbs on democracy.
All this helps explain an observation under #8 in Lavelle's commentary: "Putin is not a democrat. Putin is a reformer." But still seeking illumination, Pundita asked Lavelle to elaborate. His response:
Putin is not a democrat recognizable to the West. He is primarily interested in creating an economy in which the average Russian voter has the means and interest to participate in politics. After a decade of "oligarch" rule and misguided reforms imported from the West, Putin realizes the only way Russia can be a democracy is when living standards increase significantly--and quickly. He also understands that tough and unpopular social reforms face resistance, but must be passed into law to create a modern Russian economy. Putin, incorrectly called a dictator, is using his personal popularity and control of the legislature to create the foundations of a meaningful democracy--and it won't happen tomorrow.I think the key concept is "foundations of a meaningful democracy."
It's a shame Putin's work to create the foundations for modern government in Russia has been greatly ignored by Washington policymakers. The struggles to reform Russian government from the ground up are very valuable lessons and with application to many societies struggling toward democracy
* From "Bush Reviews Ties to Russia Amid Rising Tensions" 01/26/2005, The Wall Street Journal
Tuesday, September 5
"Why was John Batchelor dropped by WABC Radio?"
UPDATE November 2, 2010
Oh gee; I just received a comment from someone who read this post and didn't know that John had been back on WABC for years now. Here was my reply:
Gloria! My dear, WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN?? John has been back on the air for years now! WABC re-hired him, and his 4 hour show is 7 nights a week on WABC (starting at 9 PM ET) and at affiliate stations. You can listen online, and the show now has podcasts. And John's website is GREAT! He even has a schedule for each show.
Google WABC and Google John Batchelor Show to get the urls.
Meanwhile, I'd better update this old post in case anyone else thinks his show is still off the air.
Best,
Pundita
*********************************************
Update - 11:00 PM ET September 6
See following for explanation but you can also send a email expressing support for Batchelor to the programmer at Citadel: Brian.Jennings@citcomm.com
* * * * * * * * * *
"Pundita:
Why was John Batchelor dropped by WABC Radio? Is Laura Ingraham [whose show replaces John's] really more interesting to the radio audience? I'm puzzled. I find it hard to believe that this is going to get them better ratings.
Elliot Gordon, New York"
Dear Mr Gordon:
Pundita's crystal ball is in the repair shop again. But thanks to the research of industrious reader Michael Miller, we were able to gather enough pieces of the puzzle from the Internet to hazard something approaching a reply to your question.
First, John Batchelor was fired by ABC Radio, not by WABC-AM Radio. Of course WABC is owned by ABC Radio. And WABC's program director Phil Boyce is also Vice President of news/talk programming for ABC Radio. According Wikipedia:
What's certain is that Batchelor's firing was not based on his ratings, which are phenomenally good. (An old mystery is why ABC Radio never publicized John's very high ratings; perhaps they didn't want to embarrass other ABC Radio stars.)
And we can surmise this much from Batchelor's comments to his audience about his leave-taking: his firing was not precipitated by unreasonable demands on his part.
So we are left with what seems a needless and foolishly self-destructive programming decision, until we study ABC Radio's current situation. According to the Wikipedia article on ABC:
Pundita does not have the answer, but I muse that some employees who know they are not long for a job have the rude habit of smashing as much as they can of value to the company.
Even if the above observation applies to the fools who fired Batchelor, the knowledge would be small comfort to the millions of people who depend on his show for superlative reporting on key issues in American and world politics.
And even if Batchelor returns to the air this December via the Hoover Institution, that doesn't help his audience wend their way through the runup to the November elections.
So I am left with the feeling that whatever the internal upheavals caused by the Citadel-ABC merger, millions among the radio-listening public have suffered for it. That doesn't seem right to Pundita, so I decided to pen a complaint to Citadel and request that Mr Suleman move heaven and earth to immediately reinstate John Batchelor's show at WABC and WMAL.
Accordingly, I decided to email Citadel but learned from their website that their corporate headquarters only provided an email address for their media contact. A request to the contact elicited this reply, which I just received:
"The [email] address you just used is generally used for everything, it gets sent to the office manager's email account (which is me). [...] I will send your email to the appropriate person.
Amber Pierce"
Wilco and thank you, Ms Pierce. The email address is media@citcomm.com
Readers who decide to follow my lead might want to copy their letter to ABC Radio Customer Service at: customerservice@abc.com
and John Batchelor at: john@johnbatchelorshow.com
* * * * * * * *
Midnight Update: See the second post on Tuesday for another contact at Citadel and an announcement from Batchelor's website.
Oh gee; I just received a comment from someone who read this post and didn't know that John had been back on WABC for years now. Here was my reply:
Gloria! My dear, WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN?? John has been back on the air for years now! WABC re-hired him, and his 4 hour show is 7 nights a week on WABC (starting at 9 PM ET) and at affiliate stations. You can listen online, and the show now has podcasts. And John's website is GREAT! He even has a schedule for each show.
Google WABC and Google John Batchelor Show to get the urls.
Meanwhile, I'd better update this old post in case anyone else thinks his show is still off the air.
Best,
Pundita
*********************************************
Update - 11:00 PM ET September 6
See following for explanation but you can also send a email expressing support for Batchelor to the programmer at Citadel: Brian.Jennings@citcomm.com
* * * * * * * * * *
"Pundita:
Why was John Batchelor dropped by WABC Radio? Is Laura Ingraham [whose show replaces John's] really more interesting to the radio audience? I'm puzzled. I find it hard to believe that this is going to get them better ratings.
Elliot Gordon, New York"
Dear Mr Gordon:
Pundita's crystal ball is in the repair shop again. But thanks to the research of industrious reader Michael Miller, we were able to gather enough pieces of the puzzle from the Internet to hazard something approaching a reply to your question.
First, John Batchelor was fired by ABC Radio, not by WABC-AM Radio. Of course WABC is owned by ABC Radio. And WABC's program director Phil Boyce is also Vice President of news/talk programming for ABC Radio. According Wikipedia:
Boyce programs WABC Radio programs as well as nationally syndicated ABC Radio shows, including The Sean Hannity Show and The Mark Levin Show.So, it's likely that the decision by ABC Radio to drop John Batchelor's show came from Mr Boyce and/or Messrs Dolan and McCarthy.
Boyce handles programming at all ABC Radio news/talk stations, including KABC-AM in Los Angeles, WLS-AM in [Chicago] and WMAL-AM in Washington, D.C. He reports to general manager Timothy McCarthy at WABC, as well as to Mitch Dolan, president of the ABC Radio Station Group on the corporate level.
What's certain is that Batchelor's firing was not based on his ratings, which are phenomenally good. (An old mystery is why ABC Radio never publicized John's very high ratings; perhaps they didn't want to embarrass other ABC Radio stars.)
And we can surmise this much from Batchelor's comments to his audience about his leave-taking: his firing was not precipitated by unreasonable demands on his part.
So we are left with what seems a needless and foolishly self-destructive programming decision, until we study ABC Radio's current situation. According to the Wikipedia article on ABC:
In 2005, Disney CEO Bob Iger decided to embark upon a sale of the ABC Radio division, having declared it a "non-core asset."To put it another way, ABC Radio is in the process of being merged out of existence. The person overseeing the merger from the Citadel side is none other than Farid Suleman, who is sort of a Superman Numbers Cruncher and whose tolerance for fools in the radio business is notoriously short. Mr Suleman has spelled out in the clearest language how he does things when he is put in charge of herding cats:
On February 6, 2006, Disney announced ABC Radio would be spun off and merged with Citadel Broadcasting Corporation to form a new company named Citadel Communications. Once the $2.7 billion merger is completed by the end of 2006, Disney shareholders would own a majority of the new radio company's stock, but ABC/Disney would have no control over its operations.
Interviewer: How did you go about identifying the culture that you wanted to bring to the company?Those comments, taken with Mr Suleman's love of gorgeous numbers, makes one wonder why ABC Radio's current management would want to clearly signal that they preferred working at the Department of Motor Vehicles rather than under Mr Suleman's leadership.
Farid Suleman: The corporate staff at Citadel was bigger than I had at Infinity, so I had to streamline it. The first three months, I visited every market, holding “town hall” meetings at every station and telling everybody the same thing: “This is the way it’s going to be: You’re either with me or you’re not. If you’re not, we’ll work it out now, because you’ll get a good severance and you can leave.” And people wanted to stay.
I tried to create my own version of the Infinity culture by taking the best of everything. It was amazing how quickly the company was transformed. Within a year, we repositioned the company, eliminated a lot of the regional managers and made everybody hands-on accountable for what they did. We created an entrepreneurial environment. What was amazing was the way a majority of the managers responded. They liked it.
Interviewer: There had to be some people who resented change.
Suleman: There were, but I gave everybody a chance to perform or they were out. My line was: “If people had arrived at work this morning and weren’t sure that they wanted to work at Citadel or the DMV, they should leave now.”
Pundita does not have the answer, but I muse that some employees who know they are not long for a job have the rude habit of smashing as much as they can of value to the company.
Even if the above observation applies to the fools who fired Batchelor, the knowledge would be small comfort to the millions of people who depend on his show for superlative reporting on key issues in American and world politics.
