Wikileaks: Julian Assange likely to be indicted under U.S. Espionage Act

UPDATE December 13
ABC news report today: Espionage Act Presents Challenges for WikiLeaks Indictment "Sweeping Anti-Spying Law 'Makes Felons of Us All,' Legal Expert Says." Report is a good introduction to the complexities in bringing an indictment under the Espionage Act; also it quotes Eric Holder as saying that the Act isn't the only law under which the Justice Department might charge Assange.
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Assange got sloppy, according to John Loftus, a former intelligence officer and U.S. Department of Justice prosecutor. Sloppy is right; reportedly he released some of the Wikileaks State Department cables to a Hezbollah-run newspaper. Hezbollah is on the U.S. list of terrorist organizations. That means he can be indicted under the 1917 Espionage Act even though he's not a U.S. citizen.

Listen to the podcast of Loftus's conversation with John Batchelor for an explanation of the Act and how it impacts Assange's situation. Or download the show segment (10:00 PM, Friday night).

The conversation is directly after John's interview with Sebastian Gorka about the most likely successor to Saudi King Abdullah -- the very creepy Prince Naif, aka 'The Prince of Darkness.' So it's not as if you'll be bored waiting for the Loftus interview on the podcast.

In light of Loftus's discussion, I suppose I was too jaded in my initial reaction to the State cables leaks, which was to see them as a modern version of The School for Scandal. The situation is considerably more serious than that.

As to whether Assange would try to bully his way out of prosecution by acting on his threat to dump yet more documents: then he'd be looking at the death penalty, explained Loftus, if he was prosecuted under the Espionage Act.

But the world will just have to wait and see whether DOJ brings the indictment or uses the threat of indictment to persuade Assange to cease and desist.

Richard Holbrooke's surgery: Once again the hand of fate intervenes in Afghan War, and the tale of a matchmaker and the attention-deficit client

UPDATE
From Reuters report 8 PM ET: Holbrooke, 69 years old, underwent another procedure on Sunday to improve his circulation and remains in critical condition, State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said in a statement.
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The matchmaker (with Cupid's bow and arrow)

The Associated Press reported this morning that Richard Holbrooke, special U.S. envoy to Pakistan and Afghanistan, is in stable but critical condition after more than 20 hours of surgery to repair a torn aorta. The report also mentioned that even if the recovery goes well it is likely it will be a lengthy process. As to how this will affect the Afghan war situation, from the report:

[...] Holbrooke's illness comes just days before the Obama administration is expected to roll out the results of its review of the Afghanistan war next Thursday. His illness is unlikely to result in any changes in that review in which the diplomat has played an integral role.
[...]
But Holbrooke's prolonged absence could have an impact on the administration's ability to implement — and also sell to a skeptical Congress — its push for Afghan forces to assume a greater role in the fighting, allowing U.S. troops to come home. It is a transition in which Holbrooke was expected to play an important part, since he has made many visits to the region and developed personal relationships with leaders in both Afghanistan and Pakistan.
[...]

I am thinking back to the eruption of a volcano in Iceland and how in a way no one could have foreseen this changed the course of the war in Afghanistan. If not for an ash cloud from the volcano that hovered over Western Europe's airports it's likely that Gen. Stanley McChrystal would be still be in command of ISAF.

One might argue that Gen. David Petraeus has only continued the counterinsurgency plan that McChrystal was carrying out but Petraeus can do what McChrystal couldn't, which is to change his mind about facts on the ground and make sweeping changes in response. Already Petraeus has added several counterterrorism tactics to the POPCOIN (population-centric counterinsurgency or COIN) plan and he won't hesitate to keep adjusting tactics and even allover strategy in the effort to pull a win out of Afghanistan.

As for Holbrooke, Petraeus has referred to him as his 'wingman.' But despite Holbrooke's vast experience as a negotiator, I think it's been terribly unhelpful to have a wingman who confuses South Asia with Eastern Europe and Afghanistan with Bosnia. Perhaps a lengthy recovery period or retirement for Holbrooke will cause Petraeus to cast around for a wingman who sees Pakistan as Pakistan and Afghanistan as Afghanistan. Now that would be progress. As to where we are now: in the same rut we've been in for years. At the end of July, in the wake of the first round of leaked Wikileaks documents, Ahmed Rashid reported for the (U.K.) Spectator what was already plain as day:

[...] A few months ago Hamid Karzai would have been thrilled to have confirmation that American officers are speaking openly about how divisions of Pakistani intelligence are helping the Taleban. But after spending eight years criticising the ISI, he recently decided to cosy up to them.

Karzai seems to have given up on the ability of the Americans, the Brits and Nato either to defeat the Taleban or even to talk to them. This is why he has turned to Pakistan and Iran: his own freelance attempt to try to broker a ceasefire with the Taleban which would involve a power-sharing deal.[...]

I disagree with this view. From all I've seen I think it was initially Western European governments in NATO, with the USA eventually joining in, which put pressure on Karzai to open up negotiations with the Taliban; when he didn't move in that direction strongly enough some NATO governments took matters into their own hands. Recall the secret British deal to set up Taliban training camps that Karzai's security force uncovered.

But Rashid is correct in that by this year Karzai had put more effort into forging better relations with Pakistan -- as if he had choice when confronted with the threat of the U.S. quitting Afghanistan in 2011.

Rashid was also on the money in his summation of Asfaq Kayani's role in the situation:

These [Wikileaks] leaks are highly embarrassing for Pakistan’s President, Asif Zardari, who has just cravenly given in to the army and awarded a three-year extension to its chief, General Ashfaq Pervez Kiyani. [Kiyani] ran the ISI between late 2004 and 2007 and had been director of its military operations before that. Both jobs involved helping and sustaining the Taleban in exile in Pakistan, and facilitating their revival in 2004-05.

It was Kiyani who formulated the policy that is criticised in the leaks: giving the Taleban sanctuary and support. The last thing Zardari wants is a forced confrontation with the army over these leaks.

Kiyani is now the most powerful man in Pakistan and will remain army chief until 2013. His aim is for the Americans, the Brits and the Afghans to open talks with Taleban leaders — who are all in Pakistan and over whom the ISI has a great deal of influence and control. In return, Kiyani wants to make sure that the ISI brokers any such talks — and is able to advance its own national security interests. At the top if its wish list is securing a pro-Pakistan government in Kabul, and ending what he regards as too much Indian influence in Afghanistan. This is why the leaked emails [published by Wikileaks] come at a bad time for Kiyani: the last thing he needs right now is any embarrassment about his role, or that of the ISI, in the past.

Kayani needn't have worried about being embarrassed because Richard Holbrooke ably covered for him in public as did Admiral Mike Mullen, the chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff. As to whether Holbrooke did the same in private discussions: no one held a gun to his head to make him forcefully represent in public a policy toward Pakistan that was suicidal for ISAF forces and a death knell for Afghanistan. So whatever he said in private is beside the point.

The great tragedy is that NATO's view, backed to the hilt by Mullen and rubber-stamped by the Obama administration and Holbrooke, made it impossible for any intelligent assessment to gain ground on how the U.S. should deal with Pakistan.

But that's because the Afghan War is the ADD war; I was reminded of that the other night when I caught an episode of Bravo TV's reality show Millionaire Matchmaker. The show is about a third-generation matchmaker (Patti Stanger) who along with her team of assistants makes matches for millionaires who have everything in life except a spouse. I don't follow the show as much as I'd like to find time for, but every time I've seen it I have been regaled and instructed by the matchmaker's shrewd observations about her picky clients.

The girl (or guy, in the case of a female millionaire) of the millionaires' dreams turns out not to exist for many of the clients simply because no sane person except a gold-digger would date them more than once, let alone marry them. Thus, the delight of the show is Stanger's attempts to help jerks transform themselves into dating material.

One such client was described by the matchmaker's assistant as having ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder) as they settled in to study the video he made to introduce himself to Stanger.

When the matchmaker said at first that she didn't see the ADD, the assistant replied, "Wait."

It wasn't a long wait. The man seeking help was unable to focus on his request or on anything outside his business -- his attention split between his Blackberry and laptop.

Happily he was desperate for a good mate, so desperate that he took the matchmaker's advice to put away all the tools of his trade while on a date and focus on the girl. With his attention thus gathered he turned out to be an engaging date.

Would that for a few weeks the matchmaker could take charge of those in charge of the Afghan War. I feel sure she would find a way to get across to even the most scattered brains that it's not possible to win a war if it's always seen as something else; if every tactic is filtered through a geopolitical situation that is not centered in Afghanistan.

"POTUS Obama is isolated far more than you see."

