Jorge Castaneda Quotes
Mexico is a competent, strong state. A little corrupt here and there, a little ineffective here and there, but a strong state.
Jorge Castaneda, Foreign Minister of Mexico, Interview, PBS Charlie Rose Show, August 10, 2011
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
Things were not so different 80 years ago.
Some of America’s very difficult counter-insurgency efforts like Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan have been problematical since Burt’s necessary popular national government was not in place in these efforts. The governments were corrupt, incompetent, and uncaring about the majority of people. Arguably, if there were a “responsive and politically popular national government” in place, there may well have not been a serious insurgency to begin with.
Historically in America, the local governments have been the most corrupt. State government somewhat less so, and the Federal Government has statistically, given the number of employees, the lowest proportion of corrupt officials. Even in modern times, there are many local jurisdictions where bribes of building inspectors, zoning officials, health inspectors and police are still common. At the end of the 20th century, for example, every single Kentucky County Commissioners but one was indicted and convicted for accepting bribes and kickbacks. At the federal level, there is much moral corruption with Presidents and members of Congress taking "campaigh contributions" in exchange for access and the ability to influence and even write legislation. The members of Congress wrote the laws so activities that many peopke would see as corrupt was actually legal. Even when the campaign conributions were used to pay "salaries" to the relatives of the member of Congress or he/she added the money to his/her retirement fund.
This quotation did not appear in the first edition, but did in later editions.
Corruption is rampant in Pakistan like many other developing nations where corruption is a cultural tradition that has existed for centuries. All nations have some corruption including the United States. The difference is the degree and the acceptance of corruption as normality.
The coup which deposed and then murdered Patrice Lumumba had the help of the American CIA and French Army. Lumumba was a Marxist and Mobutu appeared to be an anti-Communist. The corruption under Lumumba was typical of most African counties but Lumumba himself was an ideologue and but not personally dishonest. Under Mobuto, the Congo—renamed Zaire—became the most corrupt nation on earth, and Mobuto, one of the richest men in the world. Everything he complained of to justify is coup, he himself was guilty of when he consolidated power—moreso than any other 20th century world leader.
He was not referring to economic corruption but intellectual and moral corruption. Regan who appointed many excellent key officials picked a very unfortunate choice to lead the CIA. William J. Casey had many faults and weaknesses—See {637472}, {636743} and {637469}. But the worst of his damage was imposing his ideology on the agency and having the intelligence analysts shape their intellectual product to conform with a particular world, political, and religious view. See {634408}. This became acceptable and as future administrations took power their ideologies were considered by the CIA professionals and reports were edited and shaped accordingly. Reform was instituted by some of the future CIA directors but there were precedents from the Casey days for years. One particularly bad manifestation of this intellectual corruption occurred when Vice President Richard Cheney imposed a neocon world view on the agency with a pliant CIA director and the agency gave the President a totally inaccurate assessment of Iraq nuclear capability and intention which triggered the disastrous Iraq war, made all the worse when there were not only no nuclear weapons in Iraq as had been reported, but there was not even a single laboratory trying to develop nuclear weapons or even nuclear power.
This was another of the views of the fascists that drove much of their policies and practices but are demonstrably untrue. The world has many countries that have little power or world respect and yet the people are very happy. Luxemburg, Monaco, Finland and the Baltic Countries are just a few of the counter-examples.
Jorge Castañeda Gutman is a Mexican politician and academic who served as Secretary of Foreign Affairs (2000–2003).
