The Senate for Sale Scandal: Balanoff-Obama and Balanoff-Blagojevich ties

"Inspector" Steve Diamond is on the case. To the chase!

Who is Tom Balanoff? Obama, SEIU and the Senate For Sale Scandal:


One of the mystery figures in the Illinois Governor Blagojevich "Senator for Sale" Scandal is the unnamed "SEIU Official" who spoke to Blagojevich about the replacement of Barack Obama in the United States Senate.

Who is it?

If we knew, what would that tell us about the role of SEIU in this scandal?

Given the optimism about the new Obama Presidency among wide segments of the labor movement, answering these questions is important.

Has SEIU Official put at risk the hopes of millions of American workers?

Certainly the sharp battle to defend the UAW now underway indicates the uphill battle labor will face.

For the record, SEIU has issued a statement that:

"We have no reason to believe that SEIU or any SEIU official was involved in any wrongdoing."

"In keeping with the U.S. Attorney's request, we are not sharing information with the media at this time."

In other words, it is conceivable that SEIU was part of a giant sting operation - that the minute they got word of Blagojevich's interest in a pay to play approach to the Senate seat they called the FBI and everything that followed was aimed at catching a Governor out of control.

Perhaps. But until that time we are left we what we have been told.

First, let's review.

In the FBI agent's affidavit which accompanies the criminal complaint filed last week in federal court, SEIU Official first appears on November 7 in a three way conversation between Blagojevich, his aide John Harris and an unnamed Advisor B. Harris opens up the discussion of the possibility of a position for Blagojevich with Change To Win, the union federation formed out of a split from the older AFL-CIO and that now includes SEIU as its most powerful affiliate.

Harris suggests that SEIU Official make Blagojevich the "head" of Change To Win in return for the appointment of a Senate candidate that Obama favors and that Obama in turn would help SEIU with its legislative agenda. Blagojevich, though, remains non-committal to the 3-way deal. He indicates a need to earn a substantial salary. Union staff positions pay salaries well below equivalent positions in the private sector.

On November 10 a conference call with Blagojevich, Harris and numerous other individuals in Illinois and D.C. makes clear that the Change To Win job is only one of a number of scenarios under consideration. Others talked about included a cabinet post, an ambassadorship and corporate board positions. Harris again raised the idea of a 3-way Change To Win deal to be put in place with the help of SEIU and Obama.

On November 12, following several other conversations in the interim that raised a new possibility, that of Blagojevich being named head of a non-profit entity with funding raised in part by Obama from wealthy individuals, Blagojevich speaks with Advisor B about the this alternative. Advisor B says he prefers the 3-way deal with Change To Win and SEIU because there would be fewer "fingerprints" on Obama's involvement.

But Blagojevich indicates he prefers the non-profit idea because he is not sure Change To Win would be around in two years' time. (This may refer to the fact that there is some discussion in labor circles that Change To Win will merge with the AFL-CIO in the near future. One of the differences that separated the two federations was the view of Andy Stern and Change To Win that labor involvement in electoral politics was not helping labor grow. Presumably that debate is over and Stern now recognizes that politics does indeed matter.)

A second conversation later that same day between just Blagojevich and an unnamed "Washington D.C.-based advisor" repeats the same debate about the alternatives: the non-profit v. the Change To Win position.

In a third conversation that same day just between Blagojevich and SEIU Official, who was in Washington, D.C. at the time, the Governor again raises the idea of the non-profit entity but there is no apparent discussion of the Change To Win position at all. SEIU Official agreed to take the non-profit idea and "put that flag up and see where it goes." Apparently, that meant discussing it with the Obama camp or with Valerie Jarrett directly.

Clearly Blagojevich was less interested in a "cushy union job" with Change To Win than has been suggested by some, including U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald. But just as clearly, SEIU Official was deeply involved in the discussions that did take place about Change To Win and the alternative, a possible new non-profit entity to be established with Obama’s help in order to secure the appointment of Valerie Jarrett as the new Senator from Illinois.

Who is "SEIU Official"?

I called SEIU last week to ask who the SEIU Official was and, in particular, if it was Andy Stern himself, as some had suggested in the blogosphere.

I was referred to an article that had appeared that very day in the Wall Street Journal that suggested, based on the Journal's review of an SEIU internal communication, that "SEIU Official" was, indeed, Tom Balanoff, simultaneously head of SEIU Local 1 (a janitors' and doorman's local union in Chicago), head of SEIU's 165,000 member statewide Illinois Council and a member of the International Executive Board of SEIU.

I was then referred to Ramona Oliver, head of Media for SEIU, but my call to her was not returned. I then called the Wall Street Journal and was told by one of their reporters that they had been told that the SEIU Official was, in fact, not Andy Stern.

The Journal reporter was not able to provide me any more information about the SEIU internal communication but did confirm that that communication was prepared only recently, after the discussions between Blagojevich and SEIU Official had taken place.

The Journal reporter was not able to shed any light on why the SEIU Official was in Washington D.C. when he spoke to Blagojevich. Balanoff’s office is in Chicago as is that of the Obama transition team, while that of Stern and Change To Win is in D.C. Of course, Balanoff likely travels for meetings to D.C. on a regular basis.

Clearly figures within SEIU were attempting to steer interest away from Andy Stern and towards Tom Balanoff.

That, of course, raises an important question: Who is Tom Balanoff?

Who is Tom Balanoff?

A review of what is known about Tom Balanoff indicates that he is, in fact, very close to Andy Stern. It seems highly unlikely that Balanoff would have carried on discussions with Blagojevich without informing Andy Stern. In fact, given his executive role in the SEIU hierarchy and his position as a director of SEIU, he would owe Stern and SEIU a fiduciary obligation to keep them fully informed about such discussions.

It also turns out that there is a close long standing relationship between Balanoff and Obama, and between Balanoff and Blagojevich.

What do we know?

Tom and Andy

Balanoff himself is a lifelong professional union staffer, joining the labor movement after earning a degree at the University of Illinois. John Sweeney, Stern’s predecessor at SEIU and now head of the rival AFL-CIO, hired him into SEIU's Research Department after earlier stints with the Fire Fighters (my late uncle's old union) and the Allied Industrial Workers.

Once he passed an apprenticeship in D.C. he became part of the International’s machinery, installed by Sweeney as a trustee controlling SEIU Local 73 in Chicago. Local 73 represents public employees in Illinois and Indiana, although Balanoff was never a public employee as far as I can tell. He later became the president of Local 73 when the trusteeship ended and control over the local was purportedly returned to its members.

One former employee of Local 73 wrote that Balanoff’s “poison is not alcohol. It’s power.” His "desire for power, for responsibility and an ability to swing with the big boys, landed him where he is, and offered him opportunities beyond his wildest hopes."

This was home turf for the Chicago born and raised Balanoff. Balanoff's father, Jim, was once in the Communist Party and was a life long Steelworkers activist who headed up the dissident District 31 which covered the huge steel mills that used to occupy south Chicago and Gary, Indiana. (See The Battling Balanoffs for a profile of the family - no longer CP'ers apparently, just "progressive" - so progressive that Tom's Dad met his Mom while both were campaigning for the CP-backed Henry Wallace in 1948.)

In 1999, Balanoff tasked by Stern, now head of SEIU, to be trustee of the corrupt Janitors Union in New York City, Local 32B-32J, once headed by the notorious Gus Bevona.

Balanoff now heads up SEIU's 35,000 member janitors' and doormans' Local 1 in Chicago though he has never been a janitor or doorman as far as I can tell. Through a series of mergers, Local 1 now has members in several states in the Midwest. And Balanoff also heads up the 165,000 member Illinois Council of SEIU, now a powerhouse in Chicago and Illinois politics.

Over the past decade he has worked hand in glove with Andy Stern to implement Stern's peculiar agenda for building SEIU power. Stern's top down bureaucratic strategy has engendered widespread criticism and more recently militant opposition from rank and file union members.

While apologists for Stern among academics and some on the left proclaim SEIU and other Change To Win affiliates to be a harbinger of a "new unionism" in America, others decry the trampling of union democracy by the sweetheart deals Stern has made with employers and the top down mandatory restructurings. Critics point to Stern’s cozying up to the authoritarian Chinese regime where a faux union was recently installed in a few Wal-Mart stores with the alleged assistance of Stern.

A key part of the Stern strategy has been using the weapon of trusteeship to force the merger of smaller locals into new centralized entities subject to influence if not control of the International itself. His major goal is to centralize the union into a smaller group of mega-locals that leave rank and file influence and union democracy behind. Across the country he has forced once locally controlled unions into large statewide, even cross border, entities run by professional staff rather than their own members. The number of professional staff in the union has multiplied several fold under this approach.

In a recent battle with California’s United Healthcare Workers (UHW), itself formed as a result of the merger of numerous smaller SEIU locals, it is alleged by UHW that Stern engaged in a "relentless, pervasive, and unprecedented campaign to target, retaliate against, discredit, and hobble” UHW as Stern and the International tried to restructure the organization and to run its charismatic and popular leader, Sal Rosselli, out of office.

(Unfortunately, Rosselli only a few years earlier was a key Stern ally in the formation of Change To Win out of the AFL-CIO. In addition, at the recent SEIU Convention he used an attack on a sister AFL-CIO union, the California Nurses' Association, as a whipping boy in order to argue that UHW is loyal to SEIU.)

According to Steve Early, an experienced and respected labor lawyer who follows SEIU closely, “SEIU trusteeships have become a tool for consolidating Stern's personal power, stifling dissent, negotiating substandard contracts, and creating an atmosphere of fear and intimidation viewed as unhealthy, even in a union that's diverse and fast-growing.”

