Richard Holbrooke/Samuel Berger DataDump
John Kerry is assembling a network of foreign policy advisers more hawkish than most Democrats but more skeptical of military solutions in the struggle against terrorism than the team surrounding President Bush.The experts being consulted span a broad ideological range of Democratic opinion -- to the point where some party thinkers worry that Kerry is not defining a sufficiently distinctive vision of how America should pursue its goals in the world.
Note: Brownstein doesn't quote a single one of those "party thinkers" worrying about this problem, not even anonymously. I'm not a member of any party, but through my weblog BigLeftOutside I have worried aloud more vocally than most... Maybe that's what "party thinkers" means in LA Timesspeak: unmentionable pain-in-the-neck bloggers, reporting from the lands that have to live with the consequences of the coup d'etat that has occurred in the Kerry organization and that now seeks to lobotomize and Clintonize the senator's foreign policy positions, removing those inconvenient democratic principles that have historically distinguished Kerry from lesser lights.
The most worrisome are the first two names Brownstein floats as potential Secretaries of State: Richard Holbrooke and Samuel Berger (a.k.a., for google-bombing purposes, "Sandy Berger" and "Samuel R. Berger," too).
Yikes, I'm already nostalgic for the days when we only had Rand Beers to kick around. (Beers, like Kerry, is a species of bombastic hawk without poker face that is at least honest about his dishonesty, and interesting enough to dislike intensely. But has anybody ever tried to sit through an entire speech, or read an entire essay, by either Holbrooke or Berger without hitting the remote or falling asleep?)
(I hear there once was a guy in Peoria who survived through an hour-and-four-minutes of a Sandy Berger speech without nodding out. Oh, but the guy was deaf. And they only gave him the transcript 59 minutes into the talk, at which point he promptly started snoring.)
Yup, here they come… Team Narcolepsy: putting democratic principles to sleep, one human right at a time, with enough anesthesia that nobody notices the knife.
It's also important to note that Holbrooke and Berger are not longtime backers of Kerry. According to Foreign Policy magazine, they each shopped their "expertise" around to various candidates, providing the kind of advice that, in each case, lost all those candidates the primaries!
Holbrooke advised Wesley Clark, Dick Gephardt, and John Edwards.
Berger advised Wesley Clark, John Edwards, Howard Dean, and Joe Lieberman.
Is it any wonder that Kerry was able to distinguish himself on foreign policy matters in the early caucuses and primaries when the same two shepherds led all the other sheep astray? Not content to destroy five Democratic candidacies for the presidency, Holbrooke and Berger have teamed up now to drag down the last one standing.
The Authentic Journalist has a daunting task ahead: to make these two masters of boredom interesting enough that they - and the many skeletons in each of their closets - get the scrutiny that wannabe Secretaries of State deserve… because neither can withstand the scrutiny.
After all, there are, in Kerry's bullpen, many interesting potential Secretaries of State who, simply put, have shown greater passion for democratic principles in foreign policy: Chris Dodd, Mario Cuomo, Loretta Sanchez (no slouch in "Homeland Security" or Armed Forces issues; frankly... add her to the VP "short list" too), Bill Delahunt, Gary Hart, Tim Wirth, Bob Kerrey, Ed Markey… or, here's a tri-partisan bone he could toss the free-marketeers but who also understands the democratic imperative that US foreign policy must regain: Republican-Libertarian Congressman Ron Paul of Texas… not exactly the types to get invited to my garden parties (except for Delahunt and Sanchez, of course), but any one of 'em would be a vast improvement over the Holbrooke-Berger diode (Oxford American Dictionary: "di-ode (di-ohd) n. any two-element electronic device having only two terminals that allows current to flow in only one direction").
(Please note, kind reader, my stated bias that any politician, hooked into political realities, is better than any "foreign policy bureaucrat" type for any State Department executive position, which is why, for example, Republican pol Tony Garza has been a much better Ambassador to Mexico than his predecessor, Clinton's Ambassador Jeffrey Davidow: foreign policy careerists are, by nature, antithetical to democratic principles because they consider themselves, arrogantly, to be part of a "permanent government," and, as a class, they are precisely to blame for the crisis that U.S. foreign policy has provoked at home and abroad. I say: Throw the bums in, and toss the bum-kissers out!)