There was something very odd, very unsettling, almost frightening, about President Barack Obama's behavior yesterday at the White House briefing when he brought in Bill Clinton to speak for him, then -- saying that he had already kept the First Lady waiting for a half hour -- simply walked out, abandoning his post to Bill Clinton.

Below is John Batchelor's take on an incident that is the strangest I can recall in a modern U.S. presidency. I can only hope that Obama had some kind of obscure political strategy in mind and that his act wasn't what it seemed, which was to openly register contempt for his office. (See John's website for video and links in his post):

"I have reviewed this agreement..." remarks the savvy Bill Clinton. The vital question in this unusual performance by the dynamic duo -- springing, late in the news cycle, on the White House media -- is to ask what is the relationship between POTUS Obama and POTUS Clinton? The answer is that there is no relationship. POTUS Obama disdains the Clintons. POTUS Obama does not speak to the Clintons outside of a structured and timely public setting.

POTUS Obama is isolated far more than you see. POTUS Obama team is far more delusional than we can know. The revolt by the Democratic Party disgusts POTUS. The GOP defiance enrages POTUS. POTUS is in sharp retreat from the facts of the moment. POTUS only hears the reassuring voice of Axelrod and Val Jarrett. POTUS does not hear the laughter.

There is more. If you think this is a breakdown of the Obama administration, you are underestimating what you see. Clinton rides to the rescue. Obama departs for a holiday party ordered up by FLOTUS. (The FLOTUS who derides Christmas presents of any kind.) The end of the beginning of the Obama White House. Secondary question: What did Obama walk away from? Answer, the job of the presidency.

Liu Xiaobo Nobel Peace Prize: "We cannot go on pampering and appeasing China"

Former Czech President Václav Havel and friends

trying to present their petition to free Liu Xiaobo

After pointing out that Beijing has prevented anyone even remotely associated with jailed activist Liu Xiaobo from accepting the Nobel Peace Prize on his behalf, B. Raman observes that tomorrow's award ceremony is likely to be purely symbolic. Then he lets rip:

The Chinese bullying campaign to intimidate other countries into boycotting the symbolic function at Oslo by using Beijing's economic clout has considerably succeeded at least in Asia, as would be evident from the reports that only India, Japan, South Korea and Thailand have rejected the Chinese pressure not to attend the function. One is surprised by Vietnam, which one would have expected to stand firm to China, succumbing to the Chinese pressure.
[...]
It will be interesting to watch how Beijing reacts to the obvious and well-deserved snub from New Delhi on the issue of the Oslo function. At the worst, Prime Minister Wen might cancel his forthcoming visit to India for three days from December 15 before proceeding to Pakistan. It is hoped good sense will prevail and Beijing will not take this extreme step, but, if it does, so be it.

We cannot go on pampering and appeasing China, particularly when it is so blatantly insensitive to India's major concerns relating to issues such as the Chinese refusal to issue normal visas to Indian citizens living in the Indian territory of Jammu & Kashmir and when it has been taking actions to undermine our claims of sovereignty over Gilgit-Baltistan and other areas of Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir.

Strict reciprocity should be the rule in our relations with China. If it ignores our sensitivities in matters of vital interest to us, there is no reason why we should be unnecessarily responsive to its concerns in relation to Tibet.
[...]

Hear! Hear! But it's not only the Asian branch of the Wet Noodle Spine Club that needs to quit pampering and appeasing China the Prima Donna. For now, though, credit the Asian leaders with the conscience to honor Liu Xiaobao in Oslo.

It's easy for me to sit here in Washington and tell the rest of Asia to show more spine but that would be the pot calling the kettle black, and the closer one is to the opera the harder it is to thumb one's nose at the prima donna. The four Asian leaders showing up in Oslo on December 10 are demonstrating real courage because every one of them has to lot to lose by crossing Bejing. Bravo, gentlemen!

The folowing photos are presented in alphabetical order -- and I did not forget to add 'South' to 'Korea.' Lee Myung-bak has been harshly criticized for not taking stronger action against the Kim dynasty's provocation but by holding fire he's signaling that the family does not represent the interests of the Korean people. I'm just following his cue; no more mention of 'north' and 'south' Korea on this blog. (The photograph of him is taken at the Olympics.)

Japan's Prime Minister Naoto Kan

Korea's President Lee Myung-bak

India's Prime Minister Manmohan Singh

Thailand's Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva

Alejo Garza Tamez, the Vernacular, and restoration of Mexico's sacred narrative

"It's better to die on your feet than to live on your knees."
-- Emiliano Zapata Salazar, a leading figure in Mexico's 1910 Revolution

Alejo Garza Tamez : It was well known that his word was as good as a contract."

The term vernacular is derived from the Latin vernaculus, meaning "domestic, native, indigenous"; from verna, meaning "native slave" or "home-born slave". The word probably derives from an older Etruscan word. In linguistics, vernacular refers to language use particular to a time, place or group. In architecture, it refers to that type of architecture which is indigenous to a specific time or place (not imported or copied from elsewhere). It is most often applied to residential buildings.(1)

A reader asked me to clarify what I meant by the term 'vernacular' given that my use of it in yesterday's DeviantGlobal post wasn't clear to her from the standard dictionary definition.

So, for readers who saw the first version of the post: at 7:54am ET yesterday I made this revision:

... in the manner of weeds springing up through cracks in pavement 'the Vernacular' -- in its broadest meaning, the power of expression that evolves naturally through the preferences of many -- is always with us; no totalitarian regime and no number of criminals can snuff it out. The stand of Alejo Garza Tamez against drug cartel enforcers less than a month ago, which has already made him a folk hero in northern Mexico, is ample reminder of that.

To elaborate, I learned about the wider application of the term decades ago from hearing a discourse by an American academic whose name I am sorry to say is lost to me; I can't even recall his speciality.  But I do remember the gist of his explanation, which returned to me when I pondered the last stand of Don Alejo on November 13 of this year. The academic, and others in his circle of thinkers, observed vernacular architecture versus city planning and saw broad social implications in the tension between the two ways of people used public spaces.  

Vernacular architecture doesn't fit with whatever layout of buildings, roads, and central squares was created for the urban environment through planning. Yet one way the state and the ruling classes maintain control is through control of how public spaces are configured, argued the academic. And against this is the vernacular approach to these state-created spaces, which reveals how the public actually uses them.

I suppose a classic example of how a public space can be changed by the vernacular is the use of church-door entrances as message boards once literacy began to increase in Europe. This led to Martin Luther nailing his "Ninety-Five Theses" to a church door. While his statements touched off a revolution the act of nailing them to the door was not revolutionary -- although I assume the use of church doors for such a purpose was a sign that with increased literacy the power of the church was increasingly open to challenge.

From all that, you can see why the academic liked the term 'vernacular' to convey the gist of his argument. There is a proper or polite form of a language that when adapted to everyday usage evolves slang and applies meanings to words that were never intended. The academic thought that the concept of the vernacular applies to all public activities and that by organizing through the layout of public spaces how the public acts, the power of the state is reinforced and class differences can be maintained.

And the inverse is also true: by changing how public spaces are meant to be used, the power of the state can be undermined. At the worst extreme is found the Taliban carrying out executions in a soccer stadium or Mexican cartel gangs turning a plaza into a gallows platform for hangings, torture, and beheadings.

And in both instances the public is conditioned by these debased uses of state-planned public spaces to act in a manner that makes them subservient to the new ruling class -- in the case of Mexico, the criminals who control several regions of the country. Thus, a reign of terror can be maintained with relatively little effort: the public becomes conditioned to stay inside when a cartel gang wants them to remain out of sight, to flee when a gang wants them to flee, and so on.

That's what happened in northeastern Mexico. Perhaps as many as 5,000 ranches in the region have been abandoned by ranchers who don't want to end up like Alejo Garza. From the Latin American Herald Tribune (thanks for not bothering to date the report, LAHT!):

... The drug cartels, which have been engaged in a turf war since the beginning of this year, take over ranches and use them as bases, a Tamaulipas Attorney General’s Office source told Efe on condition of anonymity.

“They use them as recruitment centers or as hiding places to avoid being spotted when federal forces do aerial reconnaissance,” the AG’s office source said. ...

Many ranchers have decided to abandon their properties or switch occupations to avoid becoming victims of the cartels, the Tamaulipas Regional Ranchers Association, or URGT, said.

“It’s a scourge that is hurting everyone. The ranchers have stopped going to the ranches and are working at something else, so the industry has been falling. They are abandoning the ranches,” URGT president Alejandro Gil said.

About 5,000 properties may have been abandoned in the state, Gil said. ...