More than 40 SEIU locals, out of 275, have been taken over by the International under Stern’s leadership. (By the way, his predecessor John Sweeney was no stranger to this bureaucratic technique. Sweeney was still head of SEIU when Balanoff was put in charge of Local 73. But when it comes to using trusteeships, Stern is Picasso whereas Sweeney was a mere Juan Gris.)

Balanoff was part of that kind of effort in Illinois and when similar efforts ran into opposition in other parts of the country, such as in Massachusetts and California, Balanoff was dispatched by Stern to quell dissent, usually in the guise of a “hearing officer” sent by the International to ferret out problems.

At a recent SEIU Convention, Balanoff "deep sixed" reform proposals made there by UHW of California so that they never made it out of the committee he chaired to the Convention floor.

Balanoff and Blagojevich

Particularly controversial has been Stern's, and Balanoff's, strategy of "organizing politicians first, workers second." This has meant funneling tens of millions of dollars into the campaigns of politicians who can then be called upon to make legal changes that mandate that thousands of previously non-union workers become dues paying union members, sometimes without the clumsy unpredictable practice of actually holding a genuine union election.

In Illinois, Balanoff and Stern have put this strategy to work with great effect.

A few years ago, Blagojevich told Stern of a politician on the rise named Rod Blagojevich. SEIU thought it could back Blagojevich’s run for governor at a time when no one else thought the Democrats had a chance of winning the post. SEIU poured money and activists into the campaign and Blagojevich eked out a narrow victory over his Republican opponent.

In return, Blagojevich used his executive authority that made it a cakewalk for SEIU to “oganize” tens of thousands of new workers into the union. The effort only became a challenge for SEIU because of the attempt by a competing union to win over the same workers.

“We told our members we had to build up our political arm in order to grow, so we increased the locals payments to the state council,” Balanoff told The American Prospect. “And we took a huge risk with Blagojevich.”

Prospect editor Harold Meyerson wrote:

“In exchange for its support, the SEIU won a specific commitment from Blagojevich: an executive order that created collective bargaining rights for the state's 25,000 home-care workers….With his executive order, Blagojevich removed those workers from legal limbo, and the SEIU won the vote of the members to represent them at the bargaining table. On February 18 of this year, Blagojevich signed an equivalent order for the state's 48,000 child-care workers, decreeing that a representation election be held within 42 days.”

Today the Wall Street Journal is reporting that yet another example of this kind of deal was underway with Blagojevich planning to sign yet another executive order that would have enabled SEIU to secure unionization of 1,200 home care workers for the developmentally disabled. Apparently, the deal was only known to SEIU and not to its major competitor in this arena, the AFL-CIO's AFSCME.

This effort duplicated a similar move in California where a deal with Governor Gray Davis led to the “unionization” of tens of thousands of home health care workers without the messy unpredictability of an actual election.

Here is how one analyst described it:

Stern has also boosted his rolls with workers who aren't really workers at all. In California, for example, Stern cannily used political contributions and organizing to reroute welfare dollars into his union and create a whole new class of members. After a decade's worth of organizing politicians in Sacramento—ex-Gov. Gray Davis got $625,000 from SEIU—and also the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, Stern persuaded them to create an agency that would serve as the employer for home-care workers. Then in 1999, the agency held an election so that SEIU could become the exclusive bargaining agent. When SEIU—which faced no opposition—won the low-turnout affair, 74,000 members were added to its rolls.

But most of those home-care workers are parents and children who got government money for taking care of family members or close friends. They didn't provide nursing services but simply bathed and fed their disabled children or elderly parents. Most home-care workers are part-time, working for one client. Their average pay is less than $700 a month (now minus dues to SEIU).

Stern and SEIU's strategy includes thug-like tactics used against fellow unions. When Rose Ann DeMoro, the president of the AFL-CIO's California Nurses' Association, was scheduled to be honored at a dinner sponsored by the Democratic Socialists of America in Chicago, Balanoff, a previous honoree at the annual event (see picture above), wrote to protest the award arguing, absurdly, that this widely respected and militant union was engaged in activities equivalent to the union-busting National Right to Work Committee.

At a recent meeting of Labor Notes, a major conference of labor activists held every other year in Detroit, invited De Moro to speak, SEIU bussed in dozens of union members who were told, again absurdly, that a "union buster" was speaking at the event. One participant died of a heart attack and another was bloodied in the confrontation and sent to the hospital.

Tom and Barack

Now, it turns out, labor is trying the Stern strategy on a much larger scale. They hope to use the leverage they have created with the Obama victory to put in place something called the Employee Free Choice Act, which would allow unions to be organized once again without bothering about a democratic union election.

Of course, for decades, as former Clinton era NLRB chair Bill Gould has explained, the deck has been stacked against labor in the union election process. It should be reformed to make elections fair and efficient. But instead both Change To Win and the AFL-CIO want to by pass that approach and use “card check” to create unions. This allows union organizers to avoid secret ballots and a campaign effort to gain union backing.

And to get the necessary legislative change in Congress it helps to have a relationship with the new President. Tom Balanoff knows Obama from way back. Balanoff himself explains that he first met Obama in 1993 when Obama was just out of Harvard Law School. Balanoff’s cousins on the south side of Chicago introduced Obama to Balanoff. Balanoff says they met Obama while Obama was a community organizer there in the mid-1980s.

The Balanoff family – including now a judge, politicians, and lawyers - was deeply immersed in the anti-machine wing of Democratic party politics. The Balanoffs would have been critical allies for a young Obama, who was thinking of attempting to duplicate the successful mayoral campaign of his late hero, Harold Washington.

The Balanoffs had close ties to independent black activists, likely a result of their long association with the Communist Party that had such an important presence in black south side Chicago. They were one of the few prominent ethnic families to back Harold Washington, himself once a labor lawyer in Chicago with links to the CP.

This introduction led to a close relationship between Balanoff and Obama as Obama began his rise to political prominence. Balanoff spoke on Obama’s behalf at the Democratic National Convention and was instrumental in securing SEIU’s endorsement over the more clearly pro-union John Edwards during the campaign itself.

When Obama was trailing in Nevada during the primaries, Balanoff and other Illinois unionists rode in to help, holding a conference call to sing Obama's praises to the locals. Balanoff told the media:

“He comes from us,” said Balanoff on Obama. “He understands our problems. We could count on Barack on all issues important to working families. Healthcare, general economic justice, jobs… Barack was there, not only there but oftentimes leading.”

What Can We Conclude?

Inevitably this review of what we know about the relationship of Obama, Balanoff, Stern and Blagojevich is incomplete. More questions remain – in fact, the review of what we do know leads to those questions. But that is helpful in and of itself.

For example, how did the idea of a job with Change To Win come up with Blagojevich? Could he have thought that up himself? It seems unlikely.

Did Balanoff suggest such a possibility? How could he have done so with any credibility if he had not discussed it with Stern? Although Stern is not named in the FBI affidavit did he have any discussions with Blagojevich?

Given the close relationship between Balanoff and Obama, would Balanoff have acted as an “emissary” (as SEIU Official is described in the affidavit) of Obama’s top confidante and advisor Valerie Jarrett without talking to Obama or at least someone who could credibly speak for Obama, perhaps Jarrett or Emanuel?

With Blagojevich and Rezko now safely in the hands of U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald we are likely to learn a good deal more about these questions and relationships.

Personally I favor organized labor being active in the political arena. But instead of competing with Big Business and Wall Street to pay for Democratic Party politicians it would be far more effective for labor to run their own candidates, chosen after open internal debate and by a democratic decision of union members. Alternatively, labor could join with like minded groups in the environmental and peace movements to support independent candidates.

SEIU, and others in the labor movement, have taken another approach that breeds authoritarianism not democratic participation by labor's rank and file. Pay to play is the wrong way to go for labor.

Sadly, organized labor may suffer the consequences of SEIU's apparent role in the Blagojevich scandal as much as anyone else.

To the man who threw his shoes at President Bush and missed

Your aim might improve if you got off your knees
President Bush and the sons and daughters of America gave you liberty
Freedom you must earn for yourself
For no man, no woman, may confer freedom on another
From here on you have a simple choice:
Return to the ways of slaves,
living your life dependent on the whims of a pasha
Or act in the manner of free men
May God bless those Iraqis who see the opportunity
and bravely fight for freedom
May God bless the Americans who've stood shoulder to shoulder with them

Eric Shawn interviews John Batchelor today on Fox News, which reminds me that Barack Obama is a fan of Mark Malloch-Brown

Journalist and Fox News senior correspondent/anchor Eric Shawn will be talking with John about Gitmo. I don't know the exact interview time but Eric's show, Fox News Sunday, airs from 10:30 to 12 noon ET.

John has appeared frequently on Eric's show and vice versa. Eric is immortalized for John's listeners as "Guy in Truck" because of his reporting on United Nations antics from a Fox News truck stationed outside UN headquarters.

Between their own reporting on the United Nations and their regular appearances on John's original show, which aired five nights a week, Eric Shawn and Claudia Rosett exposed the machinations of the biggest collection of scoundrels this side of Mordor.

Let me tell you that Mark Malloch-Brown -- that's "Sir" Mark to you -- was none too pleased about the muckraking. A month after the publication of Eric Shawn's 2006 book, The U.N. Exposed: How the United Nations Sabotages America's Security and Fails the World, Sir Mark studiously avoided mention of the book but publicly complained that the good works of the U.N. were largely lost because "much of the public discourse that reaches the U.S. heartland has been largely abandoned to its loudest detractors such as Rush Limbaugh and Fox News."

