That quote from Brent Stevens, Wall Street Journal reporter, on Tuesday's John Batchelor show. Brent was in the region last week. He reported that about a thousand US troops are there, and rendering so much help (including huge road-clearing projects and the only functioning hospitals) that when a Muslim cleric gave an anti-American speech in a mosque he was booed by the Pakistani worshippers.
The bad news is that the winter is closing in fast (2-3 weeks), there are 3 million homeless from the quake, and many of the tents they've been provided have not been winterized. The Pak military is doing a good job of coordinating relief efforts, according to Brent, but the quake areas "look like Hiroshima after the Bomb was dropped" so even with help from the US military and other outside agencies, recovery is very slow going.
Brent did not explain why there is a problem with getting winterized tents to the region, but I wonder whether the 20,000 tents provided by the United Nations are winterized. I note from an Ireland Online article that the UN also provided "60,875 plastic sheets and more than 320,000 blankets."
Not to strike a sour note, but I question the priorities. The first need is winterized tents, and that would have been obvious from the day of the quake.
"UN humanitarian relief co-ordinator Jan Vandemoortele appealed for an additional €37.3m to provide survivors with thick blankets and shelter materials. He said another 2.4 million blankets, 170,000 plastic sheets and 200,000 tarpaulins were needed."
Again, I would think that the top priority is winterized tents. Brent reported that there have been many fires in the tent cities because people are trying to waterproof the tents by pouring kerosene on them. This has caused many accidents from cooking fires, so the hospitals are reporting burn and smoke-inhalation victims.
In related news, Kofi Annan has appointed President Bush's father as special UN envoy for rehabilitation and reconstruction in quake-hit areas of northwestern Pakistan and Pakistani-controlled Kashmir. Perhaps George W. Bush can get things moving with regard to winterized tents.
More prayers are needed. Hopefully, the winter will be mild in that part of the world this year.
2:45 PM Update
I am republishing this essay under a new time so it will stay at the top of the blog today. Also, I received a comment from Dave that I should share:
Dear Pundita:
According to reports that I've heard there's a U. S. MASH unit set up not far from the quake's epicenter complete with ICU. At this point only about 30% of those who present themselves for treatment are earthquake victims (although nobody's being turned away. That suggests that the U. S. military has become the primary health care provider for a good-sized chunk of Pakistan.
Dave Schuler
The Glittering Eye
Dear Dave:
Thank you for the news; I didn't realize they were providing so much health care. This also helps explain why the cleric was booed. We've heard so much about the US acting unilaterally; this, as contrasted with multilateralism. But actually the US has been tracking toward bilateralism (or at least 'falling into' that approach). This strikes me as a good thing because it allows for highly reflexive responses to the needs of other governments. This is the second time recently that the US military has responded with great efficiency to a humanitarian crisis. (Well, I think one could add Katrina to the tsunami and the quake, if the military had been brought earlier into relief planning for the hurricane.) A tragedy their hands are tied with regard to helping in Darfur.
4:30 PM
"Pundita,
I think that robust bilateral ties particularly with strategic countries like Pakistan are a very positive approach for the United States and an approach which capitalizes on our strengths rather than emphasizing our weaknesses.
I'm quite skeptical of multi-lateral agreements and institutions. Too often they involve bureaucrats (the vulture elite?) which frequently do not share our values or have our best interests at heart. Or, possibly,any interests other than their own.
Dave Schuler"
Wednesday, December 21
Of crooks, capitalists, bankers, billionaires and oil: yes, Russia again
"On the Leonid Reiman story, you are following the wrong trail. It is the Alfa Group -- Megafon's competitor -- pushing this story. The Alfa Group has seriously important connections in the US, especially media. So I would back away from the political slant and stick with what it is almost always about: MONEY!"
-- Peter Lavelle from Dec 14 Pundita post
"Pundita, dear, you must have heard John Batchelor egging on Gary Kasparov last night. Have you noticed that John is out for Vladimir Putin's scalp? Do you think this has something to do with Iran? Or with the WSJniki? Congratulations on your retirement. Of course I will miss you.
Boris in Jackson Heights"
Dear Boris:
For my part I will miss Pundita-land's Resident Cynic. But we must look on the bright side, Boris. Pundita's retirement saves her readers from dedicating a month to figuring out what is going on with Rosneft, the Alfa Consortium, Mikhail Fridman, the European and American central banks, and the Wall Street Journal-Financial Times crowds. In other words, trying to figure out the ruckus would be as much fun as investigating China's Mystery Illness.
However, I think we could get into the ballpark if we applied Peter's advice about Russia's telecom scandal to the larger situation. In other words, the ruckus probably has something to do with money. It must be really big money, if John Batchelor invites Kasparov on his show twice in the same month to rant that Russian democracy has gone to hell in a handbasket.
Now that Don Evans has rejected President Putin's olive-branch offer to head up Rosneft, I am hoping that Putin will offer the job to a Russian. But at least according to today's Moscow News, he is still looking for an American in the hope this will be a sop to the Wall Street Journal-Financial Times crowds.(1)
Nothing will mollify the WSJniki until Putin is run out of Russia on a rail. And consider the uproar in Europe when Gerhard Schröder agreed to head up Gazprom. The big US-West European investors and speculators are hopping mad about Putin's recent statement that foreign banks are no longer terribly welcome in Russia.
I would think that a frosty climate in Russia for US and West European banks puts Russia's Alfa Bank in a very powerful position and thus, gives Russia's central bank clout in The Casino.(*) Down the line this could make the Russian ruble a contender at The Casino. I am not sure how The Lords of the Craps Table would react to this.
I am also unsure about Mikhail Fridman's position in Russia's post-Yukos era. As Chairman of Alfa Group Consortium he has tremendous power but he has come under fire recently because of a privatization scandal. And he is one of Russia's Oligarchs. I don't know whether his relationship with Putin has changed dramatically since Yukos was broken up.
Pundita does not agree with Peter Lavelle's contention that the Kremlin "stole" Yukos -- not unless you want to consider it stealing when a government does not exert itself to warn crooks that this time they are serious about collecting back taxes. However, the Yukos takeover was messy and also very traumatic for Russia's business community. Certainly, it was a rough way for the government to send the message that the rule of the Oligarchs had ended in Russia.
The one person in all this I haven't read anything bad about, despite his association with Fridman, is Peter Aven, the President of Alfa Bank. I might have to eat my words but his credentials are impressive and to all appearances he is very dedicated to getting Russia on her feet.
So if the WSJniki are simply worried about solvency and efficiency, they might not have a heart attack if Aven headed up Rosneft. The question is whether Putin would even consider a Russian for the post at this time. Any Russian who leads Rosneft will automatically gain tremendous political clout in Russia. Putin might prefer a foreigner for that reason; if so, I think that would be shortsighted. It's sending a message to the Russian people that a Russian can't be trusted to head the nation's most valuable company.
That message undercuts the rationale for going after the Oligarchs, who were perfectly willing to sell out Russia to foreigners. The message also plays into the hands of Russia's xenophobics, which of course follow the hard Right in Russia.
Yet I don't think the xenophobics are just a bunch of Skinheads attacking foreigners, although their recent antics called forth a stern lecture from Putin that "extreme nationalism" wouldn't be tolerated. If we recall that US senators used an ax on Japanese electronic appliances at the height of Japan's attempt to buy up the United States, I think we're in the ballpark about Russian sensitivities at this time.
The Kremlin will keep 51% share control of Rosneft, which still leaves 49% up for grabs to foreign investors. That should be enough for the rest of the world, I should think. So why not put a Russian in charge of Rosneft to assure the Russian people that it won't be McRosneft?
Pundita does not know what the Kremlin would think of my logic, and it could be that offering the top post at Rosneft to an American is tied with a plan to build a pipeline that would deliver up to 1 million barrels of oil per day to the United States from the port of Murmansk. Reportedly the Kremlin may be giving consideration to the plan.
The Kremlin didn't exactly go broke breaking up Yukos but between setting up Gazprom and Rosneft, they took on a huge pile of debt. Yet I think they should be able to scare up foreign investor interest without having to give the plummiest job in Russia to an American.
The long view (which is of no concern to US-managed pension funds) is that it's in America's best interest if the Russian people are happy -- as happy as it's possible for Russians to ever be. They need to stop thinking of themselves as a land of crooks and develop more faith in their future.
Translation: Trying to run Vladimir Putin out of Russia is not the way to encourage more help from his government in dealing with Syria and Iran.
* The Casino is Pundita's name for the international monetary system; The Lords of the Craps Table are those who greatly influence the system; i.e., major central banks, BIS, currency traders for major banks, OPEC ministers, and IMF.
1)
December 21, 2005.
Evans Rejects Putin's Offer to Chair Rosneft
By Maria Levitov
The Moscow Times
"Former U.S. Commerce Secretary Donald Evans, a close ally of President George W. Bush, has declined a controversial Kremlin offer to take a senior position at state-run Rosneft.
Evans told reporters in Washington late Monday that family and business commitments would not allow him to take the job. [...]
Last week, former German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder came under fire after he announced plans to head a Gazprom-led pipeline project that he had pushed while in office.
After Putin hinted on Friday that Rosneft might hire a prominent Westerner, Evans also began to face increasing public pressure not to accept a job with a Russian energy company.
The exact position offered to Evans was unclear, but he told the Financial Times that he had turned down "a position of serious responsibility at Rosneft."
Evans currently serves as CEO of the Financial Services Forum, a group of senior executives from 20 of the largest U.S. financial institutions.
Despite Evans' rejection, market watchers said the Kremlin was likely to continue wooing high-profile foreigners to burnish Rosneft's image ahead of a planned IPO.
The state plans to sell up to 49 percent of Rosneft in an IPO next year to repay a $7.5 billion loan raised to buy a majority stake in Gazprom. A Western executive would likely instill confidence among foreign investors in a company that has been sullied by the messy destruction of Mikhail Khodorkovsky's Yukos empire. Rosneft acquired Yukos' largest production unit, Yuganskneftegaz, after a forced government auction last year.
Khodorkovsky is serving an eight-year prison sentence for fraud and tax evasion in a Siberian penal colony after a highly politicized trial.
Evans' rejection must have come as an embarrassment to the authorities, who failed to sound out their candidate better before making a job offer, said Chris Weafer, chief strategist at Alfa Bank. The next candidate, likely also to be a foreigner, will be tapped more discreetly, he said.
"We know that Schröder is busy," said Peter Westin, chief economist at MDM Bank.
In an opinion piece published in The Wall Street Journal on Monday, former world chess champion and outspoken Putin critic Garry Kasparov called Schröder's decision to work for Gazprom "one giant leap for corruption in the West." Kasparov went on to write that Evans' acceptance of the job "would formally put the Bush administration's heretofore-unspoken presidential seal of approval on the Kremlin's dirty dealings."
Evans also received direct appeals not to take the job in editorials in The Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times. However, he denied that he had bowed to criticism about taking the job, the Journal reported on Tuesday.
Rosneft stands to gain from the clout and expertise of an experienced foreign executive. But Westin said that Evans, who quit his job at the Commerce Department in February, was not the right man for Rosneft.
A senior position at the oil company is not simply an industry job, but also a political position, said Westin. Ethical questions "would be less of a concern if someone came from business, rather than politics," he said.
The next candidate will probably be identified before next summer's Group of Eight summit in St. Petersburg -- and will most likely be an American, Alfa Bank's Weafer said.
The so-called U.S.-Russia energy dialog has hardly moved ahead since the beginning of the Yukos affair in 2003, Weafer said, and the Kremlin could be looking for an American to revive it.
Before he was arrested, Khodorkovsky had been pushing for the construction of a privately owned pipeline -- much to the Kremlin's chagrin -- to deliver up to 1 million barrels of oil per day to the United States from the northern port of Murmansk.
"It's well known that the U.S. has been interested in this project," Weafer said. Before Rosneft took over Yuganskneftegaz, the state did not have its own company in place to run the project, he said.
Now, the Kremlin may be more inclined to proceed with the Murmansk pipeline, and an American in a senior Rosneft chair would help jump-start the process, Weafer said."
-- Peter Lavelle from Dec 14 Pundita post
"Pundita, dear, you must have heard John Batchelor egging on Gary Kasparov last night. Have you noticed that John is out for Vladimir Putin's scalp? Do you think this has something to do with Iran? Or with the WSJniki? Congratulations on your retirement. Of course I will miss you.
Boris in Jackson Heights"
Dear Boris:
For my part I will miss Pundita-land's Resident Cynic. But we must look on the bright side, Boris. Pundita's retirement saves her readers from dedicating a month to figuring out what is going on with Rosneft, the Alfa Consortium, Mikhail Fridman, the European and American central banks, and the Wall Street Journal-Financial Times crowds. In other words, trying to figure out the ruckus would be as much fun as investigating China's Mystery Illness.
However, I think we could get into the ballpark if we applied Peter's advice about Russia's telecom scandal to the larger situation. In other words, the ruckus probably has something to do with money. It must be really big money, if John Batchelor invites Kasparov on his show twice in the same month to rant that Russian democracy has gone to hell in a handbasket.
Now that Don Evans has rejected President Putin's olive-branch offer to head up Rosneft, I am hoping that Putin will offer the job to a Russian. But at least according to today's Moscow News, he is still looking for an American in the hope this will be a sop to the Wall Street Journal-Financial Times crowds.(1)
Nothing will mollify the WSJniki until Putin is run out of Russia on a rail. And consider the uproar in Europe when Gerhard Schröder agreed to head up Gazprom. The big US-West European investors and speculators are hopping mad about Putin's recent statement that foreign banks are no longer terribly welcome in Russia.
I would think that a frosty climate in Russia for US and West European banks puts Russia's Alfa Bank in a very powerful position and thus, gives Russia's central bank clout in The Casino.(*) Down the line this could make the Russian ruble a contender at The Casino. I am not sure how The Lords of the Craps Table would react to this.
I am also unsure about Mikhail Fridman's position in Russia's post-Yukos era. As Chairman of Alfa Group Consortium he has tremendous power but he has come under fire recently because of a privatization scandal. And he is one of Russia's Oligarchs. I don't know whether his relationship with Putin has changed dramatically since Yukos was broken up.
Pundita does not agree with Peter Lavelle's contention that the Kremlin "stole" Yukos -- not unless you want to consider it stealing when a government does not exert itself to warn crooks that this time they are serious about collecting back taxes. However, the Yukos takeover was messy and also very traumatic for Russia's business community. Certainly, it was a rough way for the government to send the message that the rule of the Oligarchs had ended in Russia.
The one person in all this I haven't read anything bad about, despite his association with Fridman, is Peter Aven, the President of Alfa Bank. I might have to eat my words but his credentials are impressive and to all appearances he is very dedicated to getting Russia on her feet.
So if the WSJniki are simply worried about solvency and efficiency, they might not have a heart attack if Aven headed up Rosneft. The question is whether Putin would even consider a Russian for the post at this time. Any Russian who leads Rosneft will automatically gain tremendous political clout in Russia. Putin might prefer a foreigner for that reason; if so, I think that would be shortsighted. It's sending a message to the Russian people that a Russian can't be trusted to head the nation's most valuable company.
That message undercuts the rationale for going after the Oligarchs, who were perfectly willing to sell out Russia to foreigners. The message also plays into the hands of Russia's xenophobics, which of course follow the hard Right in Russia.
Yet I don't think the xenophobics are just a bunch of Skinheads attacking foreigners, although their recent antics called forth a stern lecture from Putin that "extreme nationalism" wouldn't be tolerated. If we recall that US senators used an ax on Japanese electronic appliances at the height of Japan's attempt to buy up the United States, I think we're in the ballpark about Russian sensitivities at this time.
The Kremlin will keep 51% share control of Rosneft, which still leaves 49% up for grabs to foreign investors. That should be enough for the rest of the world, I should think. So why not put a Russian in charge of Rosneft to assure the Russian people that it won't be McRosneft?
Pundita does not know what the Kremlin would think of my logic, and it could be that offering the top post at Rosneft to an American is tied with a plan to build a pipeline that would deliver up to 1 million barrels of oil per day to the United States from the port of Murmansk. Reportedly the Kremlin may be giving consideration to the plan.
The Kremlin didn't exactly go broke breaking up Yukos but between setting up Gazprom and Rosneft, they took on a huge pile of debt. Yet I think they should be able to scare up foreign investor interest without having to give the plummiest job in Russia to an American.
The long view (which is of no concern to US-managed pension funds) is that it's in America's best interest if the Russian people are happy -- as happy as it's possible for Russians to ever be. They need to stop thinking of themselves as a land of crooks and develop more faith in their future.
Translation: Trying to run Vladimir Putin out of Russia is not the way to encourage more help from his government in dealing with Syria and Iran.
* The Casino is Pundita's name for the international monetary system; The Lords of the Craps Table are those who greatly influence the system; i.e., major central banks, BIS, currency traders for major banks, OPEC ministers, and IMF.
1)
December 21, 2005.
Evans Rejects Putin's Offer to Chair Rosneft
By Maria Levitov
The Moscow Times
"Former U.S. Commerce Secretary Donald Evans, a close ally of President George W. Bush, has declined a controversial Kremlin offer to take a senior position at state-run Rosneft.
Evans told reporters in Washington late Monday that family and business commitments would not allow him to take the job. [...]
Last week, former German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder came under fire after he announced plans to head a Gazprom-led pipeline project that he had pushed while in office.
After Putin hinted on Friday that Rosneft might hire a prominent Westerner, Evans also began to face increasing public pressure not to accept a job with a Russian energy company.