Alejo Garza Tamez, a 77-year old lumberman, found himself caught between warring ruling classes: a corrupt police force, the most visible face of the state in that region, and a drug cartel. The cartel delivered a routine eviction notice to him when they wanted his ranch.

What Don Alejo did in response was a profoundly revolutionary act, if you're aware of the 'population-centric' counterinsurgency tactic being employed by the Mexican Army against the cartels -- a tactic they copied from the counterinsurgency in Iraq under the Petraeus command. The essence of the tactic is to create a show of force to give the population a sense of security. The cartel counterstrategy, as it is for the Taliban in Afghanistan, is to strike wherever the show of force is not.

The upshot is a very passive population -- cowed on the one hand by the rule of the drug cartels and on the other cowering behind the protection of a military.

Don Alejo did not cower. Nor did he accept the eviction notice or ask the police for help. (Surely they would have only told him to flee and reportedly he did not trust them.) After sending the ranch hands away he set up his large stock of hunting rifles and ammunition around the windows in his house in a way that he could, at least at the start of the siege, trick the cartel enforcers into thinking that there were several armed people inside the house. 

When the cartel enforcers showed up he quickly went from post to post, picking up different rifles and firing. In this way he was able to kill four of them, wound two others, and panic the rest before they knew what hit them.

It was a doomed stand, however, and Don Alejo knew so from the start; he never expected to survive the onslaught. The enforcers, armed with automatic weapons and grenades, numbered about 30 according to the LAHT report. They regrouped and lobbed grenades into the house and finally riddled him with bullets.

Alejo Garza was a given a hero's burial and as I mentioned before, the tale of his stand against the cartel has already made him a folk hero in northern Mexico even though it's not yet a month since his death. His saga was quickly carried to the United States, first by a handful of American blogs then into the mainstream via The New York Post report on December 5. 

This means the very able propagandists for the Mexican state and the cartels will find it impossible to stamp out the story of Don Alejo and the cartel. Yet both ruling classes have good reasons to attempt to quash the story: the state because it wants the fight against the cartels to be the responsibility of the government. And the cartels, which created the false narrative that they are the inheritors of the bandito 'romance' that gained great power during the Mexican Revolution, have always known that the fiction would collapse when confronted by a true revolutionary hero of the Mexican people.

If Don Alejo had been a young man, one whose life had not had time to form, it might have been a different story, but everything about his long life is well recorded: a man of honor, hard-working since his early youth, well off but not wealthy, a man who protected his employees and would calmly die fighting tyranny rather than bow to it.

In the manner of his death Alejo Garza Tamez has restored Mexico's sacred narrative of the revolutionary spirit. So the drug cartels are now fully exposed as the destroyers of the narrative. Their every attempt to stamp out the story of Don Alejo will only strengthen the people's veneration for their country's sacred narrative because Alejo Garza is no longer just a martyr or hero. He is the true face of Mexico.

This, then, is the power of the Vernacular, for it makes its own narratives quite apart from the stories spun by the rulers.

I am grateful to Michael Vlahos and John Batchelor for their discussions over the years about a nation's sacred narrative and its importance, which have helped me think about events in Mexico in a different way. I was unfamiliar with the concept of the sacred narrative before those two ruminated about it on John's radio show. However, I confess that I listened with exasperation as they sought to find a new version of America's sacred narrative to help keep up public support for the war on terror -- a version they hoped would engage the entire American society in the way the World War Two narrative had.

I understood their point: in a generational war that was being fought by professional soldiers rather than citizen soldiers the war effort could easily come to be very remote to most Americans. But by the 2004 presidential election campaign I was already quite sick of the search for a compelling war narrative -- a search that seemed to obsess Democratic candidate John Kerry and other Democrats. Too often they didn't talk about what was happening but about 'the narrative' pertaining to what was happening. It became like listening to a broken car alarm.

The term has come roaring back since then; in September Clarence Page reported that the word 'narrative' topped the list of political buzzwords. His criticism of the way the term is used mirrored my distaste although his critique was far more eloquent than the grumbles I expressed on my blog years back. He wrote in part:

In fact, "narrative" was popping up so much in reference to Obama as he grappled with crises like the Gulf oil spill that a Washington Post reporter was inspired to lead one feature with, "Sing to me of the Obama narrative, Muse."

But what does it all mean? Why has "narrative," an ancient word, moved suddenly to center stage in today's politics? I think it has something to do with the growing sophistication of the political spin industry and growing competition between growing media outlets for increasingly fragmented and polarized audiences.

In other words, today's audiences are no longer satisfied with choosing their own news outlets. They also want to choose their own versions of the reality that news covers. Whether they realize it or not, they're shopping for their own "narrative."

Political operatives and increasingly journalists use the term in ways that sound a lot like the old familiars: "spin," "public image," "propaganda" or "party line." But "the narrative" combines all of these strategies into a larger all-encompassing perception of parties, platforms and candidates that boils down to one message: We're on your side and our opponent is a (fill in the blank.)

The rise of "the narrative," as [Global Language Monitor President Paul Payack] observed, is bigger than spin; it renders actual positions on the issues almost meaningless, "since the positions now matter less than what they seem to mean."

Yet President Barack Obama, among others, knows quite well how quickly your narrative can turn from savior to pin cushion. [...]

Narrative has power. For evidence, look no farther than the Bible, whose lasting power comes largely from its storytelling. It is much easier for most of us to remember how Moses received the Ten Commandments, for example, than to remember what all of those commandments were. (A wise editor I once knew boiled all ten down to one: "Don't!")

The danger comes when politicians and their operatives essentially use "narrative" as a shorthand for "bull," the version of the truth that they want us to believe even when they don't believe it.

That's why the rising prominence of "the narrative" in political discourse should serve as a warning to voters. We like to think we're making informed choices between candidates and issues. The campaigns think we're really voting for one narrative over another. [...]

It seems to me that an authentic narrative can't be manufactured and that a nation's sacred narrative can only be restored by events that are not orchestrated.

The only art I can recall that wrestles with the power of the sacred narrative is Ridley Scott's Gladiator and specifically the film's Battle of Carthage. The scene also puts the power of the Vernacular on display when the organized might of the state, decked out with chariots and archers, bears down on a motley group of gladiators.

What was Rome? Rome was a dream, but during the wonderfully up-ended reenactment of the Battle of Carthage the sacred narrative that once nourished Rome was real.

And after the battle the film audience's uproarious laughter as the Emperor Commodus sardonically asks, "My history is a little hazy Cassius, but shouldn't the barbarians lose the battle of Carthage?"

Yes, they should have lost, just as Don Alejo should have fled his home. Can you imagine the expressions on the faces of the Mexican Marines as they searched his house after the incident, looking for the other bodies? Then finally realizing all that mayhem inflicted on a gang armed to the teeth had been done by just one old man? God help me but I find no tragedy in this, just triumphant laughter bubbling from a place deep in my heart.

1) Wikipedia article on Vernacular Architecture

DeviantGlobal: One of the hippest Twitter pages on the planet

The only reason I don't call DeviantGlobalization ("Dispatches from the global civil war") -- DeviantGlobal for short -- the hippest Twitter page on the planet is that I haven't seen every Twitter page on the planet. But this one is very hip so I am honored to learn that the author of the page is now following Pundita.

It's a lie, cooked up by a backbencher who fancies himself a great enemy of mine, that I am given to outrageous tangents to scare away readers I don't think are sufficiently intelligent to read my blog. I am not a snob; true I don't like cherry pickers but that's not saying the same, and anyhow anyone who would dress up as Kaiser Wilhelm for a costume party in Georgetown is himself too much of a snob to appreciate why I would spend, say, four months on this blog writing about swine flu.

However, I admit to a weakness for bloggers and news hounds who've identified important trends that fly under the radar of the mainstream media, including mainstream blogosphere. Several such people are futurists. Attempts to predict what the future will look like are dancing on the knife's edge of data analysis so I have great respect for people who routinely attempt the feat; even if I don't agree with their interpretations of their notes from the front I pay attention to their dispatches.

I don't know whether the DeviantGlobal Twitterer is a futurist but a glance through one page of tweets (see below) is enough to clue that the poster is on the lookout for data that indicate one of the most important trends of this young century. The trend is that the trappings of centralized state power are being greatly undermined by true anarchism, and that right now the most visible sign of this is what Nils Gilman and others following the trend call deviant or 'black' (as in black market) globalization.

See this essay at Understood Backwards, a smart blog with a very ambitious goal to combat truthiness, for a crash course on the true meaning of anarchism and the state's reaction to it. (Smart so far; the blog is only six months old. The fun of the blog is that it's the creation of unstuffy Oxford-educated historians.)

