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Today's
Stories
February 19, 2004
Ralph Nader
Whither
the Nation?
February 18, 2004
William Wilgus
Bush:
AWOL and Dereliction of Duty
William Blum
Mush-Minded
Liberals
Dave Lindorff
Bush's China Syndrome
Greg Weiher
Why
is Kerry Getting a Pass?
Mike Griffin
Killing the Messenger: the AFL-CIO's Attack on Harry Kelber
Mark Hand
Kerry Tells Peace Movement to "Move On"
February 17, 2004
Mike Ferner
The
Countryside Murders in Iraq
Mokhiber / Weissman
Corporation
as Psychopath
Marjorie Cohn
DrakeGate:
a Victory for Free Speech
Kurt Nimmo
Bush's
Endgame: a Review of Chalmers Johnson's "Sorrows of Empire"
Greg Bates
Nader Ambush: a New Low for The
Nation
Ximena Ortiz
A Bush
Doctrine, of Sorts
Gary Leupp
Whatever Happened to Gen. Khazraji?
Sen. John Kerry
"The Cause of Israel is the Cause of America"
Steve Perry
Kerry
1, Drudge 0
February 16, 2004
James Johnston
Huddling
with the Cheeseheads in a NASCAR World
Sara Eltantawi
To
Wear the Hijab or Not
Bruce Anderson
Kevin
Cooper and the Midnight Needle
Elaine Cassel
Feds
on Campus: the Drake Subpoenas
Rahul Mahajan
Bush,
Is the Tide Finally Turning?
Kevin Cooper
The Ritual of Death
Stan Cox
Goodbye, Howard Dean
Larry David
My War
Steve Perry
Bush and the Guard: the Cover-Up's the Thing
Website of the Day
Prison Patriots: Help This Vital Film Get Made
February 14/15, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Milk Bars, Hollywood and the
March of Empires
Jeffrey St. Clair
Oil Grab in the Arctic
William A. Cook
Faith-Based Fanatics
Stan Goff
Beloved
Haiti
Dave Marsh / Lee Ballinger
Rock, Rap & the Election
Hughes / Weiher
Tupac, the Patriot Act and Me
Michael Colby
Bush v. Kerry: the Power Elite's Dream Ballot
Mickey Z.
Michael Moore's Lesser Party: the General and the Lieutenant
Josh Frank
Dean's Demise No Big Loss for the Left
Peter Wolson
The Politics of Narcissism
William James Martin
Clean Break with the Road Map
Daniel Estulin
Religious Extremism in Africa
Standard Schaefer
The Privatization of Culture: an Interview with Michael Hudson
Dave Zirin
Maurice Clarett Gets Off the Plantation
Tracy McLellan
Oprah's Birthday Greedfest
Poets' Basement
Holt, LaMorticella, Guthrie, Subiet and Albert
Website of the Weekend
Progressives Scorecard: Where Do the Dems Rank on the Issues
That Matter?
February 13, 2004
Alan Maass
Kevin
Cooper's Fight to Live
Karyn Strickler
McCarthyism in the Sierra Club
Annie Higgins
On
a Street in America
Adam Federman
Democratic Snipers Target Nader
Mike Whitney
George W. Faces the Nation
Brian Cloughley
Our Imperial Leader Has Spoken
Website of the Day
Lying Action Figure Doll
February 12, 2004
Ray McGovern
George
Tenet's Spin Cycle
Robert Jensen
Bush's
Nuclear Hypocrisy
Saul Landau
Elegy to the Salton Sea
February
11, 2004
Cockburn
/ St. Clair
Hail, Kerry: Senator Facing-Both-Ways
Steve Perry
Bush
v. Bush?