"The U.N.'s role is in effect a secret in Middle America even as it is highlighted in the Middle East and other parts of the world," Malloch Brown said.

Well! The UN role certainly wasn't a secret in the parts of Middle America that tuned to John Batchelor's show and kept up with the reporting of Eric and Claudia. Then again, Middle America is not bright enough to grasp the nuances of the UN's good work -- and neither is Claudia, I might add:

In February 2006 Mark Malloch Brown, then the UN Secretary General’s chief of staff, was interviewed by Claudia Rosett at the UN, and found himself increasingly furious at the line of questioning about his housing arrangements in New York. Malloch Brown had caused controversy with his decision to live on the smart country estate of George Soros, the financier who forced Britain out of the ERM in 1992, and a major donor to left-wing causes. Finally, the UN mandarin barked that he was doing ‘God’s work’ before storming out of the interview.

What a collection of characters we Americans have wrought by our intentions to do good in the world. Sir Mark, while he was Kofi Annan's deputy at the United Nations:

[...] distinguished himself by spinning away the $100 billion Oil for Food scandal as little more than a blip in the U.N.'s good work, and one that had little to do with Mr. Annan himself. [...] "Not a penny was lost from the organization," he insisted [...] following an audit of the U.N.'s peacekeeping procurement by its Office of Internal Oversight Services.

In fact, the office found that $7 million had been lost from overpayment; $50 million worth of contracts showed indications of bid rigging; $61 million had bypassed U.N. rules; $82 million had been lost to mismanagement; and $110 million had "insufficient" justification. That's $310 million out of a budget of $1.6 billion, and who knows what the auditors missed.

But of course President-select Barack Obama is bright enough to grasp the nuances, which clearly is why he is a fan of Sir Mark, who after his tenure at the UN went on to become Britain's Minister for Africa, Asia and the United Nations. In February 2008, Samantha Power revealed that Obama came to admire Sir Mark while he was deputy secretary-general of the United Nations:

“He was really taken with him,” says Power, in what will undoubtedly be viewed by American conservatives as a desperately bad sign. “It’s a relationship that has persisted and they have talked a number of times since.”

I do not think that conservatives should be the only ones to feel alarm. The British have been screwing around in Africa and Asia for how many centuries? And they've gone from making mess to mess. As such, Sir Mark and his sorry work at the United Nations are an advertisement for everything wrong with Britain's attempts to play God. If he's now to be joined by an American President with a God complex, that's another way of describing the road to Hell.

But enough bad news. John Batchelor notes on his blog that Cuba's good climate and the exercise regimen and healthy diet at Gitmo have worked wonders for mass murderer Khalid Sheik Mohammed's appearance.

A note about John's show on WABC: If you've recently gotten no sound or wall-to-wall advertisements when you've tuned into WABC online to listen to John Bachelor's Sunday show, that has to do with football. WABC airs New York Jets games, which sometimes bumps John's show. Here's the Jets schedule.

I think tonight's Batchelor show will air in full on WABC but for future reference, the workaround is to listen to the first two hours of the New York portion of the show on Washington, DC's WMAL radio online, then either pick up the podcast for the third hour the next day at John's website, or listen to the online KSFO rebroadcast of the show on Sunday night from 10:00 PM - 1:00 AM Eastern Time (7:00 - 10:00 PM Pacific Time).

As I've mentioned before the KSFO show out of San Francisco is not the one that airs in the same time slot on Los Angeles KFI radio; John's Sunday show is bicoastal: the first three hours from New York's WABC and affiliates WMAL and KSFO radio; the second three hours from KFI out of Los Angeles.

Call and Response

"Pundita -
Way back in 2005 you did a post mentioning the phrase "you've got my goat." You offered the best explanation to date I've found [for how the saying came about], but can you tell me where you got the information about the stolen goat trial?
Thanks,
Kelly"

Dear Kelly:
So. You do not believe my explanation that the possum member of Pundita's foreign policy team supplied the information. Well then; I'll just have come up with an explanation that makes sense to you.

The explanation is that I had no idea how the saying arose. So I made up the story of the stolen goat trial.

Yet it's as you observe; the gist of the story makes sense. If I didn't know how the saying arose, how did I manage to concoct a story that probably comes close to the mark? Because I know human nature and I have a fair idea of how trials were conducted in the old days and how serious the issue of a stolen goat was -- and still is, in several parts of the world. From those skeins I wove a tale to explain how the saying "Now you've got my goat" arose and how an accusation about a goat launched the eras of armed conquest.

I created the tale to demonstrate a point to the young man whose questions called forth my story. The man was an American. He was writing to ask how best to understand democracy from the viewpoint of peoples who don't have much experience with that form of government and how Americans could better explain democracy to others.

The answer is "call and response." The way you realize how people understand anything is to call out their understanding with your questions and devise answers and more questions in response. This simple method allows you to dialogue from both the perspective of the person's question and your own storehouse of knowledge.

The result might not make it into a textbook on democratic government, might not be entirely correct. But there is no feature of democracy that is completely foreign to anyone -- a point I stressed in my response to the reader's question. Call and response is the oldest and best way of teaching and understanding deathless principles: the question always calls forth the response, so of course the answer always strikes a chord.

Later, when the questioner has built up a core of understanding from his or her perspective and thus asks more elaborate questions, then is the time for technically precise explanations and textbooks.

This musing about call and response returns me to my favorite topic at this time, which is Nils Gilman's book, Mandarins of the Future: Modernization Theory in Cold War America.

The great tragedy that Gilman's history reveals is that during the Cold War, the U.S. government and its foreign policy instruments, such as the World Bank, were talking at cross-purposes to peoples who had no experience with democracy.

The U.S. institutions (and later their European counterparts) were talking to poor countries about how to develop into a "modern" state, not a democratic one. So by the turn of this century the Western governments looked around and said, 'Omigod. Many of those people over there in Africa and the Middle East will never understand democracy.'

Well, if you spend close to a half century focused on getting people to modernize their economy within a nondemocratic framework, don't be surprised if they end up with a kind of creepy socialism that's a fig leaf for a dictatorship.

For decades, the way we treated others was not through call and response but through 'operating' on them, in the manner of a surgeon treating an ill person. The approach was that the poor countries suffered first and foremost from the 'handicap' of backwardness, so to cure them they had to be modernized. The catch is that the approach short-circuited the kind of dialogues that establish an understanding of the democratic process.

So here we are today, with President Bush's Democracy Doctrine a smoking ruin and the authoritarian Singapore model of government in the ascendency. And with many Americans complaining that Barack Obama was not so much elected as selected. That would be no surprise because it was George Soros who masterminded Obama's passage to the White House.

For decades the U.S. government had sent Mr Soros to stage-manage 'democratic' elections in ex-Soviet regions that placed hand-picked candidates in power. So all that Mr Soros would need do, to ensure Mr Obama got selected, was deploy the same techniques on Americans he used on citizens of other countries.

I note he tried the same thing with the 2004 U.S. presidential election, but he was still on a learning curve about the pesky free press and alternate media in the USA. Second time around he had the media aced.

Thus, the truism that how you treat others is returned to you in kind.

Where was I? Ah yes, the goat.

Thank you for your question, which gives me the excuse to republish the story of how a goat launched humanity's wars of conquest:

July 28, 2005

The following email arrived in my inbox with the title The Mysteries of Democracy.

"Greetings Pundita,
My question relates to how we can better understand democracy from the point of view of people who do not have a whole lot of experience with it.

Niels Bohr, one of the giants of 20th century physics, once said that anyone who is not shocked by the implications of quantum mechanics does not understand it. He said this because at its most basic level, reality, according to quantum mechanics, does not behave in a deterministic fashion like Newtonian mechanics. You can only determine the probability of events at the atomic level, such as the position of an electron. Einstein himself had deep reservations about this saying "God does not play dice with the universe."

So my question is can we say the same of democracy, that anyone who is not shocked by its implications does not truly understand it? When I think about it just as a practical matter it does not appear obvious why anyone would use a system for which there is a significant degree of randomness in the choosing of its leaders and crafting of its legislation.

Indeed most of Europe's ruling elite in the days of our Founding Founders assumed it would end in chaos as they hoped our Civil War would prove. How can we better understand this process ourselves and explain to others why and under what conditions democracies succeed?
Greg in Orlando"

Dear Greg:
Ah, but there is not randomness for humans. This was explained to me many moons ago by Guru David, after I came across the very same comments by Bohr and Einstein that you mention. I was quite perturbed by the discussion and spent days pondering myself in circles until I recalled why there are gurus.

Guru David handed me a pile of computer printout pages that weighed several pounds and which contained nothing but row upon row of digits. He explained that the printout was the result of a random numbers generator software program. Then he asked me to study the pages to see if I could find any patterns among the randomly generated numbers. At first I saw none but within moments I reported in excitement that was finding all sorts of patterns.

Guru David replied, "The patterns you perceive are supplied by your mind, not the program. If you were a mathematician you could find many more patterns. So even if God is playing dice with the universe, humans can hunker down and study the rolls of the dice and from that find patterns, and from that find order in the universe."

Upon hearing of the Bush Democracy Doctrine, "Brother" Moammar Qaddafi, as he prefers to be called since getting more in touch with his African side, snapped,
"Africans don't need democracy. They need food and medicine. Besides, Arabs invented democracy."

He went on to say that the word 'democracy' has it roots in an Arab word meaning the people sitting together.