So while criminality is the defining characteristic of people who twist modern globalized business practices to nefarious ends, deviant globalization's greatest significance is that it represents a more serious challenge to nationalism than organized counter-nationalist movements (e.g., George Soros's faux anarchist Open Society) or simple transnational organized crime, which is as old as caravans and illicit goods and usually works hand-in-glove with the state.

The counter-trend, also very important to watch, is the state's attempts to fight deviant globalization (thus, the 'civil war') because while the operation might succeed the worry is that the patient -- democracy -- will die.

The counter-counter trend is so diffuse that at a cursory glance it can't survive the coming apocalyptic war between the deviant globalists and the centralized nation-states once they really gang up. But in the manner of weeds springing up through cracks in pavement 'the Vernacular' -- in its broadest meaning, the power of expression that evolves naturally through the preferences of many -- is always with us; no totalitarian regime and no number of criminals can snuff it out. The stand of Alejo Garza Tamez against drug cartel enforcers less than a month ago, which has already made him a folk hero in northern Mexico, is ample reminder of that.

The enduring power of the Vernacular is nourished by the sentiment once expressed by the Indian mystery wrapped in an enigma, Sathya Sai Baba, when asked why God didn't seem to love everyone the same.

The king of one-liners shot back, "God loves everyone equally but some He likes better than others."

The vast majority of humanity shares the sentiment. Yes yes we must have compassion for those with weak character but we all know we'd rather have great strength of character at our side when the chips are down.

A century from today who will recount the stories of today's mobsters, terrorists, and corrupt politicians? Who will remember their names? But the names of men such Alejo Garza Tamez, Rick Rescorla, and Tukaram Omble will not be forgotten and the accounts of their final noble act will pass into legend.

So, too, for true visionaries; eventually people separate the chaff from the grain. In this era democracy has been made into a prison for the mind by politicized thinking rigidly enforced by the state and the mechanisms of lawmaking and government administration. The few philosophers who can think outside political solutions are reminiscent of the human survivors tip-toeing past warring dinosaurs in Jurassic Park.

Yet the ideas and practical solutions of the American Paul Glover, who can visualize a healthy, capitalistic democratic nation with highly decentralized power, are sowing the seeds of the next great social revolution. And none of the machinations by political factions to hijack his ideas will stand against the torrent of change once more people see past the dust kicked up by politics.

But for now, at this moment in our era, what is most clearly seen is ruthlessness on a fast march, as this sampling of tweets at DeviantGlobal evinces:

threatfusion TF News: Nigeria militants claim major oil pipeline attack http://bit.ly/f64DK2
about 18 hours ago via Threatfusion Retweeted by deviantglobal and 1 other

Shortage Of Rare Earth Metals Exacerbated By Smuggling: http://bit.ly/dRlozw
about 23 hours ago via bitly

Beware those pundit-esque predictions... RT @evgenymorozov Forget about the gas wars this winter; it will all be about the DDoS wars...
6:52 AM Dec 6th via web

[Pundita note: DDoS = Distributed Denial of Service]

evgenymorozov "Next to money & guns, the 3rd largest North American export is the U.S. idealist, who turns up in every theater of the world" Ivan Illich
3:00 PM Dec 5th via web Retweeted by deviantglobal and 14 others

[Pundita note: Illich, who once graced me with the mother of all bear hugs, died before multiculturalism, Canada's "great gift to the world" became another North American export. See the 2008 Pundita post Don't Rile the Natives or What do Canada and Chechnya have in common? for background. So it's not only the Americans.]

washingtonpost Pirates hijack cargo ship with 25 people off India http://wapo.st/hjqKmE
11:03 PM Dec 5th via twitterfeed Retweeted by deviantglobal and 22 others

The Wikileak of the future: your search history, made "radically transparent" - http://bit.ly/icwXuh
6:27 AM Dec 6th via bitly

nils_gilman South Africa's deadly new craze: Whoonga, a narcotic made from stolen antiretroviral drugs: http://j.mp/gEmB5o
1:51 PM Dec 5th via Twitter for iPhone Retweeted by deviantglobal

Another gr8 article by @MishaGlenny on Russian state-mafia ties - Russia's form of globalization is almost 100% deviant
http://bit.ly/gIqGGx
2:01 PM Dec 5th via Twitter for iPhone

Mexican drug gangs 'spread to every region of US' http://bbc.in/gtSVI5
7:13 AM Dec 5th via bitly

The broader context for the assault on the Complexo do Alemão: http://econ.st/g9uHFm 7:09 AM Dec 5th via bitly

Kidnap a kid, meth him out, turn him into a cross-border killer: http://lat.ms/gVblBZ
7:07 AM Dec 5th via bitly

Early Deviant Globalization: Irish Banditry in Southern Africa, 1880-1899 - http://amzn.to/dSjeR8
6:22 AM Dec 5th via bitly

The Tuareg domain of the Sahara: a "Terror Zone" - or "a chequer-board of mining and oil prospecting concessions"? http://bit.ly/hJPOqw
6:04 AM Dec 5th via bitly

Illicit flows are always bidirectional: criminal syndicates estimated to smuggle $18-39 billion a year from US to Mex.: http://bit.ly/hwXkBc
3:06 PM Dec 4th via bitly

German tarantula dealer busted for shipping hundreds of endangered spiders worldwide by mail: http://bit.ly/e1PLDx
3:02 PM Dec 4th via bitly

@johnrobb - Taibbi's Griftopia, Gerlach's Extremely Violent Societies, and, naturally, Gilman's Deviant Globalization
9:21 AM Dec 4th via web

23-Year-Old Russian Hacker Was Responsible for One-Third of Global Spam http://gaw.kr/f1HDyT
4:33 PM Dec 3rd via bitly

"The favelas have a different law, a different economy, and their own defense forces": http://bit.ly/dRbN84
via @johnrobb 8:35 AM Dec 3rd via bitly

The good news, however, is that the Vernacular is irrepressible.

Afghan War is not going well. Maybe Judge Judy can help.

On December 3 David Woods, AOL's Chief Military Correspondent, reported:

White House Mulls Grim Picture of 'Deteriorating Stalemate' in Afghanistan'

The assessments now pouring into the White House from Afghanistan run the gamut from discouraging to awful, as the Obama administration finishes up its long-awaited December review of the war strategy the president announced a year ago.

In many ways, the cold facts charting the grim course of the war belie the upbeat views that the perpetually confident Gen. David Petraeus, the war's top commander, has expressed in public.
[...]
Neither battlefield victory nor negotiations are even dimly visible on the horizon, and another troop "surge" is politically and militarily unlikely. The White House, it seems, has no choice but to push on and hope for the best in a bad situation.

A recent Pentagon report, for instance, asserts that U.S. and allied forces and the new strategy announced by Obama a year ago are "beginning to have cumulative effects." But in unusually frank terms, the report concludes that despite combat operations against the Taliban by the 97,000 U.S. troops and 49,000 NATO and allied troops, the insurgents' "capabilities and operational reach have been qualitatively and geographically expanding." In other words, despite the U.S. "surge," enemy forces are getting better and bigger.

The Pentagon assessment said Petraeus' strategic drive to squeeze the insurgents by cutting off their supply lines has failed to produce "measurable results;" that Afghans are losing faith in their government's corrupt judicial system; that promised development projects are languishing because of corruption and other problems, and that the Taliban are recruiting easily from an expanding population of disillusioned Afghan youth.

"A deteriorating stalemate" is the description of the war's current status by U.S. Army Col. Robert M. Cassidy, who holds a doctorate degree from Tufts University's Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy and is a member of Petraeus' staff on his third combat tour in the region.

An independent analysis by the International Crisis Group, an independent blue-chip analysis center, looks at the current situation this way: the U.S. strategy "sounds fairly simple: try to pound the Taliban, build support by protecting civilians, lure disillusioned Taliban over to the government, expand access to basic services and create resilient security forces.

"The problem is that none of this is working."

A worse problem, unfortunately, is that the prospects for breaking off and leaving Afghanistan are even more grim. As the International Crisis Group notes, without outside support the government of President Karzai would collapse. The majority Pashtun Taliban would openly seize control of much of the country, reigniting the civil war with non-Pashtun warlords in the north and west that devastated much of Afghanistan in the 1990s, and drawing in money and weapons from its competing neighbors, Iran, Russia and India.

"Even a partial Taliban victory would provide succor and a refuge for Pakistani jihadi groups" including Lashkar-e-Taiba, responsible for the Nov. 2008 Mumbai attacks, the Jaish-e-Mohammad and al-Qaeda, the ICG report says. The resulting regional conflict, it said, "would be well beyond the control of a few drone attacks" that are the main U.S. weapons against Pakistani-based militants.