February
10, 2004
Kurt
Nimmo
Inquisition in Iowa
Ron Jacobs
Politics and the Beatles: Don't
You Know You Can Count Me Out (In)
Elizabeth
Schulte
The Many Faces of John Kerry
Mickey
Z
Meet the Oxmans: "The Rich
Shouldn't Sleep at Night Either"
February
9, 2004
Michael
Donnelly
Will Skull and Bones Really Change
CEOs? Inside John Kerry's Closet
Chris Floyd
Smells Like Team Spirit: the Bush
B-Boys Replay Their Greatest Hits
Bill
Christison
What's Wrong with the CIA?
Dr. Susan
Block
Janet Jackson's Mammary Moment:
Boob Tube Super Bowl
February
7/8, 2004
Kathleen
Christison
Offending Valerie: Dealing with
Jewish Self-Absorption
Jeff Ballinger
No Sweat Shopping
Dave
Lindorff
Spray and Pray in Iraq: a Marine
in Transit
Alexander
Cockburn
McNamara: the Sequel
February
6, 2004
Ron
Jacobs
Are the Kurds in the Way?
Joanne
Mariner
Anita Bryant's Legacy
Saul
Landau
Happiness and Botox
Kurt Nimmo
Horror Non-fiction: A How-To Guide
from Perle and Frum
Niranjan
Ramakrishnan
The Real Intelligence Failure:
Our Own
February
5, 2004
Benjamin
Shepard
Turning NYC into a Patriot Act Free
Zone
Khury
Petersen-Smith
A Report from Occupied Iraq: "We Don't Want Army USA"
Mokhiber
/ Weissman
The 10 Worst Corporations of 2003
Teresa
Josette
The Exeuctioner's Pslam? Christian Nation? Yeah, Right
David Krieger
Why Dr. King's Message on Vietnam is Relevant to Iraq
Christopher
Brauchli
Monkey Business: Of Recess and Evolution in Georgia Schools
Norman
Solomon
The Deadly Lies of Reliable Sources
Cockburn
/ St. Clair
Presenting President Edwards!
February
4, 2004
Brian
McKinlay
Bush's Australian Deputy: Howard's
Last Round Up?
Mark
Gaffney
Ariel Sharon's Favorite Senator: Ron Wyden and Israel
Judith
Brown
Palestine and the Media
Frederick
B. Hudson
Moseley-Braun and the Butcher: Campaign for Justice or Big Oil's
Junta?
Kurt Nimmo
Bush's Independent Commission: Exonerating
the Spooks
M.
Junaid Alam
Philly School Workers Fight for Fair Contract
Fran Shor
Whose Boob Tube?
Kevin
Cooper
This is Not My Execution and I Will Not Claim It
February
3, 2004
Alan
Maass
The
Dems' New Mantra: What They Really Mean by "Electability"
Nick
Halfinger
How the Other Half Lives: Embedded
in Iraq
Rahul
Mahajan
Our True Intelligence Failure
Neve Gordon
The Only Democracy in the Middle East?
Laura
Carlsen
Mexico: Two Anniversaries; Two Futures
Terry
Lodge
An Open Letter to Michael Powell from the Boobs & Body Parts
Fairness Campaign
Hammond
Guthrie
Investigating the Meaningless
Website
of the Day
Waging Peace
February
2, 2004
Gary
Leupp
The Buddhist Nun in Tom Ridge's Jail
Justin
E.H. Smith
The Manners of Their Deaths: Capital Punishment in a Smoke-Free
Environment
Tom
Wright
The Prosecution of Captain Yee
Winslow
Wheeler
Inside the Bush Defense Budget
Lee Ballinger
Janet Jackson's Naked Truth
Leonard
Pitts, Jr
For Blacks, the Game of Justice is
Rigged
Jeffrey
St. Clair
The Hollow Candidate:
The Trouble with Howard Dean
Website
of the Day
Resistance:
In the Eye of the American Hegemon
Jan. 31 / Feb 1, 2004
Paul
de Rooij
For Whom the Death Tolls: Deliberate
Undercounting of Coalition Fatalities
Bernard
Chazelle
Bush's Desolate Imperium
Jack
Heyman
Bushfires on the Docks
Christopher
Reed
Broken Ballots
Michael
Donnelly
An Urgent Plea to Progressives: Don't Give in to Fear
Rob Eshelman
The Subtle War
Lee
Sustar
Palestine and the Anti-War Movement
George
Bisharat
Right of Return
Ray
McGovern
Nothing to Preempt
Brian Cloughley
Enron's Beady-Eyed Sharks
Conn
Hallinan
Nepal, Bush & Real WMDs
Kurt Nimmo
The Murderous Lies of the Neo-Cons
Phillip
Cryan
Media at the Monterrey Summit
Christopher
Brauchli
A Speech for Those Who Don't Read
John
Holt
War in the Great White North
Mickey
Z.
