Bush v. Kerry
The power elite’s dream ballot
By Michael Colby
Feb. 14— If you hear gleeful giggling from behind the curtain
shielding the political elites from the mere masses, you’re not
alone. There’s a party going on and we haven’t been invited.
It’s a presidential election party, where the puppeteers of our
democracy are celebrating an upcoming election that they can’t
lose. It’s a contest between two of their own.
George Bush versus John Kerry is a dream ballot for those whom C. Wright
Mills called the “power elite,” that tight little club of
economic, political and military leaders who truly rule the nation.
The power elite doesn’t care about political party affiliations.
That’s child’s play. In their view, fools line up to vote
while the real players decide who’s on the ballot. And for some
reason we still refer to the whole charade as democracy. The joke’s
on you.
Bush v. Kerry is simply nirvana for the bluebloods. As they say in the
business world: it’s a win-win situation. From their perspective,
whomever places his hand upon the Bible (yes, the Bible) on Jan. 20,
2005 doesn’t matter because with a Bush/Kerry contest they’re
already assured there will be no meaningful change in America for the
next four years. None. Zero. Zippo.
Before the delusional Democrats out there start peppering me with hostile
emails about the absolute necessity of getting “anybody but Bush”
in the White House, just stop yourselves long enough to consider these
facts: Kerry supported Bush’s war on Iraq; Kerry supported Bush’s
tax cuts; Kerry hasn’t proposed one major social or environmental
initiative in over 20 years in the US Senate; Kerry hasn’t put
forward any meaningful policy initiatives in his campaign for the presidency
regarding jobs or healthcare. Kerry’s campaign seems to be all
about proving that he qualifies as “anybody but Bush.” And
all that takes is a pulse.
Bush and Kerry are also, of course, both proud military men. Bush took
the easy way out of the Vietnam War by joining the National Guard --
whether he showed up or not is another matter. Kerry, as he’s so
fond of telling us, served his country by running gunboats up and down
the rivers of Vietnam. Brace yourselves, folks, because the Bush/Kerry
contest will be filled with assertions and accusations about who loves
the military more.
Kerry is really confusing on the issue of the military, too. Before
pro-military audiences, Kerry trots out his military medals (three Purple
Hearts!) and talks tough about his “duty and service” to the
nation. But then he’ll stand before the Dean Democrats and talk
about how he led the anti-war movement when he got home. Well, John,
what’s it going to be: duty and service or conscientious objections?
It’s this kind of double talk that has littered the political career
of John Kerry. He’s always hanging around talking out of both sides
of his mouth until it’s safe to actually pick a side -- and then
only if he’s forced to. Kerry doesn’t need Botox injections;
he needs a spinal transplant.
Then consider Kerry’s oft-quoted attacks on “special interests.”
Apparently, his special interests are holier than Bush’s special
interests. The truth, of course, is that they share many of the same
special interests, all to the detriment of we, the non-special people.
While it pains me to invoke the words of David Brooks, a conservative
columnist at The New York Times, he did sufficiently lampoon Kerry’s
rhetoric on special interests in a recently published column entitled
“Kerry’s Special Friends.” After detailing many of Kerry’s
special favors to the high and mighty, Brooks concludes as follows:
“You just ask David Paul, one of the big figures in the savings
and loan scandal, if Kerry didn’t make him feel special. You just
ask the high-tech executive Bob Majumder how special Kerry made him
feel, at least until Majumder was charged with 40 counts of conspiracy,
witness tampering, fraud, tax evasion and illegal campaign contributions.
You just ask the law firms, the brokerage houses, the oil companies,
the HMO’s and the drug companies, which have donated tens of thousands
of dollars to Kerry.
“Oh, he sometimes pretends that he doesn’t care about our
special interests. He puts on that callous populist facade. But deep
down he cares. Maybe he cares too much. When he’s out on the stump
saying otherwise, he’s just being a big old phony.”
Of the many similarities between the patricians Bush and Kerry, there’s
nothing more disturbing than their membership in the super-secret and
super-elite Skull & Bones club at Yale University. The fact that
both men are members of this club, and neither is willing to spill the
beans on any of its internal secrets and favors should speak volumes
about the apparent “choice” this nation is being offered on
the November ballot.
“America is about to choose between two presidential candidates,”
writes Sam Smith, editor of the Progressive Review, “who belonged
to an organization whose values were infantile, elitist, misogynist,
anti-democratic and secret and whose purposes include the mutual support
and protection of its members as they make their way into the upper
ranks of American society and throughout their adult lives. Far from
apologizing for this, the two candidates refuse to give open and honest
answers about their participation. Further, at least one of the candidates,
Kerry, has retained a close enough relationship to the organization
to have sought new members from among his young acquaintances.”
If Bush v. Kerry is truly the choice being offered to the nation in
November, we don’t even have to wait for the voting to begin in
order to declare the winner. This nation’s power elites are not
only poised for yet another victory, but they’re thrilled by the
prospects of four more years of calm, non-threatening waters from which
they float their political boats.