Afghanistan's most immediate problem is the lack of security against the Taliban, and it is here that the Pentagon assessment is most bleak.

Kabul, the capital and where U.S. and allied headquarters are located, is "relatively secure," the Pentagon said. But across the country, shootings and bombings continue "to exceed historical trends," up 300 percent since 2007 and up an additional 70 percent since last year. The use of homemade bombs, or IEDs, was up 82 percent from 2009, and civilian casualties rose 53 percent over last year, according to the U.N.

Although U.S. officials and senior military officers often attribute the increasing violence to more widespread and aggressive U.S. military operations, the Pentagon report explicitly cites "a greater frequency and wider dispersion of insurgent-initiated attacks." Despite a concerted U.S. effort against IEDs, the main killer of American and allied troops, the Pentagon reported that "homemade explosives are readily available throughout the region." U.S. forces have been unable to break the Taliban's "resilient" logistics and command capabilities, even with a record number of close air support and reconnaissance missions being flown over Afghanistan, the report said.
[...]

An earlier report by Woods on the use of the retrofitted supersonic B1 Cold War bomber in Afghanistan is a window on the 'population-centric' counterinsurgency strategy at the heart of the ISAF war plan. The bomber is an awesome killing machine but since the COIN strategy settled in, only a fraction of its firepower has been deployed:

[I]nstead of blasting the area with high explosives, the commander wants to attempt scaring off the insurgents, to force them to break off the firefight and flee. That's the point of the U.S. strategy in Afghanistan, after all: not to try to kill all the Taliban, but to protect the people.
[...]
Ten years ago, the ground commander bought the bomb -- if he said he wanted it dropped on a nearby enemy, he got it. The air crew's job was just delivery. But that's all changed -- the tactics, and the underlying strategy.

"You can't rebuild a country by blowing it up," explains Grasso, who is after all a professional bomber pilot. "We don't want to go in and take out targets unless we have to. We could drop all the bombs we have and not necessarily win this war."

Every effort is made to avoid having to drop a bomb -- including asking the ground commander if he can break contact with the enemy and go home. But sometimes there's no alternative.
[...]

If you don't know about the capabilities of the B1 bomber don't assume from the above that it's not doing much; it's been an invaluable asset in Afghanistan, as Woods's report details. I highlighted the above passages to underscore that this war is being run by people who honestly think it's already won and that they are in the reconstruction/nation-building stage while dealing with an insurgency that pretty much has to be waited out.

There's another passage I want to highlight, a quote from the above-mentioned Pentagon report in the section that discusses the insurgents' weaknesses.

"Despite the presence of shadow governors, the insurgency still cannot deliver sustainable development or administer governance beyond the crudest dispensation of justice."

I think the writer meant to convey that despite serving as shadow governors the Taliban couldn't deliver the named services. But the point is that the "crudest dispensation of justice" is just why the Taliban have been able to regain power. In the absence of a functioning legal system in the country the Taliban kangaroo courts are the only way that the vast majority of Afghans have been able to get routine legal disputes settled without having to pay fortunes in bribes and wait years for a ruling!

So the Taliban have been keeping the case loads moving. And THAT, and not physical security, is what Afghans need almost as much as food, water and oxygen! It would be the same in the USA or anywhere. What use is to live behind cement barriers if you can't settle the most simple legal issues?

The Afghans keep asking for law and order. That's not the same as "security." But they must feel as if they're in a glass booth because every time they ask the Western forces to please kindly provide them with a functioning justice system, what do they get in response? A lecture on how government and the justice system works in a democracy and how corruption must be stopped before the country can have a viable justice system.

Meanwhile, Afghans just need stuff adjudicated and arbitrated. So the Taliban zip into a village on a motorcycle with a copy of the Koran in tow, set up court under a tree, and hear cases and make a ruling and carry out the sentence. A portable justice system. That's what the villagers need, which is why they tolerate the Taliban in so many places.

Would they prefer a legal system that's less harsh than the Taliban's version of Shariah? Well sure, but what the populace most wants is to get the legal disputes settled. That calls for consistency in the rulings and the assurance that the rulings will stand.

The kicker is that many of the legal issues are small-claims stuff. You don't have to wait to create the Hague to hear them. Now why can't the Coalition forces in Afghanistan grasp this simple point? Part of it might be the perception or unconscious bias that Afghans are an uncivil people. Yet the opposite is true. Many Afghans are EXTREMELY law-abiding. That's a big part of the problem: they want things done by the book so they need judges. But when they ask for law and order the Coalition hears this as a call for more troops, not more judges.

Another obstacle might be that Europeans and North Americans in the Coalition have a concept of a judicial system that they're always trying recreate wherever they go in the 'developing' world. If the standard can't be met they consider it a failed or "crude" system. So they have set a very high bar for the Afghan legal system then say, 'Oh it'll take at least a generation before they can meet that.'

One way to overcome such a mental block would be to think less in terms of courts and more in terms of arbitration, which is very popular in the USA for many minor disputes. That would be just the ticket for Afghans.

If anyone would like to test this theory, that could be arranged. Afghanistan's Tolo TV station has started airing a drama series that's not exactly propaganda but it's aimed at teaching how a good police force operates and building faith in the Afghan police. I doubt it has a huge audience because Afghans know of the great gap between the good ethics of the fictional Afghan police and the real thing.

However, if you aired an Afghan version of Judge Judy, I predict Afghans would be beating down the TV station's door to get on the program so the judge could hear their cases.

Of course Judge Judy and other TV judges don't have the power of the legal system behind their decisions. But the people who appear before them agree to have their legal disputes arbitrated and to abide by the judge's decisions.

The court TV shows have a perennial audience in the USA. After being on the air since as long ago as 1996 Judge Judy is the top-rated show on daytime TV this year in the USA. Yet in courts-starved Afghanistan, I think you'd have to be airing the show 24/7 and still wouldn't make a dent in the demand for the TV judge's services. I think the shows would be so popular they'd become a target for the Taliban but that would be a demonstration of my point.

And you'd have to focus-group the show before airing it to find the kind of TV judge who would go over best (and it would have to be a male judge of course). Judge Judy is the most popular of the TV judges but she is also controversial; some presiding judges think her abrasive style gives real judges and the court system a bad name. She defends the insults she metes out from the bench by saying it's often part of the punishment. (Would Afghans accept Judge Judy-style tongue lashings as punishments in lieu of real lashings?)

However, an Afghan version of Judge Judy's courtroom -- which could also be aired on radio -- does not solve the problem of how to compete with the portable aspect of the Taliban's justice system. Without that solution the Taliban will continue to run rings around the Coalition for reasons I think Genghis Khan would have immediately understood. That takes me to a conversation I had last week, and which I'll publish later this week as my next post.

This one's for Uppity Woman

In this way I can blame her for my loose morals in stealing this montage of cats that look like dictators from a website with an unpronounceable name. But do me favor if you want to pass along the photos: credit and link to Yasrsly website and not my blog; this will help salve my conscience.

Studying the expressions on these cats' faces I am reminded of the old Lithuanian proverb or maybe it's the old Hungarian proverb. Anyhow: Just be glad cats aren't as big as you.

Amrullah Saleh sets the record straight on Taliban imposter, and the question that haunts

Of course this report got no play in the USA:

Taliban impostor warnings ignored by Afghan leaders, says former spy chief
by Jon Boone
(U.K.) Guardian, November 28, 2010

Desperate for a peace deal with the Taliban, officials dismissed security advice over bogus go-between

Hamid Karzai's desperation for a "Good Friday agreement for Afghanistan" led officials to ignore repeated warnings from their own spy chief that they should not trust a man who orchestrated a humiliating face-to-face meeting between the Afghan president and a shopkeeper who pretended to be the Taliban's second most powerful leader.

Amrullah Saleh, the former head of the National Directorate of Security (NDS), Afghanistan's equivalent of MI5, said his agency first vetted the man, who claimed to be a representative of Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Mansour, one of the highest-ranking figures in the Taliban, in mid-2008, but rejected him after he was unable to prove his credentials.

However, the go-between, who said he was a Taliban leader from Kandahar called Muhammad Aminullah, subsequently approached the interior minister, Hanif Atmar, the following year and was enthusiastically embraced by an Afghan government desperate for a breakthrough in peace talks.

Saleh, a highly regarded administrator who was sacked by Karzai earlier this year, said all his warnings were ignored. "I tried time and again to convince my colleagues in the ministry and subsequently at the palace that he is not a genuine representative of anybody," he told the Observer.