The exact position offered to Evans was unclear, but he told the Financial Times that he had turned down "a position of serious responsibility at Rosneft."
Evans currently serves as CEO of the Financial Services Forum, a group of senior executives from 20 of the largest U.S. financial institutions.
Despite Evans' rejection, market watchers said the Kremlin was likely to continue wooing high-profile foreigners to burnish Rosneft's image ahead of a planned IPO.
The state plans to sell up to 49 percent of Rosneft in an IPO next year to repay a $7.5 billion loan raised to buy a majority stake in Gazprom. A Western executive would likely instill confidence among foreign investors in a company that has been sullied by the messy destruction of Mikhail Khodorkovsky's Yukos empire. Rosneft acquired Yukos' largest production unit, Yuganskneftegaz, after a forced government auction last year.
Khodorkovsky is serving an eight-year prison sentence for fraud and tax evasion in a Siberian penal colony after a highly politicized trial.
Evans' rejection must have come as an embarrassment to the authorities, who failed to sound out their candidate better before making a job offer, said Chris Weafer, chief strategist at Alfa Bank. The next candidate, likely also to be a foreigner, will be tapped more discreetly, he said.
"We know that Schröder is busy," said Peter Westin, chief economist at MDM Bank.
In an opinion piece published in The Wall Street Journal on Monday, former world chess champion and outspoken Putin critic Garry Kasparov called Schröder's decision to work for Gazprom "one giant leap for corruption in the West." Kasparov went on to write that Evans' acceptance of the job "would formally put the Bush administration's heretofore-unspoken presidential seal of approval on the Kremlin's dirty dealings."
Evans also received direct appeals not to take the job in editorials in The Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times. However, he denied that he had bowed to criticism about taking the job, the Journal reported on Tuesday.
Rosneft stands to gain from the clout and expertise of an experienced foreign executive. But Westin said that Evans, who quit his job at the Commerce Department in February, was not the right man for Rosneft.
A senior position at the oil company is not simply an industry job, but also a political position, said Westin. Ethical questions "would be less of a concern if someone came from business, rather than politics," he said.
The next candidate will probably be identified before next summer's Group of Eight summit in St. Petersburg -- and will most likely be an American, Alfa Bank's Weafer said.
The so-called U.S.-Russia energy dialog has hardly moved ahead since the beginning of the Yukos affair in 2003, Weafer said, and the Kremlin could be looking for an American to revive it.
Before he was arrested, Khodorkovsky had been pushing for the construction of a privately owned pipeline -- much to the Kremlin's chagrin -- to deliver up to 1 million barrels of oil per day to the United States from the northern port of Murmansk.
"It's well known that the U.S. has been interested in this project," Weafer said. Before Rosneft took over Yuganskneftegaz, the state did not have its own company in place to run the project, he said.
Now, the Kremlin may be more inclined to proceed with the Murmansk pipeline, and an American in a senior Rosneft chair would help jump-start the process, Weafer said."
Tuesday, December 20
The connection between Mad Cow disease, soybeans, and the air you breathe
"Now soya is rapidly advancing from all sides toward the heartland of the Amazon, fuelling massive deforestation."
The question is the extent to which the giant American agribusiness Cargill stands behind Brazil's soybean king -- indeed, the extent to which Cargill created his political power in Brazil. If this is a new question for you, read on....
"The Brazilian government released figures yesterday showing that the amount of [Amazon rainforest] deforestation that took place last year was the second worst on record. Some 26,130 square kilometres of rainforest were cleared in the 12 months to August 2004. This was only surpassed in 1995 when an area the size of Belgium was erased."
-- (UK) Independent editorial, 20 May 2005
The survival of the Amazon forest...may be the key to the survival of the planet. The jungle is sometimes called the world's "lung" because its trees produce much of the world's oxygen. It is thought nearly 20 per cent of it has already been destroyed by legal and illegal logging, and clearance for cattle ranching...the soya boom has dramatically stepped up the pace of destruction. It began on the back of the BSE [Mad Cow disease] crisis in Britain, when the feed given to cattle suddenly became a matter of intense public concern. Cattle feed producers around the world switched to soya as an untainted source.
-- from the following report
"The rape of the rainforest... and the man behind it
May 20, 2005
By: Michael McCarthy and Andrew Buncombe
The (UK) Independent
It is stark. It is scarcely believable. But the ruthless obliteration of the Amazon rainforest continues at a headlong rate new figures reveal - and today we reveal the man who more than any other represents the forces making it happen. He is Blairo Maggi, the millionaire farmer and uncompromising politician presiding over the Brazilian boom in soya bean production. He is known in Brazil as O Rei da Soja - the King of Soy. Brazilian environmentalists are calling him something else - the King of Deforestation.
For the soya boom, feeding a seemingly insatiable world market for soya beans as cattle feed, is now the main driver of rainforest destruction. Figures show that last year the rate of forest clearance in the Amazon was the second highest on record as the soy boom completed its third year.
An area of more than 10,000 square miles - nearly the size of Belgium - was cut down, with half the destruction in the state of Mato Grosso, where Mr Maggi, whose Maggi Group farming business is the world's biggest soya bean producer, also happens to be the state governor.
Mr Maggi sheds no tears over lost trees. In 2003, his first year as governor, the rate of deforestation in Mato Grosso more than doubled. In an interview last year he said: "To me, a 40 per cent increase in deforestation doesn't mean anything at all, and I don't feel the slightest guilt over what we are doing here. We are talking about an area larger than Europe that has barely been touched, so there is nothing at all to get worried about."
Many people violently disagree. The survival of the Amazon forest, which sprawls over 4.1 million sq km (1.6 million sq miles) and covers more than half of Brazil's land area, may be the key to the survival of the planet. The jungle is sometimes called the world's "lung" because its trees produce much of the world's oxygen. It is thought nearly 20 per cent of it has already been destroyed by legal and illegal logging, and clearance for cattle ranching.
But the soya boom has dramatically stepped up the pace of destruction. It began on the back of the BSE crisis in Britain, when the feed given to cattle suddenly became a matter of intense public concern. Cattle feed producers around the world switched to soya as an untainted source. The boom was intensified by the fact that Brazil - in contrast to the US and Argentina - did not go down the GM route in its agriculture, so when most European countries went GM-free, it was from Brazil that they sought their soya bean supplies.
Europe now imports 65 per cent of its soya from Brazil. A further impetus to the boom is coming from China, whose emerging middle class wants to eat more and more meat - so the demand for animal feed is soaring. The soya boom is bitterly criticised by environmentalists.
"It is turning the rainforest into cattle feed. It is gross," said John Sauven, head of the rainforest campaign for Greenpeace UK.
It first showed up in the deforestation figures in 2003, when after falling or staying steady for eight years, the rate of destruction leapt by 40 per cent in a single year, from 18,170 sq km to 25,500 sq km.
Since then the rate has stayed at its new high level, with 24,597 sq km cut down the next year, and, as the figures released yesterday by the Brazilian environment ministry showed, from satellite photos and other data, no less than 26,130 sq km of rainforest was cut down in the 12 months to August 2004. This was a further leap of 6 per cent on the year before and caused immense dismay, not least because President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva's government adopted an action plan last year to protect the Amazon.
The Environment Minister, Marina Silva, who is from the Amazon state of Acre, said the figure was high, but promised the country would "work to fight this in a structured way, with lasting and effective action, involving all sectors".
Greenpeace's Amazon co-ordinator Paulo Adario said the scale of the destruction was a tragedy, and showed that deforestation was "not a priority for the Lula government".
Mr Maggi, whose company grossed $600m last year, does not see the future as one of restricted soya plantings. He has called for a tripling of the amount of land planted with soybeans during the next decade in Mato Grosso, and his company announced last year that it intended to double the area it has in production.
How demand for soya drives the destruction
The production of soya beans is now a vital industry for Brazil. Agribusiness is the country's number one export earner, and soya is the principal commodity. The current government under President Lula actively promotes soya export as a means to earn foreign exchange for debt payments.
From the 1960s, the Brazilian government promoted soya cultivation so Brazil could become self sufficient in vegetable oils. Soya was increasingly planted on large-scale, fully mechanised farms in the south and the states on the Atlantic coast.
In the past, some agro-engineers believed soya would never threaten the rainforest, because of climatic limitations and soil conditions. Soya was thought to be "as adaptable to conditions of the tropical climate as a panda bear to the African savannah".
However, the development of new varieties has enabled the rapid expansion of soya plantations north, into the tropical states where the rainforest is situated. Between 1995 and 2004, the area cultivated with soya increased by 77 per cent in the centre-west, with Mato Grosso becoming the single biggest producer.
Now soya is rapidly advancing from all sides toward the heartland of the Amazon, fuelling massive deforestation. Two companies dominate Brazil's soya business. Gruppo Maggi, owned by Blairo Maggi, Mato Grosso's governor, is considered to be the world's largest individual soya producer. The number one soy-exporter is the giant US grains business, Cargill."
* * * * *
If you were interested enough in the topic to read this far and would like a tiny idea of what the Amazon rainforest is really up against, read this first, then plow through the entire report on the RSS meeting...
"[Also attending RSS] the Dutch bank Rabobank and the English bank HSBC, which are among the main shareholders of ADM, Cargill, Bunge and Louis Dreyfus, the four companies that control the world trade of soy. The International Finance Corporation, part of the World Bank, a big financier of the expansion of soy, was also present. In 2002 and 2004, the IFC gave two loans of 30 million dollars each to the Amaggi group to expand storage infrastructure and for liquid capital, but without carrying out the adequate environmental and social evaluations. Financing this expansion signifies the expulsion of the indigenous peoples and farmers from their lands and more deforestation."
-- from Roundtable on Sustainable Soy - Alotau Enviornment blog
The question is the extent to which the giant American agribusiness Cargill stands behind Brazil's soybean king -- indeed, the extent to which Cargill created his political power in Brazil. If this is a new question for you, read on....
"The Brazilian government released figures yesterday showing that the amount of [Amazon rainforest] deforestation that took place last year was the second worst on record. Some 26,130 square kilometres of rainforest were cleared in the 12 months to August 2004. This was only surpassed in 1995 when an area the size of Belgium was erased."
-- (UK) Independent editorial, 20 May 2005
The survival of the Amazon forest...may be the key to the survival of the planet. The jungle is sometimes called the world's "lung" because its trees produce much of the world's oxygen. It is thought nearly 20 per cent of it has already been destroyed by legal and illegal logging, and clearance for cattle ranching...the soya boom has dramatically stepped up the pace of destruction. It began on the back of the BSE [Mad Cow disease] crisis in Britain, when the feed given to cattle suddenly became a matter of intense public concern. Cattle feed producers around the world switched to soya as an untainted source.
-- from the following report
"The rape of the rainforest... and the man behind it
May 20, 2005
By: Michael McCarthy and Andrew Buncombe
The (UK) Independent
It is stark. It is scarcely believable. But the ruthless obliteration of the Amazon rainforest continues at a headlong rate new figures reveal - and today we reveal the man who more than any other represents the forces making it happen. He is Blairo Maggi, the millionaire farmer and uncompromising politician presiding over the Brazilian boom in soya bean production. He is known in Brazil as O Rei da Soja - the King of Soy. Brazilian environmentalists are calling him something else - the King of Deforestation.
For the soya boom, feeding a seemingly insatiable world market for soya beans as cattle feed, is now the main driver of rainforest destruction. Figures show that last year the rate of forest clearance in the Amazon was the second highest on record as the soy boom completed its third year.
An area of more than 10,000 square miles - nearly the size of Belgium - was cut down, with half the destruction in the state of Mato Grosso, where Mr Maggi, whose Maggi Group farming business is the world's biggest soya bean producer, also happens to be the state governor.
Mr Maggi sheds no tears over lost trees. In 2003, his first year as governor, the rate of deforestation in Mato Grosso more than doubled. In an interview last year he said: "To me, a 40 per cent increase in deforestation doesn't mean anything at all, and I don't feel the slightest guilt over what we are doing here. We are talking about an area larger than Europe that has barely been touched, so there is nothing at all to get worried about."
Many people violently disagree. The survival of the Amazon forest, which sprawls over 4.1 million sq km (1.6 million sq miles) and covers more than half of Brazil's land area, may be the key to the survival of the planet. The jungle is sometimes called the world's "lung" because its trees produce much of the world's oxygen. It is thought nearly 20 per cent of it has already been destroyed by legal and illegal logging, and clearance for cattle ranching.
But the soya boom has dramatically stepped up the pace of destruction. It began on the back of the BSE crisis in Britain, when the feed given to cattle suddenly became a matter of intense public concern. Cattle feed producers around the world switched to soya as an untainted source. The boom was intensified by the fact that Brazil - in contrast to the US and Argentina - did not go down the GM route in its agriculture, so when most European countries went GM-free, it was from Brazil that they sought their soya bean supplies.
Europe now imports 65 per cent of its soya from Brazil. A further impetus to the boom is coming from China, whose emerging middle class wants to eat more and more meat - so the demand for animal feed is soaring. The soya boom is bitterly criticised by environmentalists.
"It is turning the rainforest into cattle feed. It is gross," said John Sauven, head of the rainforest campaign for Greenpeace UK.
It first showed up in the deforestation figures in 2003, when after falling or staying steady for eight years, the rate of destruction leapt by 40 per cent in a single year, from 18,170 sq km to 25,500 sq km.
Since then the rate has stayed at its new high level, with 24,597 sq km cut down the next year, and, as the figures released yesterday by the Brazilian environment ministry showed, from satellite photos and other data, no less than 26,130 sq km of rainforest was cut down in the 12 months to August 2004. This was a further leap of 6 per cent on the year before and caused immense dismay, not least because President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva's government adopted an action plan last year to protect the Amazon.
The Environment Minister, Marina Silva, who is from the Amazon state of Acre, said the figure was high, but promised the country would "work to fight this in a structured way, with lasting and effective action, involving all sectors".
Greenpeace's Amazon co-ordinator Paulo Adario said the scale of the destruction was a tragedy, and showed that deforestation was "not a priority for the Lula government".
Mr Maggi, whose company grossed $600m last year, does not see the future as one of restricted soya plantings. He has called for a tripling of the amount of land planted with soybeans during the next decade in Mato Grosso, and his company announced last year that it intended to double the area it has in production.
How demand for soya drives the destruction
The production of soya beans is now a vital industry for Brazil. Agribusiness is the country's number one export earner, and soya is the principal commodity. The current government under President Lula actively promotes soya export as a means to earn foreign exchange for debt payments.
From the 1960s, the Brazilian government promoted soya cultivation so Brazil could become self sufficient in vegetable oils. Soya was increasingly planted on large-scale, fully mechanised farms in the south and the states on the Atlantic coast.
In the past, some agro-engineers believed soya would never threaten the rainforest, because of climatic limitations and soil conditions. Soya was thought to be "as adaptable to conditions of the tropical climate as a panda bear to the African savannah".
However, the development of new varieties has enabled the rapid expansion of soya plantations north, into the tropical states where the rainforest is situated. Between 1995 and 2004, the area cultivated with soya increased by 77 per cent in the centre-west, with Mato Grosso becoming the single biggest producer.
Now soya is rapidly advancing from all sides toward the heartland of the Amazon, fuelling massive deforestation. Two companies dominate Brazil's soya business. Gruppo Maggi, owned by Blairo Maggi, Mato Grosso's governor, is considered to be the world's largest individual soya producer. The number one soy-exporter is the giant US grains business, Cargill."
* * * * *
If you were interested enough in the topic to read this far and would like a tiny idea of what the Amazon rainforest is really up against, read this first, then plow through the entire report on the RSS meeting...
"[Also attending RSS] the Dutch bank Rabobank and the English bank HSBC, which are among the main shareholders of ADM, Cargill, Bunge and Louis Dreyfus, the four companies that control the world trade of soy. The International Finance Corporation, part of the World Bank, a big financier of the expansion of soy, was also present. In 2002 and 2004, the IFC gave two loans of 30 million dollars each to the Amaggi group to expand storage infrastructure and for liquid capital, but without carrying out the adequate environmental and social evaluations. Financing this expansion signifies the expulsion of the indigenous peoples and farmers from their lands and more deforestation."
-- from Roundtable on Sustainable Soy - Alotau Enviornment blog
Victory in Iraq
"Look, the US has lost the war in Iraq - everybody knows this. Iran isn't taking any chances the Bush "lie machine" won't target Iran next to cover its tracks. Iran is acting rationally. (I don't like the Iranian regime.) We have seen the same kind of US pressure against Syria lately. Again, Iran is acting defensively."
-- Peter Lavelle, from Dec 16 Pundita post about reported Russian sale of SAMs and weapons tech to Iran
December 16
"Pundita, I wonder if Peter Lavelle thinks we are losing in Iraq as a result of the US not attempting to "win" in the classical sense? One could argue we are actually attempting to "lose", but in a specific way.
Alaska Reader"
Dear Alaska Reader:
Wouldn't our enemies love to know what CENTCOM is attempting to do in Iraq, eh? Realize that some of the people making accusations against the Bush administration are attempting to glean information. It's one of the oldest tricks in the book: if your opponent is very close-mouthed you might loosen his tongue if you make a wild accusation against him. The Bush administration is the tightest-lipped in modern US history and the Defense Department has their lips zipped.
But in Peter's case, I assume he's simply repeating what he knows from watching CNN International, BBC and Russian television. In other words, his view of the Iraq campaign is shared throughout much of Europe and among the antiwar camp in the United States. And even many Americans who supported the Iraq invasion believe the US is losing the war in Iraq -- or least, having won we lost the peace.