Clueless in America: When Mikey Met Wesley
Mark
Scaramella
The High Cost of Throwing Away the Key
Tariq Ali
Farewell, Munif
Ben
Tripp
Waiter! The Reality Check, Please
Poets'
Basement
LaMorticella, Guthrie, Thomas and Albert
January 30, 2004
Saul
Landau
Cuba High on Neo-Con Hit List
Michael
Donnelly
Bush's Second Front: The War in
the Woods
Elaine
Cassel
Worse Than Jacko: Child Abuse at Gitmo
David Vest
More Halliburton News, Brought to You by Halliburton
Mike
Whitney
The Kay Report: Still Defending Aggression
David
Miller
The Hutton Whitewash
Sam
Husseini
How Many People Must Die Because of This "Mistake",
Senator Kerry?
January 29, 2004
Patricia
Nelson Limerick
John Ehrlichman, Environmentalist
Ron
Jacobs
Homeland Security and "Legalized"
Immigration
Rahul Mahajan
New Hampshire v. Iraq
Greg
Weiher
Bush Calls for Preemptive Strike on
Moon and Mars
Norman
Solomon
The State of the Media Union
Cockburn
/ St. Clair
Does NH Mean Anything?
January
28, 2004
Kathy
Kelly
Bearing Witness Against Teachers of
Torture and Assassination
Hot Stories
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Subcomandante Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click Here
for More Stories.
|
February
19, 2004
Purging the Neo-Cons
Will
Kerry Make a Stand?
By WAYNE MADSEN
From my vantage point in the nation's capital,
I am increasingly becoming confident that the Democrats will
oust the Bush-Cheney regime from power this coming November.
However, just winning the election is only the first step for
the Democrats. There must be a thorough house cleaning, a purge,
if you will, during the transition of power and after the January
20, 2005 inauguration. Of course, the Democrats will take over
John Ashcroft's Justice Department and Tom Ridge's huge Homeland
Security bureaucracy, both of which have become tremendous threats
to our constitutional democracy. But just assuming control over
Cabinet departments and other Federal agencies will not eliminate
the scourge of the neo-con apparatchiks who have, for the past
four years, cast an extremely unpleasant stench over America's
body politic. A total purge of the right-wing neo-con political
opportunists, along with their hodgepodge fascist/Trotskyite/neo-imperialist
political philosophy, must be one of the first goals of a new
Democratic administration.
Howard Dean and his supporters had the
fire in their bellies to purge the neo-cons from the government.
His grass roots insurgent campaign was correctly focused on the
extreme right-wingers who wormed their way throughout the Bush
administration. That is the reason I joined up with the Dean
campaign, although I wish the Governor had relied less upon paid
political campaign managers (political hacks, who are, in effect,
political prostitutes who sell themselves to the highest bidder)
and more on the unpaid, but more avid and loyal, volunteers.