The rare public statement by Afghanistan's former top spy contradicted attempts yesterday by the Afghan government to deny that "Mansour" had ever held high-level meetings in Kabul. It also further undermines claims by the Afghan government that MI6 was entirely to blame for the fiasco. [...]

There's more in the report that calls for close attention but I want to turn now to another report, one that throws additional light on Saleh's trials as he tried to talk sense into men pursuing a mirage.

Note the date of the cable under discussion in the following report: January of this year. Yet at that time (and up to this day) there were elements in Washington, including elements in the U.S. military, which continued to insist that Pakistan's military command and ISI had turned over a new leaf. The willful blindness of these factions led the Obama administration to push for an equally blind pursuit of reconciliation with the Taliban.

The question that haunts me is just how far the U.S. is willing to go in the attempt to discredit Karzai's warnings about the intentions of Pakistan's military. I suspect it's a question that also haunts Karzai -- and Saleh:

Pak Army and ISI continue to support Afghan Taliban: Karzai

Press Trust Of India
December 3, 2010

(Washington) Over a month after the new Af-Pak policy was unveiled, Afghan President Hamid Karzai warned the US that no success could be achieved in the war against terrorism [while] the Pakistan Army and ISI continued to support Afghan Taliban. Welcoming a delegation of US lawmakers, including Republican John McCain, Karzai told them that the improvement in the overall bilateral relationship between Afghanistan and Pakistan was held back by the Army and ISI who continue to help the Afghan Taliban.

This was written by US Ambassador to Afghanistan Karl Eikenberry ... in a secret cable dated January 10, 2010, which was released by WikiLeaks. President Barack Obama unveiled his Af-Pak policy in December, 2009. The United States, which has charged the Wikileaks of indulging in a criminal act by stealing and releasing these cables, has neither confirmed nor denied the authenticity of these documents.

Karzai said he wants to engage more and have US support in doing so, since "the war won't end easily without Pakistani cooperation", the cable said.

"He was pessimistic about the internal situation, as was his intelligence chief, Amrullah Saleh. Saleh noted that Pakistan's energy sector was in decline and that discontent in Pashtun areas was higher than it had been in the volatile 1960s and 1970s," the cable said.

Karzai also said his Pakistani counterpart Asif Ali Zardari is using Baloch nationalists as his base of support. "Saleh predicted that neither the army nor Nawaz Sharif would bring Zardari's term to an abrupt end," the Ambassador wrote.

Explaining his reintegration approach, Karzai noted that the peace process and reintegration efforts help in the fight against the Taliban by working with those who are willing to come back, especially the "foot soldiers".

Reconciliation would extend to more senior level Taliban (not Mullah Omar, he clarified) who are not linked to Al Qaeda, "some of whom are willing" to talk. Lots of contacts are taking place, Karzai said, but no common reconciliation policy has emerged, the cable said.

"McCain noted that for this to be successful the other side should be convinced they can't win and this should probably be timed to work with the new influx of troops now underway.

"He agreed that those fighting for reasons other than ideology should be helped to return and that the fight should continue against the ideologically-motivated Taliban, stressing the importance of educating the country that both efforts were ongoing at the same time," the cable said.

Sarkozy in India: "It is unthinkable to imagine that the one billion people of India are not represented in the Security Council."

Following on the heels of Prime Minister David Cameron and President Barack Obama's embassies to India, France's no-nonsense leader is mincing no words and wasting no time in framing for the Indians the French approach to India. I especially liked the short work he made of Obama's attempt to play both sides of the fence: Sarkozy said that France did not speak in two languages to India.

Washington is playing a stupid game by approaching India as if the year were 1980, as witness the little lecture about responsibility that President Obama inserted in his speech to the Indian Parliament when he voiced vague U.S. support for India's bid for the NSC. Notwithstanding his strongly pro-American stance, for which I am profoundly grateful, Sarkozy does not intend to be beaten out in India by U.S. interests. A word to the wise in Washington.

There are reasons, not clearly evident to most Americans, why Michelle Obama made a hugely positive impression on Indians and helped her husband somewhat overcome his highly intellectual approach to people during his stay in India. Her stunning success as a representative of the best of U.S. influence in the world handed the Washington political and defense establishments a priceless gift. It would be a tragedy to see the gift wasted. Again, a word to the wise.

Speaking of wising up I think that Sarkozy's India embassy is a great time for Washington to ponder an unblinking appraisal of Obama's visit to India that was written by Rajeev Srinivasan, who for my money is one of the sharpest Indian pundits and knows American society from years he spent in the USA. The witty and acid-penned Rajeev has his own blog but Rediff, one of India's largest website portals, frequently publishes his columns and published the one featured at the end of this post. However, before the analysis of Obama's visit first more news on Sarkozy's visit to India:

Sarkozy backs India for UN Security Council, top N-club
Hindustan Times, December 4, 2010

(BANGALORE) French President Nicolas Sarkozy on Saturday pledged support to India’s membership in the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) and repeated longstanding French support for India’s candidacy for a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council (UNSC).

French President Nicolas Sarkozy on Saturday pledged support to India’s membership in the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) and repeated long-standing French support for India’s candidacy for a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council (UNSC).

Addressing scientists and students at the ISRO Satellite Centre here, he said France was a friend of India that did not speak in two languages. “It means what it says.”

With an eye on his presidency of the G-20, Sarkozy also spoke of plans to set up a G-20 environment fund and of his hopes of seeing India play a role in helping regulate global finance.

Sarkozy arrived in Bangalore at 10.30 am for a four-day official visit with his wife, former model Carla Bruni, seven cabinet ministers and 60 business and civil society leaders. After spending four hours here, Sarkozy left for Agra. The French president is expected to land in Delhi on Sunday afternoon.

Extending support for India's candidacy for the NSG, Sarkozy said it made sense for India to participate in multilateral bodies responsible for drafting and ensuring rules governing the global nuclear non-proliferation regime. “We need to put an end to the nuclear isolation of India. It was injustice done to India challenging your right to access civil nuclear energy,” he said, speaking of “limitless” possibilities in civil nuclear cooperation between the two countries.

"France was the first to say in 1998 that it was time to put an end to India’s nuclear isolation, as it was absurd to prevent such a country from developing its civilian nuclear sector”.

On India’s bid for a permanent UNSC seat, he said: “This is injustice ... It is unthinkable to imagine that the one billion people of India are not represented in the Security Council.”

He envisaged an expanded Security Council that included not only the G-4 nations — India, Brazil, Germany and Japan — but also a representative from Africa and the Arab world.

Last month, US President Barrack Obama had backed India’s bid. Two other permanent members, Britain and Russia, also endorse India. The fifth member, China, has not yet clarified its stance.

Sarkozy spoke of the development example India could be. He said if India manages to meet the challenge of effecting development through peace, it will have a huge effect on the world. But when India ushers in development, he said, it must also focus on environmental concerns. “You should safeguard the environment ... [after all] you will be first to be affected.”

Sarkozy also saw a major role for India in curbing global terrorism. “Terrorism and insurgency in Pakistan and Afghanistan are a major threat to world peace. We can’t afford to see the Taliban succeed in Afghanistan.”

Condemning 26/11, he said: "When India is attacked, it is democracy that is attacked."

During his visit, Sarkozy will bat for French firms to win contracts for military hardware. India is in the market for 126 fighter jets, a deal worth Rs 50,000 crore, and 200 helicopters worth Rs 18,400 crore. French firms are also negotiating to upgrade the IAF’s 51 Mirage-2000 jet fighters.

Now to the analysis of Obama's visit to India. As a bonus Rajeev added remarks about the still-floundering NATO war effort in Afghanistan. His brief history lesson on Pakistan and the Pashtuns is valuable for Americans but I disagree with his advice that the only way to settle the situation is the creation of a Pashtun state. The advice comes a half century too late.

The knowledge that Afghanistan is sitting on potentially USD trillions in prize natural resources is decades old but the recent explorations, which throw more light on the extent of the country's potential wealth, absolutely rule out a division of the country along ethnic lines -- except through a civil war that would only lead to a Sudan-type situation dragging on for decades.

And since the news got out that Afghanistan is in line to be filthy rich, al Qaeda has decided that the country is actually the Promised Land for Islam as described in certain Muslim texts.

The best defense Afghans will have against all efforts to pry their wealth away from them will be to grit their teeth and stick together.

"After the Kool-Aid: Notes from the Obama visit
November 11, 2010
Rediff

Where is the substance in the just-concluded Obama jamboree, asks Rajeev Srinivasan.

A casual observer, the proverbial Martian, would have concluded from the breathless media coverage during the Barack Obama love-fest that this was a visit of the King-Emperor of India's colonial master. The pageantry and pomp and circumstance hid the sad fact that the emperor had no clothes, that is to say, there was precious little of substance in evidence. Lots of style, though: An Obama trademark.

