Kurt Nimmo
Another Day In The Empire
Friday, January 5, 2007
In an all too predictable game of musical chairs, the Bush neocons
have decided to shuffle John Negroponte, the butcher of Honduras
and member in good standing at the Council on Foreign Relations,
off to the State Department to work under Condi, drop Zalmay Khalilzad,
the PNAC flunky, into fill the space vacated by the unconfirmable
John Bolton at the United Nations, and spin former admiral Mike
McConnell, a director at Booz Allen Hamilton, where the neocon
“World War Four” James Woolsey runs shop, into the
top spook position as national intelligence director.
In regard to Negroponte’s CFR connections, David Eisenberg
writes: “Like so many musical chairs, the CFR shuffles its
members from one post to another, but their control over our nation’s
foreign policy and institutions of power remains constant. This
control will only break when enough Americans utilize their influence
through the Congress—the nation’s most intended powerful
government branch as spelled out in the Constitution —to
rein in their power accumulating agenda, and get us back in adherence
to the principles of limited government under our Republic.”
I’m not holding my breath.
It is also interesting to note that Negroponte is filling in
for Robert Zoellick, who has departed for Wall Street, specifically
Goldman Sachs, as it is natural for former government officials
to work for the banksters and vice versa. If you lost your job
due to NAFTA, take it up with Zoellick, who as a “free trade”
(i.e., legalized robbery and looting) “special assistant”
to Bush Senior when he was dancing the fandango with president
Salinas of Mexico. Zoellick’s consultations made all the
difference in darkening large sections of Michigan and Pennsylvania
and ultimately sending jobs over to the “communist”
slave plantation in China. Now former factory workers buy their
shoes, manufactured by tireless Chinese zeks, at Walmart—that
is if they have enough money to buy shoes.
“Zoellick is highly respected on Wall Street and by Corporate
America at large,” writes Tom Barry. “Not only a highly
effective government representative of U.S. capital, Zoellick
has benefited from direct personal ties with the U.S. financial
community and transnational corporations. He has directly worked
in the highest echelons of the U.S. corporate community, including
serving as an executive at Goldman Sachs. Before joining the Bush
Jr. administration as a cabinet official in the capacity of the
U.S. Trade Representative, Zoellick served on an advisory council
at the Enron Corporation. In addition, Zoellick also served on
the boards of such corporations as Alliance Capital, Jones Intercable,
Said Holdings, and the Precursor Group.”
Enron, of course, is a nice touch, as it underscores the ethical
vacuum at work in Washington.
Blogger Michael J.W. Stickings comments on Negroponte’s
switch, essentially an on-paper demotion. “Why is he willing
to make the move? Is he unhappy as DNI? If so, why? What does
his move say about the position of DNI? Is it an impotent one?
Regardless, he’ll now be deeply involved with Iraq, specifically
with Bush’s ‘new’ Iraq strategy, soon to be
announced. That may be the reason. Perhaps he thinks he can do
more at State with respect to Iraq than as Bush’s chief
briefer on intelligence.”
It may also have something to do with Negroponte’s curriculum
vitae. He did, after all, play a key role in supporting the Contra
death squads in Nicaragua and spent time back-slapping General
Gustavo Alvarez Martínez, a former union-busting thug for
Standard Fruit who elevated death squads into government offices
in Honduras, most notably the bloody Battalion 3-16.
As usual, of course, such good work pays off, as Martínez
was eventually employed as a “special consultant”
to the Rand Corporation. “With the help of Nestor Sanchez
of the Department of Defense, Alvarez landed a job working with
Rand’s top anti-terrorism expert, Brian [Michael] Jenkins,”
writes Gerry O’Sullivan. Jenkins bills himself as a “terrorism
expert,” that is to say he makes the corporate media rounds
talking up the “al-Qaeda” myth in service to the neocons.
Another Rand operative and former State Department official,
James Dobbins, who “served” with Negroponte, told
Reuters that putting him under Condi the Destroyer is in “some
ways … putting Negroponte back where his true strength lies,
which is as a career diplomat.”
In other words, Negroponte may be on the grooming track to replace
Condi, disliked by one too many neocons, and thus the transformation
at the State Department since the departure of Colin Powell, who
rightly called the neocons “fucking crazies,” will
be complete as the new target, Iran, looms in the gun sights of
the neocons who are tutored in the murderous Machiavellian madness
of post-Straussian philosophy mingled with a heaping dose of the
totalitarian demagoguery of the Nazi jurist, Carl Schmitt.
Once again, the Bush neocons, or rather the neocons who selected
Bush, are turning the tables. For most of us, this is pretty drab
and lackluster stuff, especially with more important business
afoot, for instance Lindsay Lohan going under the knife. Most
Americans cannot be bothered to follow the twists and turns of
their government, even if it translates into additional murder,
mayhem, and economic and social disaster, right here in the neighborhood,
and sooner before later.
Come that inevitability, the neocons will throw up yet another
hobgoblin—worse than Osama and al-Zarqawi—a city or
two will be attacked in the heartland, and the populace, forever
easy prey for such trickery, will get back to where they were
in the months following September 11, 2001.
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