From that view, one might argue that the Allied forces did not win World War Two until the Warsaw Pact dissolved in 1991. There are parallels; by knocking out Saddam's regime, this knocked out a counter-force to Iran's military. With Hitler's forces beaten, this knocked out a counter-force to Stalin's forces.
But we know from what Jim Ellsworth wrote (and which I published in the dialogue about Saddam Hussein's trial) and from other military sources that CENTCOM was not born yesterday. They knew that knocking out Saddam would unleash other forces in the region, including al Qaeda.
In some ways it's like pest control. Farmers have learned the hard way that if you kill off one crop pest, you can set off an onslaught from the prey of the bug you wiped out. However, human beings generate so many varieties of responses that the analogy to crop pests is not useful.
There are many variables that could only emerge after Saddam's Baathist regime was toppled. So the phase of the war, post-Saddam, is highly reflexive on both sides. Keep in mind that the enemy couldn't predict how all the chips would fall, either.
Of course "highly reflexive" suggests the need for much improvisation and going back to the drawing board, which Congressional check-writers don't like, which the media do not like, and which in fact everyone having to watch from the sidelines does not like.
Above all, everybody watching a war hates the words "campaign" and "theater." We want a theater of war nicely labeled The War, so we can win or lose, so then everybody can go home. It's nerve wracking to follow a war.
Pundita used to sit around at 2:00 o'clock in the morning listening to John Batchelor's war reports; I'd get so nervous I'd throw my pen across the room and snap, "I am not going to listen to this any more."
By the time Batchelor's show was moved to an earlier time slot I'd calmed down a little.
Are we winning in Iraq? We already won that campaign; the Coalition defeated Saddam's military. As for the rest, we'll find out. My money's on CENTCOM.
As for the Bush "lie machine," again Peter is repeating widely held views in Russia and among European allies who strongly opposed the invasion of Iraq. There are lies told in war, but Bush did not lie the US into a war.
-- Peter Lavelle, from Dec 16 Pundita post about reported Russian sale of SAMs and weapons tech to Iran
December 16
"Pundita, I wonder if Peter Lavelle thinks we are losing in Iraq as a result of the US not attempting to "win" in the classical sense? One could argue we are actually attempting to "lose", but in a specific way.
Alaska Reader"
Dear Alaska Reader:
Wouldn't our enemies love to know what CENTCOM is attempting to do in Iraq, eh? Realize that some of the people making accusations against the Bush administration are attempting to glean information. It's one of the oldest tricks in the book: if your opponent is very close-mouthed you might loosen his tongue if you make a wild accusation against him. The Bush administration is the tightest-lipped in modern US history and the Defense Department has their lips zipped.
But in Peter's case, I assume he's simply repeating what he knows from watching CNN International, BBC and Russian television. In other words, his view of the Iraq campaign is shared throughout much of Europe and among the antiwar camp in the United States. And even many Americans who supported the Iraq invasion believe the US is losing the war in Iraq -- or least, having won we lost the peace.
From that view, one might argue that the Allied forces did not win World War Two until the Warsaw Pact dissolved in 1991. There are parallels; by knocking out Saddam's regime, this knocked out a counter-force to Iran's military. With Hitler's forces beaten, this knocked out a counter-force to Stalin's forces.
But we know from what Jim Ellsworth wrote (and which I published in the dialogue about Saddam Hussein's trial) and from other military sources that CENTCOM was not born yesterday. They knew that knocking out Saddam would unleash other forces in the region, including al Qaeda.
In some ways it's like pest control. Farmers have learned the hard way that if you kill off one crop pest, you can set off an onslaught from the prey of the bug you wiped out. However, human beings generate so many varieties of responses that the analogy to crop pests is not useful.
There are many variables that could only emerge after Saddam's Baathist regime was toppled. So the phase of the war, post-Saddam, is highly reflexive on both sides. Keep in mind that the enemy couldn't predict how all the chips would fall, either.
Of course "highly reflexive" suggests the need for much improvisation and going back to the drawing board, which Congressional check-writers don't like, which the media do not like, and which in fact everyone having to watch from the sidelines does not like.
Above all, everybody watching a war hates the words "campaign" and "theater." We want a theater of war nicely labeled The War, so we can win or lose, so then everybody can go home. It's nerve wracking to follow a war.
Pundita used to sit around at 2:00 o'clock in the morning listening to John Batchelor's war reports; I'd get so nervous I'd throw my pen across the room and snap, "I am not going to listen to this any more."
By the time Batchelor's show was moved to an earlier time slot I'd calmed down a little.
Are we winning in Iraq? We already won that campaign; the Coalition defeated Saddam's military. As for the rest, we'll find out. My money's on CENTCOM.
As for the Bush "lie machine," again Peter is repeating widely held views in Russia and among European allies who strongly opposed the invasion of Iraq. There are lies told in war, but Bush did not lie the US into a war.
Call and Response
Sometimes I wish I had a comment section so that all readers could share the letters I receive in connection with Pundita essays. (Then I recall that often people put more thought into letters than a comment section.) Here I share a brief exchange with Peter Lavelle, and my replies to two letters that I hope all readers will find interesting. Many thanks to all the readers who have taken the time to write since learning that Pundita blog is ending.
December 16
"Hi Pundita!
Sorry to be so tardy in my reply -- I have had a terrible flu...I am honored to accept your wonderful weblog award!
Peter Lavelle in Moscow"
Hullo, Peter!
Sorry to hear you were under the weather and hope this letter finds you better...I am tickled that you appreciated the Pundita award. Thank you again for the time you took on December 3 to educate me about matters Russian.
I don't need to tell you how strongly I feel that Americans need to get educated about Russia, which is virtually impossible to do without resorting to the Internet. I think of your Untimely Thoughts blog as a vital "public service."
Well, Peter, now that I am leaving the blogosphere (at least for the foreseeable future) and will be spending FAR less time in the coming year tracking world events, I will miss you and hope we can keep up our infrequent email exchanges on occasion, if only to say "Hello!"
All the best to you and your writing endeavors.
"December 18
Pundita, I have thoroughly enjoyed both your writing and my resulting education since I came across your blog sometime in the summer. I am a professional cellist by trade (and aspiring to become a well-paid one!), but also a student of political junkies and human nature in general, and your writings have given me a glimpse of the structures that underlie the surface movements of geopolitics and government. I wish you success in your endeavors, and hope for you to visit the blogosphere as often as your time permits. Thank you for writing.
Matt in New England"
Dear Matt:
Thank you for the letter of appreciation and for your good wishes. In turn I wish you great happiness in your career of music. Although I make occasional forays to break up the routine, giving readers that glimpse you wrote about is Pundita's mission statement. For several months I had the statement posted on the sidebar as a link to the essay titled "In search of where we are now." So, thanks such as yours are particularly treasured.
I did not start out to teach -- I have neither the training nor temperament for teaching -- and I did not think I was trying to teach at the first. Within a few months I realized that I had taken on too big a task and acquired the responsibility of teaching. It was a cartoonish moment: maybe like Roadrunner suddenly looking down while zipping across thin air. I decided to shut down the blog.
Then I received a letter that said simply, "You opened doors for me" and which recounted the reader's deepened view of world affairs that had come from reading the blog.
After chewing it over, I realized that I was not applying my highly improvisational style to the situation of the blog. In a sense not being able to do something is quite liberating, for whatever one does from that moment on toward the situation, one has nothing to lose by trying in any which way.
In other words, if you're dead in the water anyway, might as well keep thrashing around. In earlier days that attitude got me through (and helped me get others through) some very dangerous situations in far-flung regions of the world.
With that, I decided that I should not "try" to teach and just write from the heart in my own way. So here I am today, answering a letter of thanks from a reader who discovered Pundita's blog in the summer, which might not have happened if I'd shut down the blog in the spring.
December 20
"Pundita! I was so sad when I realized I was right and you are leaving then today I started laughing when I read Another Kind of Beer. I could just see the situation for that woman because it was really my situation when I found your blog. I got completely freaked out by 9/11 then when I tried to understand it I got overwhelmed because it was all so foreign. So then I retreated into listening to Coast to Coast and trying to shut out the world. I mean, it was easier to worry about aliens and ghosts than to try to understand Palestine and the Shia and the Sunnis and all.
Then somebody called and said to read your blog. You were talking with wild animals about world issues. I thought, "That's better than aliens." That's why I thought up food presents for your team and when you published my letter I saw you played along. You made everything into an adventure, even research. Of course it isn't just an adventure but it's the attitude. You helped me get the right attitude to take in world news, in the same way you got that woman to see she was not lost in a strange land.
With love and best wishes for whatever you do in future,
No longer Sleepless but still in St. Louis
Dear No Longer Sleepless:
The rest of the team joins me in wishing you all best and we thank you for your many contributions to this blog. And many thanks from the rest of the Team for all the food goodies.
In trying to create a sense of adventure I took my inspiration from my Dad, who was a scientist, and also from George Gurdjieff's time of leading a small band of artists and intellectual out the Russian Revolution to safety in France.
My Dad taught me to look at science as a diagloue between humans and the larger natural world. It comes down to call and response; if you frame questions in a way that Nature can 'answer' by Yes or No, then you can string together the replies into sentences of a sort that the human brain can understand.
He taught me that scientists often get bogged down because they can't think of the right way to frame questions and so the idea is to keep improvising even when working blindfolded. Eventually, if you stick at it, you'll find a way to ask a question that brings illuminating results.
Mr Gurdjieff taught the same lesson to the Russians he rescued. His charges were clueless when they started out. They assumed the revolution would quiet down shortly and the world they knew would remain intact. I think I have mentioned before that the women set off on the journey in high heels, as if they were going to a picnic in the park.
That's the group he had to lead through chaos, warfare and human slaughter; one day the Red Army would be in control of the countryside and another day the White Army.
Gurdjieff knew that the safe, highly civilized world the intellectuals and artists inhabited was gone; meanwhile he had to turn the group into tough survivors while not breaking their spirit. He turned it into a grand adventure for them; he taught them to improvise when they had no idea of how to proceed. And he taught them patience.
Sometimes, as in the situation of the woman in the Beer story, all one can do is wait. But how you wait is important. It is your time, your life, so don't see the wait as a delay. You are never late for the events of your life. Everything that happens in your time is yours, your experience.
December 16
"Hi Pundita!
Sorry to be so tardy in my reply -- I have had a terrible flu...I am honored to accept your wonderful weblog award!
Peter Lavelle in Moscow"
Hullo, Peter!
Sorry to hear you were under the weather and hope this letter finds you better...I am tickled that you appreciated the Pundita award. Thank you again for the time you took on December 3 to educate me about matters Russian.
I don't need to tell you how strongly I feel that Americans need to get educated about Russia, which is virtually impossible to do without resorting to the Internet. I think of your Untimely Thoughts blog as a vital "public service."
Well, Peter, now that I am leaving the blogosphere (at least for the foreseeable future) and will be spending FAR less time in the coming year tracking world events, I will miss you and hope we can keep up our infrequent email exchanges on occasion, if only to say "Hello!"
All the best to you and your writing endeavors.
"December 18
Pundita, I have thoroughly enjoyed both your writing and my resulting education since I came across your blog sometime in the summer. I am a professional cellist by trade (and aspiring to become a well-paid one!), but also a student of political junkies and human nature in general, and your writings have given me a glimpse of the structures that underlie the surface movements of geopolitics and government. I wish you success in your endeavors, and hope for you to visit the blogosphere as often as your time permits. Thank you for writing.
Matt in New England"
Dear Matt:
Thank you for the letter of appreciation and for your good wishes. In turn I wish you great happiness in your career of music. Although I make occasional forays to break up the routine, giving readers that glimpse you wrote about is Pundita's mission statement. For several months I had the statement posted on the sidebar as a link to the essay titled "In search of where we are now." So, thanks such as yours are particularly treasured.
I did not start out to teach -- I have neither the training nor temperament for teaching -- and I did not think I was trying to teach at the first. Within a few months I realized that I had taken on too big a task and acquired the responsibility of teaching. It was a cartoonish moment: maybe like Roadrunner suddenly looking down while zipping across thin air. I decided to shut down the blog.
Then I received a letter that said simply, "You opened doors for me" and which recounted the reader's deepened view of world affairs that had come from reading the blog.
After chewing it over, I realized that I was not applying my highly improvisational style to the situation of the blog. In a sense not being able to do something is quite liberating, for whatever one does from that moment on toward the situation, one has nothing to lose by trying in any which way.
In other words, if you're dead in the water anyway, might as well keep thrashing around. In earlier days that attitude got me through (and helped me get others through) some very dangerous situations in far-flung regions of the world.
With that, I decided that I should not "try" to teach and just write from the heart in my own way. So here I am today, answering a letter of thanks from a reader who discovered Pundita's blog in the summer, which might not have happened if I'd shut down the blog in the spring.
December 20
"Pundita! I was so sad when I realized I was right and you are leaving then today I started laughing when I read Another Kind of Beer. I could just see the situation for that woman because it was really my situation when I found your blog. I got completely freaked out by 9/11 then when I tried to understand it I got overwhelmed because it was all so foreign. So then I retreated into listening to Coast to Coast and trying to shut out the world. I mean, it was easier to worry about aliens and ghosts than to try to understand Palestine and the Shia and the Sunnis and all.
Then somebody called and said to read your blog. You were talking with wild animals about world issues. I thought, "That's better than aliens." That's why I thought up food presents for your team and when you published my letter I saw you played along. You made everything into an adventure, even research. Of course it isn't just an adventure but it's the attitude. You helped me get the right attitude to take in world news, in the same way you got that woman to see she was not lost in a strange land.
With love and best wishes for whatever you do in future,
No longer Sleepless but still in St. Louis
Dear No Longer Sleepless:
The rest of the team joins me in wishing you all best and we thank you for your many contributions to this blog. And many thanks from the rest of the Team for all the food goodies.
In trying to create a sense of adventure I took my inspiration from my Dad, who was a scientist, and also from George Gurdjieff's time of leading a small band of artists and intellectual out the Russian Revolution to safety in France.
My Dad taught me to look at science as a diagloue between humans and the larger natural world. It comes down to call and response; if you frame questions in a way that Nature can 'answer' by Yes or No, then you can string together the replies into sentences of a sort that the human brain can understand.
He taught me that scientists often get bogged down because they can't think of the right way to frame questions and so the idea is to keep improvising even when working blindfolded. Eventually, if you stick at it, you'll find a way to ask a question that brings illuminating results.
Mr Gurdjieff taught the same lesson to the Russians he rescued. His charges were clueless when they started out. They assumed the revolution would quiet down shortly and the world they knew would remain intact. I think I have mentioned before that the women set off on the journey in high heels, as if they were going to a picnic in the park.
That's the group he had to lead through chaos, warfare and human slaughter; one day the Red Army would be in control of the countryside and another day the White Army.
Gurdjieff knew that the safe, highly civilized world the intellectuals and artists inhabited was gone; meanwhile he had to turn the group into tough survivors while not breaking their spirit. He turned it into a grand adventure for them; he taught them to improvise when they had no idea of how to proceed. And he taught them patience.
Sometimes, as in the situation of the woman in the Beer story, all one can do is wait. But how you wait is important. It is your time, your life, so don't see the wait as a delay. You are never late for the events of your life. Everything that happens in your time is yours, your experience.
Monday, December 19
Pundita explains the mysteries of her blogroll to Dymphna
This continues my reply to Dymphna's letter, published earlier today.
After studying your blog layout I am quite certain that you look at the blog sidebar from the vantage point of being plugged into the blogosphere, which is quite distinct from blogging. For the edification of readers who are not bloggers:
The blogosphere is a creation of linking and specifically bloggers linking to each other's blogs -- both permanently (sidebar) or via links embedded in posts. The sphere of links is the basis of the ranking system used by EZ Bear to define the blogosphere ecosystem, even though many bloggers are not ranked in EZ Bear and thus, their links to a blog are not tracked by EZ Bear. You can see this by comparing links shown on Technorati with links shown on EZ Bear; not all the Technorati links show up on EZ Bear. And EZ Bear does not track links to blogs that are picked up by subscription websites.
(Technorati in turn does not record many links for reasons I've never understood; it might have something to do with software. And they too do not show links put up by subscription sites -- at least, not the subscription sites that have linked to my posts.)
Of course EZ Bear also tracks by daily readership number provided the blogger uses Site Meter tracking software. But it is entirely possible to receive a high ranking on EZ Bear even with a low daily readership, simply through the mechanism of permanent linking, which is why so many blogs have an extensive blogroll.
Those who value the sense of community the blogosphere affords, or who blog primarily to promote themselves in some way (e.g., as a book author) take linking very seriously just because the ranking system attached to it helps give their blog publicity and thus, helps increase readership.
So they would be horrified (and some have expressed horror) at Pundita's attitude toward her blogroll. I would put up links then yank them a short while later. Then some names would return only to be yanked again. Once I yanked the entire blogroll.
Finally a loyal reader wrote that my constant fiddling with the blogroll was driving her crazy. I settled down a bit after that, then came another bout of fiddling. I eventually settled on nine permanent links. The tenth (Sumedh Mungee) I had up for a short while, then yanked, then restored only a few days ago after naming him for a 2005 Pundita Weblog Award.
The above suggests that I did not look at the sidebar from the vantage point of being a member of the blogosphere. I was looking at it as way to make a gift for my readers and anyone who came across the Pundita blog, against the time I would be leaving. But it was just an idea at first; over time I struggled with the gift in the manner of a novice cook who is making a traditional Thanksgiving dinner. There was a lot of improvisation and correction involved.