And even if Batchelor returns to the air this December via the Hoover Institution, that doesn't help his audience wend their way through the runup to the November elections.
So I am left with the feeling that whatever the internal upheavals caused by the Citadel-ABC merger, millions among the radio-listening public have suffered for it. That doesn't seem right to Pundita, so I decided to pen a complaint to Citadel and request that Mr Suleman move heaven and earth to immediately reinstate John Batchelor's show at WABC and WMAL.
Accordingly, I decided to email Citadel but learned from their website that their corporate headquarters only provided an email address for their media contact. A request to the contact elicited this reply, which I just received:
"The [email] address you just used is generally used for everything, it gets sent to the office manager's email account (which is me). [...] I will send your email to the appropriate person.
Amber Pierce"
Wilco and thank you, Ms Pierce. The email address is media@citcomm.com
Readers who decide to follow my lead might want to copy their letter to ABC Radio Customer Service at: customerservice@abc.com
and John Batchelor at: john@johnbatchelorshow.com
* * * * * * * *
Midnight Update: See the second post on Tuesday for another contact at Citadel and an announcement from Batchelor's website.
Golden Oldie: No tyrant left behind -- Bush Democracy Doctrine, simply explained
Pundita is on vacation and will return to blogging on September 16; in the meantime (excepting on Sundays) the blog will reprise some of her earlier essays. The following Golden Oldie was originally published (as The Bush Doctrine, simply explained) in January 2005.
"Dear Pundita,
I liked Bush's speech at the inaugural but I'm a little confused by it. I wonder if he's talking in general terms and how he intends to implement the ideas, which are very ambitious. Also, didn't you love the white coat Laura wore for the inaugural?
Claudia in Taos"
Dear Claudia:
There is no mystery about the Democracy Doctrine; the ideas Bush sketched in his inaugural speech are already in effect although it's early days. His remarks are confusing only if you depend on secondary sources for understanding. If you go to the White House website and study the Millennium Challenge Account and the No Child Left Behind Act, you won't be confused.
You'll see that the ideas expressed in the inaugural speech reflect a typically Bushian approach to solving a systemic problem. The Democracy Doctrine is strong on accountability, standards setting, achievement tests, and performance review. It's results oriented.
In fact, Bush could make this easy for the commentariat if he directed them to study his No Child Left Behind Act. If you substitute "tyrant" for "child" and make a few other simple word substitutes, you're an instant expert on the Bush Democracy Doctrine. Let's try it with the first portion of the Act's executive summary, with the substitutions shown in boldface:
At this point the Bush Democracy Doctrine diverges from the No Child Left Behind Act. Lagging tyrants will not be given the same choice that say, sixth graders receive if they don't buckle down to math. But as you can see there is no mystery about how the doctrine is to work out in practice.
Will the No Tyrant Left Behind initiative work? Of course. Mortals can't rid the world of evil but we can rectify mistakes that set the modern world's tyrants in place and keep them in place. Today's batch are not conquerors. And almost none are products of real revolution or internal coup. The majority came to power on the back of skimmed aid/loan money from the big Western nations and/or big-nation machinations.
So today's batch are as much Frankensteins as tyrants. Today's tyrants didn't get to be tyrants without a lot of help from the world's most powerful countries, including the USA. So the Bush doctrine is aimed as much at NATO countries and China and Russia as at Iran, North Korea, and Syria.
I interject that's why I made such a fuss about the US machinations in Ukraine, which began before Bush came to office. If we want other governments to get serious about the Democracy Doctrine, US foreign policy must strive hard to keep its hem clean. Things we could get away with during the Cold War -- no more, if we want other governments to raise their bar.
However, if you substitute "developed world governments" for the public school system, you can understand why several countries (and even some representatives of the American government) are putting up so much resistance to Bush's doctrine. They've had pretty much the same reaction as public school administrators on first hearing about the No Child Left Behind Act. These governments aren't used to being held accountable in their dealings with despots.
However, if the NATO 'school system' cranked out tinhorn despots who refused to democratize their countries, that's a measure of how much the world's most powerful governments have held themselves to account, in their dealings with despots. So we all need to improve our performance.
Blaming only the tyrants is akin to blaming only the child, if he graduates high school unable to spell cat. The question is how he got that far, after generations of adults poured billions into the school system that was supposed to educate him to deal with the modern world.
Laura's inaugural coat and the matching suit are to die for. Pundita wants the knockoffs as soon as they're available.
"Dear Pundita,
I liked Bush's speech at the inaugural but I'm a little confused by it. I wonder if he's talking in general terms and how he intends to implement the ideas, which are very ambitious. Also, didn't you love the white coat Laura wore for the inaugural?
Claudia in Taos"
Dear Claudia:
There is no mystery about the Democracy Doctrine; the ideas Bush sketched in his inaugural speech are already in effect although it's early days. His remarks are confusing only if you depend on secondary sources for understanding. If you go to the White House website and study the Millennium Challenge Account and the No Child Left Behind Act, you won't be confused.
You'll see that the ideas expressed in the inaugural speech reflect a typically Bushian approach to solving a systemic problem. The Democracy Doctrine is strong on accountability, standards setting, achievement tests, and performance review. It's results oriented.
In fact, Bush could make this easy for the commentariat if he directed them to study his No Child Left Behind Act. If you substitute "tyrant" for "child" and make a few other simple word substitutes, you're an instant expert on the Bush Democracy Doctrine. Let's try it with the first portion of the Act's executive summary, with the substitutions shown in boldface:
As the world enters the 21st Century full of hope and promise, too many of our tyrants are being left behind. Today, nearly 100 percent of the world's tyrants are unable to understand democracy ....
Although education is primarily a state and local responsibility, democratic governments are partly at fault for tolerating these abysmal results. Democratic governments currently do not do enough to reward success and sanction failure in our education system
Over the decades the American government and other governments in developed countries have created thousands of programs intended to address problems in tyrant education without asking whether or not the programs produce results or knowing their impact on local needs.
This "program for every problem" solution has begun to add up -- so much so that there are thousands of aid/low-cost loan programs spread across God Only Knows how many agencies at a cost of billions of US dollars a year.
Yet, after spending trillions and probably even zillions of dollars on tyrant education, we have fallen short in meeting our goals for educational excellence. The academic achievement gap between tyrants and elected leaders is not only wide, but in some cases is growing wider still.
In reaction to these disappointing results, some have decided that there should be no direct involvement in democracy education for tyrants . Others suggest we merely add new programs into the old system. Surely, there must be another way, a way that points to a more effective developed world role.
The priorities that follow are based on the fundamental notion that an enterprise works best when responsibility is placed closest to the most important activity of the enterprise, when those responsible are given greatest latitude and support, and when those responsible are held accountable for producing results. This education blueprint will:
--Increase Accountability for Tyrant Performance:
Tyrants who improve achievement in democracy measures will be rewarded. Failure will be sanctioned. American agencies/foreign policy instruments will know how well the tyrant is learning and that they are held accountable for their effectiveness with annual assessments.
--Focus on What Works:
US tax dollars will be spent on effective, research-based programs and practices. Funds will be targeted to improve tyrant education and enhance teacher quality.
--Reduce Bureaucracy and Increase Flexibility:
Additional flexibility will be provided to American agencies, and flexible funding will be increased at the local level.
--Empower Governments of the Developed World:
Said governments will have more information about the quality of the tyrant's schooling in democracy. Tyrants in persistently low-performing schools will be given choice.
At this point the Bush Democracy Doctrine diverges from the No Child Left Behind Act. Lagging tyrants will not be given the same choice that say, sixth graders receive if they don't buckle down to math. But as you can see there is no mystery about how the doctrine is to work out in practice.
Will the No Tyrant Left Behind initiative work? Of course. Mortals can't rid the world of evil but we can rectify mistakes that set the modern world's tyrants in place and keep them in place. Today's batch are not conquerors. And almost none are products of real revolution or internal coup. The majority came to power on the back of skimmed aid/loan money from the big Western nations and/or big-nation machinations.
So today's batch are as much Frankensteins as tyrants. Today's tyrants didn't get to be tyrants without a lot of help from the world's most powerful countries, including the USA. So the Bush doctrine is aimed as much at NATO countries and China and Russia as at Iran, North Korea, and Syria.
I interject that's why I made such a fuss about the US machinations in Ukraine, which began before Bush came to office. If we want other governments to get serious about the Democracy Doctrine, US foreign policy must strive hard to keep its hem clean. Things we could get away with during the Cold War -- no more, if we want other governments to raise their bar.
However, if you substitute "developed world governments" for the public school system, you can understand why several countries (and even some representatives of the American government) are putting up so much resistance to Bush's doctrine. They've had pretty much the same reaction as public school administrators on first hearing about the No Child Left Behind Act. These governments aren't used to being held accountable in their dealings with despots.
However, if the NATO 'school system' cranked out tinhorn despots who refused to democratize their countries, that's a measure of how much the world's most powerful governments have held themselves to account, in their dealings with despots. So we all need to improve our performance.
Blaming only the tyrants is akin to blaming only the child, if he graduates high school unable to spell cat. The question is how he got that far, after generations of adults poured billions into the school system that was supposed to educate him to deal with the modern world.