I witnessed the futility of using highly compensated political
mercenaries with the McCain campaign, for which I volunteered
in 2000. Many of McCain's paid staffers were long-time Republican
National Committee insiders who were still chumming it up with
their old friends who also happened to be working for Bush. How
many campaign strategies and secrets were passed on to the Bush
campaign over drinks at Washington's Congressional Club (right
next door to the Republican National Committee) is anyone's guess,
but the effect on the McCain campaign was as disastrous as Dean's
reliance on similar political harlots in his campaign. McCain
surrounded himself with the pros and rarely listened to the volunteers.
McCain's insurgency campaign collapsed and, to make matters worse,
a few years later he became a virtual cheerleader for the Bush
neo-con platform and its worldwide hegemonic agenda.
When Dean began to challenge the neo-con
agenda, including the corporate control of the media, he became
a target of immediacy for the Washington elite. Big media began
to paint him as unstable, unelectable, and non-presidential material.
Of course, all of this was pure claptrap. The neo-con perception
management art (telling the Big Lie long enough for it to become
a Big Fact) won the day as assuredly as their Big Lies about
Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction and the "Coalition
of the Willing" became virtual facts.
Like many other Democrats, I saw John
Kerry as the go-to candidate after it became apparent that Dean
was not going to wrest the nomination. However, I have grown
less confident about Kerry. He is better than Wesley Clark, who
I accused of being a neo-con in sheep's clothing. Who would have
wanted to replace the bomber of Baghdad with the bomber of Belgrade?
Clark's past Balkans links to arch neo-cons like Richard Perle
and Douglas Feith made his candidacy a ruse, regardless of his
latter-day pronouncements about the foolishness of Bush's Iraq
caper. Clark originally supported both the war and Bush and wasted
no time in personally lobbying Dick Cheney for airline passenger
profiling contracts for Acxiom, a data-mining firm that shamelessly
capitalized on 9-11 to maximize its profits and on whose board
of directors Clark sat.
Kerry has been a Senator in Washington
for 18 years. As the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations
subcommittee that investigated the infamous Bank of Credit and
Commerce International (BCCI) scandal, Kerry discovered what
makes the Bush family tick: international underhanded deals,
drug smuggling, illegal arms trafficking, support for dictators
like Manuel Noriega and Saddam Hussein, secret offshore banks
accounts and CIA carve-out companies, and political assassinations.
Yes, Kerry found out where all the "skull and bones"
were buried (pun intended). Both Kerry and Bush evaded questions
posed by Meet the Press's Tim Russert about Yale's super secret
Skull and Bones fraternity, where both were initiated as members,
along with Bush's father and pro-Nazi grandfather, Prescott.
This bi-partisan circle of elite Elies is exactly the reason
why Mr. Kerry may not be the best person to replace Bush. He
would not be worse. But would he be better? I have a gut feeling,
based on some recent developments that Kerry might not provide
a full purging of the neo-cons that many of us opposed to Bush
so earnestly desire. Yes, I like all other Democrats, many independents,
and more than a few Republicans, want to see Bush gone. But at
what cost?