We've whacked the illegitimate incumbent party in the United States plenty around here, and being non-partisan, now we tell you the deep, dark, secrets of those who claim to be the "opposition" but are more akin to shady members of the "permanent government."
So here goes… authentic heresy… The Richard Holbrooke - Samuel Berger data dump… a work-in-progress… designed to be constantly updated until no rock under which they've crawled, or can scurry toward, remains unturned…
Email this page
Holbrooke Skeletons from Asia to Wall St,
Submitted on April 13th, 2004 by Al GiordanoEast Timor: 200,000 Skeletons in Richard Holbrooke's Closet
Mother Jones noticed those pesky atrocities, too.
According to John Pilger, the cover-up carried over into this century:
Wait, it gets worse… according to Wikipedia, it goes all the way back to Vietnam…
He're's a stellar recommendation. Holbrooke is John Negroponte's old roommate…(Again, kind reader, please note his bias in favor of "State Department Lifers" who float through Democratic and Republican administrations making bipartisan, anti-democracy, messes wherever they land.)
According to Disinfopedia, Holbrooke is not only a bureaucrat, but a big time banking and corporate man.
And how about some sunlight and disclosure on what big money interests paid his lecture fees and director's payments while he "volunteered" his time to Clark, Gephardt, Edwards… and now Kerry…
Did you know that Richard Holbrooke is "Exclusively represented by the Greater Talent Network." (You think those companies pay him to speak because he's a good or interesting speaker? No way! It's just a legalized form of graft.)
The talent network's profile of Holbrooke reveals:
Well, that's a start. Happy hunting, Authentic Journalists: There are your clues. Let the scavenger hunt begin.
Next up: Sandy Berger aka Samuel Berger aka Samuel R. Berger… a.k.a. "aspiring Secretary of Narco-State..."
Sandy Berger: Secretary of Narco-State?
Submitted on April 13th, 2004 by Al Giordano(In eight pages of white noise, and I do mean white, he touches on virtually every part of the world except for Latin America. Why? Because: Samuel Berger is essentially in agreement with the anti-democracy policies of the Bush and Otto Reich gang in Latin America: there's no Bush policy he sees worthy of critique there.)
After all, Otto Reich and Roger Noriega are merely carrying out, with greater passion, policies architected by Sandy Berger.
In 2000, Samuel Berger brought us Plan Colombia, the ongoing, largest, atrocity and war crime in this hemisphere:
Of course, four years later, it's already evident that he lied through his teeth on that one.
Berger also made asses of Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and various conscientious members of Congress, who believed his bullshit about a "human rights clause" attached to Plan Colombia. As the same article states, they were betrayed in no time at all…
Mr. Senator: How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?
Here are some similar Sandy-isms.
Hey, Berger fooled y'all once. If he fools you again… you're the fools. Massacres... blood... hands... yada yada yada, kids.
And if you think the war criminals in the narco-government of Colombia don't have continuing faith in Sandy Berger (and Rand Beers), read this recent report from Colombia Week:
Not to mention, Berger was also the go-to guy in Washington for the vicious dictator of Peru, Alberto Fujimori (and his sidekick Vladimiro Montesinos).
The ever astute Arianna Huffington has noted that Sandy Berger is "history impaired."
More Sandy Berger lies about Plan Colombia.
Not content to be pimp for narco-regimes in Colombia and Peru, Berger played special favorites with Mexican ruler Ernesto Zedillo, aka "the Butcher of Acteal."
(This, related to that famous 1999 Valentine's weekend US-Mexico presidential summit held on the property of publicly accused narco-trafficker, Roberto Hernandez Ramirez. Did Berger scout that location? Or was it Robert Rubin, plotting his own payday? Here's more, and still more of Berger's archived history of pimping for narcos.)
Yup, pass the KY indeed… he would turn the job of Secretary of State into that of Secretary of the Narco-State.
Then again, that would at least be an honest title for what that department has become during recent administrations of both parties.
Is that what John Kerry wants his foreign policy legacy to be, should he get a chance at having one?
Beers! "A Major Coup!" says Brownstein
Submitted on April 13th, 2004 by Al GiordanoThat same Ron Brownstein story includes this memorable line of prose which, reflecting on two years ago this week in Venezuela, seems stranger than comedy...