But then Indians love a good party, and this was like a Big Fat Punjabi Wedding: Plenty of dancing, much drinking, and everyone nursing a hangover the next day. Naturally, nobody wanted to bring up anything serious or embarrassing. As usual, Indians were taken in by flattery and vague words about 'global power' and 'rightful place in the world'.

There was one major meta-theme: Obama was in India hat in hand, beginning his reelection campaign. After the self-confessed 'shellacking' he received in the mid-term elections, and given that anyway he is more comfortable campaigning than governing, this should not be much of a surprise.

The 2012 presidential elections are not that far off; the Republicans may contrive to shoot themselves in the foot and so the grim prospect of 'four more years' of Obama cannot be underestimated.

If you take the election issues out, the Obama visit was much like the visit of British Prime Minister David Cameron a few weeks prior (and he's doing the same in China now). Cameron was disarmingly candid; he was a salesman, doing a hard-sell of his wares: India clearly has 'buyer power' -- as per strategy guru Michael Porter -- that is, India, being a major purchaser of all sorts of goods, has influence over sellers.

Obama did his selling more subtly, partly because he could get a lot of mileage out of his black-man-inspired-by-Gandhi-and-King trope -- Indians are suckers for this sort of sentimental pabulum, although in reality 99 per cent of American blacks have never heard of Gandhi, and have no particular sympathy for Indians as fellow-sufferers from white oppression; if anything, they may view Indians in the US as benefiting unfairly from the affirmative action programmes they won with their blood, sweat, and tears.

Was the visit a success? Perhaps it was, from the American point of view. Obama did sell $15 billion worth of goods and generate 54,000 American jobs. And he didn't give away the store, or anything at all. Incidentally, there is a meme among hostile Americans about how Dubya Bush 'gave away the store' to India -- The New York Times in particular harps on this theme often -- in relation to the so-called 'nuclear deal'.

On the contrary, it is India that gave away the store by giving up its -- pitiful though it might be -- nuclear deterrent capability.

Surely Obama didn't give much away. He got misplaced, but thunderous, applause from Indian parliamentarians when he talked about welcoming India into the UN Security Council -- they did not realise he was talking about the non-permanent membership that India has just won. The prospect of a full veto-wielding permanent membership is, alas, just as far as it always has been, thanks to the supreme folly in refusing it when offered in 1955 -- in favor, of all countries, China! Go figure!

Obama's rhetorical flourishes about the Security Council membership were full of fine phrases, but there was the distinct absence of an action verb: Such as 'support', 'commit', or 'endorse'. I am reminded of a Doonesbury cartoon about Ted Kennedy, wherein the orator makes fine, emphatic statements, which, sadly, all consist of nouns, and the commentator says, 'A verb, Senator, we need a verb!'

All President Obama said was the following, verbatim: "In the years ahead, I look forward to a reformed UNSC that includes India as a permanent member".

What he did not say was that his country strongly supported the idea and that it would throw its weight behind India's candidacy, as it has for Japan.

Without a time-bound statement of intent, it was mere fluff, a pious platitude. In any case, Obama knows full well that China will veto Japan's, and India's, aspirations.

Furthermore, Obama immediately imposed conditions -- that India should toe the US line on Iran, human rights and nuclear non-proliferation. All of these are suspect -- not that I am a big fan of Iran, but India has regional interests that suggest it engage Iran, for instance for access to Afghanistan, and for hydrocarbons.

In fact, it would be a good idea for India to lecture the US that the latter should ally with Iran so that it is not dependent on Pakistan's ISI for transit of its war materiel to Afghanistan.

By carping on human rights (code for Kashmir) and non-proliferation (code for India signing the NPT), Obama was addressing his pals in the ISI and in the non-proliferation-ayatollah-dom that permeates the Democratic ranks in the US.

What about extensive proliferation and human rights violations by Pakistan and China, Mr US President? How come you have no fine words to say to those allies of yours? What about the human rights of Afghans, so trampled on by the ISI?

All in all, whatever the ELM spin-doctors say, Obama gave much less than a ringing endorsement of India's aspirations for the Security Council. It is clear that the P5 are not going to dilute their stranglehold on the UNSC, or on nuclear weapons -- if India ever gets on the UNSC, it will be as a non-veto-holding member, and it would have signed the NPT. This is no different from the way things were two weeks ago, so I ask: "Where's the beef?"

Naturally, unfriendly pundits from The New York Times and others passed it off as 'Countering China, Obama Backs India for UN Council'. No, Virginia, read his lips. That's not what he said. The Los Angeles Times correctly identified it as 'only a step' in that direction. The Wall Street Journal quoted William Burns, an official, who refused to say whether the US would support a veto-bearing status for India. Bingo!

But Obama demonstrated that he does know how to use verbs when he spoke about Aghanistan. He said, "We will not abandon the Afghan people." Fine words, but it is hard to reconcile this with his actions, in particular his insistence on pulling out troops in 2011, which has emboldened all the warlords into a waiting game. [Pundita note: as we know, NATO has backpedaled from that date.]

Furthermore, the official Obama Administration stand on Afghanistan is predicated on India making sacrifices to appease Pakistan. The standard line was articulated in a particularly inane oped in The Washington Post on Nov 8 by one David Pollack, in an article headlined Our Indian Problem in Afghanistan, which could have been written by the ISI, so well did it articulate their position.

No, David, the issue is not India's presence in Afghanistan, which goes back centuries, and is mostly humanitarian. Let us also remember that Afghanistan was the nation that opposed Pakistan's entry into the UN -- they had good reason to do so, because half of the natural territory of Afghanistan is occupied by Pakistan.

The problem is the Durand Line. The Afghans have never recognised the Durand Line, an artificial boundary that was imposed by force on them in 1893 by the British; in any case that treaty expired in 1993. The Pathans on either side of the line are unnaturally divided by the line.

This human rights issue -- the oppression of the Pathans since 1947 by the largely Punjabi Pakistani army and the ISI -- is the root cause of the Afghan problem. There is a simple geographic solution to the Afghan problem: let the Pathans merge southern Afghanistan and the western part of Pakistan into a Pashtunistan, their long-standing demand.

That would immediately solve the Afghan problem, and Obama can take his boys home. Leaving the Pathans in charge of their own destiny will prevent the Pakistanis from abusing them by proxy -- it is Pakistani ISI and army personnel who put on baggy pants and grow beards and call themselves the Taliban. And consort with al Qaeda.

Northern Afghanistan, dominated by Tajiks, Uzbeks, and Hazaras, and base of the erstwhile Northern Alliance, could be administered as a peaceful nation, protected by NATO forces.

Even today, the Panjshir Valley (home of national hero and military genius Ahmed Shah Massoud, assassinated by the Taliban a day before 9/11), Mazar-e-Sharif, etc. are not so troubled. Why, they even have a tourist agency in Bamiyan which, I am told, brought 800 tourists this year to the site of the magnificent Buddha statues that the Taliban blew up.

Selig Harrison, writing in The Los Angeles Times on November 8, in a piece titled Pakistan divides US and India, got the facts right. The problem is the Punjabi-dominated Pakistani army, which in effect has colonised the Baluchi, Sindhi, and Pathan populations of Pakistan, all of which are restive.

The dissolution of Pakistan is the only answer to the problem. And this is the one thing that Obama is unwilling to countenance. Therefore he is not serious about solving the Afghan problem, he merely wants a face-saving way of exiting Afghanistan.

Given that these are life-and-death issues for India, and that other major issues, such as agriculture and education, got short shrift, from an Indian point of view, it is fair to say that the Obama visit was not a success.

The most positive thing I can say is that the feared 'November surprise', a signing-over of Kashmir to the ISI, did not happen. At least, it did not happen in public.

Otherwise, stripped of all the glad-handing and the huzzahs, the Obama visit to India was a major non-event. India got practically nothing out of it. But then, India's leaders do not know what their goals are, so avoiding utter disaster, I suppose, is a victory. Of sorts.

Rajeev Srinivasan"

The Wikileaks School for Scandal

UPDATE December 12
Given the news that Assange is likely to be indicted under the U.S. 1917 Espionage Act, the situation is far more serious than my original take on it in this post.
******

"The School for Scandal is the quintessential creation about people blabbering about people. Here is sham, snobbery and betrayal in full regalia. . . . It is wrongheaded, though an obvious temptation, to connect a play that is so stylish with dish, spin and whatever buzzwords define the yakety-yak of the moment. No one needs to be told that not minding your own business is an old irresistible pastime. Or that gossip didn't start with tabloids and television, and that technology is pushing the sleaze factor to new lows. Dish is now. The School for Scandal is forever."