Laura's inaugural coat and the matching suit are to die for. Pundita wants the knockoffs as soon as they're available.
Monday, September 4
Golden Oldie: The OK Corral is thataway
Pundita is on vacation and will return to blogging on September 16; in the meantime (excepting on Sundays) the blog will reprise some of her earlier essays. The following Golden Oldie was originally published in January 2005.
"Thank you for introducing me to Peter Lavelle's writings. It's a lot to absorb. From what I'm learning it's evident the media are doing a really bad job keeping Americans informed about Russia. Lavelle writes for UPI so there is good reporting available but it doesn't seem to get featured in the mainstream media, at least not in this country.
However, America is at war. Russia's recent negotiations with Syria and Iran are potentially damaging to the US war effort. Given Putin's lack of support for the US invasion of Iraq, I think he would have gone ahead with the negotiations no matter how fairly the US media might have treated him, and even if there had been no US involvement in Ukraine. There has been talk of imposing sanctions on Russia, so I think the situation is becoming serious.
[Signed] Jan in Reston"
Dear Jan:
The situation will become serious when there is talk of imposing sanctions on Germany, France, and Britain for their deals with Syria and Iran. Then we'll know the Bush administration is getting down to brass tacks.
Russia is not an ally of the United States; they're a trading partner. It's the NATO countries that are supposed to be our allies. So it's during discussion with our dear allies about their actions in the Middle East that the United States should be making demands. Until we do this, why should Putin or any other non-NATO national leader join the United States in upholding a double standard?
I don't like Putin's negotiations with Syria and Iran but he's following the approach of the EU Three (Germany, France and UK), who dominate the European Union's approach to foreign relations. And if he stops following the E3 and sides with the United States--Bingo! he's made even more enemies in the EU than he did when launching the anti-corruption drive in Russia. Keep in mind Russia has to live on the same continent as the European Union.
If the State Department would not deploy a double standard with regard to NATO allies, if they adopted a position of integrity, as Bush did by refusing to deal with Arafat, then Putin and other non-NATO national leaders would be looking at a different ball game. How they might react, don't know, but integrity is catching--particularly when it's practiced by the world's leading nation.
Now that we have that off our chest, Pundita takes your point. If we study the Bush war plan, we see that Syria is the next weakest spoke in the Axis of Evil. So Putin's negotiations with Assad, and Russian sales of military equipment to Syria, are of grave concern to the US.
But again, the negotiations of our allies with Syria and Iran are of greater concern at this time. They've already told us to go sit on a tack, if we want military help in dealing with Syria and Iran. More than that, they've signaled they will work to marshal world resistance against any US action, including embargo, which the US wants to take against Iran.
This is showdown time with our NATO allies. But instead of showing up at the OK Corral, Washington wants to hang out in the saloon and talk about Russia. Put yourself in Vladimir Putin's place and look at the situation. Why should he listen to what Bush asks him to do with regard to Syria? When he can see with his own eyes that US allies have no intention of listening to Bush with regard to Syria and Iran?
The lame excuse is that they don't like Bush's style. What they don't like is a US policy that places integrity and consistency in foreign relations above expediency. So we are right back to the central debate, which pits the Bush Democracy Doctrine against the Chirac School.
And given that roughly half the US voters side with the Chirac School, those Americans young at heart enough to believe this can be Liberty's Century have a great deal of groundwork to do.
When more Americans get clear on the Democracy Doctrine and how it works in practice, there will be greater force behind the words of the US Secretary of State in negotiations with our allies. As it is now, we're just whistling Dixie. And Putin and a host of other national leaders know this.
This to include our dear ally Israel. What in the Sam Hill were the Israelis doing selling weapons to China? When Pundita last checked, there is only one China. So this would be the same China that helped the Iranians and every other Jew-hating government build nukes. Then Sharon rings up Bush, "Oh they've got the Bomb!"
But if you know that, then why did you sell weapons to China, which makes a career out of counterfeiting weapons and selling knockoffs to the highest bidder? What is this, the Kindergarten Age? Is this what our ancestors invented copper and iron for?
But I see we've descended from polemics to sputters, so this might be the time for a critter story. Most people don't know this but beavers are the best negotiators; they have to be, to avoid being mauled by creatures who don't have the concept of dam building down pat. The beaver has to clamber around the river bank and chew down trees. Imagine yourself a bear listening to that racket. So the beavers have to communicate to the local yokels that they don't plan to stay long and that all they want is some lumber.
One day I asked the beaver member of Pundita's foreign policy team, "Just how does a beaver negotiate logging rights?"
He replied, "Sincerely."
A reply to remember during our foreign relations dealings, especially during war. If we want Russia to throw up a few less roadblocks to the Bush war plan, the request should come with the sincere assurance that he won't keep pulling knives out of his back.
"Thank you for introducing me to Peter Lavelle's writings. It's a lot to absorb. From what I'm learning it's evident the media are doing a really bad job keeping Americans informed about Russia. Lavelle writes for UPI so there is good reporting available but it doesn't seem to get featured in the mainstream media, at least not in this country.
However, America is at war. Russia's recent negotiations with Syria and Iran are potentially damaging to the US war effort. Given Putin's lack of support for the US invasion of Iraq, I think he would have gone ahead with the negotiations no matter how fairly the US media might have treated him, and even if there had been no US involvement in Ukraine. There has been talk of imposing sanctions on Russia, so I think the situation is becoming serious.
[Signed] Jan in Reston"
Dear Jan:
The situation will become serious when there is talk of imposing sanctions on Germany, France, and Britain for their deals with Syria and Iran. Then we'll know the Bush administration is getting down to brass tacks.
Russia is not an ally of the United States; they're a trading partner. It's the NATO countries that are supposed to be our allies. So it's during discussion with our dear allies about their actions in the Middle East that the United States should be making demands. Until we do this, why should Putin or any other non-NATO national leader join the United States in upholding a double standard?
I don't like Putin's negotiations with Syria and Iran but he's following the approach of the EU Three (Germany, France and UK), who dominate the European Union's approach to foreign relations. And if he stops following the E3 and sides with the United States--Bingo! he's made even more enemies in the EU than he did when launching the anti-corruption drive in Russia. Keep in mind Russia has to live on the same continent as the European Union.
If the State Department would not deploy a double standard with regard to NATO allies, if they adopted a position of integrity, as Bush did by refusing to deal with Arafat, then Putin and other non-NATO national leaders would be looking at a different ball game. How they might react, don't know, but integrity is catching--particularly when it's practiced by the world's leading nation.
Now that we have that off our chest, Pundita takes your point. If we study the Bush war plan, we see that Syria is the next weakest spoke in the Axis of Evil. So Putin's negotiations with Assad, and Russian sales of military equipment to Syria, are of grave concern to the US.
But again, the negotiations of our allies with Syria and Iran are of greater concern at this time. They've already told us to go sit on a tack, if we want military help in dealing with Syria and Iran. More than that, they've signaled they will work to marshal world resistance against any US action, including embargo, which the US wants to take against Iran.
This is showdown time with our NATO allies. But instead of showing up at the OK Corral, Washington wants to hang out in the saloon and talk about Russia. Put yourself in Vladimir Putin's place and look at the situation. Why should he listen to what Bush asks him to do with regard to Syria? When he can see with his own eyes that US allies have no intention of listening to Bush with regard to Syria and Iran?
The lame excuse is that they don't like Bush's style. What they don't like is a US policy that places integrity and consistency in foreign relations above expediency. So we are right back to the central debate, which pits the Bush Democracy Doctrine against the Chirac School.
And given that roughly half the US voters side with the Chirac School, those Americans young at heart enough to believe this can be Liberty's Century have a great deal of groundwork to do.
When more Americans get clear on the Democracy Doctrine and how it works in practice, there will be greater force behind the words of the US Secretary of State in negotiations with our allies. As it is now, we're just whistling Dixie. And Putin and a host of other national leaders know this.
This to include our dear ally Israel. What in the Sam Hill were the Israelis doing selling weapons to China? When Pundita last checked, there is only one China. So this would be the same China that helped the Iranians and every other Jew-hating government build nukes. Then Sharon rings up Bush, "Oh they've got the Bomb!"
But if you know that, then why did you sell weapons to China, which makes a career out of counterfeiting weapons and selling knockoffs to the highest bidder? What is this, the Kindergarten Age? Is this what our ancestors invented copper and iron for?
But I see we've descended from polemics to sputters, so this might be the time for a critter story. Most people don't know this but beavers are the best negotiators; they have to be, to avoid being mauled by creatures who don't have the concept of dam building down pat. The beaver has to clamber around the river bank and chew down trees. Imagine yourself a bear listening to that racket. So the beavers have to communicate to the local yokels that they don't plan to stay long and that all they want is some lumber.
One day I asked the beaver member of Pundita's foreign policy team, "Just how does a beaver negotiate logging rights?"
He replied, "Sincerely."
A reply to remember during our foreign relations dealings, especially during war. If we want Russia to throw up a few less roadblocks to the Bush war plan, the request should come with the sincere assurance that he won't keep pulling knives out of his back.
Saturday, September 2
Golden Oldie: "Things fall apart, the center cannot hold"
Pundita is on vacation and will return to blogging on September 16; in the meantime (excepting on Sundays) the blog will reprise some of her earlier essays. The following Golden Oldie was originally published in April 2005.
