| Topic: |
Politics > Politics-USA |
| User: |
"Captain Compassion" |
| Date: |
31 Jan 2007 08:11:46 PM |
| Object: |
The Kennedy, Chavez & Chomsky Pipeline |
January 31, 2007
The Kennedy, Chavez & Chomsky Pipeline
By Marc Sheppard
http://www.americanthinker.com/2007/01/the_kennedy_chavez_chomsky_pip.html
Have you seen the latest Citgo-sponsored commercial for Citizens
Energy Corporation? At first glance you may have mistaken it for a
Saturday Night Live sketch and watched it prepared for a good laugh.
That is, until you'd realized it was all too serious. Until it struck
you that a member of one of North America's most powerful political
families may well be in bed with one of South America's most notorious
and dangerous men. But it gets even more disturbing. The language
used to rationalize this unholy alliance appears to be right from the
playbook of the devout anarchist many refer to as the Ayatollah of
anti-Americanism.
The bizarre 30 second pitch (video) opens with a man who complains he
needs 2 pairs of long underwear and a jacket to stay warm inside his
house. We then fade into the image of an elderly "84 and alone" woman
dragging an iron cot into her kitchen from her basement so she can, as
her voice-over tells us, "sleep by the oven." The next voice we hear
is that of Joseph Kennedy II, who assures us that "help is on the
way." The son of Robert Kennedy then explains that heating oil is
available at 40% off thanks to "our friends in Venezuela at Citgo."
In closing, tyrant Hugo Chavez's good buddy asks us to give him a
jingle at 1-877-JOE-4-OIL because "no one should be left out in the
cold."
It's Nothing Political Joey, Strictly Benevolence
Of course, this wasn't the first time that the former Massachusetts
congressman's name and company have been attached to a Chavez oil for
fool scheme. In 2005, an ad with the banner HOW Venezuela Is Keeping
the Home Fires Burning in Massachusetts ran in major U.S newspapers
and offered cheap heating oil to America's poor as a "simple act of
generosity." A November 20, 2005 story in the Boston Globe outlined
this earlier CEC creepy covenant with CITGO, the Houston-based
subsidiary of Chavez's state-owned petroleum company Petróleos de
Venezuela.
The Globe reported scuttlebutt that Chavez had helped broker the deal
partly as a jab at President Bush. Larry Birns, executive director of
the Council on Hemispheric Affairs, a group that tracks Latin American
politics and government agreed:
''It is a slap in the face" to the Bush administration. "Chávez is
involved in petro-diplomacy."
No doubt. For starters, the move curries favor among segments of the
U.S. population most likely duped by his class warfare gamesmanship.
This diaphanous tactic works quite well on weak-minded, self-hating
Americans - just ask Chavez-bots like actor Danny Glover and singer
Harry Belafonte. And, as a bonus, El Commandante gets to portray the
United States as a country that can't even keep its own people warm in
the winter without charity from marginally civilized Latin American
socialists.
Not surprisingly, Kennedy dismissed all of this and assured critics he
was not concerned with the politics of the man whose allies represent
a virtual who's who of America's enemies:
''You start parsing which countries' politics we're going to feel
comfortable with, and only buying oil from them, then there are going
to be a lot of people not driving their cars and not staying warm this
winter. There are a lot of countries that have much worse records
than Venezuela."
As usual, to a Kennedy (any Kennedy), welfare (any welfare) from the
state (any state) is always the cure for want (any want).
With friends like these who needs loyalties?
But it was the curious reference to "our friends in Venezuela" in this
most recent commercial that caught the eye and ire of a January 19th
USA Today editorial, which fittingly noted:
"It's not entirely clear which ‘good friends' Kennedy is referring to.
Chavez, who has called Bush ‘a genocidal murderer and a madman'? The
Venezuelan people, whose natural resources Chavez is squandering?"
The column, which also reminded readers that only his nation's mammoth
oil reserves distinguish Chavez from other cruel and murderous Latin
American tyrants, elicited an immediate indignant reply from Kennedy.
After drearily repeating the lame moral equivalency argument he put
forth in 2005 and mentioning that poor cot-dragging woman we met in
the commercial, he continued with words which placed his earlier
disregard for Chavez's politics in serious doubt:
"More than 558 million barrels of Venezuelan oil made their way to the
USA last year. Why just go after the small slice that helps senior
citizens and struggling families? Why not take on those who also make
money off Venezuela - GM and Ford, which sold 300,000 cars there last
year, and Shell, BP, Conoco Phillips and other oil interests that,
unlike Venezuela and Citgo Petroleum, spurned our requests for
assisting the poor?"
Hey Joe, could it be that mutually-beneficial business deals don't
leave either party beholding to the other, whereas charity from a
socialist expansionist madman with an agenda obvious to everyone but
you does?
Needless to say, outside unwashed circles Kennedy's explanation didn't
quite satisfy. A week's worth of ongoing critical commentary prompted
a decidedly emotional supplementary response on January 24th. In it,
he suggested that windfall tax revenues on oil and gas be used to
finance increased public assistance. As to the deal with Venezuela and
those who critique it:
"The alternative is a continuation of policies that steer tax breaks
to the wealthy and subsidies to our biggest corporations, while
telling the needy, ‘You're on your own' - a kind of socialism for the
rich and free enterprise for the poor that leaves the most vulnerable
out in the cold." [emphasis added]
Did he say Socialism for the Rich?