While chairing the BCCI subcommittee,
and before he married Teresa Heinz, Kerry would often sit at
the bar at Capitol Hill's Tex-Mex Red River Grill offering anyone
who would listen to stories (even a second and third time) about
what his investigation had discovered about the illegal activities
of the Reagan-Bush administrations: the arms-for-drugs operations
in Central America that involved Noriega; the later convicted
Reagan officials John Poindexter, Richard Secord, Elliott Abrams,
and Oliver North; Iranian con-man and neo-con hero Manucher Ghorbanifar;
Saudi tycoon Adnan Khashoggi, who Perle recently attempted to
lure into his Trireme Partners Middle East investment scheme;
Gaith Pharoan, who was involved with Saudi billionaire banker
Khalid Bin Mahfouz in business deals with George W. Bush's Harken
Energy and Bin Laden family investments in Texas; how Hill &
Knowlton, the firm that concocted the phony story about Iraqi
troops tossing babies from incubators during their invasion of
Kuwait, was shilling for BCCI and providing regulators with false
information about the bank's business relationships; BCCI's involvement
in Pakistan's nuclear program; its bankrolling of convicted arms
dealer Sarkis Sarkenalian's illegal weapons smuggling to Iraq
in the 1980s; hawalah transfers that allowed Afghan mujaheddin
to evade international financial surveillance mechanisms (including
the pumping of millions of dollars of Saudi and Omani money into
Usama bin Laden's coffers in Afghanistan and Pakistan); and the
1980 "October Surprise" involving negotiations between
Reagan campaign chief William Casey to delay the release of US
hostages until after the U.S. election, thus sinking the prospects
of President Carter. When BCCI's illegal activities on behalf
of the Bush family and their CIA friends around the world became
the subject of criminal probes and media investigations in the
mid-1980s, the Bushes, as they normally do, cut and run. BCCI
collapsed and Enron took its place. After Enron served its purpose
as a Bush slush fund, it, too, collapsed. The failure of BCCI
and Enron had disastrous effects around the world and in the
United States. Never mind, the Bushes won out. Innocent people
suffered. It's the Bush system.
Yes, Senator Kerry had the "whole
enchilada" on the Bush family's illegal conduct along with
his cold bottles of Corona at the Red River Grill. But why doesn't
he talk about it now? Has he been co-opted? The late Texas Representative
Henry Gonzalez often complained how his investigation of Bush
and BCCI often ran into road blocks on the Senate side. Was Kerry
one of the roadblocks? And if so, why? It is this gnawing feeling
that not all is right with Kerry that prevents me from putting
a "Kerry 2004" bumper sticker on my car.
And there are other reasons why I have
growing angst about Kerry. Although the reported "liaison"
of Kerry with an "intern" turned out to be totally
bogus, the connections of the young woman are reasons for concern.
Kerry was erroneously linked to an extramarital relationship
with Alexandra Polier, a journalist who is originally from Malvern,
Pennsylvania but once did some unspecified work for the British
Parliament. However, it was later determined that Polier was
dating an aide to Kerry, not the senator. Polier is engaged to
Yaron Schwartzman, an Israeli-American living in Nairobi, Kenya
with his Israeli parents. Schwartzman's father is linked to some
of East Africa's most unsavory players. How Kerry could have
let himself become embroiled in such an episode involving people
with questionable business ties, to say the least, is incredible
and frightening.
Yaron Schwartzman's father, Joseph Schwartzman,
is a wealthy businessman who owns, along with former Kenyan cabinet
minister, Nicholas Biwott, H. Young Company, an engineering firm
located in Nairobi's Industrial Area. Biwott was a right-hand
man of former Kenyan President Daniel arap Moi. Biwott was accused
of ordering the murder of former Kenyan Foreign Minister Robert
Ouko, as well as a number of other human rights violations.
The elder Schwartzman reportedly never
actually physically worked at the H. Young company's offices
at the Nairobi Industrial Park. He is also connected to the Sameer
Investments Group Ltd., which has sought to invest in Rwanda.
Sameer Group consists of Naushad Merali, a wealthy Asian Kenyan,
and the former Pakistani High Commissioner to Kenya, Hameed Kidwai.
According to the Rwandan government, President Paul Kagame has
held at least one meeting with Schwartzman in Kigali and met
with Schwartzman and Merali at the Sameer Industrial Park in
2000. French anti-terrorism Judge Jean-Louis Bruguiere has recently
concluded, after a painstaking investigation, that Kagame was
involved with the 1994 shooting down by Russian-made SAM missiles
of the airplane carrying Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana
and Burundian President Cyprien Ntaryamira home from a peace
summit. The investigation turned up a shadowy operation involving
former U.S. military and intelligence operatives and oil companies
known as the International Strategic and Tactical Organization
(ISTO). Twice, I was prepared to testify about who was behind
the plane attack at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda
in Tanzania. Twice, the U.S. State Department intervened with
the tribunal to block my testimony. After the tribunal agreed
to testimony, I received a very credible death threat: "your
car won't make it from Arusha airport to your hotel." It
is the way of Bush and his powerful friends to intimidate, to
threaten, to smear. Kerry must show that he is willing to expose
the vermin who surround Bush and not replace them with others
who also have blood on their hands. Central Africa's genocide
occurred while Democratic foreign policy insider Richard Holbrooke
was Madeleine Albright's deputy UN ambassador and afterwards,
when Albright was elevated to the post of Secretary of State..
