GOP Accuses Kerry of Illegally Using Soft Money
NewsMax.com Wires
Wednesday, March 31, 2004
WASHINGTON – President Bush's campaign and the GOP on Wednesday accused Democrat John Kerry's campaign of illegally coordinating political ads and get-out-the-vote activities with independent groups.
The Bush campaign and Republican National Committee said they would file a complaint with the Federal Election Commission accusing Kerry and pro-Kerry groups of violating a campaign law that broadly bans the use of "soft money" - corporate, union and unlimited individual donations - to influence federal elections.
The Bush campaign and GOP say that pro-Kerry groups are illegally spending soft money in the presidential race, and that Kerry's campaign is illegally coordinating that spending. The groups have contended they are operating legally.
Groups such as MoveOn.org Voter Fund and Media Fund, which work on behalf of Democrats but independently of the Kerry campaign, have been running ads this month criticizing Bush in several battleground states. Kerry, too, has been airing ads in key states, but on a much smaller scale.
The coordination complaint is the second the Bush campaign has filed against the groups.
The campaign in early March asked the FEC to investigate soft-money spending by Media Fund on anti-Bush ads. Media Fund, using large individual donations to fund its ads, argues its activities are legal.
When Media Fund and MoveOn ran ads in mid-March, the Bush campaign called them "bitter partisan groups." The two groups have helped Democrats match Bush ad for ad in key media markets.
The Republican complaints come as the commission considers placing broad new limits on soft money spending by tax-exempt political groups.
Its decision could have the greatest short-term effect on Democrats, whose party depended more heavily on soft money than the GOP did before the law banned national party committees from collecting it.
The Republican Party collects millions of dollars more than the Democratic Party in limited donations from individuals allowed under the law. Bush, meanwhile, has raised more than $170 million, more than twice as much as Kerry has.
Trying to counter those advantages, several Democrat activists set up partisan groups to spend soft money after the law banned the parties from doing so in November 2002.
Campaign finance watchdogs often call such groups "shadow parties" because they have taken on types of spending the parties used to have soft money to finance, such as get-out-the-vote drives and political ads.
Republicans have also created such groups, but so far they have not been as prolific in their efforts as Democrats have.
© 2004 Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
31 March 2004
29 March 2004
Slashing Attacks From the Religious Left
In what may signal desperation in attempts to reach the crumbling moral high ground of his candidacy, John Kerry yesterday questioned the religious faith of his political opponents. Meanwhile, here in Seattle, liberals cheer as virulent attacks on George Bush are made from the pulpit. Ferociously partisan attacks made by so-called "mainstream" churches out for political blood. Yet they would call Mel Gibson an extremist hate monger. Such is the state of left-wing Clerics in the Protestant "Madrasas " of "Jihadist " Seattle. Fortunately there are churches in Seattle where one may find that God is Love, rather than feel the self-loathing crack of whipped-up brimstone by Liberal Fundamentalists. Hopefully the open-and-inclusive congregations won't make themselves hard to find amid the left-wing lather. Religious "fundamentalism" is defined by lack of tolerance for, and by extension - a dearth of, diversity of viewpoints. In many left-wing Seattle churches, diversity has reached the point of intellectual famine.
21 March 2004
CIA: Take Your Checkbook To Central Asia
Al-Zawahri Says Al Qaeda Has Suitcase Nukes
SYDNEY (Reuters) - Al Qaeda's second-in-command Ayman al-Zawahri claims the militant Islamic organization has bought briefcase nuclear bombs on the central Asian black market, according to Osama bin Laden's biographer.
Pakistani journalist Hamid Mir has told an Australian Broadcasting Corporation television program, to be aired on Monday night, that when he interviewed Osama bin Laden and al-Zawahri in 2001 he asked whether al Qaeda had nuclear weapons.
Mir said al-Zawahri laughed and said: "Mr Mir, if you have US$30 million, go to the black market in central Asia, contact any disgruntled Soviet scientist and a lot of dozens of smart briefcase bombs are available.
"They have contacted us, we sent our people to Moscow, to Tashkent, to other central Asian states and they negotiated and we purchased some suitcase bombs," Mir quoted al-Zawarhi on the ABC program "Enough Rope," recorded last Monday from Islamabad.
The Egyptian al-Zawahri, a doctor, is regarded as the brains of al Qaeda and a key figure behind the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.
Al Qaeda is suspected of having an interest in acquiring weapons of mass destruction, whether nuclear, biological or chemical, but no evidence of a program was found in searches of its bases after the fall of the Taliban in Afghanistan.
Security experts say it is highly unlikely that bin Laden and his al Qaeda network have got anywhere close to acquiring nuclear weapon technology, but they do not rule it out.
Experts have long said it might be easier for al Qaeda to create a dirty bomb -- a cocktail of non-fissile material and explosives capable of creating damage -- but that would spread radioactivity over only a limited area.
© Reuters 2004. All Rights Reserved.
Pakistani journalist Hamid Mir has told an Australian Broadcasting Corporation television program, to be aired on Monday night, that when he interviewed Osama bin Laden and al-Zawahri in 2001 he asked whether al Qaeda had nuclear weapons.
Mir said al-Zawahri laughed and said: "Mr Mir, if you have US$30 million, go to the black market in central Asia, contact any disgruntled Soviet scientist and a lot of dozens of smart briefcase bombs are available.
"They have contacted us, we sent our people to Moscow, to Tashkent, to other central Asian states and they negotiated and we purchased some suitcase bombs," Mir quoted al-Zawarhi on the ABC program "Enough Rope," recorded last Monday from Islamabad.
The Egyptian al-Zawahri, a doctor, is regarded as the brains of al Qaeda and a key figure behind the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.
Al Qaeda is suspected of having an interest in acquiring weapons of mass destruction, whether nuclear, biological or chemical, but no evidence of a program was found in searches of its bases after the fall of the Taliban in Afghanistan.
Security experts say it is highly unlikely that bin Laden and his al Qaeda network have got anywhere close to acquiring nuclear weapon technology, but they do not rule it out.
Experts have long said it might be easier for al Qaeda to create a dirty bomb -- a cocktail of non-fissile material and explosives capable of creating damage -- but that would spread radioactivity over only a limited area.
© Reuters 2004. All Rights Reserved.
Everything I Need To Know About WMD in Iraq
From Jay Reding is everything I need to know about Iraqi WMD, and a heartfelt reflection about what is at stake in Iraq. Read Jay's post here.
20 March 2004
Former Romanian Spy Examines Soviet Ties To VVAW
Kerry’s Soviet Rhetoric
The Vietnam-era antiwar movement got its spin from the Kremlin.
By Ion Mihai Pacepa, National Review Online
Part of Senator John Kerry's appeal to a certain segment of Americans is his Vietnam-veteran status coupled with his antiwar activism during that period. On April 12, 1971, Kerry told the U.S. Congress that American soldiers claimed to him that they had, "raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned on the power, cut off limbs, blew up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in a fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan."
The exact sources of that assertion should be tracked down. Kerry also ought to be asked who, exactly, told him any such thing, and what it was, exactly, that they said they did in Vietnam. Statutes of limitation now protect these individuals from prosecution for any such admissions. Or did Senator Kerry merely hear allegations of that sort as hearsay bandied about by members of antiwar groups (much of which has since been discredited)? To me, this assertion sounds exactly like the disinformation line that the Soviets were sowing worldwide throughout the Vietnam era. KGB priority number one at that time was to damage American power, judgment, and credibility. One of its favorite tools was the fabrication of such evidence as photographs and "news reports" about invented American war atrocities. These tales were purveyed in KGB-operated magazines that would then flack them to reputable news organizations. Often enough, they would be picked up. News organizations are notoriously sloppy about verifying their sources. All in all, it was amazingly easy for Soviet-bloc spy organizations to fake many such reports and spread them around the free world.
As a spy chief and a general in the former Soviet satellite of Romania, I produced the very same vitriol Kerry repeated to the U.S. Congress almost word for word and planted it in leftist movements throughout Europe. KGB chairman Yuri Andropov managed our anti-Vietnam War operation. He often bragged about having damaged the U.S. foreign-policy consensus, poisoned domestic debate in the U.S., and built a credibility gap between America and European public opinion through our disinformation operations. Vietnam was, he once told me, "our most significant success."