That wordplay can't have been unintentional. Could it?
Slate's Crowley on the "Clintonites"
Submitted on April 16th, 2004 by Al GiordanoCrowley posits seven "tribes" in the Kerry campaign (really, you can collapse them into three groups - Kerry people, Kennedy people, and Clinton people, with lots of intersecting currents - as I will in a moment), but it's still fun to peruse Crowley's observations and gang nicknames:
First off, you can fold the Clan (family), the Loyalists (longtime friends and counselors) and the "Band of Brothers" (Nam Vets) into a reasonably shared political worldview, with long intersecting working relations and loyalties, and high on the political consciousness end (in other words, much closer to the Kennedy worldview than the Clinton one).The category of "Boston Fixers" is the bridge between that first group and the Kennedy people... Again, longstanding collaborative relations intersecting with these former Dukakis aides and both the Kerry and Kennedy people.
(As to where the group he calls "DC fixers" lines up, Crowley mentions only four names, and it's the only bunch that I don't personally have any experience with. Glad he flagged them. I'll start watching more carefully. "Don't stand in the doorway, don't block up the hall, for he who gets hurt, will be he who has stalled," got it, boys?)
And then you've got those Clinton assholes over in the corner (and the worst of the Clinton crowd!), making a mess of everything. And until the Kennedy and Kerry people realize that there is a problem - because they're the ones so busy out there trying to win an election that they're not paying enough attention to these policy worms in their apple - the Clintonite cancer could spread and kill the patient.
But in the end, once the "dog hunters" in that last "Band of Brothers" category who save every damn venture of Kerry's from the jaws of defeat realize the problem with these beltway bureaucrats, this is just my personal opinion and experience: my money's on them to kick some serious aspiring war criminal ass among those foreign policy coupsters. Hey, soldiers: just whistle if you need back-up.
Berger wants to pour US money, lives into Iraq
Submitted on April 21st, 2004 by Benjamin MelançonThat's under the headline "Dominican Republic To Pull Out of Iraq" (joining Spain and Honduras, which is itself interesting news out of Latin America-- the Dominican Republic, training and staging ground for the US-supported coup against Haiti, pulls out of the 'Coalition of the Willing'!)
Back to Sandy Berger: making the huge assumption that Kerry still wants to distinguish himself from Bush on the Quagmire in Iraq, Berger's opinion expressed above ought to be enough to drum him out of Kerry's foxhole well before the election. Berger, volunteer advisor to presidential candidate John Kerry, is on record apparently favoring maintaining a high U.S. presence there-- at a cost predictably higher in lives (US and Iraqi), dollars, and time than even the 'maintain high troop levels' for five years, and spend the mindboggling '$200 billion' in three, that Berger advocates.
Race to the Bottom
Submitted on May 6th, 2004 by Jeff SimpsonFrom Reuters:
Bush vows to hasten end to Castro's rule in Cuba
And from Venezuelanalysis:
John Kerry Says Venezuela's Chavez is Becoming a Dictator
U.S. Venezuelans anti-Chavez?
Submitted on May 6th, 2004 by Benjamin MelançonThe NarcoSphere's Jeff Simpson quote of Eva Golinger at Venezula Analysis includes the statement:
Venezuela Analysis should know better than I, but I can't believe that Venezuelans in South Florida, or the whole U.S., are anywhere near as solidly oligarch or pro-oligarch as our beloved Cuban population (and willing to vote first, foremost, and maybe only on that issue). I know it isn't true of the Hispanic population in general. Did you notice how the Puerto Ricans, including the half that live in the continental U.S., loved getting bombed, even for target practice? The U.S. military is leaving Puerto Rico's tiny Vieques island, not because it wants to, but because of a big campaign waged by Hispanic activists. I don't think any politician even tried the argument 'Bombing Vieques is good practice for getting rid of Castro or Chavez some day'. I've even read that Cuban-Americans are slowly beginning to become less single-issue and monolithic in their vote.