Excluding the link to Dave Schuler's The Glittering Eye blog (which is my symbolic thanks to the blogosphere), if you study the sidebar links as a whole, there are two snapshots: one of the Bush administration's view of the war and foreign policy issues. The other is a snapshot of views in:
> Asia (Simon World)
> Russia/Central Asia/Europe (Untimely Thoughts) and
> via Sudan Watch and other of Ingrid Jones's Africa blogs linked on Sudan Watch:
-- Africa
-- global development and aid issues
-- United Nations
-- global oil politics
-- environmental problems; e.g., water scarcity
In other words, Ingrid's Sudan Watch is not just about the Darfur crisis, or about Sudan or even Africa. It's a window on the developing world and related issues, all of which are important to US foreign policy.
This is not counting the link to John Batchelor's website, which daily has links to the best reports on important issues here and abroad, and which reviews books that deal with the full range of 21st century issues.
I wanted to find an all-Canada and Mexico blog, and also a south and central American blog or at least an all-Latin American blog. I hope to have the time to pursue that goal once I stop blogging. Those blogs would help complete the big picture.
Mungee's blog is also important because it helps round out the picture in India; it's also a window on ICT for people who are not in that field, which is profoundly shaping the modern era. It's also a window on rural development -- and something more:
Study the photograph at the top of the blog: A man in tribal clothes squatted in a verdant field, showing a child how to use a PDA. There it is, in one photograph: the early 21st century across the world. All the promise and challenge of this era are captured in the picture. You've heard of the Age of Faith and the Age of Reason? Well, this is the Age of Human Resources.
So that is my gift to people who return to Pundita's blog to root around in the archives or who come upon it for the first time. I found a few blogs that together convey our world in a way that's not readily apparent from the nightly news.
I have thought about adding a link category for bloggers I like and who are plugged into the blogosphere. I thought of calling it "American potluck" or somesuch. But after thinking over all the above, my heart tells me to leave well enough alone, at least for now.
Who knows? If I return to the blogosphere, I might do it in a right proper way -- comment section, trackback, participating in blogger carnivals, politicking to get into a Whizbang Awards, endlessly visiting other blogs and adding my comments in order to promote my blog, putting into practice the great marketing advice that Dan Riehl has given me, and writing many essays about other bloggers' essays.
Thank you again for writing to say goodbye, Dymphna. I will leave you with a cautionary observation and a traveler's tale; why the latter has come to mind while reading your 'personal' blog, I do not know. But I wrote "Another kind of beer" for you.
Note the caption at Sumedh Mungee's blog: "There is no box."
That's right; there is no box and there never was a box. There are just ways of thinking, and dialogue. Stop the dialogue; terrorize it into silence, and ways of thinking harden. This only means that the Genius informing every heart can't easily be heard -- but not boxed in, not gone away. It's always there as a whisper or a roar.
So that would be my answer to the question posed by Gates of Vienna:
"Does liberal humanism provide enough spiritual might to counter the Great Islamic Jihad? If not, then we have no arms to fight it with."
Neither liberal humanism nor Islam or Christianity or any religion or creed provides spiritual force. Spiritual force comes from the heart's ability to listen to the best within us.
Now about that traveler's tale....
After studying your blog layout I am quite certain that you look at the blog sidebar from the vantage point of being plugged into the blogosphere, which is quite distinct from blogging. For the edification of readers who are not bloggers:
The blogosphere is a creation of linking and specifically bloggers linking to each other's blogs -- both permanently (sidebar) or via links embedded in posts. The sphere of links is the basis of the ranking system used by EZ Bear to define the blogosphere ecosystem, even though many bloggers are not ranked in EZ Bear and thus, their links to a blog are not tracked by EZ Bear. You can see this by comparing links shown on Technorati with links shown on EZ Bear; not all the Technorati links show up on EZ Bear. And EZ Bear does not track links to blogs that are picked up by subscription websites.
(Technorati in turn does not record many links for reasons I've never understood; it might have something to do with software. And they too do not show links put up by subscription sites -- at least, not the subscription sites that have linked to my posts.)
Of course EZ Bear also tracks by daily readership number provided the blogger uses Site Meter tracking software. But it is entirely possible to receive a high ranking on EZ Bear even with a low daily readership, simply through the mechanism of permanent linking, which is why so many blogs have an extensive blogroll.
Those who value the sense of community the blogosphere affords, or who blog primarily to promote themselves in some way (e.g., as a book author) take linking very seriously just because the ranking system attached to it helps give their blog publicity and thus, helps increase readership.
So they would be horrified (and some have expressed horror) at Pundita's attitude toward her blogroll. I would put up links then yank them a short while later. Then some names would return only to be yanked again. Once I yanked the entire blogroll.
Finally a loyal reader wrote that my constant fiddling with the blogroll was driving her crazy. I settled down a bit after that, then came another bout of fiddling. I eventually settled on nine permanent links. The tenth (Sumedh Mungee) I had up for a short while, then yanked, then restored only a few days ago after naming him for a 2005 Pundita Weblog Award.
The above suggests that I did not look at the sidebar from the vantage point of being a member of the blogosphere. I was looking at it as way to make a gift for my readers and anyone who came across the Pundita blog, against the time I would be leaving. But it was just an idea at first; over time I struggled with the gift in the manner of a novice cook who is making a traditional Thanksgiving dinner. There was a lot of improvisation and correction involved.
Excluding the link to Dave Schuler's The Glittering Eye blog (which is my symbolic thanks to the blogosphere), if you study the sidebar links as a whole, there are two snapshots: one of the Bush administration's view of the war and foreign policy issues. The other is a snapshot of views in:
> Asia (Simon World)
> Russia/Central Asia/Europe (Untimely Thoughts) and
> via Sudan Watch and other of Ingrid Jones's Africa blogs linked on Sudan Watch:
-- Africa
-- global development and aid issues
-- United Nations
-- global oil politics
-- environmental problems; e.g., water scarcity
In other words, Ingrid's Sudan Watch is not just about the Darfur crisis, or about Sudan or even Africa. It's a window on the developing world and related issues, all of which are important to US foreign policy.
This is not counting the link to John Batchelor's website, which daily has links to the best reports on important issues here and abroad, and which reviews books that deal with the full range of 21st century issues.
I wanted to find an all-Canada and Mexico blog, and also a south and central American blog or at least an all-Latin American blog. I hope to have the time to pursue that goal once I stop blogging. Those blogs would help complete the big picture.
Mungee's blog is also important because it helps round out the picture in India; it's also a window on ICT for people who are not in that field, which is profoundly shaping the modern era. It's also a window on rural development -- and something more:
Study the photograph at the top of the blog: A man in tribal clothes squatted in a verdant field, showing a child how to use a PDA. There it is, in one photograph: the early 21st century across the world. All the promise and challenge of this era are captured in the picture. You've heard of the Age of Faith and the Age of Reason? Well, this is the Age of Human Resources.
So that is my gift to people who return to Pundita's blog to root around in the archives or who come upon it for the first time. I found a few blogs that together convey our world in a way that's not readily apparent from the nightly news.
I have thought about adding a link category for bloggers I like and who are plugged into the blogosphere. I thought of calling it "American potluck" or somesuch. But after thinking over all the above, my heart tells me to leave well enough alone, at least for now.
Who knows? If I return to the blogosphere, I might do it in a right proper way -- comment section, trackback, participating in blogger carnivals, politicking to get into a Whizbang Awards, endlessly visiting other blogs and adding my comments in order to promote my blog, putting into practice the great marketing advice that Dan Riehl has given me, and writing many essays about other bloggers' essays.
Thank you again for writing to say goodbye, Dymphna. I will leave you with a cautionary observation and a traveler's tale; why the latter has come to mind while reading your 'personal' blog, I do not know. But I wrote "Another kind of beer" for you.
Note the caption at Sumedh Mungee's blog: "There is no box."
That's right; there is no box and there never was a box. There are just ways of thinking, and dialogue. Stop the dialogue; terrorize it into silence, and ways of thinking harden. This only means that the Genius informing every heart can't easily be heard -- but not boxed in, not gone away. It's always there as a whisper or a roar.
So that would be my answer to the question posed by Gates of Vienna:
"Does liberal humanism provide enough spiritual might to counter the Great Islamic Jihad? If not, then we have no arms to fight it with."
Neither liberal humanism nor Islam or Christianity or any religion or creed provides spiritual force. Spiritual force comes from the heart's ability to listen to the best within us.
Now about that traveler's tale....
Another kind of beer
One late night in the boonies in a Third World country an American woman showed up. She had been pushed to her limit by the rigors of travel in a land that was completely foreign to her. Then she couldn't get a room and was told she'd have to wait for hours to find out if one could be found. She broke into sobs and blurted that she wished she'd never made the journey.
I happened to be stting in what passed for the lobby and hearing all this. I slapped my hands on my knees, stood up and announced matter-of-factly, "I don't know about you but I'm going out for a beer."
The woman whirled to look at the stranger who spoke English. She choked through her sobs, "A beer? There's beer in this place?"
I grinned at her. "Want to come along?"
"Oh yes!" she cried in relief. "A beer! I would die for a beer right now!" She glanced at her suitcases.
"They'll be okay," I said.
I led her out into the night. A few minutes of walking through the dusty roads of the village. She asked my name and told me hers. As we walked she talked about why she had made the journey and how much she regretted it.
"I'm turning right around and going back to the US as soon as I get some sleep and find transportation."
I led her through the silent streets of the village bedded down for the night. She looked around eagerly and asked, "Where's the bar?"
I pointed ahead. On reaching the open countryside she stopped, looked around and said ruefully, "There is no bar, is there? No beer."
"The bar is right here," I smiled, and added, "Look up."
She looked up, then plunked down on the ground in awe and stared.
In that region there were no electric lights for many, many miles at night. We sat in silence watching the sky so close in the pristine air it seemed with small effort one could touch the heaven's starry tapestry.
Then we chatted about nothing in particular, as if we were sitting in a bar after work.
By the time we returned to the village a room had been found for her, but she knew by then that she could have bunked with me if no room materialized.
I saw her a few days later. "Still here, huh?"
She grinned. "Thanks for the company -- and the beer."
I happened to be stting in what passed for the lobby and hearing all this. I slapped my hands on my knees, stood up and announced matter-of-factly, "I don't know about you but I'm going out for a beer."
The woman whirled to look at the stranger who spoke English. She choked through her sobs, "A beer? There's beer in this place?"
I grinned at her. "Want to come along?"
"Oh yes!" she cried in relief. "A beer! I would die for a beer right now!" She glanced at her suitcases.
"They'll be okay," I said.
I led her out into the night. A few minutes of walking through the dusty roads of the village. She asked my name and told me hers. As we walked she talked about why she had made the journey and how much she regretted it.
"I'm turning right around and going back to the US as soon as I get some sleep and find transportation."
I led her through the silent streets of the village bedded down for the night. She looked around eagerly and asked, "Where's the bar?"
I pointed ahead. On reaching the open countryside she stopped, looked around and said ruefully, "There is no bar, is there? No beer."
"The bar is right here," I smiled, and added, "Look up."
She looked up, then plunked down on the ground in awe and stared.
In that region there were no electric lights for many, many miles at night. We sat in silence watching the sky so close in the pristine air it seemed with small effort one could touch the heaven's starry tapestry.
Then we chatted about nothing in particular, as if we were sitting in a bar after work.
By the time we returned to the village a room had been found for her, but she knew by then that she could have bunked with me if no room materialized.
I saw her a few days later. "Still here, huh?"
She grinned. "Thanks for the company -- and the beer."
Gates of Vienna and the Gates of Athens
Dear Pundita:
I'm sorry you're shutting down your blog. Pundita Encore will be a good resource but I shall miss what I believe to be one of the superior blogs -- up there with Wretchard [Belmont Club] but in your own more wide-ranging style. Aside from content, the craft of your writing is excellent. I think you do some kind of writing for a living because it seems so fluid. When I found your blog -- can't remember how I stumbled upon it -- I grabbed our readers by the lapels and told them they must go there. No one else writes in your voice or with your breadth.
I thought your Blog Awards observations were spot on. When the Baron and I went to look at them we realized we're in a little ghetto. I don't know most of those people. I did visit a few to see what I might be missing.
Since you are leaving the scene for a while, I'd like to ask a favor. Would you do a critique of Gates of Vienna and tell me why we didn't qualify for your blog roll? Are we too much in a ghetto? Too random? I'd be interested in your opinion, which I respect. And your perspective would be helpful.
I hope your leave-taking is a happy one, meaning you are just much too busy having a real life to bother blogging. I hope you are leaving your present blog up just to float in the ether.
Dymphna
Gates of Vienna blog"
Dear Dymphna:
Thank you for the praise and kind farewell. Analyzing your blog and explaining why I do not link to it on my sidebar are two different things. I have taken a liking to several blogs I have visited during the course of research but I rarely return to read them. But I will do the best I can toward answering your questions.
First, I've only visited your blog a handful of times; each time, I've come across an educational, well written report about some aspect of Islamic history/culture or an organization (Muslim or otherwise) in the US that is espousing values which pose a threat to American security.
These themes are in line with the Gates of Vienna (GOV) mission statement, as laid out in the essay titled The Newest Phase of a Very Old War:
Also, the secondary thesis tends to overwhelm the mission statement because it raises issues that transcend the war on terror and the struggle between Christianity and Islam. The issues reflect the tension between the rise of civilization and the existence of tribes.
The laws that form a nation-state are inimical to religious/tribal laws, which is why the ancient Greeks politely but inexorably kicked the Greek gods upstairs. Same happened in ancient India. It has happened everywhere that the nation-state is shown to be a more efficient model of human society than tribes.
The conundrum is that the state's diffusion and consequent weakening of religious/tribal values leads to a weakening of purpose. This makes the nation-state vulnerable to decay from within and attacks from without, as the ancient Athenians learned the hard way. It's a lesson that has been taught countless times in history.
By placing this theme in your blog you've invited a 10,000 pound gorilla to take up residence. It's a huge, huge theme, which is quite hard to integrate with GWOT and matters Islam because it overpowers them. It's the heart of many disputes connected with civilization.
This observation should not be seen as a criticism or a call to revise the GOV mission statement. Of course many blogs, including Pundita's, make forays into topics that are outside the confines of the blog's stated theme. In GOV's case in particular I would be reluctant to criticize forays because your very first letter to me mentioned that you had taken up blogging to help you through the difficult period following the death of your daughter. I note that you mentioned this again in your most recent correspondence.
I admire that as part of your blogging you do reporting that provides valuable information to the US war effort. Yet during this endeavor you listen carefully to your heart (of course mourning and the healing process have a way of prompting special attention to intuition). If close listening leads you to forays, that is simply the personality of Gates of Vienna.
I think what distinguishes newsy blogs from other media platforms is a very distinct personality, which always reveals byways of the heart and contradictions.
In short, I don't have a criticism of Gates of Vienna. What you might want to play around with is more clearly delineating the two themes so that new readers are quickly oriented, but here I am just thinking aloud.
As to whether I can criticize any of the handful of GOV essays I've read -- I take issue with the branding of today's enemy as a German Nazi and with analogies that call forth Nazi atrocities, such as the Kristallnacht atrocity. Such branding has snowballed during the past year on American news talk shows and numerous blogs and opinion websites.
Pundita has also been guilty of mental laziness in invoking the "Islamofascism" label as a matter of convenience, but not since I've noticed the tendency to cast the enemy as the Third Reich.
Earlier this year Pundita rumbled with some fans of Muslim Brotherhood who denied the Nazi roots of the organization. However, it is getting into dangerous waters to haul a peaceful US ally into analogies that miss the mark in the first place, and secondly stimulate prejudice against Germans. Both of which play into the hand of al Qaeda and the Syrian and Iranian regimes.
Pundita thinks Ahmadinejad has gone on a Holocaust denial kick to target Germany or to be more precise, Germany's new government. I think Maddy's handlers in Iran's military want to embarrass the German government and drive a wedge between Britain, Germany and France. Since the Merkel-led coalition has formed Tehran has watched the EU Three toughen and show more solidarity in their approach to negotiations with Iran about nukes.
In any case Maddy is not Hitler; correct me if my memory is wrong but I seem to recall the latter had virtually unqualified support from the German people after he consolidated power. Maddy is in power only because he's backed by Iran's military; at least 80 percent of Iran's populace wishes him gone along with his handlers.
Iran's regime is a military dictatorship, plain and simple, and which no longer finds use to Arab neighbors or the Israelis; this since the US toppled Saddam Hussein's government. So when Maddy floats the "We're all Muslims against the World" routine what he hears back is, "What you mean 'we' Kemosabe?"
Except from Bashy -- Bashar al-Assad -- of course, and he has made his name mud in the Arab world. Iran's military is in a pile of trouble at home and they know it; they are hanging on only because of oil receipts. But stand back and look at the big picture. For decades Iran's regime was petted and feted by West Europeans and Russians and tolerated by Americans; now they're hearing that they're the Third Reich.
If I recall the majority of Iran's people are under 30; it's because so were many wiped out by the war with Iraq -- a war that the West encouraged in order create stasis in the region.
What can the West do now? Keep the pressure on for democratic reform, don't let Iran's leaders change the subject by yammering about Israel, and turn off the theoretical bubble machine. No triangulation, no chessboard thinking. Demand to negotiate directly with Iran's military.