He's probably right because Arabs invented everything else. They had no choice, if you stop and think about it. In the old days, if your caravan got stuck in a sandstorm in the Kalahari you didn't tell an African chief, "Sorry, your shipment of dates has been rendered sandy goo due to circumstances beyond my control."

No. You invented the world's first miracle-ingredient exfoliating scrub, guaranteed to restore the glow of youth to even the most tired complexion.

(I interject it's a pity that summary execution no longer accompanies failure to please the customer; this has diverted much human creativity into making excuses instead of inventions.)

You are mystified because you're confusing a method of selection with the chore of assigning responsibility. The latter was never much of a problem in the old days because we could blame everything that went wrong on the gods, who were full of foibles and whose IQ was often in the idiot range.

Then came The Trouble, which generally we speak of only in whispers here in Pundita-land, but I will tell you a little about it. The Trouble started over a stolen goat; to be more precise, testimony about a stolen goat.

Incidentally this is where the expression, "Now you've got my goat" came from. And, more darkly, it explains how the mild mannered and frankly addle-brained goat came to be associated with the Devil.

In the old days the primary function of the chief was to be a judge -- to settle disputes that arose in the tribe. The Arabs hadn't gotten around yet to inventing fingerprinting so when it came to making a ruling on criminal matters the chief had to rely on oral testimony and brain sweat to determine guilt or innocence.

This duty wasn't so hard during the really old days because the life of a nomad was short, which trimmed the tribe's population. But once humans settled down and farmed, our numbers greatly increased. What this meant for the chief is that instead of sitting through the testimony of say, five witnesses, he could hear from hundreds.

Thus, The Trouble started:

It came to pass that the only respite chiefs got from ruling on cases from the bench was weddings, funerals, religious holidays and war.

However, there wasn't much war, and war in those days was rarely armed conflict. Instead, disputing tribes would paint themselves to look fierce then hop up and down and make screeching noises at each other. (I note this atavistic custom survives in the quaint ritual that anti-globalists perform outside the IMF and World Bank headquarters each Spring.) Whichever tribe managed to hop the highest and screech the loudest won the war.

Then one day, after weeks spent listening to 871 witnesses give testimony about a stolen goat, a chief turned to his court clerk and said, "Death in battle is preferable to this."

"Why not try adding another religious holiday?" whispered the clerk helpfully.

But as anyone who has visited old parts of the world can intuit, by that era chiefs desperate to get off the bench had already added so many religious holidays to the docket that tribal business moved at a snail's pace.

"No. I will gather the hotheads and travel far distant to fight a war."

This was unheard of. Wars, to the extent they occurred, were with neighbors. What else were neighbors for?

"On what grounds will you declare war on strangers?" asked the perplexed clerk.

"I don't know," muttered the chief. "Maybe I'll find a strange tribe and call their gods stupid."

"But that is Taboo," gasped the clerk. "It is only allowed to call our own gods stupid!"

"Exactly," replied the chief grimly.

And so it began. All these millennia of bloody war and conquest -- all started by a goat who wandered off on his own accord to munch on some brambles.

This according to the possum member of my foreign policy team, whose accounts of her clan's recollections stretch back even long before the time of humans.

So here we are today. Having reasoned ourselves into a corner via the Bigger Fish Tale method, few are lucky enough to have the IQ of gods to blame for our troubles. The rest have an All Knowing, All Seeing God whose intelligence is so vast as to be immeasurable.

The downside is that we can't blame a know-it-all for any situation we consider to be a mess. No, we must find in the mess a divine plan. This still leaves us with the problem of assigning blame and responsibility for dealing with parts of the divine plan that are not pleasant for humans.

Here we come to another snag: there are now too many of us to allow for blaming a single person or small group for failure to adequately deal with a messy aspect of the divine plan. This means that today more of us must share in the responsibility for managing our societies.

This observation is so self-evident that one wonders why it's ignored in favor of hideously complex arguments for democracy. To understand this part, we would need to jump back a few chapters in history. But in one sentence, trust French philosophers to make something highly complex and abstract out of something childishly simple and concrete.

Thus, there is much mystery about the philosophy of democracy. But democracy is as old as tribes, as simple as people sitting around a fire and deciding between them how to handle problems that arise in their midst. Brother Qaddafi's remarks allude to this.

However, Brother Qaddafi does not take his argument far enough. It is true the Africans need food and medicine. Yet unless more of them take responsibility for governing themselves, the needs will be a bottomless pit while they go on looking for an elite or World Bank project to blame for the lack.

That is how to explain democracy to peoples who swear with their fingers crossed behind their back that they don't understand it. That is explanation, American-style.

Why is it so hard for Americans to come up with American-style explanations? Because American academia and think tanks are so steeped in European views that we don't even have an American lexicon for discussing foreign policy, much less democracy.

The Coen Brothers have made film after film in which they try to plumb the Mystery of America. This is in the attempt to explain how a bunch of farmers, tinkerers and salesmen created history's greatest nation.

Not by democracy alone did we do it. Our founding fathers worked their tails off. They were traders, farmers, accountants, inventors, soldiers; whatever they took from European philosophy, it was filtered through the American work ethic. So Americans arrived at the acceptance of democracy not through abstractions but through a "what works best" approach that was grounded in the experiential.

But Americans ignore their history, their own experiences, when they explain democracy to the rest of the world. Until we develop our own way of articulating things, we will keep finding ourselves sucked into philosophical debates that distract from our experience with democracy.

With regard to your observation about the randomness of choosing politicians in a democracy, I recall a true story about President George W. Bush's meeting with a constituent: When Bush inquired as to what he did for a living, the man replied that he sold compressed air. Bush shot back, "We're in the same business."

The system of American democratic government is not automatic -- it needs tending to -- but the system of checks and balances works well enough over time that individuals who represent the system are not as important as the gestalt.

We look for campaigning politicians to convey that they will give us what we want and be really good at explaining why they can't when they don't. That is an expectation of leaders that is as old as tribes. Thus, the order underlying the seeming randomness of democratic politics.

As for crafting legislation, those who closely follow doings on the Hill can tell you there is nothing random about reciprocity and the art of compromise. If you greatly familiarize yourself with the goals of a presidential administration and with the major congressional players and their pet projects, it is easy to perceive order behind the way legislation turns out.

Help! Help! HELP! No wait: Fire! FIRE!

Four years. Four years of the Chicago Mob in the White House. Oh God, I'm a good American. I don't deserve this.

Why did that stupid idiot McCain get involved with that fiend Randy Scheunemann, making it impossible for any knowledgeable person to vote for him? In the first 100 days of his administration a McCain president would have put together a tough policy toward Russia, which means that on the 101st day we would have been at war with Russia.

Of course Scheunemann didn't make that announcement in the United States. He announced the plan in Georgia. No I don't have the link to the newspaper interview. I ate it.

Don't look at me that way. What was I supposed to tell you? Don't vote for McCain so Barack Obama and the entire Chicago mob plus every fiend from the Clinton administrations that was pried out of the State Department, the CIA, the World Bank and the Pentagon can come back -- plus Zbigniew Brzezinski and George Soros? Plus the return of the Russian mobs to Washington dinners? Plus the wife heading up State?

This wasn't a presidential election, this was the plot of Jurassic Park, only with the dinosaurs cornering the last of the humans on the island.

Oh why did we have to choose between a pit of snakes and a pit of spiders? Is this our punishment for going off the Gold Standard? God save us all.

Okay, I'll calm down enough to show you what got me hysterical so we can move to the South Pole together. I'm just not calm enough to add all the links that John Batchelor provided to his post, shown below, so you'll have to go to his site to pick them up if you want them:

Rahm Wobbles, Tony Whines

"He asks me for the Fifth CD thing..."

Blagojeviching may have swept in another suspect today when Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel misspoke at a reporter's questions. A Chicago Sun-Times gumshoe caught up with Emanuel in order to ask about the Blago tape.

Is Rahm Emanuel the "Obama adviser" mentioned by Blago on the tape? -- when Blago was characterizing a conversation he had already had with an "Obama adviser" about naming Obama crony Valerie Jarret to the seat?

Blago is recorded saying on the phone, "He ([nnamed Obama adviser] asks me for the Fifth CD thing. I want it to be in his head..."

Mr. Emanuel is most recently the congressman from the 5th CD of Illinois in the heart of Cook County. The reporter's questions were logical. Mr. Emanuel was not cooperative. The non-cooperation took place in the lobby of Mayor Daley's City Hall, where Mr. Emanuel aimed to attend a concert given by his children and their school.

The quotes in the exchange, recorded by a digital MP3 machine, are guaranteed to call attention to Mr. Emanuel as unprepared and in need of a time out:

"You're wasting your time. I'm not going to say a word to you. I'm going to do this with my children. Don't do that. I'm a father. I have two kids. I'm not going to do it."

At this point we are told that Mr. Emanuel "pushed the reporter's digital recorder away." Yes. A scene from an opera. The suspect caught in the headlights. Does a President-Elect's chief of staff refuse to answer questions? Yes. Does he plead fatherhood as the excuse? Yes. But does this chief of staff escape a mob of reporters at his next availability all repeating the same question: Are you the Obama advisor? And what does it mean "the Fifth CD thing?"

And how do you explain that Mr. Obama says that none of his staff spoke to Blago about "any deals related to this seat?" Did you speak to Blago? About Valerie Jarret? And so forth. The opera builds to a duet and then an aria. Rahm wobbles in his place.

This only gets better as Blago refuses to go away. The detail emerged today that CNN reported on air on Monday night December 8, the night before the Blago arrest, that Valerie Jarret had withdrawn her name from consideration. Peculiar timing.

