With the sudden demise of “Dear Leader” and cult personality/despot Kim Jong Il several days ago, all eyes have turned to his hand-picked successor, Kim Jong Un. While his father had the benefit of nearly twenty years of preparation for his role as megalomaniacal leader, Kim Jong Un has not. This has troubled analysts who […]
The debt dynamics equation was in the past of interest only to sovereign credit analysts (such as this blogger) and macro policy wonks. Now, more people want to know about it. You can generate such an equation that is elaborate or not, but the gist is the following: The primary budget surplus, that is, government revenues minus expenditures — not […]
I had a friend in college who was discovering Islam around the time I was. Though we were both born Muslims, we were now understanding it and practicing of our own accord. We were not converts, but “Reverts”. After college, she went on to study Islam at a madrassa-esque school for women and I went on […]
As reported last week in the New York Times, South Korea is seeking renegotiation of a 1974 treaty that bars it from acquiring spent nuclear fuel reprocessing or uranium enrichment plants–so-called “fuel cycle facilities” that can be used both to support a nuclear energy sector or an atomic weapons program. At the time the treaty […]
As the clock ticks, it appears Israel will have to pick between two frightful scenarios; attack Iran or live with a nuclear Iran and the constant fear of annihilation. This choice crossed my mind during a recent trip to Israel. While at the ancient fortress of Masada overlooking the Dead Sea, the tour guide proclaimed […]
Today is the twentieth anniversary of the enactment of one of the most important, far-reaching bipartisan initiatives of the twentieth and, thus far, the twenty-first century: the Cooperative Threat Reduction (CTR) program, originally known as the Soviet Nuclear Threat Reduction Act. It was twenty years ago today that an initiative that began as an amendment […]
The New York Times carried an article last week by David Sanger and William Broad providing additional detail about the mysterious blast that leveled Iran’s major missile test center on Nov. 12, killing one of the country’s top rocket scientists and others. The article also provides useful hints to sources, without ultimately shedding any new […]
The end of 2011 is fast approaching and with it the departure of U.S. forces and equipment from Iraq by December 31st so thought I’d pass on some of my thoughts. In November, I participated in two Department of Defense sponsored Bloggers Roundtables on our force drawdown efforts there. One was with Army Brigadier General […]
If you are one of the few to hold a high place in the Chinese Communist Party life has to be good. You are running one of the world’s greatest powers and you don’t have to worry about elections next Fall, or the next Fall, or the…However, there is one major hangup to being part […]
The New York Times gets it wrong again…after all I’ve written about spin, diversion, and just plain sloppy reporting on Fast and Furious, New York Times reporter Ginger Thompson lands on page A1 with a claim that DEA agents are ‘walking’ narco-dollars into Mexico and back to the cartels the same way ATF, we now know, has been ‘walking’ lethal, military-grade weapons across the US-Mexico border into the hands of cartel killers.
Bunkum.
US Drug Agents Launder Profits for Mexican Cartels isn’t true or fair or even journalism.
What it is, instead, is public relations, a business that, unlike old-fashioned reporting, is safe, simple, and sure to enhance the bottomline for all concerned–corporate owners, editors, and reporters. PR is the new news, the art of pitching client-friendly narratives by pinning them to the general assumptions and fact set of the audience. The New York Times is not the first to go, nor will it be the last.
The point is–it’s working.
Ginger Thompson and the New York Times do us a disservice, not just because they play to our concern for the 40,000 men, women and children already lost to political corruption and criminal greed, but because they portray the commitment of the American people to the rule of law as naïve, misplaced, and unattainable.
Indeed, what the reporter suggests (Is this her aim or just bad research?) is that US law enforcement has proved it is unable to make a difference, that federal agents are bunglers or miscreants, and that, if we aren’t careful, the ‘good guys’ sent in to solve the problem may instead become the worst part of it.
Back up, Ginger. The only kind of money laundering investigations DEA is allowed to conduct today are the kind designed “‘never to embarrass the government of Mexico,” which means US enforcement’s “war against drugs” is, at best, only a skirmish…
Not all is doom and gloom. Somewhat contrary to initial expectations, Russia and China joined in a firm new IAEA resolution, again calling upon Tehran to come completely clean. The UK and France are pressing European foreign ministers to adopt an oil embargo, joining the United States, and while that is not likely to have […]
A recent reading of E. M. Forster’s novel, A Passage to India, prompted me to reflect on the West’s drawn out engagement in Afghanistan. The centerpiece of this prescient narrative is an incident in an ancient cave in Northwestern India between an Indian doctor and an English woman during the heyday of the British Raj. […]
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