Sometime during the 1970s we passed into a new chapter in the saga of the human race. Here is the outline: Present technology + human population number + Amazon going up in flames due to bad development projects + rapidly escalating desertification + present phase of earth's cycle + very limited knowledge about dealing with problems of mass populations.
The earth has her own cycle of life--as we saw on the day we refer to as the Tsunami. Yet we can't tell the earth, "Please suspend your cycle until we get it together."
That means we're now operating on a very thin margin of error. One of the many recent signs of this was the heroic Canadian doctor who battled SARS to the death in a hospital in Canada. She had to wage battle with her back to the wall of bureaucratic bungling. That kind of situation is happening more and more. Yet when we're routinely having to depend on just one person to save us from a mega-disaster, this is a clear sign of system failure. It's a sign that our margin of error has shrunk to near zero.
Those who talk about saving humanity from disaster are referencing opportunity that is long gone. The ship left the pier decades ago. Given the combination of factors, there is no way humanity can avoid crashing into the metaphorical iceberg. However, the Titanic passengers who were killed did not die because of the impact of the ship's crash. They died because the ship maker and the shipping company didn't build in margins of error. They assumed the ship was unsinkable so--not enough lifeboats, no disaster drills, no backup SOS system, etc.
We can't avert all coming disasters but we can widen our margin of error--minimize our exposure to disasters and maximize our responses to them. There's plenty enough human brainpower for the task, thanks to our mega-population. The challenge is to get more of the brainpower involved with governing decisions and oversight.
That's where democratic government comes in. Democracy is no longer just about the choice between freedom and slavery. It's about transferring decision-making from small numbers (an 'elite') to large numbers with their vast diversity of experience and education. It's about the human race making it through this century in one piece.
Here we come to a snag. There are two democracy doctrines; one is phony. The Democracy Bubble of the 1980s and 1990s, when it burst, left many people round the world feeling cheated by their experiment in democracy. But they didn't really have democracy. They were sold a form of government that's a stage show run by a small circle.
How did so many people get taken in? Pundita's been trying to figure that out, in the manner of a bunko squad detective taking apart a con. I've zeroed in on the word 'freedom,' which is the word I hear most associated with democracy. Remove the dom and you're left with free--the con artist's favorite word.
(To the tune of "A Christmas Song" sung by Alvin and the Chipmunks):
Freedom for you and freedom for me!
We'll be free with democracy!
We won't worry when we are freeeeee!
All we do is vote and see
Our leaders will make us free!
Freedom is not free. It has a very high price and the payment is not a one-time shot. It's a huge ongoing investment of time and because time is money in the modern world, it's lot of money to invest. So the question is whether all the freedoms that come with democratic government are worth the high price for all peoples in all circumstances. From a Darwinian perspective, and during earlier eras, the answer would be no; the Democracy Stage Show Kit essay looks briefly at one reason--the exhaustion factor. But the choice is no longer about accepting democracy. The choice is how well the human race survives this century.
A Palestinian once told Pundita that humanity has no worries about the future because Muslim prophets have said that the end of the world is near. Hello, the end of the world is sure enough near for some peoples if they don't get cracking but we're not looking at a doomsday scenario in this century. We're looking at hell on earth for a lot more people, if we don't get more brainpower set to work on the problems we're facing. The fastest and best way to do this is via genuine democratic government beep this is a recording.
The US government needs to take all the above into consideration, the next time they decide to cut corners--for the greater good--and support a democracy stage show. They need to update their concept of the greater good. Same goes for the governments in other developed countries. Let's get it together, ladies and gentlemen, because this earth will not suspend her schedule of events while we're working through our issues.
In the Democracy Stage Show Kit I noted, "We have simply passed the era when a small elite could be counted on to properly manage the problems of governing a populace. It takes large numbers of people to efficiently govern populations that run into the hundreds of millions. "
In his commentary Zenpundit observes, "This point is not merely one of functionality but of political legitimacy."
I agree, and yet functionality and political legitimacy must converge, else the concept of 'government' is rendered invalid. I don't know the exact population number that has to be reached before tribal government begins to break down but at some point up in the thousands, it does. The same for imperial government when the population rises to the millions. "Things fall apart, the center cannot hold."
From then on, the choice is to rule by force or bring in democracy, which can efficiently govern very large numbers. Yet the functionality of democracy has not been emphasized during the past century; democracy has been presented as a philosophical subject and ideal. That's allowed for a lot of fuzzy inspirational talk and not much talk about the nuts of bolts of democratic government. That's what is missing, when we preach democracy. A little less preaching, a little more explanation. That would make it harder to palm off a show for the real deal.
We might try something new for a change and get creative. Someone could think up a board game that has players set up a democratic government. Then would come the computer game. Then the movie and the theme park.
Better yet--ask Mark Burnett to create a reality show on setting up a democratic government. Maybe we could get a LDC government to cooperate. The president of the country could give the same task to different members of his government then fire the one who did worst with the task. You could spin a soap opera off it. The BBC would pick it up; it could go on playing forever all around the world, like EastEnders.
Well why not, if you really want to see 'the masses' learn democratic government? But gee come to think of it, there never has been that much interest in teaching the masses the actual nuts and bolts of democratic government. What we've had is--
Freedom for you and freedom for me!
We'll be free with democracy...
Sometime during the 1970s we passed into a new chapter in the saga of the human race. Here is the outline: Present technology + human population number + Amazon going up in flames due to bad development projects + rapidly escalating desertification + present phase of earth's cycle + very limited knowledge about dealing with problems of mass populations.
The earth has her own cycle of life--as we saw on the day we refer to as the Tsunami. Yet we can't tell the earth, "Please suspend your cycle until we get it together."
That means we're now operating on a very thin margin of error. One of the many recent signs of this was the heroic Canadian doctor who battled SARS to the death in a hospital in Canada. She had to wage battle with her back to the wall of bureaucratic bungling. That kind of situation is happening more and more. Yet when we're routinely having to depend on just one person to save us from a mega-disaster, this is a clear sign of system failure. It's a sign that our margin of error has shrunk to near zero.
Those who talk about saving humanity from disaster are referencing opportunity that is long gone. The ship left the pier decades ago. Given the combination of factors, there is no way humanity can avoid crashing into the metaphorical iceberg. However, the Titanic passengers who were killed did not die because of the impact of the ship's crash. They died because the ship maker and the shipping company didn't build in margins of error. They assumed the ship was unsinkable so--not enough lifeboats, no disaster drills, no backup SOS system, etc.
We can't avert all coming disasters but we can widen our margin of error--minimize our exposure to disasters and maximize our responses to them. There's plenty enough human brainpower for the task, thanks to our mega-population. The challenge is to get more of the brainpower involved with governing decisions and oversight.
That's where democratic government comes in. Democracy is no longer just about the choice between freedom and slavery. It's about transferring decision-making from small numbers (an 'elite') to large numbers with their vast diversity of experience and education. It's about the human race making it through this century in one piece.
Here we come to a snag. There are two democracy doctrines; one is phony. The Democracy Bubble of the 1980s and 1990s, when it burst, left many people round the world feeling cheated by their experiment in democracy. But they didn't really have democracy. They were sold a form of government that's a stage show run by a small circle.
How did so many people get taken in? Pundita's been trying to figure that out, in the manner of a bunko squad detective taking apart a con. I've zeroed in on the word 'freedom,' which is the word I hear most associated with democracy. Remove the dom and you're left with free--the con artist's favorite word.
(To the tune of "A Christmas Song" sung by Alvin and the Chipmunks):
Freedom for you and freedom for me!
We'll be free with democracy!
We won't worry when we are freeeeee!
All we do is vote and see
Our leaders will make us free!
Freedom is not free. It has a very high price and the payment is not a one-time shot. It's a huge ongoing investment of time and because time is money in the modern world, it's lot of money to invest. So the question is whether all the freedoms that come with democratic government are worth the high price for all peoples in all circumstances. From a Darwinian perspective, and during earlier eras, the answer would be no; the Democracy Stage Show Kit essay looks briefly at one reason--the exhaustion factor. But the choice is no longer about accepting democracy. The choice is how well the human race survives this century.
A Palestinian once told Pundita that humanity has no worries about the future because Muslim prophets have said that the end of the world is near. Hello, the end of the world is sure enough near for some peoples if they don't get cracking but we're not looking at a doomsday scenario in this century. We're looking at hell on earth for a lot more people, if we don't get more brainpower set to work on the problems we're facing. The fastest and best way to do this is via genuine democratic government beep this is a recording.
The US government needs to take all the above into consideration, the next time they decide to cut corners--for the greater good--and support a democracy stage show. They need to update their concept of the greater good. Same goes for the governments in other developed countries. Let's get it together, ladies and gentlemen, because this earth will not suspend her schedule of events while we're working through our issues.
In the Democracy Stage Show Kit I noted, "We have simply passed the era when a small elite could be counted on to properly manage the problems of governing a populace. It takes large numbers of people to efficiently govern populations that run into the hundreds of millions. "
In his commentary Zenpundit observes, "This point is not merely one of functionality but of political legitimacy."