Did the Obama team get a heads-up of the arrest and tape and so move to get Ms. Jarret out of the line of fire? It didn't work. Because now the Blago remark about "the Fifth CD thing" and Valerie Jarret combined with the bizarre panicky moment by Mr. Emanuel at City Hall in this news cycle must lead to a complete reexamination of every conversation in the Obama transition team about the Senate seat.

The President-Elect can only plead innocence, ignorance, frustration, confusion, exasperation. While still in Chicago, Mr. Obama cannot get away from Chicago's unusual conduct of government; and now Chicago is going with him to Washington in the form of all those grand juries and FBI questions and transcripts to come.

And what does anyone guess Blago and Emanuel were talking about, if they were talking, when mentioning the Fifth CD and the Senate seat? Trade? Barter? Help? Names? Fatherhood? The imagination overheats. Deep breath.

Tony "...not one breath of fresh air..."

Meanwhile Blagojeviching makes it unlikely to impossible that Tony Rezko will ever again enjoy the simple joys of fatherhood such as Mr. Emanuel now finds incompatible with public service and candor. Tony has remained since June in solitary confinement at the Federal Loop jail of the Metropolitan Correction Center as he awaits sentencing for his multiple corruption convictions.

The delay is because Tony has been talking in detail to the Feds about his life of crime as a fixer for Blago and others. A small piece of the indictment of Blago points to a bribery scheme with Mercy Hospital in 2003 that involved Tony Rezko and the general genius of pay-for-play. Speculation by wags is that eventually much more of Tony's years of fixing bribes and pay-offs for Blago will be part of the prosecution.

Patrick "Untouchable" Fitzgerald moved to arrest Blago on Tuesday because of what he called a "crime spree," however the indictment shows that Fitzgerald has already assembled years of crimes by Blago and pals.

Now we are told that Tony is unhappy in his solitary cell, and we are told this by one of his two teenage sons, Adam. "Our main concern is he has not had one breath if fresh air since June," says Adam, "and he's not seen one ray of sunlight."

At first I thought this was sad, and then I remembered that sons like Adam do not invent complaints about their father's fate. They pass on what the father wants passed on. Tony is using his sons (below from last June as Tony breathed his last fresh air in sunshine and then surrendered to jail) to whine for him.

Why and why now? Since Tony will never breathe free again, and sunshine in a Chicago snowy winter is relative, and he faces a decade or more in jail and that was just the first trial, this can all only mean that Tony is looking out for Tony just now.

Something has spooked him. Blagojeviching? Is there more on the recordings about Tony? Does Tony now have to say much more than before because it is no longer enough to give up the governor, he his busted already. What else does Tony have to trade? Another big politician? The imagination overheats. Deep breath.

SEIU denies "SEIU Official" mentioned in criminal charges against Blagojevich is SEIU President Andy Stern

Steve Diamond has questions about that denial. For background, reference December 9 Pundita post Steve Diamond on Blagojevich's proposal to Service Employees International Union.

A note about Nils Gilman's "Mandarins of the Future: Modernization Theory in Cold War America"

Reference the December 10 post. I should have mentioned that Mandarins of the Future was published in January 2004 then published in paperback in February 2007.

At first I was shocked to learn how long the book had been out. But on reflection it’s no great wonder that the book did not get as much as attention as it merited when it was published, given the era, which seems a thousand years ago considering all that's happened since then. It was at the time when the Iraq expedition, and all the expectations that went with it, were falling apart, and Iran was taking center stage.

But to everything there is a season. I think that those of us who have kept informed about the struggle around the globe for democracy, the spread of transnational terrorism and crime, and the scaling back of expectations that globalization would solve all the world’s ills, are much better prepared than in 2004 to absorb the history covered in Mandarins, and its lessons.

Nils Gilman on black globalization, the world as it is today, and how it got that way

Here's the link to the video of Nils Gilman's November speech, given at the European Futurists Conference, about the global illicit economy.

Last week I wrote that his discussion about the politics of black or "deviant" globalization, as he terms it, is the best overview of the security challenges in the modern era, but I was hedging. Nils Gilman's observations have profound implications for all aspects of U.S. foreign policy, defense planning, and even U.S. domestic economics. So at this point I will go so far as to say that one can't understand the present era without grasping the concepts he lays out.

If, after listening to his speech, you think he dynamites several articles of faith about globalization, wait'll you read his Mandarins of the Future: Modernization Theory in Cold War America.

Mandarins is mind-blowing -- and the more you know about development and aid programs launched by the wealthy nations to assist the world's poorest during the past 30 years, the more stunning the revelations.

The book provides the first history of the progression of ideas that laid the groundwork for development of poor, postcolonial countries by the World Bank Group's IDA and copycat institutions; as such, it is indispensable for understanding how the world arrived at the juncture it is at today.

Long after modernization theory was discredited it continued to shape how institutions in wealthy countries viewed societies in poor countries and administered to them. Not all the resulting development/aid programs have been 'bad,' by any means. But the intellectual constructs that supported them were just that, so when met with the cold light of events in this past decade they were as castles of sand meeting the ocean's tides.

The above is another way of saying that a study of Gilman's work is the best talisman against the fear that the world is going to hell in a hand basket. One finds assurances within the pages of the book that the world is just doing what it's always done: going its own way, raucously independent of how social scientists and economists think it should behave -- a point shored by Gilman's study of black globalization.

I warn that there is one terribly depressing aspect of Gilman's book: he explains with great precision how it came to pass that the world's longest-running democracy -- the United States of America -- gave support to several dictatorial regimes. The answer, which culminates in Chapter 5, is surprising and does not fit neatly into the standard explanations of anti-communism and Containment policy.

What you learn from Gilman's research is that intellectuals built a sort of tower of premises that undisturbed by facts on the ground kept sprouting more floors, and much to the detriment of democracy.

I note that much of the edifice remains intact -- bolstered by the sort of things, such as trade and defense deals, which so inflame today's Leftists, Doves and Paleoconservatives. But Gilman's history makes clear that without a precise understanding of how the tower was erected it's been devilishly hard to dismantle it. Thus, the many "democracy stage shows" of the post-Soviet era, which I complained about so vociferously during the first year of this blog.

If cynics argue that knowing exactly how the U.S. came to support dictators will not halt the practice, they should think twice. Mandarins of the Future is mind-blowing because it demonstrates beyond argument that it was ideas about the best way to improve the lot of the poorest nations -- not the Cold War, not trade considerations or a desire for global hegemony -- which led the U.S. to support dictators.

As revolutions in thinking created the rationalization for democracy's support of dictators, so revolutions in thinking are the only way to undo it. Any doubts on this score, read Mandarins of the Future to witness the awesome power of ideas that within a relatively short time came to shape entire regions of the world.

The caveat is that the edifices of thought that Nils Gilman examines have been so hard to grasp because their study has been hindered by a screen of strong emotions -- emotions associated with one ideology or another or one political, economic or foreign policy viewpoint or another. That means you will need to muster some of the author's dispassion to finally see that which has been hidden for decades from public view.
*****************************
UPDATE DECEMBER 11
I should have mentioned that Mandarins of the Future was published in January 2004 then published in paperback in February 2007. At first I was shocked to learn how long the book had been out. But on reflection it’s no great wonder that the book did not get as much as attention as it merited when it was published given the era, which seems a thousand years ago considering all we’ve learned since then. It was at the time when the Iraq expedition, and all the expectations that went with it, were falling apart, and Iran was taking center stage.

But to everything there is a season. I think that those of us who have kept informed about the struggle around the globe for democracy, the progress of transnational terrorism and crime, and the scaling back of expectations that globalization would solve all the world’s ills, are much better prepared than in 2004 to absorb the history covered in Mandarins and its lessons.

Steve Diamond on Blagojevich's proposal to Service Employees International Union

Given that Andy Stern and James Hoffa have been doing kowtow to China's government, Pundita's ears perked when I heard today that Gov. Blagojevich tried to strike an unsavory deal with Stern's SEIU.

For readers who are trying to fathom how U.S. labor unions got involved with the CCP, see Steve Diamond's April 25, 2008 On "democratic" centralism: Stern's illusion and democracy's nightmare and his May 29, 2008 Labor's Appeasers: Teamsters' Hoffa backs down on China visit.

Today, Professor Diamond writes:

Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich met with an unnamed official of the Service Employees International Union to discuss a possible pay off of the Governor in return for his appointment of an unnamed individual to fill out the remaining two years of President-elect Obama's now vacant U.S. Senate seat, according to a criminal complaint filed this week in an Illinois federal court. The SEIU Official is identified as an "emissary" of the potential Senate appointee in the complaint.

Politico.com's Ben Smith reported today that the unnamed SEIU official was Andy Stern, the head of SEIU. It is widely believed that the unnamed individual is Valerie Jarrett, a close senior advisor of Obama.

The conversation with Blagojevich revolved around the possibility that Blagojevich would be named to head a non profit organization in return for the appointment of Jarrett. The conversation occurred as part of an effort by Blagojevich to "monetize" the appointment of the new U.S. Senator in order to provide for the governor and his family after he left office.

The complaint charges Blagojevich and an aide, John Harris, with wire fraud, mail fraud and corrupt solicitation, all crimes under federal law which carry a possibility of substantial prison terms. Harris and Blagojevich were arrested this morning, arraigned in a federal court in Chicago and released on bail. They were asked to surrender their passports.

Other conversations detailed in the criminal complaint indicate that Blagojevich explored the possibility of becoming head of Change to Win, a union alliance that includes SEIU. The current head of Change to Win, Anna Burger, was an active supporter of the Obama campaign.