The French investigation turned up links
between ISTO and Armitage and Associates (the firm once owned
by Colin Powell's deputy Richard Armitage) and Halliburton. Interestingly,
these companies share the same office building at 1550 Wilson
Boulevard in the Rosslyn business district of Arlington, Virginia.
Around the corner is AES, a company that bills itself as the
largest owner of power generation systems in the world and which
is chaired by Richard Darman, the elder Bush's Office of Management
and Budget chief. After it took over the Republic of Georgia's
electric system, it forced blackouts throughout the country,
thus undermining one-time U.S. ally, President Eduard Shevardnadze.
Soon, Georgia erupted in mass protests, forcing Shevardnadze
from power. He was replaced by a young, U.S.-trained lawyer who
has welcomed a permanent U.S. military presence in his country
to protect Halliburton's Azerbaijan- to-Turkey oil pipeline.
While it doesn't hang a shingle from an office, ISTO certainly
seems to maintain a major presence in Rosslyn. Kerry must ensure
that his administration is composed of individuals who are not
"bought and paid for" and will clean up these corrupt
networks of influence peddling and illegal activities.
The double assassination of the Rwandan
and Burundian presidents and their staffs triggered a genocide
in Rwanda that killed as many as 1 million people and follow-on
invasions and genocide in Zaire/Democratic Republic of the Congo
that killed 3 million more people. After all his experience in
investigating BCCI, Kerry should have had better sense than allowing
his name to become associated in the media with such people,
even though there was two degrees of separation.
Sameer has been linked to Kenya's official
Goldenberg Inquiry into the affairs of Goldenberg International
Limited, a company believed to have been involved in the smuggling
of gold and diamonds from Rwanda and the Democratic Republic
of Congo via Kenya. Other players involved in Kenyan diamond
and gold smuggling include Sanjivan Ruprah, a Kenyan Asian associated
with RUIM (Russian-Ukrainian-Israeli Mafia) smuggling activities
in Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Rwanda, and Viktor Bout, a RUIM
international arms smuggler who once assisted the Taliban in
Afghanistan while Bin Laden was ensconced in the country planning
for 9-11. Goldenberg is also alleged by Kenyan authorities to
have used Mombassa's Paradise Hotel as a front operation. The
Israeli-owned hotel was blown up in 2002 in an alleged attack
by Al Qaeda operatives. At the same time, Russian-made SAM missiles,
later found to be inoperative, were fired at an Israeli charter
plane taking off from Mombassa Airport.
Another Africa dilemma for Kerry involves
his wife's past activities with one of the most corrupt and bloodiest
businesses in the world--the diamond trade. Teresa Thierstein
Simões-Ferreira Heinz Kerry is tied financially to one
of Africa's largest diamond enterprises. According to senior
political sources in Washington, DC, Mrs. Kerry, who was married
to the late Pennsylvania Republican Senator H. John Heinz III,
is linked, through her late Portuguese father Jose's investments,
to the De Beers diamond cartel of South Africa. Although DeBeers
has cleaned up its tarnished image since diamond magnate Nicky
Oppenheimer took over the company founded by his family, the
DeBeers company of the past was closely involved in apartheid
South Africa's most egregious activities, including arms smuggling
and covert activities against the African National Congress.
