Reporter's Notebook: Al Giordano

Richard Holbrooke/Samuel Berger DataDump

Posted by Al Giordano - April 13, 2004 at 6:12 pm

Ron Brownstein of the Los Angeles Times begins to flush the members of presumptive U.S. Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry's Cromagnon foreign policy team out from their caves. Here's a version of his story in the Minnesota Star Tribune (which, unlike the LAT, doesn't demand your personal data to read it... ¡putos! suddenly they do want you to register... okay, here's the Baltimore Sun version, while it lasts...):

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…

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Holbrooke Skeletons from Asia to Wall St,

Submitted April 13, 2004 - 6:22 pm by Al Giordano

Let's start with Holbrooke's atrocities in East Timor... from Z magazine:

East 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:

Collusion between the Bush and Gore camps was common. During the 2000 election, Richard Holbrooke, who probably would have become Gore's secretary of state, conspired with Paul Wolfowitz to ensure their respective candidates said nothing about US policy towards Indonesia's blood-soaked role in southeast Asia. "Paul and I have been in frequent touch," said Holbrooke, "to make sure we keep [East Timor] out of the presidential campaign, where it would do no good to American or Indonesian interests."

Wait, it gets worse… according to Wikipedia, it goes all the way back to Vietnam…

Richard Holbrooke… Life Events

  • 1962 graduates from Brown University; enters US Foreign Service
  • 1962-6 Vietnam diplomatic service as a provincial representative for the Agency for International Development (AID), then Ambassadors' staff assistant to Maxwell Taylor and Henry Cabot Lodge.
  • 1966 White House Vietnam staff of President Lyndon Johnson
  • 1967-69 special assistant to Under Secretaries of State Nicholas deb. Katzenbach and Elliot Richardson, writes one volume of the Pentagon Papers...

He're's a stellar recommendation. Holbrooke is John Negroponte's old roommate…

Despite the massive evidence of Negroponte’s grisly history, the nomination has considerable support from Democrats as well as Republicans. Clinton’s last UN Ambassador, Richard Holbrooke, praised Negroponte, calling his nomination “terrific ... good for the UN, good for the foreign service, and I believe it will be good for the United States.” Holbrooke was Negroponte’s roommate in Vietnam and a coworker on Kissinger’s National Security Council.

Holbrooke pointed out that Negroponte has already been confirmed several times by Democratic-controlled congresses, in 1989 and 1993, despite opposition sparked by his record in Vietnam and Central America. “He’s gotten through before in a more liberal Congress, so I don’t see why he’d have trouble now,” the Clinton administration official said, adding, “We need a professional on the job. If professional diplomats are penalized for carrying out the instructions of their government, then we’re all in trouble.”

(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:

Holbrooke's experience includes stints as vice chairman of CS First Boston and as managing director of Lehman Brothers, where he utilized his leadership and strategic planning expertise to guide their growth nationally and globally.

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..."

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Sandy Berger: Secretary of Narco-State?

Submitted April 13, 2004 - 6:38 pm by Al Giordano

His foreign policy doctrines are vacuous, as seen in this essay for the Council on Foreign Relations. If you don't believe me when I tell you that Sandy Berger is the devil's own gift to insomniacs, try to read through this essay, keeping both eyes open.

(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:

Briefing reporters on President Clinton's visit to Colombia next week, White House National Security Adviser Sandy Berger rejected the notion the United States is heading for a Vietnam-style U-S involvement

in Colombia:

"You should learn from what happened before. But the fact is this is nothing similar what-so-ever. We're talking about a few hundred American people going to train some Colombian army battalions - vetting them for human rights, training them in human rights as well - who will have a greater capability to provide security for the Colombian national police when they go in to try to destroy crops. That is the parameters of our undertaking."

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…

President Clinton late Tuesday invoked national security considerations to waive human rights conditions set by Congress for the aid package though Mr. Berger insisted President Pastrana is committed to human rights reform in the military and will fulfill the U-S terms over time.

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:

Interviewed by the Bogotá daily El Tiempo, Colombian Ambassador to the United States Luis Alberto Moreno said a Democratic presidential victory would not jeopardize support for Plan Colombia or a trade pact. “John Kerry’s main foreign policy advisors, Rand Beers and Sandy Berger, know the situation perfectly well,” Moreno said. “Kerry has always voted in favor of Colombia when the issue has come up before Congress.”

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."

Sandy Berger, the president’s history-impaired national security adviser, dismissed the parallels being drawn between Colombia and Vietnam -- which also began with the deployment of a few military advisers and more than a few million dollars in military aid.  But Vietnam is not the only part of our past that should be remembered.  As recently as March 1999, Clinton apologized to the people of Guatemala for America’s involvement in that country’s civil war.  He now proceeds to repeat that mistake.

The evidence amassed by human-rights groups overwhelmingly shows the Colombian military continues to allow its paramilitary allies to massacre hundreds of unarmed civilians each year.  And only two weeks ago, the army itself was responsible for an attack that killed six elementary school children on a hiking trip...

"I don’t know if President Clinton enjoyed apologizing to the people of Guatemala," Carlos M.  Salinas of Amnesty International USA told me, "but he’s all but guaranteeing that some future U.S.  president will have to apologize to the Colombian people for the dirty little war we’re about to escalate."

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."

"President Zedillo is clearly trying to establish a clean government and respect for the rule of law," Sandy Berger, the president's national security adviser, told reporters.

He said Mexico is confronting its problem of government corruption "with remarkable candor."

"Indeed, much of what we know and much of what troubles us about the extent of corruption in the Mexican law-enforcement effort has emerged from Mexico's own efforts to uproot it," Berger said.  "And that's something we need to acknowledge and encourage."