In a press conference today, U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald described the scheme as follows:

"At one point, he [Blagojevich] proposed a three-way deal -- that a cushy union job would be given to him at a higher rate of pay where he could make money.

"In exchange, he thought that the union might get benefits from the president-elect, and therefore, the president-elect might get the candidate his choice."

Fitzgerald said the complaint makes no allegations about Obama himself.

Fitzgerald went on to say in response to press questions:

"[I]f you read the complaint carefully, one of the conversations describes how the job that Governor Blagojevich wanted for himself with the union couldn't be just given to him by the union because they already have people doing that job.

"So, when you say you want a job for four years; you want a salary of about $300,000, and you basically want to work on behalf of a union and cost them $1.2 million to basically add no value, because people are already doing your job, and part of that is an exchange, where -- an exchange, if you don't get that job, no one's getting the appointed Senate seat, we're comfortable in the law that someone who schemes to do that has broken the law.

"And we're not trying to criminalize people making political horse trades on policies or that sort of thing. But it is criminal when people are doing it for their personal enrichment and they're doing it in a way that is, in this case, clearly criminal."

Later, Fitzgerald said in response to a question about which union was involved:

"[T]he scheme that he had in mind with co-defendant Harris was a job with a coalition called "Change to Win," which was affiliated with SEIU, which is the Service Employees International Union. And that was their, you know, their scheme to sell the seat in that three-way exchange.

"That never happened. That scheme did not come to fruition. He curses later that it didn't happen. But the one being discussed was the SEIU union."

According to the complaint, the SEIU Official agreed with regard to the non profit entity to "put that flag up and see where it goes." Blagojevich later said, according to the complaint, that he told the SEIU Official to "broach the idea" to the unnamed Senate candidate.

It is not clear from the complaint why the SEIU Official agreed to consider the idea or whether he did so after the phone call. One possibility is that while some involved in the scheme thought that a non profit entity would be too closely linked to Obama that Blagojevich was unsure that a job with Change To Win would be secure. Thus, Blagojevich pressed for a non profit entity that he could head up since it would be around when he was no longer governor in two years time.

According to the complaint Blagojevich said "he likes the 501(c)(4) idea because he knows it will be there in two years when he is no longer Governor, whereas Change to Win might not be."

That might refer to the fact there is some discussion in labor circles that Change To Win might re-join the AFL-CIO in the post-election period and thus a position promised to Blagojevich now with Change To Win would not be kept.

It is not clear why an SEIU Official would have been an emissary for the potential Senate appointee to the Illinois governor.

SEIU has denied any wrongdoing by the union or any union official. Change to Win issued the following statement this afternoon:

“No one connected with Change to Win ever considered, discussed or promised any position at Change to Win to Governor Blagojevich, his staff or his advisors. In the affidavit released by the United States Attorney, a position at Change to Win is discussed only in conversations between the governor and his advisors. The first time Change to Win learned of any of the matters raised in the criminal complaint was with today’s public release of the affidavit.”

Stern is a powerful but controversial labor leader. SEIU has been on the defensive recently because of charges related to violations of internal union democracy of union members. In addition, Stern is part of a controversial effort to establish ties between the American labor movement and the Chinese communist government's labor body, the All China Federation of Trade Unions. SEIU raised $1.7 million to support the political campaigns of Blagojevich.

The U.S. labor movement as a whole, including the AFL-CIO, a competing labor federation, spent hundreds of millions of dollars during the recent election and was seen as a key source of support for Obama.

Recent appointments to the incoming Administration, however, have disappointed labor as they include individuals like economist Larry Summers who are viewed as hostile to some policies favored by organized labor.

Chicago Masala

Sahib Obama quick but U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald quicker. From John Batchelor's Untouchable:

[S]ince Rezko started talking there has been the moody music that the Obama team would make Fitzgerald go away as soon as it took control of Justice. There were promises, there were editorials, but no one has been certain that the Obama landslide wouldn't provide the cover needed to promote Fitzgerald out of Chicago. Now that is all moot. The perp walk by Blago today means that Fitzgerald has the TV, the muscle, the mood to go on forever. Untouchable.

I hope so.

Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich arrested by feds and charged with corruption (UPDATED 3:35 PM ET)

3:35 PM ET
RBO is staying on top of this story (now dubbed BlagoGate) as it unfolds at breakneck speed through the day. Check RBO frequently for updates and new posts. See the site for video of Fitzgerald's presser. Also:

A RBO regular is combing through the 70-plus page federal criminal corruption complaint against Ill. Gov. Rod Blagojevich and his chief of staff, John Harris, that was revealed today by U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald’s office. RBO will post that information and any other speculation on the identities of those “named” in the document as soon as it becomes available.

Some identities have already been nailed.
******************************************
This has been on the way for many months. RBO has all the news and background.

Will Chicago, and Illinois, finally get cleaned up? That's the plan, and the first trial of political fixer and Barack Obama mentor Tony Rezko and now the governor's arrest suggest the plan is going ahead, no matter what the cost to the Illinois political machine. But Illinois has been cleaned up before and yet the pervasive corruption, centered in Chicago, soon returned.

For a reason I can't clearly articulate Chicago reminds me of Phnom Penh. It's as if the corruption stems from a decay that seeped into the buildings and sidewalks, the very air. Chicago, as with Phnom Penh, is a city of ghosts. Maybe Chicago needs an exorcist as much as a crusading federal prosecutor.

Back to the trees

I assume the poster accompanying RBO's Progressive Whine and Cheese Party is the work of Freedom Fairy. FF should think about bringing out a coffee table edition of her Barack Obama posters.

Meanwhile, Uppity Woman is terribly suspicious of a Car Czar.

And over at Global Labor, Steve Diamond has news for anyone who's fooled by Barack Obama's centrist fig leaf and progressive patter. The Obama administration will not be about centrism or progressivism. As Steve has explained until he is blue in the face, it is about the racialization of American politics.

But I say Steve is wrong to conclude that the American work force is headed for balkanization. That's just a stopover. We're headed for the trees. There, we will hail each other by the particulars of our victimhood:

Ugga Ugh! Good morning, Black-Slave Descendent-Fat-Male!

Ugga! Good morning, White-Old Female-Autistic!

Ugga Ugh to you, Blind-Hispanic-Needing Affordable Housing!

Ugga! Single Female-No High School-With Five Children!

I remember an Indian expat worker asking me into his office, then wordlessly tossing a thick file across his desk. Inside the file were applications for an intern program in the USA. I skimmed through the papers. All applicants 30 or under; each applicant had at least two PhDs. I looked at the educational establishments, at the places of birth, current residences and the brief biography accompanying each application. The applicants were from 'Third World' countries; virtually all had come from hardscrabble-poor circumstances.

Finally I raised my eyes from the file and asked, "How long do you think Americans have left?"

He shrugged. "Maybe a quarter century."

The year of that conversation was 1984.

The United States of America has so far escaped the consequences of the inexorable law of Survival of the Fittest because the floor for the price of oil is fixed by a monopoly and the price is designated in US dollars.

What this means is that our ever-escalating demands for an ever-growing list of rights have been footed by the world's poorest oil-importing nations. They are carrying the American citizen and his idea of a fair shake on their backs.

What will happen when they shrug? After we've finished spreading around what's left of our wealth, free fall.

All connected, whether we like it or not

From John Batchelor's discussion of tin-cup rattling yesterday on Capitol Hill by U.S. automakers:

Spoke Thursday 4 with Peter Kent, Minister of Foreign Affairs (Americas) for Canada's Conservative Party, and learned that the Canadian government is preparing worst-case scenarios in the event of a General Motors bankruptcy filing at year's end. [...]

Major shift in U.S. approach to warfare. Will U.S. foreign policy keep up? (UPDATED 12:40 PM ET)

Just in time for the 26/11 era, which over three days of horror in Mumbai superceded the 9/11 era, the Pentagon has approved a major policy directive that elevates irregular warfare to an equal footing with traditional combat.

From the Washington Post report today (H/T Iraq Slogger):

[...] The directive, signed by Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England on Monday, requires the Pentagon to step up its capabilities across the board to fight unconventionally, such as by working with foreign security forces, surrogates and indigenous resistance movements to shore up fragile states, extend the reach of U.S. forces into denied areas or battle hostile regimes.

The policy, a result of more than a year of debate in the defense establishment, is part of a broader overhaul of the U.S. military's role as the threat of large-scale combat against other nations' armies has waned and new dangers have arisen from shadowy non-state actors, such as terrorists that target civilian populations.

"The U.S. has considerable overmatch in traditional capabilities . . . and more and more adversaries have realized it's better to take us on in an asymmetric fashion," said Michael G. Vickers, assistant secretary of defense for special operations/low-intensity conflict and interdependent capabilities, and a chief architect of the policy.

Designed to institutionalize lessons the U.S. military has learned -- often painfully -- in Afghanistan and Iraq since 2001, the policy aims to prepare the military for the most likely future conflicts and to prevent the type of mistakes made in the post-Vietnam War era, when hard-won skills in counterinsurgency atrophied.

The new, 12-page directive states that irregular warfare "is as strategically important as traditional warfare."

Defined as "a violent struggle among state and non-state actors for legitimacy and influence over the relevant population(s)," irregular warfare "favors indirect and asymmetric approaches . . . to erode an adversary's power, influence, and will," the directive states.

A major thrust of the policy is for U.S. troops to do less of the fighting themselves and instead build the capabilities of foreign militaries and security forces.