The KGB organized a vitriolic conference in Stockholm to condemn America's aggression, on March 8, 1965, as the first American troops arrived in south Vietnam. On Andropov's orders, one of the KGB's paid agents, Romesh Chandra, the chairman of the KGB-financed World Peace Council, created the Stockholm Conference on Vietnam as a permanent international organization to aid or to conduct operations to help Americans dodge the draft or defect, to demoralize its army with anti-American propaganda, to conduct protests, demonstrations, and boycotts, and to sanction anyone connected with the war. It was staffed by Soviet-bloc undercover intelligence officers and received about $15 million annually from the Communist Party's international department — on top of the WPC's $50 million a year, all delivered in laundered cash dollars. Both groups had Soviet-style secretariats to manage their general activities, Soviet-style working committees to conduct their day-to-day operations, and Soviet-style bureaucratic paperwork. The quote from Senator Kerry is unmistakable Soviet-style sloganeering from this period. I believe it is very like a direct quote from one of these organizations' propaganda sheets.
The KGB campaign to assault the U.S. and Europe by means of disinformation was more than just a few Cold War dirty tricks. The whole foreign policy of the Soviet-bloc states, indeed its whole economic and military might, revolved around the larger Soviet objective of destroying America from within through the use of lies. The Soviets saw disinformation as a vital tool in the dialectical advance of world Communism.
The Stockholm conference held annual international meetings up to 1972. In its five years of existence it created thousands of "documentary" materials printed in all the major Western languages describing the "abominable crimes" committed by American soldiers against civilians in Vietnam, along with counterfeited pictures. All these materials were manufactured by the KGB's disinformation department. I would print up these materials in hundreds of thousands of copies each.
The Romanian DIE (Ceausescu's secret police) was tasked to distribute these KGB-concocted "incriminating documents" all over Western Europe. And ordinary people often bought it hook, line, and sinker. "Even Attila the Hun looks like an angel when compared to these Americans," a West German businessman reprovingly told me after reading one such report.
The Italian, Greek, and Spanish Communist parties serviced by Bucharest were much affected by this material and their activists regularly distributed translations. They also handed them out to the participants at anti-American demonstrations around the world.
Many "Ban-the-Bomb" and anti-nuclear movements were KGB-funded operations, too. I can no longer look at a petition for world peace or other supposedly noble cause, particularly of the anti-American variety, without thinking to myself, "KGB."
In 1978, when I broke with Communism, my DIE was propagating the line that Washington's adventure in Vietnam had wasted over $200 trillion. This waste, we warned darkly, would soon generate European inflation, recession, and unemployment.
As far as I'm concerned, the KGB gave birth to the antiwar movement in America. In 1976, Andropov gave my own Romanian DIE credit for helping his KGB do so.
Leftist intellectuals in America now look to Europe — steeped for years in anti-American propaganda from the Soviet Union — for "a sane and frank European criticism of the Bush administration's war policy." Indeed, anti-Americanism in Europe today is almost as ferocious as it was during Vietnam. France and Germany insist we are torturing the al Qaeda prisoners held at Guantanamo Base. The Mirror, a British newspaper, is confident that President Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair were "killing innocents in Afghanistan." The Paris daily Le Monde put Jean Baudrillard on its front page asserting that "the Judeo-Christian West, led by America, not only provoked the [September 11] terrorist attacks, it actually desired them."
In June 2002, a documentary film on "U.S. war crimes" in Afghanistan was shown in the German Bundestag by the crypto-Communist Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS). The film faithfully reincarnated the style of old Soviet-bloc "documentaries" demonizing the U.S. war in Vietnam. According to this 20-minute movie, American soldiers were involved in the torture and murder of some 3,000 Taliban prisoners in the region of Mazar-e-Sharif. One witness in the film even claimed he had seen an American soldier break the neck of one Afghan prisoner and pour acid on others.
During my last meeting with Andropov, he said, wisely, "now all we have to do is to keep the Vietnam-era anti-Americanism alive." Andropov was a shrewd judge of human nature. He understood that in the end our original involvement would be forgotten, and our insinuations would take on a life of their own. He knew well that it was just the way human nature worked.
— Ion Mihai Pacepa was acting chief of Romania's espionage service and national-security adviser to the country's president. He is the highest-ranking intelligence officer ever to have defected from the former Soviet bloc.
The Vietnam-era antiwar movement got its spin from the Kremlin.
By Ion Mihai Pacepa, National Review Online
Part of Senator John Kerry's appeal to a certain segment of Americans is his Vietnam-veteran status coupled with his antiwar activism during that period. On April 12, 1971, Kerry told the U.S. Congress that American soldiers claimed to him that they had, "raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned on the power, cut off limbs, blew up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in a fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan."
The exact sources of that assertion should be tracked down. Kerry also ought to be asked who, exactly, told him any such thing, and what it was, exactly, that they said they did in Vietnam. Statutes of limitation now protect these individuals from prosecution for any such admissions. Or did Senator Kerry merely hear allegations of that sort as hearsay bandied about by members of antiwar groups (much of which has since been discredited)? To me, this assertion sounds exactly like the disinformation line that the Soviets were sowing worldwide throughout the Vietnam era. KGB priority number one at that time was to damage American power, judgment, and credibility. One of its favorite tools was the fabrication of such evidence as photographs and "news reports" about invented American war atrocities. These tales were purveyed in KGB-operated magazines that would then flack them to reputable news organizations. Often enough, they would be picked up. News organizations are notoriously sloppy about verifying their sources. All in all, it was amazingly easy for Soviet-bloc spy organizations to fake many such reports and spread them around the free world.
As a spy chief and a general in the former Soviet satellite of Romania, I produced the very same vitriol Kerry repeated to the U.S. Congress almost word for word and planted it in leftist movements throughout Europe. KGB chairman Yuri Andropov managed our anti-Vietnam War operation. He often bragged about having damaged the U.S. foreign-policy consensus, poisoned domestic debate in the U.S., and built a credibility gap between America and European public opinion through our disinformation operations. Vietnam was, he once told me, "our most significant success."
The KGB organized a vitriolic conference in Stockholm to condemn America's aggression, on March 8, 1965, as the first American troops arrived in south Vietnam. On Andropov's orders, one of the KGB's paid agents, Romesh Chandra, the chairman of the KGB-financed World Peace Council, created the Stockholm Conference on Vietnam as a permanent international organization to aid or to conduct operations to help Americans dodge the draft or defect, to demoralize its army with anti-American propaganda, to conduct protests, demonstrations, and boycotts, and to sanction anyone connected with the war. It was staffed by Soviet-bloc undercover intelligence officers and received about $15 million annually from the Communist Party's international department — on top of the WPC's $50 million a year, all delivered in laundered cash dollars. Both groups had Soviet-style secretariats to manage their general activities, Soviet-style working committees to conduct their day-to-day operations, and Soviet-style bureaucratic paperwork. The quote from Senator Kerry is unmistakable Soviet-style sloganeering from this period. I believe it is very like a direct quote from one of these organizations' propaganda sheets.
The KGB campaign to assault the U.S. and Europe by means of disinformation was more than just a few Cold War dirty tricks. The whole foreign policy of the Soviet-bloc states, indeed its whole economic and military might, revolved around the larger Soviet objective of destroying America from within through the use of lies. The Soviets saw disinformation as a vital tool in the dialectical advance of world Communism.
The Stockholm conference held annual international meetings up to 1972. In its five years of existence it created thousands of "documentary" materials printed in all the major Western languages describing the "abominable crimes" committed by American soldiers against civilians in Vietnam, along with counterfeited pictures. All these materials were manufactured by the KGB's disinformation department. I would print up these materials in hundreds of thousands of copies each.
The Romanian DIE (Ceausescu's secret police) was tasked to distribute these KGB-concocted "incriminating documents" all over Western Europe. And ordinary people often bought it hook, line, and sinker. "Even Attila the Hun looks like an angel when compared to these Americans," a West German businessman reprovingly told me after reading one such report.
The Italian, Greek, and Spanish Communist parties serviced by Bucharest were much affected by this material and their activists regularly distributed translations. They also handed them out to the participants at anti-American demonstrations around the world.
Many "Ban-the-Bomb" and anti-nuclear movements were KGB-funded operations, too. I can no longer look at a petition for world peace or other supposedly noble cause, particularly of the anti-American variety, without thinking to myself, "KGB."
