Aristide, Bush, Chávez, Kerry: When Presidents Collide

Your story is very helpful, particularly in seeing that Kerry's camp may not be entirely hopeless on Venezuela.  The petition for Kerry to retract his statement is now at Petition to Kerry, and has some 3500 signatures Saturday afternoon.

Paul

Go to google and search on "kerry opec". As you can see, "JFK" intends to try and get OPEC to increase oil production.

OPECs case for cutting production seems rock solid: The oil is running out, yet with current technology and population levels, every country in the world needs oil just to feed its people. In addition, some oil exporters like Venezuela and Iraq have people living in desperate poverty. Cutting production raises prices to help these desperate people.

Bush/Kerry's case for increasing production seems to me less solid: Americans all have cars with oversized engines and theyll get angry if they cant afford fuel and will vote me out.

Anyone with any brains at all should be able to see the wisdom in reserving the last half of the oil to keep us alive in the coming decades. But election politics is nothing to do with brains or common sense. Ordinary Americans just basically do not care if their SUV is killing people in other countries or is shortening the life of the human race. They will vote for whichever suit gives them the lowest taxes and the cheapest petrol.

In the light of this psychopathic behavior by the American voters, Bin Laden's statements about educating America through large explosions almost start to amke sense - except that his explosions have had the opposite effect to that he claims to intend.

Clearly ANYONE would be a better president than Bush (I for one would prefer Charles Manson), so its still worth voting for and supporting Kerry, simply because on past form Democratic governments kill fewer people than Republican ones.

But it seems to me that the real issue is NOT who is president, its how much petrol does America use. Kerry SAYS he will do things to reduce this problem, but with his OPEC statements its now clear that he isnt going to be that different from Bush in this regard.

I propose a new ethic for concerned Americans: Passivism (as opposed to Activism). So much benefit can be brought by CEASING to do things: Stop doing your pointless job, stop driving your killer car. Cease to cooperate with the psychopathic authority in your country.

Since voting makes no difference, I recommend a global strike against the oil industry and the system which supports it. If your job doesnt involve food production or alternative energy research (or authentic journalism) you should quit it now and not go back to work until the oil industries have all been nationalised and alternative energy research is no longer blocked by aggressive use of patents.

Tim

This was really some wonderful analysis of this whole Kerry situation.  I emailed Kerry in early March regarding his stance on Venezuela, informing him that I was a swing voter (that is between him and Ralph Nader, not him and Jorge), and that the policy toward Venezuela would be an important issue for me.  I did not get a responce.

A couple weeks later, Dawn Gable, a US pro-Bolivarian activist emailed me with the Kerry statement she found on his site.  I was really shocked and disappointed, and I really turned against John Kerry.  Since that time, I've read PLENTY of great rebutalls to Kerry's statement, from Venezuelanalysis.org and from other independent media outlets, however none of the analysis I've read was in any way similar to this.

I now believe, and I guess I hope, that Kerry will pull another infamous "flip-flop", as a result of the pro-democracy activists who have bombarded him with the petitions and various articles debunking his moronic statement.  Considering these internal battles within the Kerry camp, that unfortunately nobody else who I've read had picked up on, I think its quite plausible that Kerry may indeed retract his position.

I guess only time will tell.

Alex