Here's another piece of info from the Golinger's article to ponder:
My interpretation, then, is that bashing Chavez has a lot to do with doing favors for Gustavo Cisneros, on the assumption that he can help 'deliver the hispanic vote', and it is not a statement poll-tested to be popular with Hispanics. (Not to mention that the pro-democracy camp in Kerry's campaign is losing, or forfeiting, this fight. The answer to 'Is Chavez a dictator' -- interesting question to ask -- "Chavez is fast on the road of becoming exactly that" is the clearest statement he makes in the May 5 interview with Univizion anchor Jorge Ramos. Ramos, a thoughtful guy judging from his preface to The Other Face of America, does not seem to be a friend of any government of any country people choose to leave, case in point 'Venezuelans who distrusted their populist, authoritarian governments' {page xxvii} — plural? What was the other populist gov't? Ramos reports on the U.S., mind you, not Latin America — but I still see Cisnero's hand in even asking "Is Chavez a dictator".)
A new Financial Times story confirms that Univision is the largest Spanish language broadcaster - TV, radio, and Internet - in the United States, and it's growing. It also mentioned something that's got to tick off Cisneros and put him in play for tilting coverage for either would-be elected president:
Not that this has hurt Univision's profitability, (especially as it has bought itself an FCC-blessed monopoly in the Spanish radio market). Associated Press reporter Alex Veiga wrote today:
The Oligarchic Republic of S. Florida
Submitted on May 9th, 2004 by Al GiordanoFlorida is a magnet for a certain kind of Latin American oligarch: the kind who come fleeing democracy (Bolivia's disgraced president Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada is a recent example, neo-Hatian dictator Gerard Latortue who took refuge there for years before his US-installed return is another) instead of those many good immigrants who come to the U.S. from many lands hoping to practice it.
The South Florida oligarch community attracts elites from Latin America. They come not in search of honest work and opportunity, but, rather, in search of avoiding work and the opportunity to work. These are elites so accustomed to live unfairly off the labor and resources of the many that they have come to believe it as their divine right.
There are, most evidently, other Venezuelans in the United States who don't agree with this crowd of cretinous spoiled brats: they belong to the Bolivarian Circles inside the United States from New York to California. But any of the few pro-democracy Venezuelans that have the bad luck to be living in South Florida probably have to keep quiet about their views because the sea of former and aspiring oligarchs will at best shun them and at worst harm them, in business, in their children's experience at school, and in all the ways that metaphorical lynch mob mentalities form against those who speak uncomfortable truths inside insular communities. In any case, those who can move to other regions flee these crazies, and those who can't are a distinct minority in South Florida even though they are a distinct majority almost anywhere else in the United States.
I repeat, again: I think we must be careful when looking at "the Latino vote," or at any specific nationality within it, to refrain from making generalizations until we've studied the situation. There is no "Latino vote" in the United States in the way the case can be made that there is a "black vote." Latin America has not provided a shared cultural experience in the way that being black in the United States has experienced. Latin America is a continent and isthmus of different lands with very different experiences, and, almost everywhere, two different classes with an abyss of experience between them: the oligarchs on one side and the workers and poor on the other.
Finally, and this is the saddest part of the story: Venezuela Analysis' statement that "South Florida's Hispanic population seems to have placed its votes up for grabs; the candidate with the firmest stance on Cuba and Venezuela is likely to acquire its support," I fear, falls for the same hype that Kerry has fallen for, hook, line, and sinker. The oligarch vote in South Florida is not up for grabs. It is simply, with full complicity of its Republican Party political bosses there and in Washington DC, and the same "organizations" that cheered the kidnapping of Elian Gonzalez, and that get significant perques and funding from Governor Uday Bush, and significant immigration breaks from President Saddam Bush, is dancing a very cynically choreographed recital. It has tricked Kerry, and apparently others, into thinking it is up for grabs in order to neutralize the pro-democracy position visavis Venezuela inside the United States.
Kerry may fall for it, but I don't. That vote is not "up for grabs." It is going to Bush. And I have to admit that, as an armchair political strategist, I grudgingly admire their political smarts, although I hate and oppose their evil, anti-democracy, intent, in having so successfully tricked Kerry and others simply by claiming that their votes are in the air. They're not... Not in South Florida.
It's stuff like this that makes most of Latin America's population correct when it views gringos as kind of slow, fatheaded, and stupid. I mean, if the "opposition candidate" in the U.S. falls for this ploy, stupid is the obvious word to describe him.
The way to turn it around begins with not accepting the premise that the oligarchs and their political bosses have skillfully imposed: they are not "up for grabs." They are, to any conscientious pro-democracy person in any land, the enemy.