You bet. In fact, Kennedy had made prior use of that silly idiom,
including in his aforementioned January 19th rebuttal. Interestingly
enough, his brother Robert also employed the puzzling phrase when he
accepted a Sierra Club Tree-Hugger Award in September of 2005.
More interesting still, almost a decade earlier, American political
dissident Noam Chomsky wrote an article which commenced:
"The Free Market is socialism for the rich: the public pays the costs
and the rich get the benefit -- markets for the poor and plenty of
state protection for the rich."
Sounds a lot like Joseph the Second's January 24th comments, doesn't
it? Don't be surprised. You see, Joe's buddy Hugo has a buddy named
Noam who's been whining about the evils of capitalism in general and
as practiced by selfish Americans specifically for decades.
You'll recall the stir Chavez caused addressing the U.N last September
when he opened his speech by waving a copy of comrade Chomsky's
Hegemony or Survival: The Imperialist Strategy of the United States in
the face of the General Assembly. The Latin nutcase claimed that the
book contained proof that the greatest threat looming over our planet
is the
"hegemonic pretensions of the American empire [which is] placing at
risk the very survival of the human species."
In an uneven tirade which included his referencing President Bush
alternately as the world dictator and the devil himself, he gushed
over the book so convincingly that it jumped to number 1 on Amazon's
best-seller list overnight. There must have been an abundance of
Libertarian socialists, Anarcho-syndicalists, and otherwise-aligned
America haters in the gallery that day.
I told you, we're an Anarcho-syndicalist Commune
A recurring theme in Chomsky's work of late has been the evolving
symbiosis between Venezuela and Cuba which he holds forth as a shining
model of the virtues of Chavez's socialist petro-charity. Chavez
provides low-cost oil while his dying hero and mentor Castro
reciprocates with literacy and medical programs. Take that premise
and add another familiar Chomsky fantasy -- Chavez's brave struggle to
overcome American backed trade agreements which exploit workers and
perpetuate unfair economic and social strata. Now, mix well in a
large Margarita pitcher and Voila -- Kennedy's argument exactly.
And by the way, the man who favors a social revolution whereby freely
co-operative workers' unions would replace all forms of competition,
leadership and executive power is no stranger to Kennedy's ploy. It
just so happens that in December of 2005, Chomsky penned an article
addressing the hoopla over the Citgo-Kennedy connection. The
anarchist linguistic genius begins by making disappointingly generic
moral equivalence points similar to Pal Joey's - and then manages to
degrade farther still. True to form, the piece quickly descends into
his signature rhetorical abyss -- blaming all things Capitalist
America for all things awry in South America, advocating Chavez as the
natural, if imperfect, outcome. And, of course, adding the requisite
socialist-expansion academic spam:
"At issue in the region, as elsewhere around the world, is alternative
social and economic models. Enormous, unprecedented popular movements
have developed to expand cross-border integration - going beyond
economic agendas to encompass human rights, environmental concerns,
cultural independence and people-to-people contacts. These movements
are ludicrously called "anti-globalisation" because they favour
globalisation directed to the interests of people, not investors and
financial institutions."
Curiously, the man once voted the world's top public intellectual also
failed to ask one obvious question. If even Hugo's best friend is
expected to pony up recompense for cheap Latin-tea, why would he
provide the same to his worst enemy without similarly anticipating his
due pound of flesh?
The Three Ameriphobic Amigos
Okay, so Hugo loves Noam and Joey loves Hugo and maybe Noam but Noam
loves Hugo and, while no fan of Kennedys per se, maybe even Joey. So
just what is it that connects these three contrasting socialists --
one dictatorial, one anarchistic and one welfare-state?
On the day following the September 11th terrorist attacks President
Hugo Rafael Chávez Frías mumbled,
"The United States brought the attacks upon itself, for their arrogant
imperialist foreign policy."
In an interview a week later, one Avram Noam Chomsky Ph.D proclaimed:
"During these years the US virtually exterminated the indigenous
population, conquered half of Mexico, intervened violently in the
surrounding region, conquered Hawaii and the Philippines (killing
hundreds of thousands of Filipinos), and in the past half century
particularly, extended its resort to force throughout much of the
world. The number of victims is colossal. For the first time, the guns
have been directed the other way."
And while a prominent American who might agree wouldn't be stupid
enough to say so, Joseph Patrick Kennedy II certainly isn't lacking
stupid things he is willing to say. For instance, last November, he
told a Wall Street Journal Reporter questioning his assisting "an
anti-American tyrant at the expense of the Venezuelan people," that as
to democracy, there is,
"ample room for improvement in the ways that people get elected in
Venezuela as well as in Florida."
So then, it would appear that there's one thing the three share much
more congruently than their underlying common dream of wealth
redistribution.
--
There may come a time when the CO2 police will wander the earth telling
the poor and the dispossed how many dung chips they can put on their
cook fires. -- Captain Compassion.
Wherever I go it will be well with me, for it was well with me here, not
on account of the place, but of my judgments which I shall carry away
with me, for no one can deprive me of these; on the contrary, they alone
are my property, and cannot be taken away, and to possess them suffices
me wherever I am or whatever I do. -- EPICTETUS
"Civilization is the interval between Ice Ages." -- Will Durant.
"Progress is the increasing control of the environment by life.
--Will Durant
Joseph R. Darancette
daranc@NOSPAMverizon.net
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