Indeed, Vickers said he envisions that the Pentagon's primary vehicle for carrying out irregular warfare operations will be a global network -- already underway -- made up of the U.S. and foreign militaries and other government personnel in scores of countries with which the United States is not at war. The network is designed to wage "steady state" counterterrorism operations. The directive also requires the Pentagon to develop capabilities to conduct larger-scale irregular campaigns, such as those in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The goal of the network, Vickers said in a recent speech, is ambitious: "to create a persistent, ubiquitous presence against our adversaries . . . and essentially to smother them over time." [...]

On paper, the shift in policy is inarguable. I'm just a concerned that unless U.S. foreign policy thinking undergoes a similarly radical change, the new military approach will be the proverbial square peg in a round hole.

In what I think is the best overview of the security challenges in the modern era (H/T John Robb), Nils Gilman writes:

[...] The underlying political process associated with deviant ["black-market"] globalization is the disaggregation of the "sovereignty bundle" of powers associated with the high modernist liberal state. In many places the state is no longer (if, indeed it ever was) the de facto governing authority, in the sense that it does not control the delivery of fundamental political goods, such as security, infrastructure, education, and health care.

Different pieces of that bundle are being parceled out to (or, more commonly, grabbed by) a variety of actors: tribal leaders, gangsters, NGOs, religious leaders, transnational and local corporations, mercenaries, ethnic militias, and so on. The particular combinations vary from place to place, and there is a great deal of path dependency.

In many places, the same actors who control the resource flows associated with deviant globalization are also de facto providers of "state-like services" such as security or infrastructure. And naturally enough, the common people who rely on these providers tend to align their political loyalties accordingly.

What's new in this situation is that in many cases these "political actors" have no interest in actually becoming a state or taking over an existing state. They’re happy to wield state-like authority and power, while enriching themselves via dubious business operations. [...]

As this new class of post-state political actors takes over functions formerly monopolized by states, they and their constituents lose interest in the state. From a political perspective, therefore, deviant globalization leads to (and also is facilitated by) the proliferation of jurisdictionally ambiguous spaces where sovereignty as it has traditionally been conceived simply no longer exists. It’s a self-reinforcing dynamic.

Western pundits and politicians like to describe these sorts of spaces with highly misleading terms such as "failing states" or "undergoverned zones." The implication of such terminology is that the people living there want to be just like us, but that somehow they're unable to get there. But such a belief is, if I may be blunt, a narcissistic delusion masquerading as political science.

Contrary to what the bien-pensants claim, most so-called failing states don't want to get fixed. In many of these zones, the local powers that be are quite content with these novel, informal political arrangements. It allows them to make fabulous amounts of money running globe-spanning commercial empires, while being recognized as the "big men" within the communities that they care about. They have no desire to attain the West's ideal of an inclusive, welfare-providing modern state.

These guys are "postmodern" in the sense that they realize that the West's form of modernity will never include them, and they're charting an entirely different path. It's very different from the classic revolutionary movements of the twentieth century.[...]

So, put another way, my concern is that the "smothering" approach to dealing with adversaries tends to view them as rogue actors or dictators, whereas in fact they're viewed by those in their regions as chieftains. Unless U.S. foreign policy, and in particular development policy, recognizes this, waging "irregular" warfare as a means of nullifying non-state actors is at best an exercise in lopping off a hydra's head.

***************************************************
UPDATE 12:40 PM ET

I've received permission from Nils Gilman to crosspost the entire analysis I quote from above. The analysis is actually excerpts from an interview. I can't emphasize enough the importance of his observations. See also his observations in the comment section accompanying his post on the interview.

Saturday, August 16, 2008
The Politics of Deviant Globalization

I'm speaking in a couple of months at the European Futurists' Conference on the topic of "deviant globalization." I just did an interview with them regarding the contents of my talk, the best parts of which I excerpt below:

Compared to the legal economy, the illicit economy has grown at twice the rate. What factors explain this fast growth?

Smuggling, trafficking, and transnational criminal organizations have always existed. But with the exception of narcotics—which for reasons of plant biology and economics has long been the world's most globalized industry—many of these illicit economies were local or regional in scope until quite recently. Since the 1990s, however, there has been a rapid integration of markets, for both political reasons (structural adjustment programs, the end of Soviet socialism, the Washington Consensus) and technical reasons (the Internet, mobile telephony, improved transportation infrastructure). Just as these changes have helped many legal businesses to go global, they have also enabled former street corner thugs to become global gangsters.

The withdrawal of states from their commanding role in many economies and the declining capacity and authority of many states (including states in the so-called developed world) have opened up operational spaces for what I call "deviant globalization"—human trafficking, drug dealing, gun running, cross-border waste disposal, organ trading, sex tourism, money laundering, transnational gangs, piracy (both intellectual and physical), and so on.

The structure of the current global economy is not designed for equitable, plodding growth; it's designed to reward opportunistic, risk-seeking innovators. It follows logically that illicit industries (which will naturally be led by opportunistic, risk-seeking entrepreneurs) form a particularly high-growth sector. Were one to construct an investment portfolio of illicit businesses, it would no doubt outperform Wall Street.

Globalization tears down traditional national structures and opens doors to illicit actors who fill the void. What can be done to stop this process?

The first step is for governments to realize that the growth of the illicit economy is neither a minor irritant, nor something that can be eliminated. Rather, it is a permanent feature of the contemporary global order, which needs to be actively managed. There are two main ways that governments and nonprofits typically go wrong in dealing with deviant globalization. The first is by more or less ignoring it, or downplaying its significance. The second is by thinking that the deviant manifestations of globalization can somehow be eliminated or separated from the legal manifestations. (This latter fallacy is what leads, for example to the fruitless, demoralizing campaigns like the war on drugs. The street price of narcotics has steadily fallen on the streets of almost every country for the last three decades, which tells you that supply has been growing even faster than demand—a telling indicator of the effectiveness of the war on drugs.)

As long as we continue to combine massive disparities of wealth and power, with a desire to control or stop the flows of certain goods and services, there will continue to be a nearly endless supply of people willing to move goods, people, and services at a premium price. The challenges of deviant globalization are best dealt with in a regulatory framework, not via law enforcement. Of course, such an approach flies in the face of moralizing about these issues.

Is this trend worldwide or more prone to affect certain countries or regions?

This is a global trend, but one affects different regions in different ways. Countries prone to deviant globalization tend to share certain family resemblances: a weak or fragmented central state; long, poorly guarded borders; and a large supply of or demand for goods with dubious moral properties—drugs, antiquities, valuable minerals, exotic wildlife, human organs, sex, oil, highly enriched uranium, and so on. The traditional world leaders in deviant globalization have been probably Russia, Nigeria, Brazil, China and the United States—though today the most deviantly globalized place on earth may be Iraq.

But it would be a mistake to think of the geography of deviant globalization primarily in terms of states, for deviant globalization has a complex microgeography that largely ignores state boundaries: it spans the archipelago of slums that runs from the inner cities of the United States, to the favelas of Rio de Janiero, to the banlieus of France, to the almost continuous urban slum that girds the Gulf of Guinea from Abidjan to Lagos; it extends across the cocaine supply chain that links the mountains of Colombia, to the slums of São Paolo, to the waterways of West Africa, to the noses of tourists in the Netherlands; it traverses the mountains of toxic garbage that move from the dustbins of rich countries to the landfills of poor ones; and on and on. You will find manifestations of it in every city and in every household that has any connection to the global economy. It is inseparable from the global economy.

You consider the illicit actors a political force. In what way?

The underlying political process associated with deviant globalization is the disaggregation of the "sovereignty bundle" of powers associated with the high modernist liberal state. In many places the state is no longer (if, indeed it ever was) the de facto governing authority, in the sense that it does not control the delivery of fundamental political goods, such as security, infrastructure, education, and health care. Different pieces of that bundle are being parceled out to (or, more commonly, grabbed by) a variety of actors: tribal leaders, gangsters, NGOs, religious leaders, transnational and local corporations, mercenaries, ethnic militias, and so on. The particular combinations vary from place to place, and there is a great deal of path dependency. In many places, the same actors who control the resource flows associated with deviant globalization are also de facto providers of "state-like services" such as security or infrastructure. And naturally enough, the common people who rely on these providers tend to align their political loyalties accordingly.

What's new in this situation is that in many cases these "political actors" have no interest in actually becoming a state or taking over an existing state. They’re happy to wield state-like authority and power, while enriching themselves via dubious business operations. I’m thinking here of groups as various as the Mahdi Army in Iraq, the PCC in Brazil, the 'Ndrangheta in Italy, or Laurent Nkunda's crew in Congo. None of these organizations plan to declare sovereign independence and file for membership of the United Nations. What they want, simply, is to carve out a space where they can do their business and not have the state mess with them. This means that, unless a state confronts them, they're disinclined to challenge states directly—directly challenging the state is expensive, and generally bad for business. As this new class of post-state political actors takes over functions formerly monopolized by states, they and their constituents lose interest in the state. From a political perspective, therefore, deviant globalization leads to (and also is facilitated by) the proliferation of jurisdictionally ambiguous spaces where sovereignty as it has traditionally been conceived simply no longer exists. It’s a self-reinforcing dynamic.

Western pundits and politicians like to describe these sorts of spaces with highly misleading terms such as "failing states" or "undergoverned zones." The implication of such terminology is that the people living there want to be just like us, but that somehow they're unable to get there. But such a belief is, if I may be blunt, a narcissistic delusion masquerading as political science. Contrary to what the bien-pensants claim, most so-called failing states don't want to get fixed. In many of these zones, the local powers that be are quite content with these novel, informal political arrangements. It allows them to make fabulous amounts of money running globe-spanning commercial empires, while being recognized as the "big men" within the communities that they care about. They have no desire to attain the West's ideal of an inclusive, welfare-providing modern state. These guys are "postmodern" in the sense that they realize that the West's form of modernity will never include them, and they're charting an entirely different path. It's very different from the classic revolutionary movements of the twentieth century.