In 1978, when I broke with Communism, my DIE was propagating the line that Washington's adventure in Vietnam had wasted over $200 trillion. This waste, we warned darkly, would soon generate European inflation, recession, and unemployment.
As far as I'm concerned, the KGB gave birth to the antiwar movement in America. In 1976, Andropov gave my own Romanian DIE credit for helping his KGB do so.
Leftist intellectuals in America now look to Europe — steeped for years in anti-American propaganda from the Soviet Union — for "a sane and frank European criticism of the Bush administration's war policy." Indeed, anti-Americanism in Europe today is almost as ferocious as it was during Vietnam. France and Germany insist we are torturing the al Qaeda prisoners held at Guantanamo Base. The Mirror, a British newspaper, is confident that President Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair were "killing innocents in Afghanistan." The Paris daily Le Monde put Jean Baudrillard on its front page asserting that "the Judeo-Christian West, led by America, not only provoked the [September 11] terrorist attacks, it actually desired them."
In June 2002, a documentary film on "U.S. war crimes" in Afghanistan was shown in the German Bundestag by the crypto-Communist Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS). The film faithfully reincarnated the style of old Soviet-bloc "documentaries" demonizing the U.S. war in Vietnam. According to this 20-minute movie, American soldiers were involved in the torture and murder of some 3,000 Taliban prisoners in the region of Mazar-e-Sharif. One witness in the film even claimed he had seen an American soldier break the neck of one Afghan prisoner and pour acid on others.
During my last meeting with Andropov, he said, wisely, "now all we have to do is to keep the Vietnam-era anti-Americanism alive." Andropov was a shrewd judge of human nature. He understood that in the end our original involvement would be forgotten, and our insinuations would take on a life of their own. He knew well that it was just the way human nature worked.
— Ion Mihai Pacepa was acting chief of Romania's espionage service and national-security adviser to the country's president. He is the highest-ranking intelligence officer ever to have defected from the former Soviet bloc.
18 March 2004
Key Link For Winter Soldier Research
www.wintersoldier.com is a key link for full background on the "real" John Kerry.
Details Emerging About Kerry's Anti-War Scandal
From NewsMax.com - a major breaking scandal affecting Kerry's candidacy:
Wednesday, March 17, 2004 1:31 a.m. EST
Video Shows Kerry Conducting 'War Crimes' Interviews
A 1971 videotape shows Sen. John Kerry taking an active roll at the infamous Winter Soldier Investigation by personally grilling Vietnam vets about alleged war crimes they committed.
The tape, obtained by Vietnam war historian B.G. Burkett, apparently contradicts Kerry's claim that he was a mere observer at the Winter Soldier hearings - an event bankrolled by Jane Fonda that Kerry later cited in testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations committee.
"I was looking at the tape tonight," Burkett told WABC Radio's Steve Malzberg on Tuesday. "It shows that prior to putting these people on the air, Kerry is interviewing them."
According to Burkett - whose book "Stolen Valor" debunks much of the disparaging mythology perpetuated by the anti-war movement about Vietnam veterans - the tape shows Kerry rehearsing the Winter Soldier witnesses.
"They're sorting them out in terms of what each one of them is going to testify to and how they're going to testify," he told Malzberg.
Kerry wasn't the moderator at Winter Soldier - that task fell to Kerry's partner Al Hubbard, who was later exposed as an impostor who never served in Vietnam. But Burkett said the tape clearly shows Kerry "asking questions and presenting these individuals to the press."
Burkett said he obtained the video from a television producer who used it as part of an anti-war program to be shown to college students.
In a separate interview, New York Sun reporter Thomas Lipscomb shared new details about an assassination plot against pro-war U.S. congressmen hatched by Kerry's organization, Vietnam Veterans Against the War, a few months after the Winter Soldier hearings.
Seven U.S. senators were marked for death in the plot, which the VVAW "spent a day and a half discussing seriously" before turning it down, Lipscomb told Malzberg.
"It was a remarkable moment when this peace organization turned into a terror organization," he said.
The meeting was held in a Mennonite Church in Kansas City, a location the VVAW settled on after moving the venue twice in a bid to elude possible FBI surveillance.
Witnesses differ on whether the likely Democratic presidential nominee attended the meeting, with Kerry himself claiming he resigned from the VVAW just prior to the Kansas City event.
Get Steve Malzberg's exclusive NewsMax.com column e-mailed directly to you at www.newsmax.com/malzberg
Wednesday, March 17, 2004 1:31 a.m. EST
Video Shows Kerry Conducting 'War Crimes' Interviews
A 1971 videotape shows Sen. John Kerry taking an active roll at the infamous Winter Soldier Investigation by personally grilling Vietnam vets about alleged war crimes they committed.
The tape, obtained by Vietnam war historian B.G. Burkett, apparently contradicts Kerry's claim that he was a mere observer at the Winter Soldier hearings - an event bankrolled by Jane Fonda that Kerry later cited in testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations committee.
"I was looking at the tape tonight," Burkett told WABC Radio's Steve Malzberg on Tuesday. "It shows that prior to putting these people on the air, Kerry is interviewing them."
According to Burkett - whose book "Stolen Valor" debunks much of the disparaging mythology perpetuated by the anti-war movement about Vietnam veterans - the tape shows Kerry rehearsing the Winter Soldier witnesses.
"They're sorting them out in terms of what each one of them is going to testify to and how they're going to testify," he told Malzberg.
Kerry wasn't the moderator at Winter Soldier - that task fell to Kerry's partner Al Hubbard, who was later exposed as an impostor who never served in Vietnam. But Burkett said the tape clearly shows Kerry "asking questions and presenting these individuals to the press."
Burkett said he obtained the video from a television producer who used it as part of an anti-war program to be shown to college students.
In a separate interview, New York Sun reporter Thomas Lipscomb shared new details about an assassination plot against pro-war U.S. congressmen hatched by Kerry's organization, Vietnam Veterans Against the War, a few months after the Winter Soldier hearings.
Seven U.S. senators were marked for death in the plot, which the VVAW "spent a day and a half discussing seriously" before turning it down, Lipscomb told Malzberg.
"It was a remarkable moment when this peace organization turned into a terror organization," he said.
The meeting was held in a Mennonite Church in Kansas City, a location the VVAW settled on after moving the venue twice in a bid to elude possible FBI surveillance.
Witnesses differ on whether the likely Democratic presidential nominee attended the meeting, with Kerry himself claiming he resigned from the VVAW just prior to the Kansas City event.
Get Steve Malzberg's exclusive NewsMax.com column e-mailed directly to you at www.newsmax.com/malzberg
Kerry's Anti-War Activities Probed
NewsMax.com brings forward more about the activities of Vietnam Veterans Against The War:
Pro-Kerry Historian: Kerry Lies About Anti-war Activities
Marc Morano, CNSNews.com
Thursday, March 18, 2004
A Vietnam War historian and supporter of Democrat presidential candidate John Kerry has told CNSNews.com that Kerry is lying about key events related to his anti-war activities in 1971.
Kerry said he hasn't spoken to former anti-war associate Al Hubbard since the two men appeared side by side on national television in April 1971, but according to author Gerald Nicosia, that assertion is wrong. So is Kerry's insistence that he did not attend a November 1971 meeting of Vietnam Veterans Against the War, at which group members discussed the possibility of assassinating U.S. senators who were still supporting the war in Vietnam, Nicosia said.
Nicosia backed up his comments regarding Kerry's presence at the November 1971 meeting by providing CNSNews.com with the FBI's redacted files about that meeting.
Questions about events that happened 33 years ago continue to nag the Kerry candidacy as the Massachusetts Democrat's November match-up against President Bush comes into sharper focus.
Kerry faces increasing skepticism about answers he gave to certain questions as well as recent statements he made, including his claim that some foreign leaders had told him they were hopeful Bush would be defeated this year.
Among the questions surrounding Kerry's involvement as a 27-year-old anti-war protester are those about his relationship with Hubbard, the former executive director of Vietnam Veterans Against the War. Kerry and Hubbard appeared on NBC's "Meet the Press" on April 18, 1971 to argue for an end to the war.
But shortly thereafter, Hubbard, who had been introduced on the NBC program as a decorated Air Force captain, was exposed for having exaggerated his military credentials. A separate news investigation revealed that there were no military records showing that Hubbard had either served in Vietnam or was injured there.