We should take our cue from a reform-minded Iranian cleric whose answer to Maddy's talk about the Mahdi's Second Coming was to the effect, "Yes yes but we also have to focus on the deficit and inflation."
They have to focus on a few other things as well, but so far Maddy has created uproars that distract attention from Tehran's seat on a slippery slope.
To be continued.
I'm sorry you're shutting down your blog. Pundita Encore will be a good resource but I shall miss what I believe to be one of the superior blogs -- up there with Wretchard [Belmont Club] but in your own more wide-ranging style. Aside from content, the craft of your writing is excellent. I think you do some kind of writing for a living because it seems so fluid. When I found your blog -- can't remember how I stumbled upon it -- I grabbed our readers by the lapels and told them they must go there. No one else writes in your voice or with your breadth.
I thought your Blog Awards observations were spot on. When the Baron and I went to look at them we realized we're in a little ghetto. I don't know most of those people. I did visit a few to see what I might be missing.
Since you are leaving the scene for a while, I'd like to ask a favor. Would you do a critique of Gates of Vienna and tell me why we didn't qualify for your blog roll? Are we too much in a ghetto? Too random? I'd be interested in your opinion, which I respect. And your perspective would be helpful.
I hope your leave-taking is a happy one, meaning you are just much too busy having a real life to bother blogging. I hope you are leaving your present blog up just to float in the ether.
Dymphna
Gates of Vienna blog"
Dear Dymphna:
Thank you for the praise and kind farewell. Analyzing your blog and explaining why I do not link to it on my sidebar are two different things. I have taken a liking to several blogs I have visited during the course of research but I rarely return to read them. But I will do the best I can toward answering your questions.
First, I've only visited your blog a handful of times; each time, I've come across an educational, well written report about some aspect of Islamic history/culture or an organization (Muslim or otherwise) in the US that is espousing values which pose a threat to American security.
These themes are in line with the Gates of Vienna (GOV) mission statement, as laid out in the essay titled The Newest Phase of a Very Old War:
The thesis of this blog is that, like it or not, we are in a religious war. We do not define the terms but we should take careful note of them. We are mistaken if we think the Enemy wants merely to kill us. Once again, Jihad offers two choices to the West: conversion or death.However, I was struck by another GOV thesis, as stated in Part One of the series titled The Enemy Within:
...can this battle against the enemy within be fought without a religious regeneration in our own [American] culture? Does liberal humanism provide enough spiritual might to counter the Great Islamic Jihad? If not, then we have no arms to fight it with.This thesis puts you and Baron Bodissey (GOV co-author) in general agreement with traditionalist Muslim clerics not to mention the fundamental teachings of al Qaeda's Ayman al Zawahiri. His target is much more secular government than Christianity. And he is very clearly against the nation-state.
Also, the secondary thesis tends to overwhelm the mission statement because it raises issues that transcend the war on terror and the struggle between Christianity and Islam. The issues reflect the tension between the rise of civilization and the existence of tribes.
The laws that form a nation-state are inimical to religious/tribal laws, which is why the ancient Greeks politely but inexorably kicked the Greek gods upstairs. Same happened in ancient India. It has happened everywhere that the nation-state is shown to be a more efficient model of human society than tribes.
The conundrum is that the state's diffusion and consequent weakening of religious/tribal values leads to a weakening of purpose. This makes the nation-state vulnerable to decay from within and attacks from without, as the ancient Athenians learned the hard way. It's a lesson that has been taught countless times in history.
By placing this theme in your blog you've invited a 10,000 pound gorilla to take up residence. It's a huge, huge theme, which is quite hard to integrate with GWOT and matters Islam because it overpowers them. It's the heart of many disputes connected with civilization.
This observation should not be seen as a criticism or a call to revise the GOV mission statement. Of course many blogs, including Pundita's, make forays into topics that are outside the confines of the blog's stated theme. In GOV's case in particular I would be reluctant to criticize forays because your very first letter to me mentioned that you had taken up blogging to help you through the difficult period following the death of your daughter. I note that you mentioned this again in your most recent correspondence.
I admire that as part of your blogging you do reporting that provides valuable information to the US war effort. Yet during this endeavor you listen carefully to your heart (of course mourning and the healing process have a way of prompting special attention to intuition). If close listening leads you to forays, that is simply the personality of Gates of Vienna.
I think what distinguishes newsy blogs from other media platforms is a very distinct personality, which always reveals byways of the heart and contradictions.
In short, I don't have a criticism of Gates of Vienna. What you might want to play around with is more clearly delineating the two themes so that new readers are quickly oriented, but here I am just thinking aloud.
As to whether I can criticize any of the handful of GOV essays I've read -- I take issue with the branding of today's enemy as a German Nazi and with analogies that call forth Nazi atrocities, such as the Kristallnacht atrocity. Such branding has snowballed during the past year on American news talk shows and numerous blogs and opinion websites.
Pundita has also been guilty of mental laziness in invoking the "Islamofascism" label as a matter of convenience, but not since I've noticed the tendency to cast the enemy as the Third Reich.
Earlier this year Pundita rumbled with some fans of Muslim Brotherhood who denied the Nazi roots of the organization. However, it is getting into dangerous waters to haul a peaceful US ally into analogies that miss the mark in the first place, and secondly stimulate prejudice against Germans. Both of which play into the hand of al Qaeda and the Syrian and Iranian regimes.
Pundita thinks Ahmadinejad has gone on a Holocaust denial kick to target Germany or to be more precise, Germany's new government. I think Maddy's handlers in Iran's military want to embarrass the German government and drive a wedge between Britain, Germany and France. Since the Merkel-led coalition has formed Tehran has watched the EU Three toughen and show more solidarity in their approach to negotiations with Iran about nukes.
In any case Maddy is not Hitler; correct me if my memory is wrong but I seem to recall the latter had virtually unqualified support from the German people after he consolidated power. Maddy is in power only because he's backed by Iran's military; at least 80 percent of Iran's populace wishes him gone along with his handlers.
Iran's regime is a military dictatorship, plain and simple, and which no longer finds use to Arab neighbors or the Israelis; this since the US toppled Saddam Hussein's government. So when Maddy floats the "We're all Muslims against the World" routine what he hears back is, "What you mean 'we' Kemosabe?"
Except from Bashy -- Bashar al-Assad -- of course, and he has made his name mud in the Arab world. Iran's military is in a pile of trouble at home and they know it; they are hanging on only because of oil receipts. But stand back and look at the big picture. For decades Iran's regime was petted and feted by West Europeans and Russians and tolerated by Americans; now they're hearing that they're the Third Reich.
If I recall the majority of Iran's people are under 30; it's because so were many wiped out by the war with Iraq -- a war that the West encouraged in order create stasis in the region.
What can the West do now? Keep the pressure on for democratic reform, don't let Iran's leaders change the subject by yammering about Israel, and turn off the theoretical bubble machine. No triangulation, no chessboard thinking. Demand to negotiate directly with Iran's military.
We should take our cue from a reform-minded Iranian cleric whose answer to Maddy's talk about the Mahdi's Second Coming was to the effect, "Yes yes but we also have to focus on the deficit and inflation."
They have to focus on a few other things as well, but so far Maddy has created uproars that distract attention from Tehran's seat on a slippery slope.
To be continued.
Saturday, December 17
House votes to erect 700 mi security fence along US-Mexico border
"After we pass this, we send it to the Senate. And I think that's the end of it."
Pundita thinks we should see something like another Boston Tea Party -- launched this time against the Democrat and Republican parties -- if the Senate doesn't at least vote for the limp-wristed security measures passed by the House.
However, the bill does not deal with the huge problem of remittances, which Pundita addressed at length earlier this year. (See Mexico essays on the sidebar.)
And of course legislation cannot substitute for strong action by the White House and State Department in dealing with the Mexican and Central American governments, which tacitly (and overtly) encourage immigration to the US in lieu of making reforms that bother the ruling class in those countries.
Border-security bill passes House but divides GOP
Mike Madden
Republic Washington Bureau
Gannett
Arizona Central newspaper online
"Dec. 17, 2005 12:00 AM WASHINGTON - The House passed a sweeping border enforcement bill Friday night that would make illegal presence in the United States a federal crime, order employers to verify their workers' legal status and build a fence across most of the Arizona-Mexico border.
The 239-182 vote split the Arizona delegation, underscoring the fractious politics behind the issue. More than half of the 1.2 million arrests made last year by the U.S. Border Patrol were in Arizona.
The vote also exposed broader disputes among House Republicans that could pose hurdles for any immigration-reform bill, despite widespread recognition that the current system no longer works.
Pressure from constituents to fix the law has mounted in the past few years as illegal immigration has soared to record levels, straining hospitals, schools, social services and police departments around the country.
GOP leaders pushed hard for the measure so that lawmakers could go home for a monthlong Christmas break and lay the groundwork for next year's elections by touting tough action to stop illegal immigration.
But the bill does not include a plan for temporary-work visas for any of the estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants already in the United States, something President Bush has sought for two years and a step many Arizona lawmakers say is crucial. The White House supported the bill anyway but said the administration will keep pushing for broader legislation.
The Senate may support a guest-worker visa when it takes up the issue in February, setting up an election-year clash over the most extensive immigration reform in years.
Both of Arizona's Republican senators, John McCain and Jon Kyl, have written immigration bills that allow guest workers, though they differ over how to design the program.
The House measure attracted only grudging support from many lawmakers.
Republicans were split. Conservatives who want to crack down harder on illegal immigration and businesses that employ undocumented workers complained that it didn't go far enough.
Moderates who favor a guest-worker plan were upset that the bill didn't include the plan. They predicted undocumented immigrants would stay in the United States to work illegally even under the new bill's terms.
'The end of it'
Opposition arose on both sides of the debate, even within the Republican majority. Arizona GOP Reps. J.D. Hayworth and Jim Kolbe, who rarely agree on any immigration question, both opposed the bill and voted against two procedural motions needed to advance it to a final vote. Hayworth voted against final passage, one of only 17 Republicans to oppose the bill.
Kolbe, who will retire after this term in office, skipped the vote on final passage. His office released a statement saying he had a prior commitment but would've voted against the bill.
"These people, having voted on enforcement only, are never going to touch it again," said Kolbe, who has co-sponsored a guest-worker proposal with Rep. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., that mirrors McCain's proposal.
Kolbe said he fears the House will never act on it.
"After we pass this, we send it to the Senate. And I think that's the end of it," he said.
Meanwhile, Hayworth predicted the Senate will pass its own guest-worker program that the House eventually will take up instead of the bill passed Friday.
"In terms of truth in labeling, are we in fact engaged in enforcement first, or are we in fact engaged in enforcement maybe?" Hayworth asked.
Republican leaders tried hard not to alienate other conservatives, who said they would revolt against any guest-worker bill. Republicans met privately Thursday to hash out internal disagreements before holding the first of two procedural votes needed to move the bill toward passage.
Both narrowly passed, despite opposition from Hayworth and Kolbe.
Most Democrats voted against the bill, saying it was too harsh on immigrants and impossible to enforce.
Pulled between siding with Kolbe, his co-sponsor on the guest-worker program, and with Republican leaders, Flake voted for the bill but said he could have voted against it. He said he was counting on the Senate to pass a more comprehensive reform bill.
He said he voted for the second procedural motion only after asking for assurance from House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., that leadership wouldn't block the House from taking up a guest-worker bill next year.
"If the only way to move this forward is to give the Senate a flawed vehicle, then give it," Flake said.
Other Arizona lawmakers voted along party lines. The bill included a proposal by Rep. Rick Renzi to require Border Patrol uniforms to be made in the United States, easing security concerns raised by their production in Mexican factories.
Outside Congress, advocates for increasing legal immigration said they also hoped the Senate will pass a guest-worker plan and that the House bill will not become law. Business groups joined with labor unions and churches to oppose the House bill. Advocates for immigrant rights decried the legislation. The National Council of La Raza called it "appalling."
Mexico's ambassador to the United States, Carlos de Icaza, said the bill wouldn't fix immigration problems.
"Fences by themselves don't solve things, and not between neighbors," de Icaza said in an interview.
Conservatives called the measure a useful step toward getting control of the nation's borders, especially the 1,950-mile frontier with Mexico. The Federation for American Immigration Reform and other groups that seek reduced immigration agreed, urging supporters to call lawmakers all day Thursday and Friday to lobby for certain amendments."
Pundita thinks we should see something like another Boston Tea Party -- launched this time against the Democrat and Republican parties -- if the Senate doesn't at least vote for the limp-wristed security measures passed by the House.
However, the bill does not deal with the huge problem of remittances, which Pundita addressed at length earlier this year. (See Mexico essays on the sidebar.)
And of course legislation cannot substitute for strong action by the White House and State Department in dealing with the Mexican and Central American governments, which tacitly (and overtly) encourage immigration to the US in lieu of making reforms that bother the ruling class in those countries.
Border-security bill passes House but divides GOP
Mike Madden
Republic Washington Bureau
Gannett
Arizona Central newspaper online
"Dec. 17, 2005 12:00 AM WASHINGTON - The House passed a sweeping border enforcement bill Friday night that would make illegal presence in the United States a federal crime, order employers to verify their workers' legal status and build a fence across most of the Arizona-Mexico border.
The 239-182 vote split the Arizona delegation, underscoring the fractious politics behind the issue. More than half of the 1.2 million arrests made last year by the U.S. Border Patrol were in Arizona.
The vote also exposed broader disputes among House Republicans that could pose hurdles for any immigration-reform bill, despite widespread recognition that the current system no longer works.
Pressure from constituents to fix the law has mounted in the past few years as illegal immigration has soared to record levels, straining hospitals, schools, social services and police departments around the country.
GOP leaders pushed hard for the measure so that lawmakers could go home for a monthlong Christmas break and lay the groundwork for next year's elections by touting tough action to stop illegal immigration.
But the bill does not include a plan for temporary-work visas for any of the estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants already in the United States, something President Bush has sought for two years and a step many Arizona lawmakers say is crucial. The White House supported the bill anyway but said the administration will keep pushing for broader legislation.
The Senate may support a guest-worker visa when it takes up the issue in February, setting up an election-year clash over the most extensive immigration reform in years.
Both of Arizona's Republican senators, John McCain and Jon Kyl, have written immigration bills that allow guest workers, though they differ over how to design the program.
The House measure attracted only grudging support from many lawmakers.
Republicans were split. Conservatives who want to crack down harder on illegal immigration and businesses that employ undocumented workers complained that it didn't go far enough.
Moderates who favor a guest-worker plan were upset that the bill didn't include the plan. They predicted undocumented immigrants would stay in the United States to work illegally even under the new bill's terms.
'The end of it'
Opposition arose on both sides of the debate, even within the Republican majority. Arizona GOP Reps. J.D. Hayworth and Jim Kolbe, who rarely agree on any immigration question, both opposed the bill and voted against two procedural motions needed to advance it to a final vote. Hayworth voted against final passage, one of only 17 Republicans to oppose the bill.
Kolbe, who will retire after this term in office, skipped the vote on final passage. His office released a statement saying he had a prior commitment but would've voted against the bill.
"These people, having voted on enforcement only, are never going to touch it again," said Kolbe, who has co-sponsored a guest-worker proposal with Rep. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., that mirrors McCain's proposal.
Kolbe said he fears the House will never act on it.
"After we pass this, we send it to the Senate. And I think that's the end of it," he said.
Meanwhile, Hayworth predicted the Senate will pass its own guest-worker program that the House eventually will take up instead of the bill passed Friday.
"In terms of truth in labeling, are we in fact engaged in enforcement first, or are we in fact engaged in enforcement maybe?" Hayworth asked.
Republican leaders tried hard not to alienate other conservatives, who said they would revolt against any guest-worker bill. Republicans met privately Thursday to hash out internal disagreements before holding the first of two procedural votes needed to move the bill toward passage.
Both narrowly passed, despite opposition from Hayworth and Kolbe.
Most Democrats voted against the bill, saying it was too harsh on immigrants and impossible to enforce.
Pulled between siding with Kolbe, his co-sponsor on the guest-worker program, and with Republican leaders, Flake voted for the bill but said he could have voted against it. He said he was counting on the Senate to pass a more comprehensive reform bill.
He said he voted for the second procedural motion only after asking for assurance from House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., that leadership wouldn't block the House from taking up a guest-worker bill next year.
"If the only way to move this forward is to give the Senate a flawed vehicle, then give it," Flake said.
Other Arizona lawmakers voted along party lines. The bill included a proposal by Rep. Rick Renzi to require Border Patrol uniforms to be made in the United States, easing security concerns raised by their production in Mexican factories.
Outside Congress, advocates for increasing legal immigration said they also hoped the Senate will pass a guest-worker plan and that the House bill will not become law. Business groups joined with labor unions and churches to oppose the House bill. Advocates for immigrant rights decried the legislation. The National Council of La Raza called it "appalling."
Mexico's ambassador to the United States, Carlos de Icaza, said the bill wouldn't fix immigration problems.
"Fences by themselves don't solve things, and not between neighbors," de Icaza said in an interview.
Conservatives called the measure a useful step toward getting control of the nation's borders, especially the 1,950-mile frontier with Mexico. The Federation for American Immigration Reform and other groups that seek reduced immigration agreed, urging supporters to call lawmakers all day Thursday and Friday to lobby for certain amendments."
Not with all your smarts, Dan Riehl, not with all your smarts
Whereupon Pundita grouses to the Riehl World View blogger. (For an introduction to Dan Riehl's highly independent views about the blogosphere, read the Sigmund, Carl and Alfred interview.)
