If he doesn't beat Bush, maybe he'll consider running against Sharon on the Labor ticket.
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Last update - 03:18 04/05/2004 Presidential hopeful Kerry woos Jews with Israel anecdotes By Nathan Guttman, Haaretz Correspondent
WASHINGTON - Democratic presidential candidate Senator John Kerry on Monday tried to convey to a major Jewish audience, at the annual convention of the Anti-Defamation League, his strong personal commitment to Israel and its security.
But instead of delivering a programmatic speech on the Middle East he decided to appeal to the emotions of the audience, and spoke at length about his first visit to the country, 20 years ago, when he traveled from north to south.
Along with the personal stories, he of course also emphasized that he would never pressure Israel, would not force it to negotiate with an unreliable partner, and would continue trying as president to advance the disengagement plan.
"Whatever the future of this particular plan, if elected president I will guarantee you that I will work continuously, never disengaging as this administration did . . . "
a Kerry [p]residency would bring only more skulls, more bones, move lacerated flesh and wasted breath and Earth, but with them a diminished attention to painful realities by people who prefer myth.
Most people didn't protest Iraq's children (and Mexico's, and 20 million in this coulntry) paying the price of their oil, as long as the surface was not obviously ugly; as a woman told me last week she "just can't forgive Bush for being so stupid AND ugly," forgetting, as everyone tends to do, that smart, handsome Kennedy came into office through blatant war-mongering based on lies (assisted by bribery, selling of judgeships, and some vote-fixing), was utterly ruthless in foreign policy, and repaid his big campaign donors by multiplying the nuclear weapons arsenal from 4000 to 34,000; as he drastically reduced federal taxes paid by congloms.
I.F. Stone and, more recently, Cockburn and St. Clair, demonstrate how international tensions were eased and, domestically, populist gains increased, during Nixon's presidency (also a time of great environmental potential, but "Big Greens," finding themselves with big contributions of green, became, as Cockburn/St. Clair have shown, the organizational equivalents of aircraft carriers, responsible only for keeping themselves afloat).
Brian Willson who is on a year's petroleum fast said at Livermore last August that "George W. Bush is the greatest gift the cosmic goddess has given us, -- if we will accept the gift, which is that he shows US who we are."
Facing ourselves is the pre-requisite for taking on what Kathy Kelly calls our most important task, "to diagnose the illness of victory and believe it curable."
We need to face, and face down, the resistance within Pacifica, to truth and to holding ourselves accountable. Look at Argentina: why are we with incomparably greater resources available to us, cannot hold our govt. to any demand, while Argentinians could stand in the rain until every corrupt office-holder resigned (how many govts. did they force out before they were satisfied?)
Every political party, no matter its "orientation," should be held to the sub-minimum requirement to field a candidate who is not a war criminal. It can still be bad enough to keep the myth-makers busy. The sly Carter was more oppressive and brutal in Central America than Reagan, and his military spending far beyond Reagan's; the vile Clinton, despite pretenses to the contrary, cut every dirty backroom deal he could smell, further disenfranchised, criminalised, and enslaved the poor, sending them on a welfare express train to precarious jobs, near-perpetual imprisonment, or onto the streets; slashed the Constitution; tightened central control of media, clear-cut endangered species habitat by night; kept Wiranto and other state terrorists in business by back-channel means; opened the border to narco-trafficking (he reduced DEA agents to 1/20th their former number), ground US unions into NAFTA dust as he laughed at their trust in him, and plunged Mexico into poverty too devastating to imagine (see Charles Bowden's Down By the River if you want the heartbreaking statistics).
We are only 4% of Earth's human population. Why further test the rest of the world's patient forebearance, or exploit their justifiable fears? What does it mean to be free to elect one of two war criminals? Surely we can demand more from, and for, ourselves.
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