Last week, during a Capitol Hill news conference, CNSNews.com asked Kerry whether he was still in touch with Hubbard or whether he was willing to repudiate him because of Hubbard's fabricated war record.
"I haven't talked to Al Hubbard since that week" of the "Meet the Press" appearance, Kerry replied. He also said he did not believe that VVAW's credibility was hurt as a result of Hubbard falsifying his war record.
Bull
But Gerald Nicosia, author of the book "Home to War: A History of the Vietnam Veterans' Movement" and a Kerry supporter, disagreed with Kerry's contention that he and Hubbard saw no more of each other after the week of April 18, 1971.
"That is bull****. No, no, [Kerry] saw [Hubbard] at numerous meetings after that, including the one I talk about in my book, the July meeting in St. Louis," Nicosia told CNSNews.com.
[Kerry] saw [Hubbard] in July, and according to FBI [files on Vietnam Veterans Against the War] and the minutes of those meetings, [Kerry] probably saw him in November [1971] too," Nicosia said.
200 Witnesses
Kerry and Hubbard had a heated argument at the St. Louis meeting in July that was "witnessed by 200 veterans," according to Nicosia.
Despite the presidential candidate's claim last week that Hubbard had not hurt the anti-war group's credibility in 1971, Kerry actually believed otherwise, according to Nicosia.
"There was a big fight with Al Hubbard in which Kerry confronted him and they were screaming at each other across the hall," Nicosia explained. Hubbard, who had ties to the radical Black Panthers, and Kerry "couldn't have been more opposite personalities," Nicosia said.
The simmering tension between the two men finally reached a boil in St. Louis, Nicosia said, with Kerry shouting, "Who are you, Al Hubbard? Are you even really a veteran?
"So it was a big screaming match," he added.
'Awkward Position'
Nicosia told CNSNews.com he was uncomfortable disputing Kerry's statements.
"I am in kind of an awkward position here. I am a Kerry supporter, and I certainly don't want to do anything that hurts him. On the other hand, my number one allegiance is to truth. So I am going to go with where the facts are, and John is going to have to deal with that," Nicosia said.
"I am having some problems with the things he is saying right now, which are not matching up with accuracy," he added.
Talk of Assassinating Senators
Nicosia also disputed Kerry's denial that he was in attendance when VVAW members met in Kansas City in November 1971 to discuss the possibility of assassinating U.S. senators still committed to the Vietnam War.
Kerry was at the meeting, Nicosia insisted, pointing to FBI files and the minutes from the VVAW meeting, which he has obtained. "The minutes of the meeting, November 12th through the 15th, it's got John Kerry there, it's got John Kerry resigning there on the third day," Nicosia said.
Nicosia provided CNSNews.com with a copy of the FBI's redacted files of that November 1971 VVAW meeting. The files refer to the fact that Kerry had "resigned for 'personal reasons.'"
"You are talking to a Kerry supporter, but I will tell you, after everything that I have heard and seen, I would conclude that he was there," he added.
'Negative Thing'
Nicosia said he was not sure why Kerry is answering questions on the issue in the manner he is.
"Why didn't Clinton say he [had sex with] Monica Lewinsky? It took him until he had to be confronted with the hard evidence before he said he did," Nicosia said.
"I think [Kerry] may be worried or the people around him may be worried that his association with VVAW is a very negative thing and they want John to back away from it," he said.
Nicosia concluded with advice for Kerry.
"The chickens are coming home to roost, and unfortunately he is starting to backtrack, and I personally don't think backtracking is going to work because people are going to go at him and find the discrepancies," Nicosia said.
As recently as two days ago, Kerry's presidential campaign spokesman David Wade told the New York Sun, "Kerry was not at the Kansas City meeting." Wade added that Kerry had resigned from the VVAW "sometime in the summer of 1971."
Copyright CNSNews.com
Pro-Kerry Historian: Kerry Lies About Anti-war Activities
Marc Morano, CNSNews.com
Thursday, March 18, 2004
A Vietnam War historian and supporter of Democrat presidential candidate John Kerry has told CNSNews.com that Kerry is lying about key events related to his anti-war activities in 1971.
Kerry said he hasn't spoken to former anti-war associate Al Hubbard since the two men appeared side by side on national television in April 1971, but according to author Gerald Nicosia, that assertion is wrong. So is Kerry's insistence that he did not attend a November 1971 meeting of Vietnam Veterans Against the War, at which group members discussed the possibility of assassinating U.S. senators who were still supporting the war in Vietnam, Nicosia said.
Nicosia backed up his comments regarding Kerry's presence at the November 1971 meeting by providing CNSNews.com with the FBI's redacted files about that meeting.
Questions about events that happened 33 years ago continue to nag the Kerry candidacy as the Massachusetts Democrat's November match-up against President Bush comes into sharper focus.
Kerry faces increasing skepticism about answers he gave to certain questions as well as recent statements he made, including his claim that some foreign leaders had told him they were hopeful Bush would be defeated this year.
Among the questions surrounding Kerry's involvement as a 27-year-old anti-war protester are those about his relationship with Hubbard, the former executive director of Vietnam Veterans Against the War. Kerry and Hubbard appeared on NBC's "Meet the Press" on April 18, 1971 to argue for an end to the war.
But shortly thereafter, Hubbard, who had been introduced on the NBC program as a decorated Air Force captain, was exposed for having exaggerated his military credentials. A separate news investigation revealed that there were no military records showing that Hubbard had either served in Vietnam or was injured there.
Last week, during a Capitol Hill news conference, CNSNews.com asked Kerry whether he was still in touch with Hubbard or whether he was willing to repudiate him because of Hubbard's fabricated war record.
"I haven't talked to Al Hubbard since that week" of the "Meet the Press" appearance, Kerry replied. He also said he did not believe that VVAW's credibility was hurt as a result of Hubbard falsifying his war record.
Bull
But Gerald Nicosia, author of the book "Home to War: A History of the Vietnam Veterans' Movement" and a Kerry supporter, disagreed with Kerry's contention that he and Hubbard saw no more of each other after the week of April 18, 1971.
"That is bull****. No, no, [Kerry] saw [Hubbard] at numerous meetings after that, including the one I talk about in my book, the July meeting in St. Louis," Nicosia told CNSNews.com.
[Kerry] saw [Hubbard] in July, and according to FBI [files on Vietnam Veterans Against the War] and the minutes of those meetings, [Kerry] probably saw him in November [1971] too," Nicosia said.
200 Witnesses
Kerry and Hubbard had a heated argument at the St. Louis meeting in July that was "witnessed by 200 veterans," according to Nicosia.
Despite the presidential candidate's claim last week that Hubbard had not hurt the anti-war group's credibility in 1971, Kerry actually believed otherwise, according to Nicosia.
"There was a big fight with Al Hubbard in which Kerry confronted him and they were screaming at each other across the hall," Nicosia explained. Hubbard, who had ties to the radical Black Panthers, and Kerry "couldn't have been more opposite personalities," Nicosia said.
The simmering tension between the two men finally reached a boil in St. Louis, Nicosia said, with Kerry shouting, "Who are you, Al Hubbard? Are you even really a veteran?
"So it was a big screaming match," he added.
'Awkward Position'
Nicosia told CNSNews.com he was uncomfortable disputing Kerry's statements.
"I am in kind of an awkward position here. I am a Kerry supporter, and I certainly don't want to do anything that hurts him. On the other hand, my number one allegiance is to truth. So I am going to go with where the facts are, and John is going to have to deal with that," Nicosia said.
"I am having some problems with the things he is saying right now, which are not matching up with accuracy," he added.
Talk of Assassinating Senators
Nicosia also disputed Kerry's denial that he was in attendance when VVAW members met in Kansas City in November 1971 to discuss the possibility of assassinating U.S. senators still committed to the Vietnam War.
Kerry was at the meeting, Nicosia insisted, pointing to FBI files and the minutes from the VVAW meeting, which he has obtained. "The minutes of the meeting, November 12th through the 15th, it's got John Kerry there, it's got John Kerry resigning there on the third day," Nicosia said.
Nicosia provided CNSNews.com with a copy of the FBI's redacted files of that November 1971 VVAW meeting. The files refer to the fact that Kerry had "resigned for 'personal reasons.'"
"You are talking to a Kerry supporter, but I will tell you, after everything that I have heard and seen, I would conclude that he was there," he added.