Subj: Bringing the US Department of State in line with today's world
Date: 12/17/05 5:28:10 AM Eastern Standard Time
From: Pundita1
To: itsjustdan@comcast.net
Dan, this long essay, which ranges over several issues connected with State, is prefaced by a long letter from a loyal reader (cybersecurity expert Annlee Hines) ...
Pundita
* * * *
In a message dated 12/17/05 5:34:02 AM Eastern Standard Time, itsjustdan@comcast.net writes:
"what happened to your retirement???"
* * * *
Date: 12/17/05 5:36:22 AM Eastern Standard Time
From: Pundita1
To: itsjustdan@comcast.net
what are you doing up at this ungodly hour? I am going to sleep before I crash face forward onto the keyboard. will write tomorrow.
* * * *
Date: 12/17/05 6:10:53 AM Eastern Standard Time
From: itsjustdan@comcast.net
To: Pundita1@aol.com
"Pundita always says this. LOLOL nite"
* * * *
It's a forced retirement, Dan. In a few days I will have no choice but to leave the blogosphere and concentrate completely on personal matters. But after taking a short break about a month ago (or whenever I announced my long vacation) I decided to battle on as long as I possibly could, right down to the wire. Not a smart decision if you knew my circumstances, simply a tenacious one.
I want to show you something, so you understand the road ahead for the Bush democracy doctrine:
Do you remember the essay I sent you by the US vet about his adventures helping the stranded in New Orleans after Katrina? "The Deuce." My site meter showed that no sooner did you link to it than hundreds of your readers began showed up to read it, and it went on like that until I gave up trying to count. But over the course of a few days thousands read the essay. (I am very glad they did; it is a wonderful story.)
Now, I will tell you how many of your readers came calling today after you published a link to my essay about the US Department of State: As of 10:30 AM, two. One of them in Europe.
Yes, it's a Saturday, and it's still early, and this is a weekend when many people are doing Christmas shopping, so I'm sure there will be more readers from your site as the week wears on. And Pundita's blog, which probably sees fewer readers in a day than yours sees in an hour, will stay up after I leave, so a few thousand readers here and abroad will eventually read the essay and maybe a hundred of those will find the time to ponder about it.
However, a few thousand are not enough to turn the tide, you understand. What about John Batchelor's audience, which numbers I don't know but maybe as many as 10-20 million listeners a night? I can tell you this much: whatever knowledge his audience has gained about the doings at State, after listening four years to his show, it has not made a dent in the Democrat and Republican political machines. Not even the smallest dent.
In the end, US foreign policy will be set by battles between the most aggressive and ruthless partisans and lobbyists and by the machinations of civil servants at State. In short, about 50 people will shape how the US interacts with the world. And if it all falls down again, as it did on September 11, there will always be the US military to pick up the pieces.
I don't see all this as a cause for pessimism; one cannot fight to win because many times in the battle to inform and explain, all seems lost. One simply does what one can, and keeps doing it, until one can't battle longer. In this way, civilization lurches onward.
But I will tell you that at times I fall prey to a dark mood. This happened when I published the essay about State that I sent you early this morning. Before tumbling into bed I thought that I should be happy if only 100 people took the time to read the essay, which admittedly was overly long.
After crashing for a few hours I checked the site meter then glumly observed, "Bah. My fellow Americans would rather watch paint dry than read about State."
With a sigh I clicked to your site, to see your comment about the essay. At first I missed it. On the second scroll-through I found it, but could not believe my eyes at first. You'd published your comment under the title, Are you ready for some football? and the first sentence was clearly about football.
For a moment I sat there staring, then burst into laughter. I laughed until tears streamed down my face. If anyone can lead a horse to water, it's a smart marketing professional. (Are there any other kind but smart?) So the Pajamas Media people should listen carefully to your critiques and take notes because you know what you're talking about.
Yet not with all your smarts, Dan Riehl, not with all your smarts and marketing experience, can you squeeze out a higher percentage of interest among the American electorate about the doings at Foggy Bottom. But you sure gave it one hell of a try, which I find to be of great cheer.
Subj: Bringing the US Department of State in line with today's world
Date: 12/17/05 5:28:10 AM Eastern Standard Time
From: Pundita1
To: itsjustdan@comcast.net
Dan, this long essay, which ranges over several issues connected with State, is prefaced by a long letter from a loyal reader (cybersecurity expert Annlee Hines) ...
Pundita
* * * *
In a message dated 12/17/05 5:34:02 AM Eastern Standard Time, itsjustdan@comcast.net writes:
"what happened to your retirement???"
* * * *
Date: 12/17/05 5:36:22 AM Eastern Standard Time
From: Pundita1
To: itsjustdan@comcast.net
what are you doing up at this ungodly hour? I am going to sleep before I crash face forward onto the keyboard. will write tomorrow.
* * * *
Date: 12/17/05 6:10:53 AM Eastern Standard Time
From: itsjustdan@comcast.net
To: Pundita1@aol.com
"Pundita always says this. LOLOL nite"
* * * *
It's a forced retirement, Dan. In a few days I will have no choice but to leave the blogosphere and concentrate completely on personal matters. But after taking a short break about a month ago (or whenever I announced my long vacation) I decided to battle on as long as I possibly could, right down to the wire. Not a smart decision if you knew my circumstances, simply a tenacious one.
I want to show you something, so you understand the road ahead for the Bush democracy doctrine:
Do you remember the essay I sent you by the US vet about his adventures helping the stranded in New Orleans after Katrina? "The Deuce." My site meter showed that no sooner did you link to it than hundreds of your readers began showed up to read it, and it went on like that until I gave up trying to count. But over the course of a few days thousands read the essay. (I am very glad they did; it is a wonderful story.)
Now, I will tell you how many of your readers came calling today after you published a link to my essay about the US Department of State: As of 10:30 AM, two. One of them in Europe.
Yes, it's a Saturday, and it's still early, and this is a weekend when many people are doing Christmas shopping, so I'm sure there will be more readers from your site as the week wears on. And Pundita's blog, which probably sees fewer readers in a day than yours sees in an hour, will stay up after I leave, so a few thousand readers here and abroad will eventually read the essay and maybe a hundred of those will find the time to ponder about it.
However, a few thousand are not enough to turn the tide, you understand. What about John Batchelor's audience, which numbers I don't know but maybe as many as 10-20 million listeners a night? I can tell you this much: whatever knowledge his audience has gained about the doings at State, after listening four years to his show, it has not made a dent in the Democrat and Republican political machines. Not even the smallest dent.
In the end, US foreign policy will be set by battles between the most aggressive and ruthless partisans and lobbyists and by the machinations of civil servants at State. In short, about 50 people will shape how the US interacts with the world. And if it all falls down again, as it did on September 11, there will always be the US military to pick up the pieces.
I don't see all this as a cause for pessimism; one cannot fight to win because many times in the battle to inform and explain, all seems lost. One simply does what one can, and keeps doing it, until one can't battle longer. In this way, civilization lurches onward.
But I will tell you that at times I fall prey to a dark mood. This happened when I published the essay about State that I sent you early this morning. Before tumbling into bed I thought that I should be happy if only 100 people took the time to read the essay, which admittedly was overly long.
After crashing for a few hours I checked the site meter then glumly observed, "Bah. My fellow Americans would rather watch paint dry than read about State."
With a sigh I clicked to your site, to see your comment about the essay. At first I missed it. On the second scroll-through I found it, but could not believe my eyes at first. You'd published your comment under the title, Are you ready for some football? and the first sentence was clearly about football.
For a moment I sat there staring, then burst into laughter. I laughed until tears streamed down my face. If anyone can lead a horse to water, it's a smart marketing professional. (Are there any other kind but smart?) So the Pajamas Media people should listen carefully to your critiques and take notes because you know what you're talking about.
Yet not with all your smarts, Dan Riehl, not with all your smarts and marketing experience, can you squeeze out a higher percentage of interest among the American electorate about the doings at Foggy Bottom. But you sure gave it one hell of a try, which I find to be of great cheer.
Stand and Deliver: Bringing the US Department of State in line with today's world
Hi, Pundita:
Re: your post about de-Europeanizing the US Department of State. As always, I enjoyed your essay, and don't disagree with the premise. Being human, however, I can always quibble about something.
One thing I've noticed about people who grow up (individually) in cramped quarters: disagreements to them are win-lose. Those of us who grew up with a little more space around us (even though the city grew out to change that) tend to think more in terms of win-win.
Oddly, societies seem to operate in somewhat the same way, though the flavor is a little different. Europe, with its history of so many wars fought over the same dreadful ground, sees all contests between states as win-lose, while the US, with its history of taking our kit and going elsewhere, tends to be win-win. You can have your way here; I'll just go over there, and we won't bother each other -- we might even trade a bit eventually.
But those Americans most likely to be the doers rather than the arguers are those least likely to be attracted to the State Dept. Most societies are older than ours, and so generally those attracted to old societies will be the ones who want to deal with them. The doers of that group will want to deal with them for profit (business), the talkers will gravitate to a talking shop: State, the UN, etc.
As for a universal truth, I think that wonderful set of clauses [in the Preamble of the Declaration of Independence] may be just that, though John Locke had to spell it out for us. I've come to the conclusion that he had to spell it out because those truths are not self-evident. (Though it made a lovely bit of framing the argument, eh?) Further, it is because they are not self-evident we must say them aloud, indeed proclaim them early and often and defend them every time, lest they be nibbled away like a stream bank when no one is looking.
Since those serving at State and desirous of serving in the UN, et al, are those among us least likely to live that truth, perhaps we need to make government service less of a career opportunity, even at the risk of introducing new forms of ineffeciency. After all, the inefficiencies which come with our present career service model (including tenure, by any other name as sweet) are most dissatisfying.
Annlee Hines
Dear Annlee:
You should know by now that Pundita loves quibbles, which have inspired many Pundita essays and helped me (and I hope, readers) clarify thinking on a matter. Which is to say that knowledge does not build if everyone is in perfect agreement. I appreciate your comments, which are always thought provoking. I disagree with you on some points in your letter and see in them a need to clarify some of my statements.
I agree that environment, including the amount of "space" one inhabits, is a factor in attitudes about how far to carry a disagreement. However, my call to wrest the State Department away from Eurocentrism is grounded less in what the Europeans are like and more in what official Washington and the American public are like.
It is pulling teeth with an elf's tweezer to get the majority of Americans to think with any depth about global matters and thus, it's easy for State to operate outside the spotlight of the American public's scrutiny. This situation won't change markedly because America is a vast nation, Americans are such terribly busy people, and many matters of diplomacy are best carried out without the constant glare of media attention.
The other side is that because of America's superpower status, American foreign policy should not drift under the influence of foreign regional concerns and the increasingly globalized interests of American big business.
The latter reflects the viewpoint that characterized the foreign relations of the European colonial powers. Such attitudes are not necessarily the best for America's defense and the regions of no great interest to the business powers. Yet if 9/11 has taught anything, it is that no world region is unimportant in this era.
For this reason American foreign relations need to be brought closely in line with the only rational definition of foreign policy, which is to directly support the defense of a nation.
Toward this end, the US government must not fall in love with any one world region, bloc, alliance or other nation -- no matter how valuable they might be to US strategic resources and business interests. This is on the theory that the backlash from an oppressed, isolated, ignored or especially favored region can wipe out whatever security the US gains from focusing on a particular resource or region at the expense of others.
Yet during the waning years of the Cold War and running into the post-Soviet era the US Department of State was dominated by factions that were hyperfocused on Eastern Europe/Russia. The American public had only the haziest notion of how the post-Soviet era in those regions was shaking out and so was unaware that the Cold War did not stop with the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
Meanwhile, a few other things were going on in the world, as Americans learned on 9/11 and again, when France and Germany rose up in 2002 at the UN to tell America to go sit on a tack. And again as it dawned that Beijing had not sat on their hands with the power accorded them by the big Western trading nations. This was a power considered by the NATO allies to be a 'necessary evil' to offset Soviet expansion, and which continued unexamined by the State Department after the Soviet Union dissolved.
So I take issue with your implication that State is a talker and not a doer. If only State had confined themselves to talk! The problem for the American people and the world at large is that throughout the Clinton years, State continued as a big doer.
By the end of the Cold War State had gathered tremendous power; I believe they got more power than the Congress and White House to set and direct foreign policy. During the Clinton era no small part of the power was placed under the control of George Soros and the Marc Rich crowd, US corporations wanting to cash in on the breakup of the Soviet Union, and congressionals who listened to lobbyists here and abroad who didn't want to stop with 'winning' the Cold War; they wanted to take control of Russia's government and destroy any possibility of the Soviet Union rising again.
By the end of Clinton's presidency State was virtually running the Central Intelligence Agency and controlling the Pentagon's agenda. And it's not much of an exaggeration to say that State was by then run from a post box in Brussels; i.e., they fell in line with the foreign policy of the European Union. This policy was in turn (and still is) influenced by the 'Chirac School' of multilateralism, which is a thinly disguised rationale for allowing trade to dominate all other issues.
One cannot blame all this on America's foreign office, and one certainly can't blame it on the European Union. During the Clinton era State acted behind the screen of public inattention, which reflected the US media's hyperfocus on domestic issues and battles between the US political left and right.
Nor can State's power be tracked solely to the Cold War and the US determination to retain the NATO alliance after the Cold War ended. The power State accrued over decades was an inevitable consequence of the inbuilt tension between the congressional and presidential branches of US government.
The tension serves the checks and balances in the US Constitution in that it acts as a corrective measure when one branch becomes too powerful. The downside is that the constant jockeying for power between two elected branches of government gives power to a civil service agency. This is because a bureaucracy is buffered against the revolving door of political appointments and attendant shifts in political winds.
People who understand this warned passionate supporters of the Bush doctrine not to pin great hope on Condoleezza Rice's appointment to State, particularly during the first years. The Secretary of State does not run Foggy Bottom. Those whose entry into the State Department is through presidential appointment, or who come to State hand-picked by appointees, must find ways to negotiate with powerful civil servants they know can outlast a term of political appointment.
Generations of those civil servants at State were trained to give the highest priority to NATO aims, which meant little adjustment in thinking when the focus went to chipping away at Moscow's hold on the waning Soviet empire. The Bush doctrine, while retaining lip service to NATO, represents a completely new day for US foreign policy -- and a very dangerous, untested one, in the view of State's most powerful chiefs.
What happens, they ask, when Bush leaves the presidency and Rumsfeld leaves Defense? The United States of America could be out there bouncing on the limb of democracy yappity-yap and with no safety net provided by our oldest and most powerful allies.
These civil servants see themselves as the tiller on the ship of state, which in a democracy is buffeted by the winds of politics. They are there to keep America's foreign policy on a steady course through the storms of change wrought by political winds. They provide the continuity that democratic politics does not necessarily allow.
Is their view of their function right or wrong? There is no easy answer, until you stop and think it through very carefully. Let's begin with the obvious questions. Do we really want our foreign office to act as a pioneer? To always place integrity above the exigencies of dealing with a flashpoint situation? Do we want them to march in lockstep with the latest power shift in Congress and presidential election?
From the other side, is the US foreign office supposed to set US foreign policy and shield the decisions from control by the Congress and White House?
That's a question the Founding Fathers didn't think about because at the time the US Constitution was framed, the Union was not the world's lone superpower nation in a world of many governments and alliances with global power. But we can feel our way to the answer because the Founders designated three and not four branches of US government. This was alluded to during a recent debate on PBS NewsHour. An ex-State official fumed that State was being shut out of a place at the table by the Bush administration when it came to decisions on Iraq.
The other guy stared at the official in quiet amazement then said something like, "State is a bureaucracy. They don't get a seat at the table."
Britain's foreign office does function as a virtually autonomous branch of government. But in our version of democracy our laws do not allow for a fourth branch of government.
This brings me to another disagreement with your statements. I am in great sympathy with the position of America's foreign service workers. Whether they serve in diplomatic missions or at Foggy Bottom, they are at the mercy of political appointees who often can't find their country appointment on a map and whose knowledge of diplomatic matters would not fit on the head of a pin.
Time and again, these appointees have wrecked months and even years of delicate negotiations through sheer ignorance or the desire to carry through a political party's agenda at the expense of sane actions. But I am reminded of the punchline in Under Siege, when the ex-Navy Seal tells the disgruntled ex-CIA operative that if you don't like taking insane orders, don't sign up.
The State Department is not the guardian of the American nation. It is not the tiller of the ship of state. That function falls to the American people as a whole and elected representatives to the Congress and White House. State is there to carry out orders by elected officials. If they don't like them apples, find another place to work.
That does not mean America's foreign service workers do not have a legitimate beef. One cannot put competent workers in the position of receiving dangerously inept orders from idiots and expect them to be cooperative. We saw this in starkest terms during the Viet Nam war, when reportedly US soldiers sometimes replied to clearly insane orders by shooting the idiot who issued them.
Certainly, State's vast bureaucracy, which I sent up in The US Department of Pack Rat, needs pruning and refurbishing for the post-Soviet era. However, I don't think less is more in this case. America is a superpower nation in an incredibly complex world of many competing powers; we need the best diplomats (and foreign office) that US tax money can afford, not "less." We need a meritocracy at State, one that does not pass over intelligent, experienced and very dedicated workers in favor of a 'political' promotion.