I agree, and yet functionality and political legitimacy must converge, else the concept of 'government' is rendered invalid. I don't know the exact population number that has to be reached before tribal government begins to break down but at some point up in the thousands, it does. The same for imperial government when the population rises to the millions. "Things fall apart, the center cannot hold."
From then on, the choice is to rule by force or bring in democracy, which can efficiently govern very large numbers. Yet the functionality of democracy has not been emphasized during the past century; democracy has been presented as a philosophical subject and ideal. That's allowed for a lot of fuzzy inspirational talk and not much talk about the nuts of bolts of democratic government. That's what is missing, when we preach democracy. A little less preaching, a little more explanation. That would make it harder to palm off a show for the real deal.
We might try something new for a change and get creative. Someone could think up a board game that has players set up a democratic government. Then would come the computer game. Then the movie and the theme park.
Better yet--ask Mark Burnett to create a reality show on setting up a democratic government. Maybe we could get a LDC government to cooperate. The president of the country could give the same task to different members of his government then fire the one who did worst with the task. You could spin a soap opera off it. The BBC would pick it up; it could go on playing forever all around the world, like EastEnders.
Well why not, if you really want to see 'the masses' learn democratic government? But gee come to think of it, there never has been that much interest in teaching the masses the actual nuts and bolts of democratic government. What we've had is--
Freedom for you and freedom for me!
We'll be free with democracy...
Friday, September 1
Vacation time, review time
Pundita is getting in a whole two weeks of vacation! Of course I will be taking along a copy of Norm Podhoretz's Is the Bush Doctrine Dead? and Paul Wolfowitz's security 'doctrine' -- what's available of it in the public domain.
This seems a good time to review issues that seriously impact America's security and Bush's Democracy Doctrine. (The latter can, I think, be analyzed separately from the National Security Doctrine.) So Pundita has rooted in her archives for posts that will help me - and, I hope, the reader - review such issues. I will be publishing a "golden oldie" every day of my vacation with the exception of Sunday.
The first in the series, House of Cards, is posted below.
Until September 16th, then.
Best regards to all,
Pundita
This seems a good time to review issues that seriously impact America's security and Bush's Democracy Doctrine. (The latter can, I think, be analyzed separately from the National Security Doctrine.) So Pundita has rooted in her archives for posts that will help me - and, I hope, the reader - review such issues. I will be publishing a "golden oldie" every day of my vacation with the exception of Sunday.
The first in the series, House of Cards, is posted below.
Until September 16th, then.
Best regards to all,
Pundita
Pundita Golden Oldie: House of Cards
Originally published September 2005
Reviewing a reader's question about corruption in Peru's construction industry reminds Pundita that two US states famous for corruption, Mississippi and Louisiana, are undertaking a massive reconstruction effort. So now is good time to bone up on a report about corruption in the construction industry and guidelines for averting the worst abuse of public monies --
September 2
"Dear Pundita:
I've lived in Latin America on and off for years. I've often wondered how US aid money gets from taxpayers' pockets to corrupt officials' private bank accounts. A flow chart would be fascinating (and heartbreaking).
The stealing going on must be tremendous. There is virtually no investment in infrastructure in most Latin American cities. Public works is a complete nil. I agree with one of your basic assessments (my paraphrase): it is not that rich people -- say, in Latin America -- are particularly bad or twisted, but they do not tax themselves.
Latin America does not have an IRS-type agency that has the Fear of God as a backstop. Basically, nobody pays taxes at any significant level. Or at minimum, there doesn't seem to be any honest collection and distribution system.
In any case, would you be willing to explain just how corruption works? Take for example some Minister -- say the Director, Ministerio de Vivienda of Peru. The public monies coming in cannot be all that large. Foreign aid on the other hand represents a respectable pile of cash.
How does our director go about getting his divvy of US foreign aid?
Doug in Seattle"
Dear Doug:
Actually the rich are soaked in countries without a fair tax code and enforced collection system; the taxation on the rich is whatever the traffic will bear. However, the taxation is under the table, as I pointed out in Paw a Revenuer's at the door....
In other words, there is always de facto taxation in effect. If you have to pay bribes to get anything done that's a tax albeit an illegal one.
The biggest problem with this kind of taxation is that the revenue, if it can be called that, is not spent on works that benefit the public as a whole. That sets in motion a vicious cycle. The roads or electricity will be somewhat reliable in a rich neighborhood, thanks to bribes, but because other regions or sections of a city go without, the rich end up spending exorbitant monies to do business or simply function outside their own neighborhood.
That much human stupidity is hysterically funny when looked at from the longest view. More than once Pundita has had to tell a bald-faced lie, in order to explain away her peals of laughter while listening to the complaints of the rich in countries that run on bribes.
"Bah! Nothing works in this crazy country! Our entire shipment rotted on the docks again because the roads washed out! I can't tell you how much in bribes it cost to get things moving again!"
If you see someone who is otherwise sane whacking himself in the shins with a tire iron then complaining, "I can't walk," at first you feel sympathy. But once you've heard, "This is my tradition" a few times it's hard not to think of The Three Stooges.
The good news: that much stupidity is severely punished in a globalized trade system unless there is an external force propping it up. Enter foreign aid and development loans.
So I'm going to throw you a curve ball. Even if the aid agency or development bank could somehow prevent corruption, which often can't be done without draconian, expensive oversight measures, you're not even out of the gate.
The truth is that as long as many governments have a way to stave off a realistic, enforced tax code, they'll take it. That's because the wealthy faction that put them in power throws a hissy fit when confronted with an iron-clad tax code and collection enforcement.
The World Bank has learned this lesson the hard way and USAID is catching up.(1) That's why they've gone gaga over remittances. The reasoning is that if they have to contribute to tax delinquency, at least work it so they're not the only ones. Encourage chump immigrants to send their hard-earned money over and above taxes back home.
In this way, the chumps continue to support the home administration's habit of blowing revenue to keep the rich from overthrowing them. Then we're right back at shin whacking.
Here you might ask why the wealthiest nations don't simply shut off development loans and aid except for outright disasters. The answer is that aid and development banking are mega-industries.
Even if you only gave aid in the form of outright cash, you'd be helping to support the banking sector because you have to collect, transfer and disburse the cash. However, most aid is in the form of goods or service, which helps support contractors and subcontractors.
Same principle applies to development banks. See Development Banks under the Pundita Selected Essays on the sidebar.
The industry of being helpful to the poor supports so many livelihoods that if you somehow managed the impossible and shut it down, it would spring up again virtually overnight.
The development loan industry even supports the industry that's grown up to invest in helping the poorest in the poorest nations, if you can feature that. There are funds you can invest in that specialize in providing micro loans to the world's poorest entrepreneurs. You don't get a big return, of course, but if you want to invest in 'socially responsible' projects, an industry has arisen to tend to that desire.
I hasten to add that investing in micro-projects, which can be as small as a few hundred dollars, is a good idea in principle. And in practice micro-investing brings genuine and generally corruption-free assistance to the neediest and hardest working.
Yet as soon as the poor expand beyond a tiny neighborhood business, they run into the same problems the rich run into in their country. The electricity fails during business hours, the roads are washed out, the garbage isn't picked up, and so on down the long list. So what do the fledgling entrepreneurs end up doing? They pay more bribe money.
How to break the vicious cycle? The US government has hit on the idea of promoting genuine democracy and election reforms in the poorest countries. The reasoning is that if more people in the poorest countries are brought into the voting and governing process, collective wisdom will break self-destructive traditions.
As to how aid money gets from Americans' bank accounts into the hands of corrupt officials, it depends on how the aid transfer is set up and the form it takes. Money can be skimmed or outright stolen by a virtually infinite variety of means. Close oversight, which costs a lot of money, is the only way to insure that most of the aid won't wend its way into the wrong hands.
With regard to corruption in public construction works, you will find the 2005 report by Transparency International of interest. You might want to first read their press release, which is cheerily titled, "A world built on bribes?"
Or go directly to Global Corruption Report 2005, which focuses on corruption in construction and post-conflict reconstruction. And ahem the guidelines and warnings apply as well to post-disaster reconstruction.
1) USAID Anticorruption Strategy 2005 (PDF).
Reviewing a reader's question about corruption in Peru's construction industry reminds Pundita that two US states famous for corruption, Mississippi and Louisiana, are undertaking a massive reconstruction effort. So now is good time to bone up on a report about corruption in the construction industry and guidelines for averting the worst abuse of public monies --
September 2
"Dear Pundita:
I've lived in Latin America on and off for years. I've often wondered how US aid money gets from taxpayers' pockets to corrupt officials' private bank accounts. A flow chart would be fascinating (and heartbreaking).
The stealing going on must be tremendous. There is virtually no investment in infrastructure in most Latin American cities. Public works is a complete nil. I agree with one of your basic assessments (my paraphrase): it is not that rich people -- say, in Latin America -- are particularly bad or twisted, but they do not tax themselves.
Latin America does not have an IRS-type agency that has the Fear of God as a backstop. Basically, nobody pays taxes at any significant level. Or at minimum, there doesn't seem to be any honest collection and distribution system.
In any case, would you be willing to explain just how corruption works? Take for example some Minister -- say the Director, Ministerio de Vivienda of Peru. The public monies coming in cannot be all that large. Foreign aid on the other hand represents a respectable pile of cash.