Kerry & Chavez
Submitted on May 12th, 2004 by Christopher Whalen------------------------------------
4 de mayo de 2004, 01:11 PM PST, Reuters
Gobierno venezolano prepara purga en el sistema judicial
Por Ana Isabel Martínez
CARACAS (Reuters) - El gobierno de Venezuela, que ya purgó de sus enemigos a la estatal Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA) y a las fuerzas armadas, se enfila ahora a dar un "sacudón" en el controversial sistema de justicia, tras ser aprobada recientemente una nueva ley para el máximo tribunal.
El diputado oficialista Luis Velázquez, promotor del nuevo instrumento legal para el Tribunal Supremo de Justicia (TSJ), dijo el martes que prevé que la ley sea promulgada este mes.
"Lo que está planteado aquí (...) es una reestructuración a fondo, estructural, tipo PDVSA, en la dirección ejecutiva de la magistratura," dijo en una entrevista con Reuters.
"Eso pasa por una reestructuración en cada tribunal que existe en el país, incluyendo al Supremo," agregó Velázquez para quien en el TSJ hay magistrados "golpistas" que avalaron la fugaz salida del poder del presidente Hugo Chávez en abril del 2002.
Pero los adversarios al "chavismo" dicen que la nueva ley del TSJ busca darle al presidente el control de la máxima corte, como lo ha hecho con el resto de los poder públicos, para evitar decisiones contrarias y hasta tratar de influenciar en un referendo revocatorio contra Chávez el 8 de agosto.
Velázquez explicó que la "purga" es necesaria para despolitizar al "corrupto" sistema de justicia, que a su juicio está dominado por partidos opuestos al gobierno.
Pero Velázquez no pudo garantizar que tras el "sacudón," el sistema no quede en manos absolutas de los partidos del "chavismo" y se repitan los vicios que ahora critican.
Velázquez explicó que ya tiene listos otros cinco proyectos de leyes vinculados a la justicia, con lo que pretenden hacer la reestructuración total.
Después del breve derrocamiento en abril del 2002, Chávez hizo una purga en las filas castrenses para poner a militares de confianza en cargos clave.
El año pasado, tras un desgarrador paro opositor que buscaba su renuncia y golpeó con fuerza al vital sector petrolero de Venezuela, Chávez despidió a unos 18.000 empleados de PDVSA -la mitad de la nómina- por plegarse a la protesta.
LUCHAR POR LA REVOLUCION
Ahora el oficialismo quiere sacar del sistema judicial a quienes considera sus enemigos, bajo el argumento de que hay que depurarlo para hacer justicia verdadera.
Pero los opositores del mandatario temen por el referendo.
"Si logran poner la Ley en aplicación rápidamente y poner los magistrados en la Sala Electoral del TSJ sí pudiera haber alguna afectación sobre el referendo," dijo a Reuters el diputado opositor Juan José Caldera.
Velázquez desestimó esa hipótesis porque aseguró que para nombrar doce nuevos magistrados en el TSJ como dicta la Ley hay que pasar por un complejo sistema de selección que pasa por el parlamento y que los lapsos parecieran no dar para hacerlo antes del referendo, que a su juicio no se hará por falta de firmas para pedirlo.
"No vamos a acelerar de alguna manera ni el nombramiento de los magistrados ni el proceso de reestructuración. No tenemos que poner fechas tope como esa," dijo Velázquez.
Para escoger a los nuevos magistrados del TSJ -y elevar el número actual de 20 a 32- hay que designar primero un comité de postulaciones que será escogido con mayoría simple de la asamblea dominada por el chavismo.
Esta constituye la primera queja de la oposición acerca de la selección de los jueces porque temen sean designados los que favorezcan los intereses de la revolución.
Y es que el mismo Chávez ha arremetido contra la cúpula del TSJ que el mismo "chavismo" designó a principios del 2000, por haber emitido alguna vez sentencias en su contra.
El diputado dejó claro que el proyecto "revolucionario" contenido en la Constitución de 1999, impulsado por Chávez, debe combatir las adversidades.
"Nosotros tenemos que contrarrestar todo aquello que vaya contra la Constitución y la forma de organización del TSJ permitió movimientos bien importantes, desestabilizadores de la democracia," sentenció.