Foreign service employees posted abroad often work under very dangerous and difficult conditions and are always looked upon as spies by the host government. Despite this, they do not garner respect and gratitude in the American society in the way that police do. Bureaucrats are not held in high esteem in America and the foreign service is no exception. The American public needs to become more aware of the contributions of the best field workers yet at the same time they can't just because those workers are placed in more danger by the spotlight of public attention.
Also, we need to give our foreign service workers protection against Americans who are handed power and diplomatic posts simply as a plum because they wrote out big donation checks to a political candidate and did big fundraising. The American public needs to realize that such plums are very counterproductive and even very dangerous in this era.
A good analogy is Michael Brown's appointment to head FEMA. During a settled weather pattern, it didn't matter so much that FEMA was run by someone whose greatest expertise seemed to be showing Arabian horses. Then came the perfect storm.
There many storms during this very unsettled era. Gone are the Kabuki-like days of Cold War diplomacy, when moves by other governments were so predictable that an American with no foreign service experience and not even speaking the language could be expected to hold down a diplomatic post. The 9/11 attack was the perfect storm in US foreign policy circles. Congressional attention to the needs of our foreign service has not reflected this because such discussion boils down to pay scale hikes and more money spent on training. Yet at the least we need to move past the era when being a great friend to a political campaign is the sole criterion for determining competency to run a diplomatic mission.
Let the friends sleep in The Lincoln Bedroom or run the White House Easter Egg Roll. Give them any kind of plum except the work of US diplomacy.
I also take issue with your statement "Americans most likely to be the doers rather than the arguers are those least likely to be attracted to the State Department."
We desperately need the best arguers we can find. Arguing skillfully about highly abstract concepts that underpin different types of government is very much a "doer" occupation, and one that has been tragically neglected on American shores, which carries over to US diplomatic missions.
Yet I will grant that the sentiment you express about talkers and doers is a hallmark of American thinking. Thus, in Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand took a thousand pages to bash home the point that despots such as Josef Stalin did not think up Communism and its rationale; that was done by philosophers who were quite distant from the clock-punching workaday world of "doers."
The view among many Americans is that to see American success is to love democracy and capitalism. So if we just keep doing our thing, eventually everyone will see its value. Tell that to someone who lives in a country taken over by transnational dope-selling gangs that are models of free market enterprise after they've murdered all dissenters in the government.
Tell that to a country taken over by a cadre of foreign investors and bankers practicing free market economics, cranking out pro-democracy tracts and stage-managing "democratic" elections while taking zero interest in the welfare of the populace.
The Bush democracy doctrine is not a real doctrine in the sense of a developed philosophy of foreign relations. It is an outline of ideas, which must run the gauntlet of many thoughtful, subtle and shrewd disputes if it's to outlast Bush's presidency. America's foreign service workers are on the front line of the disputes, which means they need to hunker down to serious talking -- and keep talking outside the narrow channels of diplomacy.
In the bars of Calcutta, the coffee houses of Cairo, the shopping malls of Shanghai, they must talk and talk and talk. They must learn to talk skillfully, intelligently, and thoughtfully when challenged by arguments that elevate profit motive, national security, internal social order, and religious law above democracy.
Before talk must come hard thinking. Months ago I warned a reader that America is facing the fight of our lives. The battlefield is ideas. I say with a smile that you have already made that point, and eloquently, so I will close with repeating your own words:
Re: your post about de-Europeanizing the US Department of State. As always, I enjoyed your essay, and don't disagree with the premise. Being human, however, I can always quibble about something.
One thing I've noticed about people who grow up (individually) in cramped quarters: disagreements to them are win-lose. Those of us who grew up with a little more space around us (even though the city grew out to change that) tend to think more in terms of win-win.
Oddly, societies seem to operate in somewhat the same way, though the flavor is a little different. Europe, with its history of so many wars fought over the same dreadful ground, sees all contests between states as win-lose, while the US, with its history of taking our kit and going elsewhere, tends to be win-win. You can have your way here; I'll just go over there, and we won't bother each other -- we might even trade a bit eventually.
But those Americans most likely to be the doers rather than the arguers are those least likely to be attracted to the State Dept. Most societies are older than ours, and so generally those attracted to old societies will be the ones who want to deal with them. The doers of that group will want to deal with them for profit (business), the talkers will gravitate to a talking shop: State, the UN, etc.
As for a universal truth, I think that wonderful set of clauses [in the Preamble of the Declaration of Independence] may be just that, though John Locke had to spell it out for us. I've come to the conclusion that he had to spell it out because those truths are not self-evident. (Though it made a lovely bit of framing the argument, eh?) Further, it is because they are not self-evident we must say them aloud, indeed proclaim them early and often and defend them every time, lest they be nibbled away like a stream bank when no one is looking.
Since those serving at State and desirous of serving in the UN, et al, are those among us least likely to live that truth, perhaps we need to make government service less of a career opportunity, even at the risk of introducing new forms of ineffeciency. After all, the inefficiencies which come with our present career service model (including tenure, by any other name as sweet) are most dissatisfying.
Annlee Hines
Dear Annlee:
You should know by now that Pundita loves quibbles, which have inspired many Pundita essays and helped me (and I hope, readers) clarify thinking on a matter. Which is to say that knowledge does not build if everyone is in perfect agreement. I appreciate your comments, which are always thought provoking. I disagree with you on some points in your letter and see in them a need to clarify some of my statements.
I agree that environment, including the amount of "space" one inhabits, is a factor in attitudes about how far to carry a disagreement. However, my call to wrest the State Department away from Eurocentrism is grounded less in what the Europeans are like and more in what official Washington and the American public are like.
It is pulling teeth with an elf's tweezer to get the majority of Americans to think with any depth about global matters and thus, it's easy for State to operate outside the spotlight of the American public's scrutiny. This situation won't change markedly because America is a vast nation, Americans are such terribly busy people, and many matters of diplomacy are best carried out without the constant glare of media attention.
The other side is that because of America's superpower status, American foreign policy should not drift under the influence of foreign regional concerns and the increasingly globalized interests of American big business.
The latter reflects the viewpoint that characterized the foreign relations of the European colonial powers. Such attitudes are not necessarily the best for America's defense and the regions of no great interest to the business powers. Yet if 9/11 has taught anything, it is that no world region is unimportant in this era.
For this reason American foreign relations need to be brought closely in line with the only rational definition of foreign policy, which is to directly support the defense of a nation.
Toward this end, the US government must not fall in love with any one world region, bloc, alliance or other nation -- no matter how valuable they might be to US strategic resources and business interests. This is on the theory that the backlash from an oppressed, isolated, ignored or especially favored region can wipe out whatever security the US gains from focusing on a particular resource or region at the expense of others.
Yet during the waning years of the Cold War and running into the post-Soviet era the US Department of State was dominated by factions that were hyperfocused on Eastern Europe/Russia. The American public had only the haziest notion of how the post-Soviet era in those regions was shaking out and so was unaware that the Cold War did not stop with the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
Meanwhile, a few other things were going on in the world, as Americans learned on 9/11 and again, when France and Germany rose up in 2002 at the UN to tell America to go sit on a tack. And again as it dawned that Beijing had not sat on their hands with the power accorded them by the big Western trading nations. This was a power considered by the NATO allies to be a 'necessary evil' to offset Soviet expansion, and which continued unexamined by the State Department after the Soviet Union dissolved.
So I take issue with your implication that State is a talker and not a doer. If only State had confined themselves to talk! The problem for the American people and the world at large is that throughout the Clinton years, State continued as a big doer.
By the end of the Cold War State had gathered tremendous power; I believe they got more power than the Congress and White House to set and direct foreign policy. During the Clinton era no small part of the power was placed under the control of George Soros and the Marc Rich crowd, US corporations wanting to cash in on the breakup of the Soviet Union, and congressionals who listened to lobbyists here and abroad who didn't want to stop with 'winning' the Cold War; they wanted to take control of Russia's government and destroy any possibility of the Soviet Union rising again.
By the end of Clinton's presidency State was virtually running the Central Intelligence Agency and controlling the Pentagon's agenda. And it's not much of an exaggeration to say that State was by then run from a post box in Brussels; i.e., they fell in line with the foreign policy of the European Union. This policy was in turn (and still is) influenced by the 'Chirac School' of multilateralism, which is a thinly disguised rationale for allowing trade to dominate all other issues.
One cannot blame all this on America's foreign office, and one certainly can't blame it on the European Union. During the Clinton era State acted behind the screen of public inattention, which reflected the US media's hyperfocus on domestic issues and battles between the US political left and right.
Nor can State's power be tracked solely to the Cold War and the US determination to retain the NATO alliance after the Cold War ended. The power State accrued over decades was an inevitable consequence of the inbuilt tension between the congressional and presidential branches of US government.
The tension serves the checks and balances in the US Constitution in that it acts as a corrective measure when one branch becomes too powerful. The downside is that the constant jockeying for power between two elected branches of government gives power to a civil service agency. This is because a bureaucracy is buffered against the revolving door of political appointments and attendant shifts in political winds.
People who understand this warned passionate supporters of the Bush doctrine not to pin great hope on Condoleezza Rice's appointment to State, particularly during the first years. The Secretary of State does not run Foggy Bottom. Those whose entry into the State Department is through presidential appointment, or who come to State hand-picked by appointees, must find ways to negotiate with powerful civil servants they know can outlast a term of political appointment.
Generations of those civil servants at State were trained to give the highest priority to NATO aims, which meant little adjustment in thinking when the focus went to chipping away at Moscow's hold on the waning Soviet empire. The Bush doctrine, while retaining lip service to NATO, represents a completely new day for US foreign policy -- and a very dangerous, untested one, in the view of State's most powerful chiefs.
What happens, they ask, when Bush leaves the presidency and Rumsfeld leaves Defense? The United States of America could be out there bouncing on the limb of democracy yappity-yap and with no safety net provided by our oldest and most powerful allies.
These civil servants see themselves as the tiller on the ship of state, which in a democracy is buffeted by the winds of politics. They are there to keep America's foreign policy on a steady course through the storms of change wrought by political winds. They provide the continuity that democratic politics does not necessarily allow.
Is their view of their function right or wrong? There is no easy answer, until you stop and think it through very carefully. Let's begin with the obvious questions. Do we really want our foreign office to act as a pioneer? To always place integrity above the exigencies of dealing with a flashpoint situation? Do we want them to march in lockstep with the latest power shift in Congress and presidential election?
From the other side, is the US foreign office supposed to set US foreign policy and shield the decisions from control by the Congress and White House?
That's a question the Founding Fathers didn't think about because at the time the US Constitution was framed, the Union was not the world's lone superpower nation in a world of many governments and alliances with global power. But we can feel our way to the answer because the Founders designated three and not four branches of US government. This was alluded to during a recent debate on PBS NewsHour. An ex-State official fumed that State was being shut out of a place at the table by the Bush administration when it came to decisions on Iraq.
The other guy stared at the official in quiet amazement then said something like, "State is a bureaucracy. They don't get a seat at the table."
Britain's foreign office does function as a virtually autonomous branch of government. But in our version of democracy our laws do not allow for a fourth branch of government.
This brings me to another disagreement with your statements. I am in great sympathy with the position of America's foreign service workers. Whether they serve in diplomatic missions or at Foggy Bottom, they are at the mercy of political appointees who often can't find their country appointment on a map and whose knowledge of diplomatic matters would not fit on the head of a pin.
Time and again, these appointees have wrecked months and even years of delicate negotiations through sheer ignorance or the desire to carry through a political party's agenda at the expense of sane actions. But I am reminded of the punchline in Under Siege, when the ex-Navy Seal tells the disgruntled ex-CIA operative that if you don't like taking insane orders, don't sign up.
The State Department is not the guardian of the American nation. It is not the tiller of the ship of state. That function falls to the American people as a whole and elected representatives to the Congress and White House. State is there to carry out orders by elected officials. If they don't like them apples, find another place to work.
That does not mean America's foreign service workers do not have a legitimate beef. One cannot put competent workers in the position of receiving dangerously inept orders from idiots and expect them to be cooperative. We saw this in starkest terms during the Viet Nam war, when reportedly US soldiers sometimes replied to clearly insane orders by shooting the idiot who issued them.
Certainly, State's vast bureaucracy, which I sent up in The US Department of Pack Rat, needs pruning and refurbishing for the post-Soviet era. However, I don't think less is more in this case. America is a superpower nation in an incredibly complex world of many competing powers; we need the best diplomats (and foreign office) that US tax money can afford, not "less." We need a meritocracy at State, one that does not pass over intelligent, experienced and very dedicated workers in favor of a 'political' promotion.
Foreign service employees posted abroad often work under very dangerous and difficult conditions and are always looked upon as spies by the host government. Despite this, they do not garner respect and gratitude in the American society in the way that police do. Bureaucrats are not held in high esteem in America and the foreign service is no exception. The American public needs to become more aware of the contributions of the best field workers yet at the same time they can't just because those workers are placed in more danger by the spotlight of public attention.
Also, we need to give our foreign service workers protection against Americans who are handed power and diplomatic posts simply as a plum because they wrote out big donation checks to a political candidate and did big fundraising. The American public needs to realize that such plums are very counterproductive and even very dangerous in this era.
A good analogy is Michael Brown's appointment to head FEMA. During a settled weather pattern, it didn't matter so much that FEMA was run by someone whose greatest expertise seemed to be showing Arabian horses. Then came the perfect storm.
There many storms during this very unsettled era. Gone are the Kabuki-like days of Cold War diplomacy, when moves by other governments were so predictable that an American with no foreign service experience and not even speaking the language could be expected to hold down a diplomatic post. The 9/11 attack was the perfect storm in US foreign policy circles. Congressional attention to the needs of our foreign service has not reflected this because such discussion boils down to pay scale hikes and more money spent on training. Yet at the least we need to move past the era when being a great friend to a political campaign is the sole criterion for determining competency to run a diplomatic mission.
Let the friends sleep in The Lincoln Bedroom or run the White House Easter Egg Roll. Give them any kind of plum except the work of US diplomacy.
I also take issue with your statement "Americans most likely to be the doers rather than the arguers are those least likely to be attracted to the State Department."
We desperately need the best arguers we can find. Arguing skillfully about highly abstract concepts that underpin different types of government is very much a "doer" occupation, and one that has been tragically neglected on American shores, which carries over to US diplomatic missions.
Yet I will grant that the sentiment you express about talkers and doers is a hallmark of American thinking. Thus, in Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand took a thousand pages to bash home the point that despots such as Josef Stalin did not think up Communism and its rationale; that was done by philosophers who were quite distant from the clock-punching workaday world of "doers."
The view among many Americans is that to see American success is to love democracy and capitalism. So if we just keep doing our thing, eventually everyone will see its value. Tell that to someone who lives in a country taken over by transnational dope-selling gangs that are models of free market enterprise after they've murdered all dissenters in the government.
Tell that to a country taken over by a cadre of foreign investors and bankers practicing free market economics, cranking out pro-democracy tracts and stage-managing "democratic" elections while taking zero interest in the welfare of the populace.
The Bush democracy doctrine is not a real doctrine in the sense of a developed philosophy of foreign relations. It is an outline of ideas, which must run the gauntlet of many thoughtful, subtle and shrewd disputes if it's to outlast Bush's presidency. America's foreign service workers are on the front line of the disputes, which means they need to hunker down to serious talking -- and keep talking outside the narrow channels of diplomacy.
In the bars of Calcutta, the coffee houses of Cairo, the shopping malls of Shanghai, they must talk and talk and talk. They must learn to talk skillfully, intelligently, and thoughtfully when challenged by arguments that elevate profit motive, national security, internal social order, and religious law above democracy.
Before talk must come hard thinking. Months ago I warned a reader that America is facing the fight of our lives. The battlefield is ideas. I say with a smile that you have already made that point, and eloquently, so I will close with repeating your own words:
...it is because [the truths stated in the Preamble] are not self-evident we must say them aloud, indeed proclaim them early and often and defend them every time, lest they be nibbled away like a stream bank when no one is looking.
Friday, December 16
Peter Lavelle and Pundita discuss reported Russian sale of SAMs, weapons tech to Iran
More of my December 3 correspondence with Peter Lavelle, UPI Senior Analyst and whose blog, Untimely Thoughts, won a 2005 Pundita Weblog Award. The first part of our discussion revolved around Russia's telecom scandal and the Kremlin's nationalization push.
Peter's side of the exchange is shown in quotes. See this Pundita post if you need to refresh your memory about the weapons agreement under discussion
Peter,
I note from a Reuters report that Russia's export agency claims to have no record of the SAMs sale agreement to Iran. Washington is seriously bent out of shape about the reported agreement. However, an unnamed diplomat said the deal made no sense. From various Russia news services, it seems there was indeed a deal. But why would Putin allow such a sale -- or does he have no control over it?
"Pundita,
See this part of my weekly panel discussion with experts on Russia.(1) The panel doesn't directly answer your question but explains Russia's engagement of Iran and other "rogue states."
Okay; I have read the discussion at the link you sent me. Isn't Putin's position contradicting his 'state of the union' speech, in which he was clearly inspired by Bush's democracy doctrine?(2) Wasn't he speaking of Russia as becoming the "civilizing" influence in Central Asia and helping to lead the entire region to more liberal values?
I read an analysis of the speech (published on your site) that very nearly brought tears to my eyes. Was all that hot air? Wishful thinking on the part of the analyst? If not, there seems to be a contradiction between Putin's stated vision and what he's doing. Or not?