How does our director go about getting his divvy of US foreign aid?
Doug in Seattle"
Dear Doug:
Actually the rich are soaked in countries without a fair tax code and enforced collection system; the taxation on the rich is whatever the traffic will bear. However, the taxation is under the table, as I pointed out in Paw a Revenuer's at the door....
In other words, there is always de facto taxation in effect. If you have to pay bribes to get anything done that's a tax albeit an illegal one.
The biggest problem with this kind of taxation is that the revenue, if it can be called that, is not spent on works that benefit the public as a whole. That sets in motion a vicious cycle. The roads or electricity will be somewhat reliable in a rich neighborhood, thanks to bribes, but because other regions or sections of a city go without, the rich end up spending exorbitant monies to do business or simply function outside their own neighborhood.
That much human stupidity is hysterically funny when looked at from the longest view. More than once Pundita has had to tell a bald-faced lie, in order to explain away her peals of laughter while listening to the complaints of the rich in countries that run on bribes.
"Bah! Nothing works in this crazy country! Our entire shipment rotted on the docks again because the roads washed out! I can't tell you how much in bribes it cost to get things moving again!"
If you see someone who is otherwise sane whacking himself in the shins with a tire iron then complaining, "I can't walk," at first you feel sympathy. But once you've heard, "This is my tradition" a few times it's hard not to think of The Three Stooges.
The good news: that much stupidity is severely punished in a globalized trade system unless there is an external force propping it up. Enter foreign aid and development loans.
So I'm going to throw you a curve ball. Even if the aid agency or development bank could somehow prevent corruption, which often can't be done without draconian, expensive oversight measures, you're not even out of the gate.
The truth is that as long as many governments have a way to stave off a realistic, enforced tax code, they'll take it. That's because the wealthy faction that put them in power throws a hissy fit when confronted with an iron-clad tax code and collection enforcement.
The World Bank has learned this lesson the hard way and USAID is catching up.(1) That's why they've gone gaga over remittances. The reasoning is that if they have to contribute to tax delinquency, at least work it so they're not the only ones. Encourage chump immigrants to send their hard-earned money over and above taxes back home.
In this way, the chumps continue to support the home administration's habit of blowing revenue to keep the rich from overthrowing them. Then we're right back at shin whacking.
Here you might ask why the wealthiest nations don't simply shut off development loans and aid except for outright disasters. The answer is that aid and development banking are mega-industries.
Even if you only gave aid in the form of outright cash, you'd be helping to support the banking sector because you have to collect, transfer and disburse the cash. However, most aid is in the form of goods or service, which helps support contractors and subcontractors.
Same principle applies to development banks. See Development Banks under the Pundita Selected Essays on the sidebar.
The industry of being helpful to the poor supports so many livelihoods that if you somehow managed the impossible and shut it down, it would spring up again virtually overnight.
The development loan industry even supports the industry that's grown up to invest in helping the poorest in the poorest nations, if you can feature that. There are funds you can invest in that specialize in providing micro loans to the world's poorest entrepreneurs. You don't get a big return, of course, but if you want to invest in 'socially responsible' projects, an industry has arisen to tend to that desire.
I hasten to add that investing in micro-projects, which can be as small as a few hundred dollars, is a good idea in principle. And in practice micro-investing brings genuine and generally corruption-free assistance to the neediest and hardest working.
Yet as soon as the poor expand beyond a tiny neighborhood business, they run into the same problems the rich run into in their country. The electricity fails during business hours, the roads are washed out, the garbage isn't picked up, and so on down the long list. So what do the fledgling entrepreneurs end up doing? They pay more bribe money.
How to break the vicious cycle? The US government has hit on the idea of promoting genuine democracy and election reforms in the poorest countries. The reasoning is that if more people in the poorest countries are brought into the voting and governing process, collective wisdom will break self-destructive traditions.
As to how aid money gets from Americans' bank accounts into the hands of corrupt officials, it depends on how the aid transfer is set up and the form it takes. Money can be skimmed or outright stolen by a virtually infinite variety of means. Close oversight, which costs a lot of money, is the only way to insure that most of the aid won't wend its way into the wrong hands.
With regard to corruption in public construction works, you will find the 2005 report by Transparency International of interest. You might want to first read their press release, which is cheerily titled, "A world built on bribes?"
Or go directly to Global Corruption Report 2005, which focuses on corruption in construction and post-conflict reconstruction. And ahem the guidelines and warnings apply as well to post-disaster reconstruction.
1) USAID Anticorruption Strategy 2005 (PDF).
Thursday, August 31
Chad's president throws a tantrum at the World Bank: If you don't love me I'll go to Grandma's House!
Chad plays China against the US. Memorize this story -- the basic plot known to all cunning children with a doting grandparent living nearby -- because it's the shape of US efforts in the developing world for years to come.
Of course Mom and Pop made a concession:
The production and export of petroleum in Chad are overseen by the Exxon Mobil-led consortium. Under the mechanism, Exxon Mobil ... is responsible for 40 percent of the country's production, while Chevron has 25 percent and [Malaysia's] Petronas has 30 percent.Quotes compiled from two Associated Press reports filed by Madjiasra Nako: Chad Plans to Evict 2 Oil Firms Over Unpaid Taxes and Chad Suspends 3 Ministers Over Oil Deals
The three companies agreed to finance a $4.2 billion, 650-mile pipeline to deliver oil from landlocked Chad to a port in Cameroon.
The companies agreed to invest the money after the World Bank gave the project its support and after Chad passed a World Bank-backed oil revenue law that required most of the money to go to health, education and infrastructure projects. ...
But the venture has proved troubling for Chad, one of the poorest countries in the world. In January, the World Bank froze $125 million in oil revenue and cut $124 million in financial aid, accusing Chad of reneging on a promise to set aside part of its oil revenue to help citizens.
Last month, the government reached a deal with the bank and signed an accord to commit 70 percent of its budget to poverty and development programs. ..."
August 26, 2006
N'Djamena, Chad - Chad's president on Saturday ordered two oil companies, Chevron Corp. and Petronas, to leave the country, saying that neither had paid taxes and that his country would take responsibility for the oil fields they have overseen. [...]
If the two companies are evicted, Chad could seek help from China, which has taken an active interest in Africa in its search for raw materials, including oil and metals. Earlier this month, Chad broke off diplomatic relations with Taiwan and turned instead to China, a move that could help it sell its oil to the energy-hungry power. ...
California-based Chevron said in a statement Saturday that it had not been behind on any tax payments and had not been told it must leave Chad. ...
Mark D. Boudreaux, a spokesman for Exxon Mobil, told The Associated Press by e-mail that neither his company, nor affiliate Esso Chad has been asked to leave the country.
Chad's largest labor organization backed Deby's move, saying the country was being exploited by foreign oil companies, state-owned radio reported. However, opposition groups said on another radio station that only members of Deby's tribe - whose heartland is in the oil-rich north of the country - benefit from oil production.
Political scientist Roland Marchal, an expert in Chadian affairs, said Deby is unlikely to go through with the expulsion.
"Deby is playing both the nationalist card because he is saying that foreign companies are taking Chad's money, which is popular, and also that if these two companies are not flexible enough to come to a new agreement where Chad receives more money, then Deby can always talk to the Chinese ..."
Of course Mom and Pop made a concession:
But the World Bank also agreed to allow 30 percent of oil revenue to go toward Chad's general treasury, instead of just 15 percent. Chad can use that money on whatever it wants -- including weapons.And of course China's Grandma has very big teeth. But where there's life there's hope and negotiation:
August 30
Chad Panel to Renegotiate Oil agreements
N'Djamena, Chad (Associated Press)- Chad President Idriss Deby has formed a commission to renegotiate agreements with oil companies, after he ordered Chevron Corp. of the United States and Malaysia's Petronas out of the country for allegedly failing to pay taxes, his spokesman said Wednesday.
Deby signed a decree late Tuesday establishing the commission, presidential spokesman Dieudonne Djonabaye said. ...
Wednesday, August 30
Eeek! My blog has been taken over by Batchelorites!
Every Pundita post I ever wrote on John Batchelor's radio show has come back to haunt me, as Batchelorites descend looking to glean information on Our Hero's leave-taking. My poor little 100-limit site meter log is overwhelmed.
I will not sugar coat this; for now the terrorist-sponsoring states and their goons won a skirmish with John's ejection from his nationally syndicated radio show at ABC Radio.
And while John is off the air we're really going to appreciate how much work his research and his regular reporting sources saved us. There's nothing for it but to roll up our sleeves and descend on the milblogs and Google's search engine.
So this is a good time to thank John Batchelor, his staff, and the guest regulars on his show at ABC for all their years of service since September 12, 2001. I wish them smooth sailing in Batchelor's next broadcast venture.
Remember to check periodically at Batchelor's website for news on the show's next broadcast site. (The website and the John Batchelor Show belong to John, not Commodus - er, ABC.) and you can email John at the address shown at the website under "Contact us" in the menu column.
In the meantime we can keep up with important global news by making daily visits to The Intelligence Summit news page and following the links.
For readers who have never listened to the John Batchelor show and wonder what the fuss is all about, you can read the Wikipedia article, which features quotes from one of Pundita's posts.