Mrs. Kerry was born to Portuguese parents in what was once Lourenco
Marques, the capital of colonial Mozambique. After Senator Heinz
died in a freak plane crash in 1991, Mrs. Heinz inherited the
H. J. Heinz Company fortune. She married Kerry in 1995.
Mrs. Kerry is fluent in several languages, including Portuguese,
Spanish, French, and Italian and she was once a United Nations
translator for the UN Trusteeship Council in New York. Mrs. Kerry
graduated from the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg
and the Interpreters School of the University of Geneva. Her
father, an oncologist and tropical disease specialist in Mozambique,
was also reportedly invested in the southern African diamond
industry and had ties to DeBeers. He and his Mozambican-born
wife fled Mozambique for Porto, Portugal in 1975 when the country
achieved independence under a Marxist government. Even before
Mrs. Kerry married the wealthy John Heinz in 1966, her family's
fortune is said to have rivaled and even exceeded that of Heinz.
Although Mozambique's Marxist government nationalized Mr. Simoes-Ferreira's
property and finances in Mozambique, his investments in DeBeers
in South Africa were untouched.
In 1999, Mrs. Kerry, through her Heinz Family Philanthropies,
attempted to broker a land development deal between an extreme
right-wing Republican Texan billionaire and supporter of George
W. Bush named James U. Blanchard III -- a past supporter of the
right-wing Mozambican rebel group RENAMO and the pro-Bush Heritage
Foundation in Washington, DC -- and the Mozambican government
to develop a huge eco-tourist area south of Maputo to the Kwazulu
Natal border of South Africa. The tourist mecca was to have included
five star hotels and villas, floating casinos, golf courses,
scuba diving schools, game fishing enterprises, and marinas.
The deal collapsed after Blanchard died and some Mozambique politicians
expressed their opposition to the deal. The area Blanchard and
Mrs. Kerry hoped to develop was a primary zone of RENAMO guerrilla
activity and includes one of Africa's last protected elephant
areas, the Maputo Elephant Preserve. According to US intelligence
sources, the area also attracted the attention of Zimbabwean
diamond magnate John A. Bredenkamp, a former backer of RENAMO,
who owns some of the same region's off-shore barrier islands,
which he also hopes to develop into major resorts. The Kruger
National Park in South Africa is planning to join with parks
in neighboring Mozambique and Zimbabwe to form one of the world's
largest parks, the "Transnational Park." It is this
same area that attracted the interests of Blanchard and Mrs.
Kerry and may have been an attempt to "privatize" one
of Africa's last protected wildlife areas.
So with all the "ties that bind"
the Kerrys to unsavory characters, whether accidental or intentional,
one is reminded of the present dilemma with the crooked machinations
of the Bushes, Cheneys, and their friends and associates. Kerry
can do something to allay my fears about the aura, both perceived
and real, that surrounds him and his friends. First of all, he
can bring up on the campaign trail what he knows for a fact about
the ties of the Bushes to international scams and scandals. Second,
he must come clean about the Skull and Bones. Is whatever oath
he took at "The Tomb" at Yale more important than the
presidential oath of office? I think not.
Third, and most importantly, Kerry must
commit to a purge from his administration of all neo-cons, whether
of the Republican or Democratic persuasion. A number of hawkish
Democrats, who are waiting in the wings, were singing from the
same song sheet as the neo-cons in the Bush administration about
invading Iraq and the mumbo jumbo about America's role as the
world's only remaining superpower. Holbrooke, a supporter of
the Iraq invasion, is rumored to be on the short list as a Democratic
Secretary of State. Under no circumstances should he or Leon
Fuerth (Vice President Gore's former national security adviser),
Joe Lieberman, Jamie Rubin, Susan Rice, Wesley Clark, and other
Democratic world interventionists be considered for any positions
in a Kerry administration. Democrats who witnessed how the Bush
regime embarked on a unilateralist foreign policy do not wish
to see that policy replaced by a unilateralist-lite Democratic
foreign policy.