'Negative Thing'
Nicosia said he was not sure why Kerry is answering questions on the issue in the manner he is.
"Why didn't Clinton say he [had sex with] Monica Lewinsky? It took him until he had to be confronted with the hard evidence before he said he did," Nicosia said.
"I think [Kerry] may be worried or the people around him may be worried that his association with VVAW is a very negative thing and they want John to back away from it," he said.
Nicosia concluded with advice for Kerry.
"The chickens are coming home to roost, and unfortunately he is starting to backtrack, and I personally don't think backtracking is going to work because people are going to go at him and find the discrepancies," Nicosia said.
As recently as two days ago, Kerry's presidential campaign spokesman David Wade told the New York Sun, "Kerry was not at the Kansas City meeting." Wade added that Kerry had resigned from the VVAW "sometime in the summer of 1971."
Copyright CNSNews.com
15 March 2004
The Winter Soldier Candidate
The Winter Soldier Candidate
By P. Scott Cummins © 2004 The Urbane R
“He’s an equivocator. He’s a liberal. He’s a politician. He was liberal, he was rich, he was from Massachusetts, he talked like a Kennedy, he had people cleaning his house that could have been our parents… (T)hey were viewing John Kerry as some kind of elitist.”
What’s this, another Republican attack? Actually, it is reflections on John Kerry from men who helped him run Vietnam Veterans Against The War (VVAW), as interviewed by Richard Stacewicz in his book Winter Soldiers: An Oral History of the Vietnam Veterans Against The War. Ironically, this discussion by VVAW insiders came in discussion of their meeting in the autumn of 1971 in Kansas City, where John Kerry resigned from the steering committee of the organization. Why would he do that? Perhaps this revelation from VVAW leader Terry DuBose had something to do with it:
“That was also where there was actually some discussion of assassinating some senators during the Christmas holidays… They had a list of six senators… Helms, John Tower, and I can’t remember the others, who they wanted to assassinate when they adjourned for Christmas. They were the ones voting to fund the war. They approached me about assassinating John Tower because he was from Texas. The logic made a certain amount of sense because there’s (sic) thousands of people dying in southeast Asia. We can shoot these six people and probably stop it.” Even though he remained with VVAW, DuBose went on to say that after this “I couldn’t get up the enthusiasm any more.”
The question must be asked: was John Kerry present during this discussion? If not, did he know about it? The author doesn’t ask, but goes into great detail about Kerry’s upset at so many of his VVAW colleagues who inflated, or outright fabricated, their Vietnam credentials. So Kerry was asking questions, and apparently knew the true motivations behind the movement he helped run – and for which he was national spokesperson. As the VVAW’s most prominent war hero, and the contact for much of the fundraising which maintained the organization – it might be presumed that Kerry had more influence than was actually the case. He apparently had great misgivings about the organization being “used” for propaganda purposes by the Soviets and North Vietnamese. But VVAW insiders wore their communist-affiliated medals and ribbons with pride – and even went to Paris to convivially meet with North Vietnamese in a propaganda coup of epic proportions. Did the VVAW ask to meet with Hanoi Hilton POWs? Yeah, right.
So what were VVAW activities that Kerry and his cohorts conducted? Stacewicz’ book is replete with examples. One, from 1969, was something they called “Guerilla Theater” at a California shopping mall near San Bernardino. “All of us vets came in wearing fatigues and carrying toy guns and stuff. It was incredible. We started grabbing people out of the crowds and started pushing them, shoving them, and calling them names. We drug them all down and threw them in a big group and pretended to machine-gun them. We threw fake blood all over the place… We wanted to show Americans what it was like to be Vietnamese… We made definite gains… Our line was: Veterans have done a lot of stuff in Vietnam, and this is what we have to do to pay back for what we did.”
Was Kerry actually involved in the planning of such activities? The details on that are murky, and Kerry isn’t talking. But in comparison to years of steadfast service by his fellow Yalie in the Texas and Alabama National Guard, Kerry’s choices are, well, what they are. Political scientists can analyze away, but the propaganda outreach and meetings with Soviets and North Vietnamese (which Kerry opposed, it appears – and again, he should talk about this) clearly hardened communist resolve on the war – and prolonged it. In later years, even the VVAW insiders who conducted the strategies which brought shame on soldiers (such as the now famous video clip of Kerry’s speech about everyday atrocities, which runs right along the edge between rhetorical overstatement and outright fabrication), complained about the lack of celebration for Vietnam veterans – but refuse to own up to their pivotal role in bringing that shame upon their comrades.
What of atrocities? VVAW made the specter of Americans-as-criminals the centerpiece of their organization. While atrocities did occur - and were reported, investigated and prosecuted whenever uncovered – where they the everyday experience? If Kerry’s viewpoint is credible, then why no investigation of his own statements and experiences? There seems to be a double-standard when viewing the war era experiences of the two candidates.
What is the reality of this situation? In their book Stolen Valor, B.G. Burkett and Glenna Whitley uncover many of the inconsistencies and outright lies about America in Vietnam – particularly the fabrications concocted by VVAW. Kerry’s now-famous impassioned speech to the Senate was written for him and coached by a Kennedy family media handler. Even then, Kerry’s political aspirations were being managed. If one candidate must produce war-era records in corroboration, then Candidate Kerry must produce records which demonstrate he rebuked many of the tactics and activities of his own organization. Because if he did not, he is not fit to be president.
By P. Scott Cummins © 2004 The Urbane R
“He’s an equivocator. He’s a liberal. He’s a politician. He was liberal, he was rich, he was from Massachusetts, he talked like a Kennedy, he had people cleaning his house that could have been our parents… (T)hey were viewing John Kerry as some kind of elitist.”
What’s this, another Republican attack? Actually, it is reflections on John Kerry from men who helped him run Vietnam Veterans Against The War (VVAW), as interviewed by Richard Stacewicz in his book Winter Soldiers: An Oral History of the Vietnam Veterans Against The War. Ironically, this discussion by VVAW insiders came in discussion of their meeting in the autumn of 1971 in Kansas City, where John Kerry resigned from the steering committee of the organization. Why would he do that? Perhaps this revelation from VVAW leader Terry DuBose had something to do with it:
“That was also where there was actually some discussion of assassinating some senators during the Christmas holidays… They had a list of six senators… Helms, John Tower, and I can’t remember the others, who they wanted to assassinate when they adjourned for Christmas. They were the ones voting to fund the war. They approached me about assassinating John Tower because he was from Texas. The logic made a certain amount of sense because there’s (sic) thousands of people dying in southeast Asia. We can shoot these six people and probably stop it.” Even though he remained with VVAW, DuBose went on to say that after this “I couldn’t get up the enthusiasm any more.”
The question must be asked: was John Kerry present during this discussion? If not, did he know about it? The author doesn’t ask, but goes into great detail about Kerry’s upset at so many of his VVAW colleagues who inflated, or outright fabricated, their Vietnam credentials. So Kerry was asking questions, and apparently knew the true motivations behind the movement he helped run – and for which he was national spokesperson. As the VVAW’s most prominent war hero, and the contact for much of the fundraising which maintained the organization – it might be presumed that Kerry had more influence than was actually the case. He apparently had great misgivings about the organization being “used” for propaganda purposes by the Soviets and North Vietnamese. But VVAW insiders wore their communist-affiliated medals and ribbons with pride – and even went to Paris to convivially meet with North Vietnamese in a propaganda coup of epic proportions. Did the VVAW ask to meet with Hanoi Hilton POWs? Yeah, right.
So what were VVAW activities that Kerry and his cohorts conducted? Stacewicz’ book is replete with examples. One, from 1969, was something they called “Guerilla Theater” at a California shopping mall near San Bernardino. “All of us vets came in wearing fatigues and carrying toy guns and stuff. It was incredible. We started grabbing people out of the crowds and started pushing them, shoving them, and calling them names. We drug them all down and threw them in a big group and pretended to machine-gun them. We threw fake blood all over the place… We wanted to show Americans what it was like to be Vietnamese… We made definite gains… Our line was: Veterans have done a lot of stuff in Vietnam, and this is what we have to do to pay back for what we did.”