For a less objective but more personal look at Batchelor you can read The New York Times February 2006 article.
For readers in a hurry, here are the Pundita passages on the show that Wiki quotes:
I will not sugar coat this; for now the terrorist-sponsoring states and their goons won a skirmish with John's ejection from his nationally syndicated radio show at ABC Radio.
And while John is off the air we're really going to appreciate how much work his research and his regular reporting sources saved us. There's nothing for it but to roll up our sleeves and descend on the milblogs and Google's search engine.
So this is a good time to thank John Batchelor, his staff, and the guest regulars on his show at ABC for all their years of service since September 12, 2001. I wish them smooth sailing in Batchelor's next broadcast venture.
Remember to check periodically at Batchelor's website for news on the show's next broadcast site. (The website and the John Batchelor Show belong to John, not Commodus - er, ABC.) and you can email John at the address shown at the website under "Contact us" in the menu column.
In the meantime we can keep up with important global news by making daily visits to The Intelligence Summit news page and following the links.
For readers who have never listened to the John Batchelor show and wonder what the fuss is all about, you can read the Wikipedia article, which features quotes from one of Pundita's posts.
For a less objective but more personal look at Batchelor you can read The New York Times February 2006 article.
For readers in a hurry, here are the Pundita passages on the show that Wiki quotes:
Batchelor's show represents post-partisan, intelligence-based news analysis and reporting. He and his sources unpack background to major news events over days, months, and even years so that the listener develops an in-depth, coherent view of a particular region or issue.Of course all Batchelorites know that the above doesn't do full justice to the show. We who consume news 24/7 depend on Batchelor's discussions with authors of books on the arts; science; and higher mathematics, which save us from grunting in monosyllables at dinner parties.
First American news program to treat the United States as a superpower nation. First American news program to look at international news from a uniquely American perspective. First news program to integrate daily news coverage with 21st century issues--energy, space exploration, etc.
. . . Analysis of US politics and European/other world region politics--Middle East, China, India, Former Soviet Union, African countries, etc. Reports regularly on State Department, White House, Congress, US intelligence agencies. Nightly in-depth reporting on war on terror. US history discussions, strong on US war history. Cultural trends. Discussions about new books on literary/historical figures.
Tuesday, August 29
Tick tock tick tock it's almost 10 o'clock
11:45 PM ET Update
Batchelor let drop a little more news about his plans during the John Loftus Report. He said that the network he's going to after ABC will be connected with the Hoover Institution.
And crank up the theme music from "Gladiator!" Batchelor is retiring undefeated from ABC; he has been #1 in ratings since -- well, for years, and he's still #1. So, conspiracy theorists can have a field day speculating as to the real reason ABC Radio decided to ax John's show.
More news: John Loftus is in discussion with Discovery Channel to have his own weekly "spy" show. Now won't that be a show! The contract is not signed yet but obviously negotiations are promising for Loftus to mention it.
* * * * * * * * * *
10:37 PM ET Update
"The princes of serendipity have arrived and we are making the best of it."
Bah. That's not information, that's poetry. But then I assume ABC Radio wouldn't be overjoyed if John announced his plans on their airwaves.
Batchelor also said that he was leaving "not by my instigation." That we already know. Loftus wrote this morning that the network is being sold.
John also said something I didn't catch on account of munching on popcorn (I thought this was to be a major announcement) but it was to the effect that he'd continue with something or other and with his weekly column for The New York Sun.
Malcolm Hoenlein chimed in to say that this is not the end "but will be a new beginning" for Batchelor's show and that he'll be with John on the new Batchelor show.
A little more information can be gleaned from the John Batchelor Show website:
As to where the new show will be airing -- I guess we'll have to watch the sky for smoke signals.
By the way, Ambassador John Bolton will be guesting on Batchelor's Wednesday show. He usually visits during the opening segment.
* * * * * * * * * *
9:28 PM ET:
Not that Pundita is pacing the floor in impatience or anything. Tune to John Batchelor's show tonight at 10:00 PM ET to get the scoop on why he's leaving ABC Radio. See my earlier post today if you're just learning the news.
Batchelor let drop a little more news about his plans during the John Loftus Report. He said that the network he's going to after ABC will be connected with the Hoover Institution.
And crank up the theme music from "Gladiator!" Batchelor is retiring undefeated from ABC; he has been #1 in ratings since -- well, for years, and he's still #1. So, conspiracy theorists can have a field day speculating as to the real reason ABC Radio decided to ax John's show.
More news: John Loftus is in discussion with Discovery Channel to have his own weekly "spy" show. Now won't that be a show! The contract is not signed yet but obviously negotiations are promising for Loftus to mention it.
* * * * * * * * * *
10:37 PM ET Update
"The princes of serendipity have arrived and we are making the best of it."
Bah. That's not information, that's poetry. But then I assume ABC Radio wouldn't be overjoyed if John announced his plans on their airwaves.
Batchelor also said that he was leaving "not by my instigation." That we already know. Loftus wrote this morning that the network is being sold.
John also said something I didn't catch on account of munching on popcorn (I thought this was to be a major announcement) but it was to the effect that he'd continue with something or other and with his weekly column for The New York Sun.
Malcolm Hoenlein chimed in to say that this is not the end "but will be a new beginning" for Batchelor's show and that he'll be with John on the new Batchelor show.
A little more information can be gleaned from the John Batchelor Show website:
Starting Monday, September 4, 2006, The John Batchelor Show will be on hiatus until further notice, to return probably in late fall of 2006. We extend our warm thanks and appreciation to all the listeners of The John Batchelor Show, without whom we would not have had the luxury of producing the program. If you'd like more information on the future of The John Batchelor Show, please check this website for further announcements. We look forward with pleasure to resuming again and intend to do so soon enough.I suspect that "late fall" will be in December, if I correctly read Loftus' email.
As to where the new show will be airing -- I guess we'll have to watch the sky for smoke signals.
By the way, Ambassador John Bolton will be guesting on Batchelor's Wednesday show. He usually visits during the opening segment.
* * * * * * * * * *
9:28 PM ET:
Not that Pundita is pacing the floor in impatience or anything. Tune to John Batchelor's show tonight at 10:00 PM ET to get the scoop on why he's leaving ABC Radio. See my earlier post today if you're just learning the news.
This is how the blogosphere gets things done right
I'm glad I stopped by Riehl World View a second time today or I might have missed Dan's latest post. If you are new to the Ambulance story you might have trouble keeping up with the discussion in the linked essay. But following the twists and turns is worth the effort if you rely on the blogosphere to turn up news that the MSM (mainstream media)overlook or get wrong.
The blogosphere as a self-correcting medium, and the microscopic analysis that the blogosphere excels at (note the discussion of rust in the linked post), are both on display in Dan Riehl's I'd Advise The Blogosphere To Slow Down:
The blogosphere as a self-correcting medium, and the microscopic analysis that the blogosphere excels at (note the discussion of rust in the linked post), are both on display in Dan Riehl's I'd Advise The Blogosphere To Slow Down:
As the originator of the Red Cross Ambulance story, I would urge the elements of the blogosphere still running with the story to at least slow down, if not back up. They are increasingly looking like the very drive by media against which we so often rant, running the risk of being exploited by propagandists on another side of an issue. And no matter how much many of us may support that side, propagandists on both sides do exist. For the record, I'm guilty, too. [...]Other bloggers can always learn something when Riehl decides to search his blogger's soul, as he did today on his second anniversary as a blogger, and when he takes fellow bloggers to task.
John Batchelor will have the last word. Tune in tonight.
Friday is John Batchelor's last date of broadcasting for ABC Radio. John Mainelli's column at the New York Post published the news on Monday morning but I didn't learn of it until John announced the news during his opening Monday night segment.
Long time regular Pundita readers can imagine my reaction. It was somewhat like hearing the sun had fallen from the sky. I couldn't imagine what this country would do without Batchelor's reports on the war on terror and on other major issues shaping this century and America's place in it.
Pundita dashed off an email to Batchelor regular John Loftus of Intelligence Summit; it said simply, "This hit me hard."
Loftus replied that I should be sure to listen to Batchelor's show tonight for news on why the show is leaving ABC.
And a cryptic response from Batchelor in the wee hours, in response to a whiny email, gives me hope that the John Batchelor Show will soon have another roost on the airwaves.
Long time regular Pundita readers can imagine my reaction. It was somewhat like hearing the sun had fallen from the sky. I couldn't imagine what this country would do without Batchelor's reports on the war on terror and on other major issues shaping this century and America's place in it.
Pundita dashed off an email to Batchelor regular John Loftus of Intelligence Summit; it said simply, "This hit me hard."
Loftus replied that I should be sure to listen to Batchelor's show tonight for news on why the show is leaving ABC.
And a cryptic response from Batchelor in the wee hours, in response to a whiny email, gives me hope that the John Batchelor Show will soon have another roost on the airwaves.
Dan Riehl, take a bow
Today is Dan Riehl's second anniversary as a blogger. Here he republishes his first effort for the blogosphere. The writing conveys the signature elements of his blog: direct, from the heart, and very shrewd. Riehl World View is a great addition to the blogosphere and it's been a staunch friend to Pundita blog.
Dan, if you can keep finding the time to inform and educate us, I wish you many more years of success on the blogosphere.