Source: CounterPunch
Misdirection in the Arctic
By Jeffrey St. Clair
Feb. 14— With the attention of the press and the big greens
rigidly fixated on the fate of the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge(ANWR),
the Bush administration has quietly launched a quick strike on an equally
pristine stretch of the arctic plain for massive oil and gas drilling.
The Bush Interior Department is set leasing off to big oil nearly 9
million acres of untrammeled tundra west of Prudhoe Bay. The area targeted
for drilling sits in the northwest corner of the 22.5 million acre National
Petroleum Reserve.
The National Petroleum Reserve, located on the Arctic plains just west
of Prudhoe Bay, was set aside by President Warren Harding in 1923 and
was only to be developed in the case of a national emergency. Control
over the reserve’s oil was originally left in the hands of the
US Navy, which proved a zealous guardian. The Navy resisted demands
by big oil to open the reserve to drilling through the Second World
War, the Korean and Vietnam wars and the energy crisis. Frustrated by
the Navy’s obstinacy, the oil lobby pressured the Ford administration
to transfer authority over the reserve from the Pentagon to the Interior
Department, which has long done the oil industry’s bidding. Through
the 1980s the Interior Department began cobbling together different
plans for opening the reserve, but none got very far, mainly because
the Reagan and Bush administration’s were obsessed for political
reasons with the doomed quest to tap into the Alaska National Wildlife
Refuge, the 14 million acre swatch of tundra, lakes and mountains east
of Prudhoe Bay. Although the petroleum reserve is larger than ANWR,
just as valuable ecologically and is still used for subsistence hunting
and gathering by the Inupiat, the scheme to turn the coastal plains
of the petroleum reserve into a full-scale oil field has gotten precious
little public attention. Why? One reason is that environmental groups
have focused all of their attention on saving ANWR, which has been under
threat for two decades. The other, perhaps more telling reason, is that
the heavy lifting in prying open the petroleum reserve to plunder by
the oil companies was done by Bill Clinton and Bruce Babbitt in 1996.
In a cozy session with oil executives held at a ranch in Jackson, Wyoming,
Clinton and Babbitt agreed to deliver on two long sought goals: rescinding
the ban on the export of Alaskan crude oil and opening the Alaskan petroleum
reserve to drilling. Neither move generated much coverage by the national
press. Babbitt went to work and within months announced his intention
to open the reserve to drilling, promising at the same time that he
would “visit every lake and pond” to make sure the oil companies
would not mar the tundra. On Oct. 8, 1998, Babbitt signed the record
of decision opening 4.6 million acres in the northeastern corner of
the reserve to oil leasing. In one of the more striking hypocrisies
of the Clinton age, the green establishment largely went along with
Babbitt’s plan to open the petroleum reserve, under the deluded
impression that to do so meant they would be able to keep the oil companies
out of ANWR.
Of course, by swallowing Babbitt’s plan to open the petroleum reserve
to oil drilling the greens basically undermined nearly every ecological
and cultural argument for keeping the drillers out of ANWR.
Like ANWR, the petroleum reserve is home to a caribou herd. But the
Western Arctic caribou herd that migrates across the reserve is almost
twice as large as the herd that travels across ANWR. Similarly, the
petroleum reserve is home to a slate of declining species, including
polar bears, Arctic wolves and foxes, and musk ox.
Unlike ANWR, the petroleum reserve contains one of the great rivers
of the Arctic, the Colville River, the largest on the North Slope, which
starts high in the Brooks Range and curves for 300 miles through the
heart of the reserve to a broad delta on the Arctic Ocean near the Inupiat
village of Nuiqsut. The Colville River canyon and the nearby lakes and
marshes is one of the world’s most important migratory bird staging
areas. Over 20 percent of the entire population of Pacific black brant
molt each year at Teshekpuk Lake alone. The bluffs along the Colville
River are recognized as the most prolific raptor breeding grounds in
the Arctic, providing critical habitat for the peregrine falcon and
rough-legged hawk.
Under the Bush plan, 9 million acres would be opened to drilling almost
immediately and another 3 million acres, near the Inupiat village of
Wainwright, would be opened later in the decade. The plan, tailored
to meet the needs of ConocoPhillips, will call for thousands of wells,
hundreds of miles of road, dozens of waste dumps and a network of pipelines
to transport the oil to Prudhoe Bay and the trans-Alaska pipeline.
“It’s never enough for the Bush administration,” says
Cindy Shogan, director of the Anchorage-based Alaska Wilderness League.
“They won’t be happy until every acre in America’s arctic
is a wasteland filled with oil, pipelines and roads.”
But oil and gas may not be the only objective. The BLM, which never
misses an opportunity to pursue maximum development of public lands,
estimates that the petroleum reserve may harbor approximately 40 percent
of all coal remaining in the US (400 billion to 4 trillion US tons).
Coming soon: strip mines in the Arctic.
Source: CounterPunch