Apparently the 'Ndrangheta, the Calabrian mob, earned 44 billion Euros last year and is bigger than the better known Mafia. What happens with all this money and how does it affect the future of – in this case – Italy?

The case of the 'Ndrangheta in Calabria—and perhaps even more, the Camorra around Naples—is illustrative of how the licit and illicit global economies are increasingly inseparable. The crucial point about these loose organizations is that they control not just the drug and flesh trades in their regions, but that they also own or control enormous portions of the licit economy—sweat shops, garbage disposal, ports, factories, construction, and so on. There’s virtually no business that has any presence in Italy that they don't have their hands on. The legal businesses get capital from the illicit business, and also serve to launder the illicit gains. Sometimes people talk about economic development as the "solution" to corruption in the Italian South; but the truth of the matter is that corruption IS development in the South of Italy.

TARP and the lifeboat

John Batchelor's deeply troubling look at the unfortunately named (or all too well-named) Troubled Assets Relief Program, TARP Titanic Boat Deck, causes me to wonder if Jim Sinclair has any takers yet on his one million dollar wager that gold will trade at USD $1650 before the second week of January 2011.

Obama Watch

The Real Barack Obama, now simply titled RBO, fights on from the jungle. The best anti-Obama site, run by a researcher/writer John Batchelor has called "The Librarian at Alexandria" -- a reference to the gigantic library in Egypt that was a seat of learning in the ancient world. RBO features massive, meticulous documentation on every aspect of Barack Obama's odious political life and that of his fellow travelers.

Today, RBO presents The RezkObama Reading List, which contains articles going back to 2004 about the relationship between convicted political fixer Tony Rezko and Barack Obama. This is one to bookmark for future reference.

Mumbai 9/11: Name that terrorist

Indian forces mutilated beyond recognition the faces of the slain terrorists. Why?

A reader has questioned an observation I made in the Unko bachana kuan chahega? post of yesterday, which was cross-posted at both Uppity Woman and RBO.

The reader's comment, posted at Uppity's blog, questions my observation that one of the Mumbai terrorists "does not look Pakistani to my eyes. The photograph is fuzzy but he looks as if he could be from India's northeast, maybe Assam state."

The reader states:

For the most part, Indians and Pakistanis don’t look very, if at all, different. Really a common people, sometimes divided by their respective religions but mostly always by their respective governments. (The exception tends to be people in the northwest of Pakistan, the Pathans, who look more like the Afghanis.) In the case of the guy referred to in the blog, he could certainly be from Pakistan. He looks like hundreds of guys I saw growing up in Pak.

I am glad Uppity's reader raised the question because it prodded me to clarify my statement and explain the reasoning behind it.

As I mentioned in the last post I do not publish photographs, but RBO has published this post along with the photograph in question. (And added links about Mongoloid and Assamese ethnic types -- thanks, RBO!) Or go to this report and scroll to the second-to-last photograph. Now to my reply:

Because of countless mass migrations and invasions over millennia the Indian subcontinent is a melting pot. Indo-Iranians, Dravidians, Arabs, Turkish peoples, Polynesian peoples -- the list goes on and on. But as you move toward the northeast in India you are leaving South Asia and heading toward South East Asia, where you find peoples whose looks are more East Asian. Or what used be called Mongoloid -- a term that has been virtually banned from anthropology, but still helpful for my purposes if it calls up an image of physical features that are, to a greater or lessor extent, Mongolian.

Can you find people with somewhat East Asian features in Pakistan? Yes; as the reader indicated, the ethnic boundaries between Pakistanis and Indians are the invention of governments.

However comma, the terrorist on the left-hand side of the photograph, the shorter man, would be easily recognizable as a Pakistani. Yet that man could not pass for a South East Asian to save his life. The man standing next to him could; in fact, he looks more South East Asian to my eyes than anything else.

Granted, I'm working from a very poor photograph shot in poor light -- probably from a cell phone -- in which the eye area of both men is cast in shadow. And of course the camera angle can greatly distort.

With all that said, the head shape of the man on the right, his facial bone structure and shape of his eye sockets, calls up -- for me -- more of an East Asian look than any other race/ethnicity commonly found in South Asia.

I am well aware that such identifications are extremely subjective, and that a forensic anthropologist might tell me I'm wrong. However, given the extreme gravity of the question, I went out on a limb to raise it.

If that man is South East Asian, then we could be looking at a different situation than the one that Indian authorities quickly settled on; i.e., that all the terrorists who attacked in Mumbai were connected with Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT).

And, as I mentioned in my post yesterday, it just so happens that the faces of all the dead terrorists were mutilated beyond recognition by the Indian security forces. So all we have right now by way of identifying that one man is the photograph and the account of the lone surviving terrorist, who transformed himself into a fountain of information after he was apprehended. He has named the nine dead terrorists and claims that they're all Pakistani. (If I recall he only supplied last names for a few or a couple of the men.)

He might be giving good information, or lying, or simply passing along what he was told by his handlers. But again, considering the gravity of the issue, every attempt should be made to get a better look at that particular terrorist's face and positively identify him. Of course, it would also be vital to positively identify all the dead terrorists.)

A computer program could erase the shadows in the photograph and any distortions, and of course enlarge the photograph. And the face that emerged on the computer screen could be rotated, so that a forensic anthropologist could take an educated guess at identifying the man's ethnicity.

Also, the genetic markers in the terrorist's DNA should be studied for clues to his ethnicity -- if he is dead, that is. There is no way of knowing at this point whether that terrorist is among the nine dead, which is all the more reason to take DNA samples from the dead terrorists. I hope that has been done; if it hasn't, if the bodies have already been buried without that test, they should be exhumed. (If I were in charge of the investigation, I would even bring in a forensic modeler to 'reconstruct' the mutilated faces of the dead terrorists.)

Why did I fix on Assamese as my guess for the man's ethnicity? Because my first guess, "Burmese," didn't fit the situation even though he looked as if he could be Burmese. While anything is possible in this world of grievances, and hit-men for hire, I couldn't see a Burmese having a big axe to grind in India.

My second guess, Chechen -- because I've seen Chechens who look like that man even though they're not South East Asian -- also seemed like a stretch. I was looking for an Indian nationality.

"Assamese" was the next guess that popped into my mind. When I mentioned the guess to a correspondent he asked if I knew that there had been terrorist attacks in Assam this year. To the best of my recollection I hadn't heard that news. But once hearing, I decided that as long as I was shooting blindfolded in the dark, I might as well stick with Assamese.

Thus ends my attempt to play amateur forensic anthropologist. Could I have done better by simply hauling out the Ouija board? Well, I was driving at a general point, not trying to hit a place on map. I thought the terrorist looked as if he might hail from somewhere near Burma on the Indian side, rather than the Pakistan side.

The Assamese region is itself a mish-mash of ethnicities; according to Wikipedia:

The roots go back to three thousand years when the first assimilation took place between the Austro-Asiatic and Tibeto-Burman cultures. ... Assam is surrounded by the rest of the Seven Sister States: Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland, Manipur, Mizoram, Tripura and Meghalaya. These states are connected to the rest of India via a narrow strip in West Bengal called the Siliguri Corridor or "Chicken's Neck". Assam also shares international borders with Bhutan and Bangladesh; and cultures, peoples and climate with South-East Asia—important elements in India’s “Look East” Policy. Assam became a part of India after the British occupied the region following the Treaty of Yandaboo of 1826.

And from my brief readings on the terrorist attacks there seem to be a number of Assamese who still consider their land occupied, and who are very insistent about wanting the Indian government to take a hike.

I will not inflict on you the alphabet soup of Assam's extremist and separatist groups and their histories but from what I read, it seems to me that some might be willing to hook up with LeT, if that afforded them a chance to strike a hard blow against New Delhi.

I was struck by this statement about Rajan Daimary, the founder-chief of the National Democratic Front of Bodoland (NDFB), who reportedly executed the order for the October 30 serial bombings in Assam:

Daimary has a long history of sanctioning brutal attacks against civilians. In October, 2004, at least 12 people were killed in attacks on targets that included crowded markets in the towns of Dhekiajhuli, Gouripur and Bijni.

The report goes on to note:

Some in India’s intelligence services believe the NDFB executed the bombings on behalf of Islamists in Bangladesh. ... Assam Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi appeared to endorse that perception, describing Bangladesh as “our biggest threat.”

“Assam is the most vulnerable State”, Mr. Gogoi said, “in regard to terror attacks from Bangladeshi soil. It is the main problem as a large number of terrorist groups there help our local outfits.”

I could be right about the terrorist's ethnicity without his having been involved with an Assamese terror/separatist group, or without any such group working in coordination with LeT. But the rush to identify all the terrorists as Pakistanis and LeT could put blinders on the Indian government's approach to dealing with terrorism on Indian soil, which is coming from several quarters.

In his 11/29 Mumbai TV WMD post John Batchelor wrote that one of his sources described the terrorists as a "multinational force of attackers: Britons, Pakistanis, Kashmiris, Hyderabad Indians."

A multinational force would be one thing; a mastermind who is actually a coalition of terrorist/separatist organizations that have grievances with the Indian government would be quite another. The latter would call for a different approach than one directed solely at LeT or Pakistan's government.