Kerry should also make it very plain
that there is no place in his administration for those who espouse
a neo-conservative agenda. He must clean house of these individuals,
both political appointees and career civil service and military,
within the Pentagon, intelligence agencies, State Department,
and National Security Council. Perle recently called for the
heads of CIA Director George Tenet and Defense Intelligence Agency
chief Vice Admiral Lowell Jacoby to roll over the failure to
find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Kerry should make it
plain and clear that his Justice Department and FBI will go after
Perle and his friends, with criminal indictments, if necessary.
He should leave no stone unturned to bring to justice those who
lied about and profited from the invasion of Iraq.
If Kerry continues to conduct his campaign
by stabbing around the edges of both Bushs' corrupt administrations,
he plays into the hands of the elites who want to see business
conducted as usual. These denizens of K Street, Wall Street,
Georgetown, and Capitol Hill arrogantly consider themselves and
their enterprises untouchably secure, no matter what political
party is in power. Can or will Kerry be able to change this sad
fact of life? Howard Dean did not think so. Senator Bob Graham
of Florida, who, like Kerry, knows an awful lot about Bush's
past business connections to the Saudis and others who were also
involved in the funding of Al Qaeda, from his own investigation
of 9-11 as Chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence,
ran for President to change the status quo. He was the first
candidate to drop out. Graham and Dean smelled a rat with the
Bush administration and also knew that the elite class of Washington,
of which Kerry is a charter member, was unlikely to set out the
rodent traps to get to the bottom of the corruption of the present
regime.
So Kerry has a choice. Act more like
a populist or continue to waffle and evade on the Skull and Bones,
his past business ties (especially through the "Boston Brahmin"
Forbes side of his family), and what he knows about the Bush
family's corrupt practices. If he chooses the former, he might
light a little fire with would-be but skeptical supporters. If
he opts for the latter, Senator John Edwards can pick up the
populist/progressive ball and run with it. Kerry has not won
the nomination yet and the March 2 Super Tuesday primaries will
select one half of the Democratic convention delegates. People
throughout the United States are tired of the elitism and secrecy
that has overtaken Washington. Kerry has an opportunity to leave
Beacon Hill and Georgetown and join with "We the People"
and thus win the White House. Or John Edwards can tap into the
angst of the American people, forget his outreach to conservatives,
pledge to clean house in Washington, and pull off the upset of
the century.
Wayne Madsen
is a Washington, DC-based investigative journalist and columnist.
He wrote the introduction to Forbidden
Truth. He is the co-author, with John Stanton, of "America's
Nightmare: The Presidency of George Bush II."
Madsen can be reached at: WMadsen777@aol.com
Weekend
Edition Features for February 14 / 15, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Milk Bars, Hollywood and the
March of Empires
Jeffrey St. Clair
Oil Grab in the Arctic
William A. Cook
Faith-Based Fanatics
Stan Goff
Beloved
Haiti
Dave Marsh / Lee Ballinger
Rock, Rap & the Election
Hughes / Weiher
Tupac, the Patriot Act and Me
Michael Colby
Bush v. Kerry: the Power Elite's Dream Ballot
Mickey Z.
Michael Moore's Lesser Party: the General and the Lieutenant
Josh Frank
Dean's Demise No Big Loss for the Left
Peter Wolson
The Politics of Narcissism
William James Martin
Clean Break with the Road Map
Daniel Estulin
Religious Extremism in Africa
Standard Schaefer
The Privatization of Culture: an Interview with Michael Hudson
Dave Zirin
Maurice Clarett Gets Off the Plantation
Tracy McLellan
Oprah's Birthday Greedfest
Poets' Basement
Holt, LaMorticella, Guthrie, Subiet and Albert
Website of the Weekend
Progressives Scorecard: Where Do the Dems Rank on the Issues
That Matter?
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