"Not at all. To have a liberal society, each state needs security from both domestic and foreign threats. There is an unstated myth in Western media - the Kremlin controls the "stans" - that is simply wrong. Russia's influence is very limited. What the Kremlin fears is the possibility of an Islamic republic coming to power on its ex-Soviet border. The Kremlin will accept just about anything from the old Soviet establishment to avoid this. The Kremlin's foreign policy regarding its southern flank is defensive in the extreme - it is playing the role of a fireman fearing the worst."
Interesting. So why agree to sell SAMs to Iran and moreover agree to help them modernize their air force across the board? Is the Kremlin being blackmailed by Tehran thugs in league with al Qaeda and Chechen hard-liners? See, it doesn't stack -- the reported missile deal and what you've written, which makes good sense.
"[...] SAMs are a defensive system by very definition."
Ah, but modernizing Iran's air force cuts both ways.
"Look, the US has lost the war in Iraq - everybody knows this. Iran isn't taking any chances the Bush "lie machine" won't target Iran next to cover its tracks. Iran is acting rationally. (I don't like the Iranian regime.) We have seen the same kind of US pressure against Syria lately. Again, Iran is acting defensively."
The contract was reportedly signed before the Kremlin lost patience with Tehran, so we'll see what happens next. A nuke-armed Iran is not in Russia's best interest, so my hope is that Putin will find a way to scotch or at least suspend the contract -- use it maybe as a carrot to encourage Iran's regime to give up nuke weapon development.
Wars are not won or lost before they're over. If any war drags on longer than a year, it settles down to each side trying to take advantage of the other's mistakes.
* * * * * * *
The close reader will note that Peter's last reply attempts to switch the ground of discussion by attacking Bush's prosecution of the war. My impression is that Peter's response reflects how the Kremlin (and I assume the Russian military) tries to gloss the inherent contradiction in their approach to Iran.
The last thing the Kremlin needs in their region is a nuke-armed despotic regime under pressure from the most radical Islamist elements. The problem for Russia is that at this point they can't depend on backup from the European Union or China, if they take a hard stand about Iran's nuclear weapons program.
To say Russia could depend on backup from the United States -- since when? The State Department has very recently softened their harsh rhetoric toward Russia, but that is no assurance the US wouldn't leave Russia bouncing on a limb. The US government does not yet speak with one voice on the US approach to Tehran.
At the risk of repeating myself endlessly, if we want more cooperation from Russia on the issue of Iran (and Syria), we first need to get very clear on how the US should approach Iran then seek greater cooperation from Brussels and Beijing.
1)
http://russiaprofile.org/experts_panel/
article.wbp?article-id=338E06A9-ABFE-
4C2D-8B3B-DECEA602AEE7
2) President Putin's remarks in his 2005 "speech to the nation" sketch an ambitious vision that is easily picked apart and compared with the record. However, several of his statements reveal a determination to move Russia toward the lofty goals outlined in Bush's democracy doctrine. Putin set the bar high, which invites close scrutiny and criticism of his record during the rest of his term. That, in itself, is a credit to his thinking.
Here are the parts of the speech that especially impressed me and touched off my questions to Peter Lavelle about the troubling contradiction I noted in the Kremlin's approach to Iran's despotic regime:
April 25, 2005
The Kremlin, Moscow
The Russian President's Annual Address to the Federal Assembly
"...Russia should continue its civilising mission on the Eurasian continent. This mission consists in ensuring that democratic values, combined with national interests, enrich and strengthen our historic community.
"...the terrible lessons of the past also define imperatives for the present. And Russia, bound to the former Soviet republics – now independent countries – through a common history, and through the Russian language and the great culture that we share, cannot stay away from the common desire for freedom.
"Today, with independent countries now formed and developing in the post-Soviet area, we want to work together to correspond to humanistic values, open up broad possibilities for personal and collective success, achieve for ourselves the standards of civilisation we have worked hard for – standards that would emerge as a result of common economic, humanitarian and legal space."
Peter's side of the exchange is shown in quotes. See this Pundita post if you need to refresh your memory about the weapons agreement under discussion
Peter,
I note from a Reuters report that Russia's export agency claims to have no record of the SAMs sale agreement to Iran. Washington is seriously bent out of shape about the reported agreement. However, an unnamed diplomat said the deal made no sense. From various Russia news services, it seems there was indeed a deal. But why would Putin allow such a sale -- or does he have no control over it?
"Pundita,
See this part of my weekly panel discussion with experts on Russia.(1) The panel doesn't directly answer your question but explains Russia's engagement of Iran and other "rogue states."
Okay; I have read the discussion at the link you sent me. Isn't Putin's position contradicting his 'state of the union' speech, in which he was clearly inspired by Bush's democracy doctrine?(2) Wasn't he speaking of Russia as becoming the "civilizing" influence in Central Asia and helping to lead the entire region to more liberal values?
I read an analysis of the speech (published on your site) that very nearly brought tears to my eyes. Was all that hot air? Wishful thinking on the part of the analyst? If not, there seems to be a contradiction between Putin's stated vision and what he's doing. Or not?
"Not at all. To have a liberal society, each state needs security from both domestic and foreign threats. There is an unstated myth in Western media - the Kremlin controls the "stans" - that is simply wrong. Russia's influence is very limited. What the Kremlin fears is the possibility of an Islamic republic coming to power on its ex-Soviet border. The Kremlin will accept just about anything from the old Soviet establishment to avoid this. The Kremlin's foreign policy regarding its southern flank is defensive in the extreme - it is playing the role of a fireman fearing the worst."
Interesting. So why agree to sell SAMs to Iran and moreover agree to help them modernize their air force across the board? Is the Kremlin being blackmailed by Tehran thugs in league with al Qaeda and Chechen hard-liners? See, it doesn't stack -- the reported missile deal and what you've written, which makes good sense.
"[...] SAMs are a defensive system by very definition."
Ah, but modernizing Iran's air force cuts both ways.
"Look, the US has lost the war in Iraq - everybody knows this. Iran isn't taking any chances the Bush "lie machine" won't target Iran next to cover its tracks. Iran is acting rationally. (I don't like the Iranian regime.) We have seen the same kind of US pressure against Syria lately. Again, Iran is acting defensively."
The contract was reportedly signed before the Kremlin lost patience with Tehran, so we'll see what happens next. A nuke-armed Iran is not in Russia's best interest, so my hope is that Putin will find a way to scotch or at least suspend the contract -- use it maybe as a carrot to encourage Iran's regime to give up nuke weapon development.
Wars are not won or lost before they're over. If any war drags on longer than a year, it settles down to each side trying to take advantage of the other's mistakes.
* * * * * * *
The close reader will note that Peter's last reply attempts to switch the ground of discussion by attacking Bush's prosecution of the war. My impression is that Peter's response reflects how the Kremlin (and I assume the Russian military) tries to gloss the inherent contradiction in their approach to Iran.
The last thing the Kremlin needs in their region is a nuke-armed despotic regime under pressure from the most radical Islamist elements. The problem for Russia is that at this point they can't depend on backup from the European Union or China, if they take a hard stand about Iran's nuclear weapons program.
To say Russia could depend on backup from the United States -- since when? The State Department has very recently softened their harsh rhetoric toward Russia, but that is no assurance the US wouldn't leave Russia bouncing on a limb. The US government does not yet speak with one voice on the US approach to Tehran.
At the risk of repeating myself endlessly, if we want more cooperation from Russia on the issue of Iran (and Syria), we first need to get very clear on how the US should approach Iran then seek greater cooperation from Brussels and Beijing.
1)
http://russiaprofile.org/experts_panel/
article.wbp?article-id=338E06A9-ABFE-
4C2D-8B3B-DECEA602AEE7
2) President Putin's remarks in his 2005 "speech to the nation" sketch an ambitious vision that is easily picked apart and compared with the record. However, several of his statements reveal a determination to move Russia toward the lofty goals outlined in Bush's democracy doctrine. Putin set the bar high, which invites close scrutiny and criticism of his record during the rest of his term. That, in itself, is a credit to his thinking.
Here are the parts of the speech that especially impressed me and touched off my questions to Peter Lavelle about the troubling contradiction I noted in the Kremlin's approach to Iran's despotic regime:
April 25, 2005
The Kremlin, Moscow
The Russian President's Annual Address to the Federal Assembly
"...Russia should continue its civilising mission on the Eurasian continent. This mission consists in ensuring that democratic values, combined with national interests, enrich and strengthen our historic community.
"...the terrible lessons of the past also define imperatives for the present. And Russia, bound to the former Soviet republics – now independent countries – through a common history, and through the Russian language and the great culture that we share, cannot stay away from the common desire for freedom.
"Today, with independent countries now formed and developing in the post-Soviet area, we want to work together to correspond to humanistic values, open up broad possibilities for personal and collective success, achieve for ourselves the standards of civilisation we have worked hard for – standards that would emerge as a result of common economic, humanitarian and legal space."
Thursday, December 15
EU LEADERS SET TO CONDEMN IRAN'S PRESIDENT ON NUKES, HOLOCAUST DENIAL
Too many false starts for Pundita to jump for joy but the statement out of Brussels is progress, of sorts. We'll see how much solidarity the leaders maintain when they have to decide just exactly how long the "window of opportunity" will remain open for Iran.
Thu Dec 15, 2005
Reuters UK
BRUSSELS (Reuters) - European Union leaders were set to condemn Iran's president for denying the Holocaust and warn Tehran the opportunity for a diplomatic solution to its nuclear programme cannot stay open forever, diplomats said on Thursday.
A summit statement drafted by EU foreign ministers said of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's statement that the Nazi mass extermination of Jews was a myth: "These comments are wholly unacceptable and have no place in civilised political debate."
It also voiced grave concern at Iran's failure to remove suspicions about its nuclear intentions and said: "The window of opportunity will not remain open indefinitely." [...]
Ride of the Gold Dinar Fairy (to music of Ride of the Valkyries)
December 14, 11:20 PM Pundita email to correspondent:
"Dun dun dun DUN dun dun dun DUN! Bashy dissed King Notdullah! Go get him, Sire! (Listening to Seffy) Ooof thud just fell off chair laughing"
For those who have not followed Pundita's blog since early days (and the John Batchelor show), Bashy is my name for Bashar al-Assad; King Notdullah is my name for Saudi King Abdullah; and Seffy is Yossef Bodansky, who frequently reports to John Batchelor's audience about GWOT. Right now Seffy is focusing on Assad's attempts to hang on to his power.
Assad can thumb his nose all he wants at the UN Security Council but he has made a serious mistake by insulting a very sharp (not dull) ruler who is about twice his age. Saudi King Abdullah tried to give Assad a face-saving out (for Arab solidaity and all that) and Assad threw it back in his face. You don't diss old kings in that part of the world if you're a whippersnapper.
I almost feel sorry for people whose idea of following the war is limited to finding as many bricks as possible to hurl at the US effort in Iraq. They are missing out on the ground floor of a new world era. And they are now so far behind the curve of events, they can't hope to make sense out of the war.
As to the Gold Dinar Fairy, I hotly dispute that she's a figment of my imagination although I've never actually seen her. She's sort of an Arab version of Tinkerbell and the Tooth Fairy rolled into one. Translation: Money talks, nobody walks.
So we'll see whose checking account is bigger: House of Saud or Iran's regime. As for Assad's banking account, I suspect he's transferring what funds he has left to Switzerland but Tehran's oil bankroll is still keeping Assad's regime afloat.
Okay; Pundita will settle down now. I'm giddy because of election day in Iraq. Three cheers for the Iraqi voters and the Coalition and Iraqi troops! Remember all the talk in 2002, 2003 about Arabs not being capable of self rule? Take this, you trash talking -- tsk! tsk! be gracious in victory, Pundita. From the the Scotsman (UK):
"Dun dun dun DUN dun dun dun DUN! Bashy dissed King Notdullah! Go get him, Sire! (Listening to Seffy) Ooof thud just fell off chair laughing"
For those who have not followed Pundita's blog since early days (and the John Batchelor show), Bashy is my name for Bashar al-Assad; King Notdullah is my name for Saudi King Abdullah; and Seffy is Yossef Bodansky, who frequently reports to John Batchelor's audience about GWOT. Right now Seffy is focusing on Assad's attempts to hang on to his power.
Assad can thumb his nose all he wants at the UN Security Council but he has made a serious mistake by insulting a very sharp (not dull) ruler who is about twice his age. Saudi King Abdullah tried to give Assad a face-saving out (for Arab solidaity and all that) and Assad threw it back in his face. You don't diss old kings in that part of the world if you're a whippersnapper.
I almost feel sorry for people whose idea of following the war is limited to finding as many bricks as possible to hurl at the US effort in Iraq. They are missing out on the ground floor of a new world era. And they are now so far behind the curve of events, they can't hope to make sense out of the war.
As to the Gold Dinar Fairy, I hotly dispute that she's a figment of my imagination although I've never actually seen her. She's sort of an Arab version of Tinkerbell and the Tooth Fairy rolled into one. Translation: Money talks, nobody walks.
So we'll see whose checking account is bigger: House of Saud or Iran's regime. As for Assad's banking account, I suspect he's transferring what funds he has left to Switzerland but Tehran's oil bankroll is still keeping Assad's regime afloat.
Okay; Pundita will settle down now. I'm giddy because of election day in Iraq. Three cheers for the Iraqi voters and the Coalition and Iraqi troops! Remember all the talk in 2002, 2003 about Arabs not being capable of self rule? Take this, you trash talking -- tsk! tsk! be gracious in victory, Pundita. From the the Scotsman (UK):
Strong turnout in Iraq elections
Iraqis have voted in a historic parliamentary election, with strong turnout reported in Sunni Arab areas that had shunned balloting last January [...] Several explosions rocked Baghdad as the polls opened [...] But violence overall was light and did not appear to discourage Iraqis, some of whom turned out wrapped in their country's flag on a bright, sunny day [...]
Putin the Clever vs Mordor: the war moves to the banking sector
A big thanks to Riehl World View and The Steel Deal for catching this United Press International story:
Is Putin serious about severely limiting foreign banking in Russia? Well, I think he's very serious about getting more cooperation from US, West European and Israeli banks in coughing up billions in owed back taxes that Russian oligarchs have stashed in those banks. I also think he's sending a clear message to Russia's business community that the Rape of Russia is over.
While the Russian oligarchs ran the show they sure didn't do their big banking at Russian banks; they banked the big profits at US, Israeli and West European banks. So not only did the oligarchs rob the Russian taxpayers and government blind, they did not put enough Russian oil profits into the Russian banking system and thus into the Russian economy to help it stay solvent. Sort of like beating up someone after robbing him.
That's not even speaking to Israeli banks refusing to cooperate with the Russian government's attempts to get back the billions in back taxes owed to Russia that oligarchs and Russian mobsters bunkered in Israel stashed there.
11:00 AM Update
See Putin the Clever vs Mordor: the war moves to the banking sector for my analysis of Putin's latest move in what I only half-jokingly referred to earlier this year as "World War V." Thanks again to Riehl World View and Steel Deal for catching the UPI article!
NOVOSIBIRSK, Russia, (UPI) -- December 14 -- Russia's president said Wednesday he wants foreign banks "essentially banned" from his country, Itar-Tass reported. [...]Readers who have been with Pundita since the early days know that I warned almost a year ago that this sort of move was coming once the Kremlin wrestled control of Russia's oil away from Russia's oligarchs.
"This is connected not only with competition, including the impossibility to trace the movement of money and capital in the modern world," said Putin. "This is connected among other things with the need to fight terrorism. We must not forget this. And this is connected with the need to fight money laundering."[...]
Is Putin serious about severely limiting foreign banking in Russia? Well, I think he's very serious about getting more cooperation from US, West European and Israeli banks in coughing up billions in owed back taxes that Russian oligarchs have stashed in those banks. I also think he's sending a clear message to Russia's business community that the Rape of Russia is over.
While the Russian oligarchs ran the show they sure didn't do their big banking at Russian banks; they banked the big profits at US, Israeli and West European banks. So not only did the oligarchs rob the Russian taxpayers and government blind, they did not put enough Russian oil profits into the Russian banking system and thus into the Russian economy to help it stay solvent. Sort of like beating up someone after robbing him.
That's not even speaking to Israeli banks refusing to cooperate with the Russian government's attempts to get back the billions in back taxes owed to Russia that oligarchs and Russian mobsters bunkered in Israel stashed there.
11:00 AM Update
See Putin the Clever vs Mordor: the war moves to the banking sector for my analysis of Putin's latest move in what I only half-jokingly referred to earlier this year as "World War V." Thanks again to Riehl World View and Steel Deal for catching the UPI article!
Vladimir Putin pours Rosneft oil on troubled waters
This will give the US contingent of the Get Putin gang something to think about -- even if Evans does not accept the position:
Analysis: Evans and Russia's oil patch
By Peter Lavelle
Analysis: Evans and Russia's oil patch
By Peter Lavelle
"MOSCOW, Dec. 13 (UPI) -- Former U.S. Commerce Secretary Don Evans, who is a close friend of U.S. President Bush, is reported to have been offered the job of chairman of the Russian state oil company Rosneft ahead of its initial public offering next year. Bringing Evans on board may help improve the oil giant's damaged reputation in the wake of the Yukos affair, but is it enough for investors?
The Russian business daily Kommersant Tuesday reported Evans met with several top Russian officials during a trip to Moscow last week, and with President Vladimir Putin on Dec. 7. The daily says Putin offered Evans the post of head of Rosneft's board of directors. At the time of writing, neither the company nor Evans commented on the report.
If the news is confirmed and Evans takes up the post, his duties would apparently include improving Rosneft's attractiveness to the Western investment community and to potential shareholders. This will not be an easy task."
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