Was Kerry actually involved in the planning of such activities? The details on that are murky, and Kerry isn’t talking. But in comparison to years of steadfast service by his fellow Yalie in the Texas and Alabama National Guard, Kerry’s choices are, well, what they are. Political scientists can analyze away, but the propaganda outreach and meetings with Soviets and North Vietnamese (which Kerry opposed, it appears – and again, he should talk about this) clearly hardened communist resolve on the war – and prolonged it. In later years, even the VVAW insiders who conducted the strategies which brought shame on soldiers (such as the now famous video clip of Kerry’s speech about everyday atrocities, which runs right along the edge between rhetorical overstatement and outright fabrication), complained about the lack of celebration for Vietnam veterans – but refuse to own up to their pivotal role in bringing that shame upon their comrades.
What of atrocities? VVAW made the specter of Americans-as-criminals the centerpiece of their organization. While atrocities did occur - and were reported, investigated and prosecuted whenever uncovered – where they the everyday experience? If Kerry’s viewpoint is credible, then why no investigation of his own statements and experiences? There seems to be a double-standard when viewing the war era experiences of the two candidates.
What is the reality of this situation? In their book Stolen Valor, B.G. Burkett and Glenna Whitley uncover many of the inconsistencies and outright lies about America in Vietnam – particularly the fabrications concocted by VVAW. Kerry’s now-famous impassioned speech to the Senate was written for him and coached by a Kennedy family media handler. Even then, Kerry’s political aspirations were being managed. If one candidate must produce war-era records in corroboration, then Candidate Kerry must produce records which demonstrate he rebuked many of the tactics and activities of his own organization. Because if he did not, he is not fit to be president.
05 March 2004
Before You Start About Vietnam...
I grew up around many guys who went to Vietnam, a few in combat units, but most in some form of diligent administrative capacity which occupies the vast part of our military. All of them served honorably, and quite a number harbor quiet, lingering resentment because they feel the enormous weight of prior restraint on their free speech. They would love to point with pride that our country did actually blunt the advance of outright tryranny on a continent - and that to their regret they were unable to bring the light of freedom and democracy to that country. What they do know is that Vietnam was "superpower" conflict-by-proxy, and that it was an anvil upon which China and the Soviet Union hammered & sickled out their vision of world domination. The confusion for them is the manner in which our foreign policy - the art of geopolitical "containment" and micromanagement - was allowed to dominate the business of doing what our military does best: kick ass, take names, and go home. The precision insight below, from the "Great One" Jay Reding as compiled from InstaPundit, sums up the stark dichotomy, as it stands in the post 9/11 era of "Terror War With Islamic Fundamentalism" - and the risky business of making comparative analogies with the Vietnam experience:
Bush seems to be falling victim to his own success. We have been so successful in the war on terror that the country doesn't see it as a war anymore.
Consider the following: If you were told on 9/21/2001 that by this date:
The Taliban have fallen
Iraq has fallen and has become a bastion of free press in the islamic world.
Libya had given up its WMD's
North Korea is in multi-lateral talks about WMD's
A majority of the leadership of Al Queda are dead or in custody
Pro-democracy rumblings are going on in Iran
Arafat is isolated
Many convictions of domestic sleepers or Al Queda members (Portland, NY etc...) and finally
NO SUCCESSFUL TERROR ATTACKS ON US SOIL
And all of this has cost less than 1000 dead American soldiers.
You'd be thinking "not bad."
Bush said in his Sept. 20th speech that even if the country forgets he will not. He was right.
Indeed, in no period in history has so much been achieved with such little bloodshed... although one would never think so based on the horribly biased reporting of most of the worldwide media.
The next deals with the old "Iraq = Vietnam" canard:
The anti-war types keep comparing Iraq to Vietnam. This has made me think...
If less than a year after US troops first landed in Vietnam, they had occupied all of North Vietnam, had Ho Chi Minh and General Giap dead or in custody, had an interim government in place, and were preparing for free elections (which of course in actuality Vietnam still doesn't have forty years later), all for under five hundred combat casulaties, that wouldn't have been such a bad outcome.
Of course people will say the situations aren't comparable. That's right -- they aren't comparable, so people should stop trying to make bogus analogies between the two situations.
Bush seems to be falling victim to his own success. We have been so successful in the war on terror that the country doesn't see it as a war anymore.
Consider the following: If you were told on 9/21/2001 that by this date:
The Taliban have fallen
Iraq has fallen and has become a bastion of free press in the islamic world.
Libya had given up its WMD's
North Korea is in multi-lateral talks about WMD's
A majority of the leadership of Al Queda are dead or in custody
Pro-democracy rumblings are going on in Iran
Arafat is isolated
Many convictions of domestic sleepers or Al Queda members (Portland, NY etc...) and finally
NO SUCCESSFUL TERROR ATTACKS ON US SOIL
And all of this has cost less than 1000 dead American soldiers.
You'd be thinking "not bad."
Bush said in his Sept. 20th speech that even if the country forgets he will not. He was right.
Indeed, in no period in history has so much been achieved with such little bloodshed... although one would never think so based on the horribly biased reporting of most of the worldwide media.
The next deals with the old "Iraq = Vietnam" canard:
The anti-war types keep comparing Iraq to Vietnam. This has made me think...
If less than a year after US troops first landed in Vietnam, they had occupied all of North Vietnam, had Ho Chi Minh and General Giap dead or in custody, had an interim government in place, and were preparing for free elections (which of course in actuality Vietnam still doesn't have forty years later), all for under five hundred combat casulaties, that wouldn't have been such a bad outcome.
Of course people will say the situations aren't comparable. That's right -- they aren't comparable, so people should stop trying to make bogus analogies between the two situations.
03 March 2004
From Magnolia to Mismaloya – An Eye on Puerto Vallarta
The Urbane R © 2004 P. Scott Cummins
To the Honorable Gustavo Gonzalez Villasenor, Mayor of Puerto Vallarta, Jalisco, Mexico. Your Excellency, your city of Puerto Vallarta is one of the most compellingly beautiful tourist destinations in the world. No wonder so many friends and neighbors from Seattle return every year. I too have just been to Puerto Vallarta (“PV” as so many there refer to it). This was my first trip to Mexico. Our family traveled with another Seattle family – and while there greeted other friends from the neighborhood where we live in Seattle. The joke here is that “PV” is Seattle’s sunny southern suburb. We also met many Americans from the Midwest and Northeast during our stay - but there seems to be a special rapport between the people of your state (Jalisco) and us from up the coast. Maybe it is the sixty-plus year legacy of connection between the workers from Jalisco - who came to Washington to pick the fruit, dig the ditches and struggle to improve their lives while contributing mightily to the relative economic advantage we enjoy in El Norte. People from Seattle are cognizant of that legacy of sacrifice – as well as the richness of culture and inter-connectedness which has manifested between us. PV is almost unique, it seems, because it helped pioneer large scale tourism from around the world - after Tennessee Williams’ film “The Night of the Iguana” was made south of town at Mismaloya. Puerto Vallarta was “discovered” by Euro-American “jetsetter” tourists because stars like Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, and legendary director John Huston had homes there. But it is a joke to think that PV was discovered then, because of the more than four hundred year history of Spanish settlement there. And, next to the resort where we stayed near the Iguana set, the Pueblo Mismaloya - a tiny, poverty-stricken village where people of Native American Mestizo ancestry have lived for millennia. That legacy adds to the cultural richness which makes Puerto Vallarta so compelling. But sometimes it seems only in other kinds of riches that others are interested, does it not? This leads directly to the point, Mr. Mayor: we visitors do not wish to destroy what we have all come to enjoy. Yet along the coast, a tide line of soapy effluent clearly signals that the sewage outfall from the many hotels and condominiums needs treatment, to head-off serious lasting damage to the very ocean we admire for its beauty and enjoy for its bounty. The United Nations, World Tourism Organization, and many Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) focusing on the concept of Sustainable Development could “zero in” on Puerto Vallarta, and Mismaloya in particular. At Mismaloya beach is a resort boasting all the amenities for awesome vacation memories -and compelling future return visits. Yet outside the resort’s high walls are throngs of the very poor marketing their wares to the (comparatively) very rich. Sustainable Development practices could provide these people a host of low-risk, high-reward venture benefits, among them: micro-lending to boost workers into service business and mercantile opportunities; sustainable tourism certification designations to boost service demand while increasing confidence among the visitor-customers; and implementation of basic public and sanitation requirements, food handler permits, etc. To walk just five minutes from that resort at Mismaloya, into the nearby Native American pueblo, can take you back from the twenty first century - virtually into the nineteenth. With local government encouragement – your championing the message of “best practices” in sustainable development of the tourism economy can inexorably “nudge” the corporate interests owning the nearby resort toward partnership with you: in building the water and sewer systems, rebuilding the crumbling roads, and developing retail opportunities for the impoverished citizens of the Pueblo Mismaloya. Because, you see, for those of us at this end of the visitor economy, who very much want to see our tourist dollars “spread around” more evenly, this will only enhance our visitor experience. More than that, the confidence which such leadership inspires will bring a whole new dimension of prosperity to your community and citizens. Transparency in government policymaking and adjudication, a well defined rule of law rooting-out corruption and graft, carefully crafted and administered accounting practices: we here in America have our share of challenges. We have much work to do in America, and we admire your resolve in Mexico as well. One of the tricky aspects of commerce brought on by globalization is that all of us are compelled to make market decisions based on “best practices” - not just “best prices” – the world is now just too small to pretend otherwise.