(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?

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Beers! "A Major Coup!" says Brownstein

Submitted April 13, 2004 - 6:55 pm by Al Giordano

And not to leave Randy Beers off the hit parade...

That same Ron Brownstein story includes this memorable line of prose which, reflecting on two years ago this week in Venezuela, seems stranger than comedy...

"Most observers considered the Kerry campaign's signing of Beers in May last year a major coup..."

- Ron Brownstein, LA Times

That wordplay can't have been unintentional. Could it?

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Slate's Crowley on the "Clintonites"

Submitted April 16, 2004 - 1:55 pm by Al Giordano

Michael Crowley's essay, The Kerry Tribes: The seven factions fighting for control of his campaign and his presidency is oversimplified and at times a little kooky, but he seems to "get" my meme that there are counter-forces in the Kerry organization that need to be rallied and given the vision to isolate and pin down the Holbrooke-Berger-Beers crowd within the U.S. opposition candidate's organization.

Crowley 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:

  • The Kennedy Militia
  • The Boston Fixers
  • The Kerry Clan
  • The D.C. Fixers
  • The Clintonites (Holbrooke, Berger, Beers included)
  • The Kerry Loyalists
  • Band of Brothers

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.

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Berger wants to pour US money, lives into Iraq

Submitted April 21, 2004 - 3:28 pm by Benjamin Melançon

I'm interpreting a little loosely with my headline.  Democracy Now reported today:

former National Security Advisor Sandy Berger told the Senate Tuesday the US will likely have to maintain a high troop level in Iraq for up to five years and spend another $200 billion over the next three years to stabilize Iraq.

That'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.

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Race to the Bottom

Submitted May 6, 2004 - 6:46 pm by Jeff Simpson

It looks like Tweedle-pendejo and Tweedle-cabron are getting serious about South Florida.

From Reuters:

Bush vows to hasten end to Castro's rule in Cuba

President George W. Bush on Thursday offered new steps he said would help hasten the end of Cuban President Fidel Castro's rule, such as stepping up anti-Castro propaganda and bolstering dissidents groups, as he played to Cuban-American voters in Florida.

Bush will tighten limits on visits to Cuba by American family members and increase sting operations to keep money for relatives from falling into the government's hands. He also wants to deploy airplanes to prevent Cuba from jamming anti-Castro broadcasts by the United States.

Up to $59 million will be earmarked for anti-Castro efforts over the next two years.

...

Florida is home to around 450,000 Cuban Americans, 68.5 percent of whom are registered with Bush's Republican party. Support from anti-Castro Cuban-Americans helped Bush win a disputed but crucial victory in Florida in 2000. The state could again prove key in the 2004 election.

"I think these are very positive measures," said Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a Florida Republican.

The anti-Castro Cuban American National Foundation said it was eager for the measures to be adopted. "Our people are dying in the Straits of Florida every day. We do not have the luxury of time," said the group's chairman Jorge Mas Santos.

And from Venezuelanalysis:

John Kerry Says Venezuela's Chavez is Becoming a Dictator

For the second time in the first quarter of the campaign trail, John Kerry, the democratic candidate for president of the United States, has declared that “democracy is a risk” in Venezuela. Kerry also said that Venezuela’s democratically–elected President Chavez is becoming a dictator.

The statements were made on Wednesday night during Kerry’s first interview with the U.S. Spanish-language network, Univision, in an obvious attempt to garner the Hispanic vote. The 38 million strong Hispanic population in the United States is considered to be an important voting block in the upcoming 2004 presidential elections.

The Univision interview, conducted by Jorge Ramos, was clearly targeted at Southern Florida Spanish-speaking voters, known to be opposed to Cuban President Fidel Castro and with strong ties with the Republican Party. Yet in recent months, 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 – democrat or republican aside.

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U.S. Venezuelans anti-Chavez?

Submitted May 6, 2004 - 8:54 pm by Benjamin Melançon

Anybody live in or near a U.S. Venezuelan community that can give some insight here?

The NarcoSphere's Jeff Simpson quote of Eva Golinger at Venezula Analysis includes the statement:

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

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:

The Univision network is part of the Cisneros Group of Companies, owned by Gustavo Cisneros, a Venezuelan billionaire of Cuban descent and outspoken Chavez opponent who has been implicated in the April 2002 coup d?etat against Chavez.

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:

Ray Rodriguez, president of Univision Television Networks, called the network "the primary source for developing Spanish language ad budgets", but noted that Univision was not benefitting from political advertising like English-language broadcasters.

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:

Net revenue rose 35 percent to $352.9 million, compared to $261.7 million in the first quarter of 2003, the company said. The total includes net revenue from Univision Radio, formerly Hispanic Broadcasting Corp., which Univision acquired in September for $3.2 billion.

[...]

The company said its three networks - Univision, Galavision and Telefutura - delivered the largest total audience numbers in the company's history during the quarter.

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The Oligarchic Republic of S. Florida

Submitted May 9, 2004 - 10:20 am by Al Giordano

As my old friend (and John Kerry's) Dan Payne advised Kerry yesterday through his column in the Boston Globe:

Never forget: Florida is still dictatorship run by President Bush's brother Uday.



Florida 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.

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Kerry & Chavez

Submitted May 13, 2004 - 12:16 am by Christopher Whalen

My guess is that Kerry will move steadily right on VE/LA as the GOP turns up the $/volume. If he goes with FL running mate, Cuba and VE will be on the menu.  Note item below circulated by some policy types in DC -- including some dems. Al's point on Berger is well taken.  He could serve under a Republican admin very easily.  

------------------------------------

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.

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