Dan, if you can keep finding the time to inform and educate us, I wish you many more years of success on the blogosphere.
Monday, August 28
Forget Podhoretz's four pillars; the Bush Doctrine needs flying buttresses
The Bush Doctrine is a towering edifice of ideas; it's a veritable manifesto of US international relations for the post 9/11 era. As such the doctrine does not, and cannot, serve as a US National Security Strategy and yet that is the doctrine's formal name and stated purpose.
So it's no wonder that many have pronounced the doctrine dead and charged that President Bush has abandoned it. However, one can't abandon something so weighted with diverse assertions that it can't get off the ground. That means Norman Podhoretz is technically correct in both defending Bush's actions (for a commander-in-chief can't actually deviate from a body of ideas that is not specific to national defense) and claiming the doctrine has not died.
Policy analysts noted of the first incarnation of the doctrine (published in September 2002) that in key aspects it was based on Paul Wolfowitz's 1992 Defense Planning Guidance draft co-authored with Lewis "Scooter" Libby.
The 2006 incarnation of the US National Security Strategy -- hilariously claiming to be supported by just two pillars -- piles on more points about human dignity, what it takes to make governments work, and a recipe for Salad Nicoise.
So what we need to do here, before trying to decide whether we should simply frame the Bush Doctrine for posterity and rely on Wolfowitz's manifesto for our national security, is plow through both incarnations of the security strategy and study the Wolfowitz document.
That will be the summer project for Pundita readers. Yes I know it won't be as fun as last summer's project (China's Mystery Pig Disease Epidemic) but I trust it will be greatly less confounding.
So it's no wonder that many have pronounced the doctrine dead and charged that President Bush has abandoned it. However, one can't abandon something so weighted with diverse assertions that it can't get off the ground. That means Norman Podhoretz is technically correct in both defending Bush's actions (for a commander-in-chief can't actually deviate from a body of ideas that is not specific to national defense) and claiming the doctrine has not died.
Policy analysts noted of the first incarnation of the doctrine (published in September 2002) that in key aspects it was based on Paul Wolfowitz's 1992 Defense Planning Guidance draft co-authored with Lewis "Scooter" Libby.
The 2006 incarnation of the US National Security Strategy -- hilariously claiming to be supported by just two pillars -- piles on more points about human dignity, what it takes to make governments work, and a recipe for Salad Nicoise.
So what we need to do here, before trying to decide whether we should simply frame the Bush Doctrine for posterity and rely on Wolfowitz's manifesto for our national security, is plow through both incarnations of the security strategy and study the Wolfowitz document.
That will be the summer project for Pundita readers. Yes I know it won't be as fun as last summer's project (China's Mystery Pig Disease Epidemic) but I trust it will be greatly less confounding.
Saturday, August 26
What is this, National Balkans Month?
Pundita's cogitations on Norm Podhoretz's Four Pillars of the Bush Doctrine were rudely interrupted by Senator Joseph Biden's Thursday editorial for The Washington Post, in which he argues that in order to save Iraq from sectarian violence we must destroy it:
Yet Biden's editorial is not the first time in recent weeks I've come across similarly flawed reasoning. So let me see if I understand the argument for the balkanization of Iraq:
A great failure of the American experiment in nationhood is that wars between Italian and Irish gangs for control of the bootleg liquor trade did not produce Bostonia and Chicagoia.
This failure built on Lincoln's catastrophic mistake in not allowing the southern states to become The Americas Republic of England and Teddy's wrongheaded decision not to cede Texas to Mexico.
My pen drips with sarcasm when I observe that the only condition under which the Iraqis should consider balkanization is if Iran would also agree to undergo the balkanization process so that the border of Shiastan is finally and fairly drawn.
But of course Iran would not tolerate a molecule of their nation ceded to a "tribal area," nor does Iran lust solely for Iraq's south. They want the whole enchilada, and in particular the oil-rich Kurdish region.
If Iraq is balkanized into three regions it will be impossible for each to muster an army capable of standing up to Iran's military. So Iran would not need to invade to gain control of the Kurdish region; they would only need to cut a deal with Turkey to harry the Kurds from two sides until so much oil tribute is paid to both that the Kurds can barely afford the price of Iran's tea.
To say that US muscle would prevent such an outcome is to argue for a large permanent US troop deployment -- across a region fragmented into competing tribal areas!
A balkanized Iraq simply means that the Arab gulf states and Iran's gulf state have more pawns to play against each other in their cold war for control of the Strait of Hormuz.
The Western powers that carved up the Iraq-Iran region did a typical botched job of drawing borders. But they got one thing right. They imposed the idea of nationhood on tribal peoples. That is a very good thing in an age when fabulous natural resources in a region invariably install the cruelest of pashas in place of the fatherly chieftain.
To support the argument for balkanization Senator Biden observes:
Recall the time when New York was run by the Five Points gang, which controlled Tammany Hall and terrorized the fledgling police force. This was not reason to turn New York out of the Union, or to see in the power of gangster militias cause to balkanize the American Union. Why, then, not accord the same tolerance to the Iraqis' struggles to make their nation work as a democracy?
Or does Biden fear that tolerance equates to Congress writing out more checks to send more US troops to Iraq, so the Bush Administration can finally get the job of post-conflict stabilization done right?
In the end, those who argue for balkanization of Iraq are making a contradictory argument. On the one hand they recognize that Iran foments much trouble and supports the most powerful militias in Iraq. On the other hand, they want to exclude Iran from the discussion while observing that 'sectarian violence' is tearing the country apart anyhow!
The only ones who profit from the contradiction are al Qaeda and Iran's IRCG.
The five-point plan Les Gelb and I laid out [...] calls for maintaining a unified Iraq by decentralizing it and giving Kurds, Shiites and Sunnis their own regions. The central government would be left in charge of common interests, such as border security and the distribution of oil revenue. [...]Biden hauls in Bosnia to explain what he's talking about:
The example of Bosnia is illustrative, if not totally analogous. Ten years ago, Bosnia was being torn apart by ethnic cleansing. The United States stepped in decisively with the Dayton Accords to keep the country whole by, paradoxically, dividing it into ethnic federations. We even allowed Muslims, Croats and Serbs to retain separate armies. With the help of U.S. troops and others, Bosnians have lived a decade in peace.There is no meaningful comparison between Bosnia and Iraq in this argument because Bosnia is not swimming in oil; nor is it sitting next to Iran.
Yet Biden's editorial is not the first time in recent weeks I've come across similarly flawed reasoning. So let me see if I understand the argument for the balkanization of Iraq:
A great failure of the American experiment in nationhood is that wars between Italian and Irish gangs for control of the bootleg liquor trade did not produce Bostonia and Chicagoia.
This failure built on Lincoln's catastrophic mistake in not allowing the southern states to become The Americas Republic of England and Teddy's wrongheaded decision not to cede Texas to Mexico.
My pen drips with sarcasm when I observe that the only condition under which the Iraqis should consider balkanization is if Iran would also agree to undergo the balkanization process so that the border of Shiastan is finally and fairly drawn.
But of course Iran would not tolerate a molecule of their nation ceded to a "tribal area," nor does Iran lust solely for Iraq's south. They want the whole enchilada, and in particular the oil-rich Kurdish region.
If Iraq is balkanized into three regions it will be impossible for each to muster an army capable of standing up to Iran's military. So Iran would not need to invade to gain control of the Kurdish region; they would only need to cut a deal with Turkey to harry the Kurds from two sides until so much oil tribute is paid to both that the Kurds can barely afford the price of Iran's tea.
To say that US muscle would prevent such an outcome is to argue for a large permanent US troop deployment -- across a region fragmented into competing tribal areas!
A balkanized Iraq simply means that the Arab gulf states and Iran's gulf state have more pawns to play against each other in their cold war for control of the Strait of Hormuz.
The Western powers that carved up the Iraq-Iran region did a typical botched job of drawing borders. But they got one thing right. They imposed the idea of nationhood on tribal peoples. That is a very good thing in an age when fabulous natural resources in a region invariably install the cruelest of pashas in place of the fatherly chieftain.
To support the argument for balkanization Senator Biden observes:
In December's [Iraq] elections, 90 percent of the votes went to sectarian lists. Ethnic militias increasingly are the law in Iraq. They have infiltrated the official security forces.Have Biden and Gelb no sense of the history of American politics in cities that saw ethnic strife and non-government militias during America's peak immigrant decades?
Recall the time when New York was run by the Five Points gang, which controlled Tammany Hall and terrorized the fledgling police force. This was not reason to turn New York out of the Union, or to see in the power of gangster militias cause to balkanize the American Union. Why, then, not accord the same tolerance to the Iraqis' struggles to make their nation work as a democracy?
Or does Biden fear that tolerance equates to Congress writing out more checks to send more US troops to Iraq, so the Bush Administration can finally get the job of post-conflict stabilization done right?
In the end, those who argue for balkanization of Iraq are making a contradictory argument. On the one hand they recognize that Iran foments much trouble and supports the most powerful militias in Iraq. On the other hand, they want to exclude Iran from the discussion while observing that 'sectarian violence' is tearing the country apart anyhow!
The only ones who profit from the contradiction are al Qaeda and Iran's IRCG.
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