To the Honorable Gustavo Gonzalez Villasenor, Mayor of Puerto Vallarta, Jalisco, Mexico. Your Excellency, your city of Puerto Vallarta is one of the most compellingly beautiful tourist destinations in the world. No wonder so many friends and neighbors from Seattle return every year. I too have just been to Puerto Vallarta (“PV” as so many there refer to it). This was my first trip to Mexico. Our family traveled with another Seattle family – and while there greeted other friends from the neighborhood where we live in Seattle. The joke here is that “PV” is Seattle’s sunny southern suburb. We also met many Americans from the Midwest and Northeast during our stay - but there seems to be a special rapport between the people of your state (Jalisco) and us from up the coast. Maybe it is the sixty-plus year legacy of connection between the workers from Jalisco - who came to Washington to pick the fruit, dig the ditches and struggle to improve their lives while contributing mightily to the relative economic advantage we enjoy in El Norte. People from Seattle are cognizant of that legacy of sacrifice – as well as the richness of culture and inter-connectedness which has manifested between us. PV is almost unique, it seems, because it helped pioneer large scale tourism from around the world - after Tennessee Williams’ film “The Night of the Iguana” was made south of town at Mismaloya. Puerto Vallarta was “discovered” by Euro-American “jetsetter” tourists because stars like Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, and legendary director John Huston had homes there. But it is a joke to think that PV was discovered then, because of the more than four hundred year history of Spanish settlement there. And, next to the resort where we stayed near the Iguana set, the Pueblo Mismaloya - a tiny, poverty-stricken village where people of Native American Mestizo ancestry have lived for millennia. That legacy adds to the cultural richness which makes Puerto Vallarta so compelling. But sometimes it seems only in other kinds of riches that others are interested, does it not? This leads directly to the point, Mr. Mayor: we visitors do not wish to destroy what we have all come to enjoy. Yet along the coast, a tide line of soapy effluent clearly signals that the sewage outfall from the many hotels and condominiums needs treatment, to head-off serious lasting damage to the very ocean we admire for its beauty and enjoy for its bounty. The United Nations, World Tourism Organization, and many Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) focusing on the concept of Sustainable Development could “zero in” on Puerto Vallarta, and Mismaloya in particular. At Mismaloya beach is a resort boasting all the amenities for awesome vacation memories -and compelling future return visits. Yet outside the resort’s high walls are throngs of the very poor marketing their wares to the (comparatively) very rich. Sustainable Development practices could provide these people a host of low-risk, high-reward venture benefits, among them: micro-lending to boost workers into service business and mercantile opportunities; sustainable tourism certification designations to boost service demand while increasing confidence among the visitor-customers; and implementation of basic public and sanitation requirements, food handler permits, etc. To walk just five minutes from that resort at Mismaloya, into the nearby Native American pueblo, can take you back from the twenty first century - virtually into the nineteenth. With local government encouragement – your championing the message of “best practices” in sustainable development of the tourism economy can inexorably “nudge” the corporate interests owning the nearby resort toward partnership with you: in building the water and sewer systems, rebuilding the crumbling roads, and developing retail opportunities for the impoverished citizens of the Pueblo Mismaloya. Because, you see, for those of us at this end of the visitor economy, who very much want to see our tourist dollars “spread around” more evenly, this will only enhance our visitor experience. More than that, the confidence which such leadership inspires will bring a whole new dimension of prosperity to your community and citizens. Transparency in government policymaking and adjudication, a well defined rule of law rooting-out corruption and graft, carefully crafted and administered accounting practices: we here in America have our share of challenges. We have much work to do in America, and we admire your resolve in Mexico as well. One of the tricky aspects of commerce brought on by globalization is that all of us are compelled to make market decisions based on “best practices” - not just “best prices” – the world is now just too small to pretend otherwise.
02 March 2004
Jerusalem Post Weighs In With Must-Read Review
March 2, 2004
The misreading of Mel Gibson
Benyamin Cohen, editor of the online publication Jewsweek, went to see Mel Gibson's The Passion Of The Christ and came out homicidal: "My first comprehensible thought was this: I really want to kill a Jew."
Maureen Dowd of The New York Times agreed: "In Braveheart and The Patriot, his other emotionally manipulative historical epics, you came out wanting to swing an ax into the skull of the nearest Englishman. Here, you want to kick in some Jewish and Roman teeth. And since the Romans have melted into history...."
Really? You want to kick in some Jew teeth? I mean, really want to? If you say so. It may be that elderly schoolgirl columnists at The New York Times are unusually easy to rouse to violence.
But I reckon Dowd and Cohen are faking it. They don't mean that, thanks to Mel, Times marquee columnists and liberal Jewish New Yorkers will be rampaging around looking for Jews to kill, they mean all those rubes and hicks in Dogpatch who don't know any better will be doing so.
I'll be reviewing The Passion for The Spectator when it opens in London later this month, so let me put Gibson's direction and James Caviezel's acting to one side, and just say this: Chances of any Jew getting his teeth kicked in by one of Mel's customers? Zero per cent. Okay, let me cover myself a little: Point-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-whatever per cent.
When this film first loomed on the horizon, the received wisdom of the metropolitan sophisticates was that Mel Gibson had blown well over 30 million bucks of his own money on a vanity project of no interest to anyone but him and a few other Jesus freaks. A couple of weeks ago, when stories began to trickle out of amazing advance sales and Bible Belt multiplex owners booking it on to all 20 screens simultaneously, the received wisdom did a screeching U-turn:
How about that Mel Gibson, huh? He claims to be such a devout Christian yet he's pimping his Saviour's suffering to the masses and raking in gazillions of dollars.
As Andy Rooney, the ersatz controversialist on CBS's Sixty Minutes, enquired: "How many million dollars does it look as if you're going to make off the crucifixion of Christ?" Hey, if he's lucky, maybe as many millions as Michael Moore made off all those dead high-school kids with Bowling For Columbine.
Throughout the whiplash U-turn, only one feature of the "controversy" remained constant: that the movie is "anti-Semitic."
It's true that in Europe "passion plays" often provided a rationale for Jew-hatred. But that was at a time when the church was also a projection of state power. What's happening in America is quite the opposite: One reason why Hollywood assumed Mel had laid a $30 million Easter egg was because the elite coastal enclaves who set the cultural agenda haven't a clue about the rest of the country when it comes to religion.
They don't mind Jesus when he's hippy (Godspell) or horny (Terrence McNally's "gay Jesus" play Corpus Christi) but taking the guy seriously is just for fruitcakes.
SO, WHEN metropolitan columnists say Mel's movie makes you want to go Jew-bashing, they're really engaging in a bit of displaced Christian-bashing.
Ever since 9/11, there's been a lame trope beloved of the smart set: Yes, these Muslim fundamentalists may be pretty extreme, but let's not forget all our Christian fundamentalists – the "home-grown Talibans," as The New York Times's Frank Rich called them, in the course of demanding that John Ashcroft, the attorney-general, round them up.
Two years on, if this thesis is going to hold up, these Christians really need to get off their fundamentalist butts and start killing more people.
Critics berating Gibson for lingering on the physical flaying of Jesus would be more persuasive if they weren't all too desperately flogging their own dead horse of fundamentalist moral equivalence.
The more puzzling question is why so many American Jewish leaders started crying anti-Semitism months before anyone had even seen the picture. It requires a perverse inability to prioritize to anoint Mel Gibson as the prime source of resurgent anti-Semitism. Not to mention that it's self-defeating.