Alvin Klein's review of a 2001 stage production of Richard Brinsley Sheridan's timeless 1777 play is perhaps the best starting point from which to examine the Wikileaks trove of leaked U.S. Department of State cables. Julian Assange and the hackers that contribute to his site have, I suspect, seriously misjudged human nature given their intention to sow horror and outrage at governments and unleash chaos. There hasn't been so much fun here in Washington since I can't remember when, with everyone saying to everyone else, 'Terrible! Shocking! Must be a law!' while gobbling up the gossip, the intrigues, and just plain cattiness of the world's movers and shakers revealed in State Department dispatches.

There are still no shattering revelations in the State cable leaks for anyone who closely follows defense/foreign relations issues but the devil, and the delight, of the cables is in the wealth of juicy details they provide.

Not to insult America's professional entertainers but what Kanye West or Linsday Lohan think and do is so inconsequential outside the entertainment industry that the Wikileaks State cables are like a huge gulp of oxygen for a drowning swimmer. The swimmer, in this case, is the hapless public -- force fed on news about absolute bores by media organizations that prefer not to dig up and report on the kind of meaty gossip found in the State cables.

And, it turns out, the stars of the Wikileaks School for Scandal are not Assange and his roster of hackers but the shrewdly observant authors of the cables, who in the manner of the servants in Upstairs Downstairs strive to keep their bearings while caught in the intrigues of host governments. So while I register the obligatory outrage with Assange & Company's theft of documents, to be perfectly frank they have given the world a great gift by showing that the workings of foreign policy are a thousand times more titillating than the bump and grind of the entertainment industry.

And I think that instead of leading the world to the brink of chaos by leaking the State cables Wikileaks has done just the opposite. Much of the sense of disorder, the feeling that the world is spinning out of control, has come from the perception that a very remote ruling class is making critical decisions that the public knows nothing about. The Upstairs Downstairs viewpoint from which the leaked State cables are written has taken the public inside the workings of the highest levels of governments to reveal -- lo and behold -- that the ruling class is peopled with the same types that the world's working stiffs encounter every day in the office. I venture that the majority in the public will find the revelation more a reassurance than a cause for alarm if (and this is a big "if") they actually read the cables. My concern is that in lieu of reading, many in the public, at least in the United States, will take their understanding of the cables from political commentators, whose interpretation of the leaks break along partisan lines.

As to the charge that the State leaks will make foreign officials reluctant in future to speak candidly to the United States -- I refer to Lady Sneerwell's observation in The School for Scandal: If her reputation is injured by gossip she will "go and plot mischief" using the very same weapon against her enemies that they turned against her.

In other words, any member of government who makes a truly candid utterance in the presence of a diplomat from another country is too addle-headed to last long in the halls of power. While the leaked State cables give a good airing of what everyone thinks of everyone else, one shouldn't assume the utterances they record are artless or not intended to be passed along. Learning that their remarks might have a much bigger audience than the intended one will only inspire the actors in the real-life School for Scandal to make even more interesting off-the-record comments.

So is Julian Assange this era's Richard Sheridan? Hardly. Sheridan's gifts for language and wit find no echo in Assange, who has all the wit of a block of cement and whose style of language is a ceaseless grating whine. That Assange's attempt to wreak havoc unexpectedly regaled the world is yet another demonstration of the great efficiency of Nature, which finds ways to put even a dolt to good use.

A Murder in Paradise

The first phase of residential development occurred in the summer of 1996 with Celebration Village, West Village and Lake Evalyn; this was followed by the North Village, South Village, East Village and Aquila Reserve and the final Artisan Park phases.

Disney CEO Michael Eisner took an especially keen interest in the development of the new town in the early days, encouraging the executives at Disney Development Company to "make history" and develop a town worthy of the Disney brand and legacy that extended to Walt Disney's vision of an Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow (EPCOT).

DDC executives collaborated extensively with leaders in education, health and technology in addition to planners and architects to create the vision and operating policies for the town.

Critics of Celebration viewed it as something akin to "The Truman Show" or "The Stepford Wives." Fans of the project saw a return to small-town values, a walkable community and safety.(1)

Some say the town of Celebration reminds them of the dystopian satire, The Stepford Wives. No, Celebration was paradise, once upon a time, as close to paradise as it gets on earth. It was just so incredibly normal, without all the rubbernecking and jockeying for attention that goes with the haunts of the fabulously rich.

Normal people -- people who don't want too much or too little out of life -- aren't happy, so the conventional wisdom of the snobbiste goes. Well, they can be. Were. Once upon a time. Before the tentacles of the burst housing bubble and the financial crisis reached into Celebration, like kudzu creeping up a morning-glory vine. Before the SWAT teams showed up.

Celebration, Florida has its first killing
by Kim Severson
The New York Times, December 2, 2010

CELEBRATION, Fla. — As if the Thanksgiving murder were not enough to ruin things in this subdivision that Disney designed. Now, tanks and SWAT teams?

Here in a community built 14 years ago by the Walt Disney Company as the happiest subdivision on earth — and which, to be fair, has been largely free from urban strife — two major crimes in the span of less than a week have made even the fake snow that blankets the town square every evening hour on the hour seem a little less cheery.

Late into Thursday night, sheriff’s deputies barricaded several blocks in this neo-traditional town of 10,000 people and miles of white rail fencing, trying to talk a despondent and possibly armed man out of his home.

Earlier, the schoolhouse near the town square was locked down. Buzzing helicopters interrupted horse-and-carriage rides. Even the holiday cocktail party at the golf course was canceled.

But the situation, which a sheriff’s deputy described as a domestic dispute involving a father who had lost a job and his marriage, was not even the worst of it in Celebration.

Sometime over Thanksgiving weekend, Matteo Patrick Giovanditto, 58, was murdered, the Osceola County Sheriff’s Office said. It was the first murder in Celebration history. Concerned neighbors who had not heard from him went into his first-floor condo, one block from the artificial ice rink on the town square. He was on the floor covered with a blanket, according to the police.

Officers later located his black Corvette in a nearby town, but have yet to make an arrest. Residents were assured that there was nothing to fear.

“They’ve got some really substantial leads,” said a sheriff’s spokeswoman, Twis Lizasuain. “We haven’t disclosed what we found, but it was a big break in the case to find the vehicle.”

Mr. Giovanditto, who was from Massachusetts, moved to Florida in the 1980s to teach, his cousin, Theresa Troiano, said from Tewksbury, Mass.

“He was a wonderful young man from a big New England family,” she said. “We hope there is swift justice.”

Mr. Giovanditto moved to Celebration in 2004. He lived with his Chihuahua, Lucy, neighbors said. His house was a popular destination for trick-or-treaters, and he frequently weighed in on the Front Porch, a kind of Facebook for Celebration residents.

“He was a good guy online,” said Alex Morton, the publisher of the monthly Celebration Independent and one of the first people to buy a house when the subdivision opened in 1996.

“This town is all corporate executives and golden parachuters,” said Mr. Morton, who was holding up the printing of his paper until he had more news on the murder and, now, the standoff happening a few blocks from his tiny newspaper office.

The killing of Mr. Giovanditto was a crack in the facade of this community, a 10-minute drive from Disney World, that was just too hard to ignore — especially with the standoff coming right on its heels.

“It’s like Manhattan!” said Vince Cassaro. He ought to know. The former Connecticut resident worked in New York City before moving his family here 12 years ago.

Had residents ever seen a SWAT team in town before?

“Maybe for the Boy Scouts when they do a display, but that’s about it,” said Jeffry Ewing, a resident who had to stop work on a house renovation that was within the police perimeter.

Of course, there have been other indications here that the ride might be over. Smaller crimes are not unheard of. In 1998, a robber who said he had a gun threatened a family and robbed them in their home. It was the town’s first reported violent crime.

No, those aren't church spires; they're part of Celebration's movie theater

The economy has taken some of the shine from the streets, too. On Thanksgiving Day, the movie theater, which proudly showed its share of Disney films, went out of business. And there is no one who has not been hoping that home prices stop dropping. At their peak, homes sold for an average of $1 million. Now, they might go for half that.

Glenn Williams, who was watching the sheriff’s deputies block the roads, said the price of his house had fallen to about $360,000 now from $825,000 two years ago.

Like others, he was sad for the families involved in the standoff and the murder.

“But I’m surprised it’s been this long before something happened,” Mr. Williams said.
[...]

Part of police blockade on Thursday
Photo: Chip Litherland for The New York Times


1) From Wikipedia article on Celebration