As Melanie Phillips, a British Jew, recently noted in The Observer: "Let us all agree on one thing at least. The more Jews warn that anti-Semitism has come roaring out of the closet, the more people don't like the Jews."
There's something to that. During the New Hampshire primary, I prompted the following complaint from Barbara Baruch of New York: "What motivated Mark Steyn to describe Joe Lieberman as the 'Yiddisher pixie'? As this has absolutely no relevance to Lieberman's political viability, it's obvious that Steyn's linguistic choice is nothing less than insidious anti-Semitism."
Oh, phooey. I called him a pixie because, in contrast to John Kerry, he was jolly and beaming, and yiddisher is an allusion to the old song "My Yiddisher Momma," since Joe was always going on about his own momma. "Yiddisher pixie" is a term of affection, and the best way to demonstrate the preposterousness of Baruch's assertion is a simple test:
Try to imagine Sheikh Akram Abd-al-Razzaq al-Ruqayhi, the A-list imam at the Grand Mosque in Sanaa, who does the Friday prayers live on Yemeni state TV, breaking off from his usual patter on Jews – "O God, count them one by one, kill them all and don't leave anyone" – to refer to one as a "Yiddisher pixie."
Or the members of Calgary's "Palestinian community" who marched through the streets carrying placards emblazoned "Death To The Jews."
Or the gangs who've been torching French synagogues, kosher butchers and schools in an ongoing mini-intifada.
Or Archbishop Desmond Tutu who says people should not be scared of America's Jewish lobby because other scary types like "Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Pinochet, Milosevic and Idi Amin were all powerful, but in the end they bit the dust."
Or the wife of European Central Banker Wim Duisenberg, who amuses herself by doing oven jokes in public.
Mel Gibson's movie won't kill anyone.
On the other hand, right now, at The Hague, the International Court of Justice is holding a show trial of Israel's security fence. At the very least, a European court sitting in judgment on the Jewish state is a staggering lapse of taste.
But it should also remind Jews of the current sources of "the world's oldest hatred" – not just the Islamic world, where talk of killing them all is part of the wallpaper, but modern-day secular Europe, where antipathy toward Ariel Sharon long ago crossed over into a broader contempt for the Jewish state and a benign indifference to those who use European Jewry as a substitute target.
If Jewish groups think Mel Gibson and evangelical Christians are the problem, more fool them.
The writer is senior contributing editor for Hollinger Inc.
The misreading of Mel Gibson
Benyamin Cohen, editor of the online publication Jewsweek, went to see Mel Gibson's The Passion Of The Christ and came out homicidal: "My first comprehensible thought was this: I really want to kill a Jew."
Maureen Dowd of The New York Times agreed: "In Braveheart and The Patriot, his other emotionally manipulative historical epics, you came out wanting to swing an ax into the skull of the nearest Englishman. Here, you want to kick in some Jewish and Roman teeth. And since the Romans have melted into history...."
Really? You want to kick in some Jew teeth? I mean, really want to? If you say so. It may be that elderly schoolgirl columnists at The New York Times are unusually easy to rouse to violence.
But I reckon Dowd and Cohen are faking it. They don't mean that, thanks to Mel, Times marquee columnists and liberal Jewish New Yorkers will be rampaging around looking for Jews to kill, they mean all those rubes and hicks in Dogpatch who don't know any better will be doing so.
I'll be reviewing The Passion for The Spectator when it opens in London later this month, so let me put Gibson's direction and James Caviezel's acting to one side, and just say this: Chances of any Jew getting his teeth kicked in by one of Mel's customers? Zero per cent. Okay, let me cover myself a little: Point-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-whatever per cent.
When this film first loomed on the horizon, the received wisdom of the metropolitan sophisticates was that Mel Gibson had blown well over 30 million bucks of his own money on a vanity project of no interest to anyone but him and a few other Jesus freaks. A couple of weeks ago, when stories began to trickle out of amazing advance sales and Bible Belt multiplex owners booking it on to all 20 screens simultaneously, the received wisdom did a screeching U-turn:
How about that Mel Gibson, huh? He claims to be such a devout Christian yet he's pimping his Saviour's suffering to the masses and raking in gazillions of dollars.
As Andy Rooney, the ersatz controversialist on CBS's Sixty Minutes, enquired: "How many million dollars does it look as if you're going to make off the crucifixion of Christ?" Hey, if he's lucky, maybe as many millions as Michael Moore made off all those dead high-school kids with Bowling For Columbine.
Throughout the whiplash U-turn, only one feature of the "controversy" remained constant: that the movie is "anti-Semitic."
It's true that in Europe "passion plays" often provided a rationale for Jew-hatred. But that was at a time when the church was also a projection of state power. What's happening in America is quite the opposite: One reason why Hollywood assumed Mel had laid a $30 million Easter egg was because the elite coastal enclaves who set the cultural agenda haven't a clue about the rest of the country when it comes to religion.
They don't mind Jesus when he's hippy (Godspell) or horny (Terrence McNally's "gay Jesus" play Corpus Christi) but taking the guy seriously is just for fruitcakes.
SO, WHEN metropolitan columnists say Mel's movie makes you want to go Jew-bashing, they're really engaging in a bit of displaced Christian-bashing.
Ever since 9/11, there's been a lame trope beloved of the smart set: Yes, these Muslim fundamentalists may be pretty extreme, but let's not forget all our Christian fundamentalists – the "home-grown Talibans," as The New York Times's Frank Rich called them, in the course of demanding that John Ashcroft, the attorney-general, round them up.
Two years on, if this thesis is going to hold up, these Christians really need to get off their fundamentalist butts and start killing more people.
Critics berating Gibson for lingering on the physical flaying of Jesus would be more persuasive if they weren't all too desperately flogging their own dead horse of fundamentalist moral equivalence.
The more puzzling question is why so many American Jewish leaders started crying anti-Semitism months before anyone had even seen the picture. It requires a perverse inability to prioritize to anoint Mel Gibson as the prime source of resurgent anti-Semitism. Not to mention that it's self-defeating.
As Melanie Phillips, a British Jew, recently noted in The Observer: "Let us all agree on one thing at least. The more Jews warn that anti-Semitism has come roaring out of the closet, the more people don't like the Jews."
There's something to that. During the New Hampshire primary, I prompted the following complaint from Barbara Baruch of New York: "What motivated Mark Steyn to describe Joe Lieberman as the 'Yiddisher pixie'? As this has absolutely no relevance to Lieberman's political viability, it's obvious that Steyn's linguistic choice is nothing less than insidious anti-Semitism."
Oh, phooey. I called him a pixie because, in contrast to John Kerry, he was jolly and beaming, and yiddisher is an allusion to the old song "My Yiddisher Momma," since Joe was always going on about his own momma. "Yiddisher pixie" is a term of affection, and the best way to demonstrate the preposterousness of Baruch's assertion is a simple test:
Try to imagine Sheikh Akram Abd-al-Razzaq al-Ruqayhi, the A-list imam at the Grand Mosque in Sanaa, who does the Friday prayers live on Yemeni state TV, breaking off from his usual patter on Jews – "O God, count them one by one, kill them all and don't leave anyone" – to refer to one as a "Yiddisher pixie."
Or the members of Calgary's "Palestinian community" who marched through the streets carrying placards emblazoned "Death To The Jews."
Or the gangs who've been torching French synagogues, kosher butchers and schools in an ongoing mini-intifada.
Or Archbishop Desmond Tutu who says people should not be scared of America's Jewish lobby because other scary types like "Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Pinochet, Milosevic and Idi Amin were all powerful, but in the end they bit the dust."
Or the wife of European Central Banker Wim Duisenberg, who amuses herself by doing oven jokes in public.
Mel Gibson's movie won't kill anyone.
On the other hand, right now, at The Hague, the International Court of Justice is holding a show trial of Israel's security fence. At the very least, a European court sitting in judgment on the Jewish state is a staggering lapse of taste.
But it should also remind Jews of the current sources of "the world's oldest hatred" – not just the Islamic world, where talk of killing them all is part of the wallpaper, but modern-day secular Europe, where antipathy toward Ariel Sharon long ago crossed over into a broader contempt for the Jewish state and a benign indifference to those who use European Jewry as a substitute target.
If Jewish groups think Mel Gibson and evangelical Christians are the problem, more fool them.
The writer is senior contributing editor for Hollinger Inc.
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