By the way, the phrase, "that the media chose to ignore", is becoming less and less relevant every day because the "old" media (newspapers, big-three network news) is becoming less and less relevant every day. The "old" media is dying fast precisely because the news they choose to ignore ends up getting more attention on the intenet and on talk radio than they could ever give it even if they chose not to ignore it.
The olden days when the "old" media could choose to ignore news that didn't fit their (liberal) political agenda are long gone. Such news no longer disappears quietly into the aether like the "old" media wants it to - - like it always did in the past.
| 1969 | John Kerry meets with Vietcong spokeswoman, Nguyen Thi Binh, in Paris | |
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| 1975 | Ly Thanh Binh comes to U.S.A., Graduates Tulane University 1978. |
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| 08/02/1991 | Senate Select Committee on P.O.W./M.I.A. Affairs created, John F. Kerry, Chairman. | |
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| 11/xx/1992 | Ron Brown first meets with with Nguyen Van Hao, prior S. Vietnamese Vice Premier of Commerce and business partner of Ly Than Binh a business consultant living in Tamarac, Fla | |
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| 11/28/1992 | Binh, Hao and two other men flew to Vietnam, where they met with Prime Minister Vo Van Kiet | |
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| 12/xx/1992 | John Kerry and Bob Smith travel to Vietnam (POW/MIA Committee) | |
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| 12/xx/1992 | Vietnam signed its first huge commercial deal worth at least $905 million to develop a deep-sea commercial port at Vung Tau in anticipation of trade to come. It signed the deal with a company called Colliers International. Stewart Forbes, CEO of Colliers is John Kerry's cousin. | |
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| 01/14/1993 | After 16 month investigation, Senate report issued concluding "no compelling evidence" that any US servicemen remain alive in captivity in Southeast Asia. | |
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| 02/xx/1993 | Colliers International is first U.S. real estate affiliate to open offices in Vietnam. | |
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| 05/xx/1993 | John Kerry travels to Vietnam (late May/Early June) | |
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| 02/14/1994 | U.S. lifts trade embargo against Vietnam | |
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| 2004 | Spaulding & Slye Colliers, a corporate partner of Colliers International, donates $100,000 to the Democratic Party for National Convention |
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Vietnam: The Big Buildup Begins; U.S. Firms Get Ready To Act Quickly Once Embargo Is Lifted:[FINAL Edition]
Thomas W. Lippman.
The Washington Post (pre-1997 Fulltext).
Dec 6, 1992. pg. h.01
Full Text (1058 words)
(snip - Final 3 Paragraphs below)
Embargo `Irrelevant'
The corporate view of the embargo is that it is politically irrelevant - because the Hanoi government has fulfilled the two principal conditions for lifting it: withdrawal of its troops from Cambodia and cooperation on the MIA issue - and economically counterproductive, because the United States is losing out while other nations seize opportunities.
Similarly, Frederick Z. Brown, director of Southeast Asian Studies at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, wrote in a recent paper for the Overseas Development Council that "today, the United States has a chance to `win' in Vietnam ... The question for the next administration is whether the continuation of the economic embargo against Vietnam serves U.S. political, economic and national security objectives. The answer is no. The most effective guarantee of regional security is to integrate Vietnam into the international economic grid. ... "
Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.), chairman of the Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs, said during his visit here last month that he favors lifting the embargo and the President Bush has promised the Vietnamese to reward their new posture of cooperation on the MIA issue. Kerry and other senators met with Bush and his senior foreign policy and defense advisers at the White House last week to urge him to make some gesture toward Hanoi, but they said they did not recommend any specific move such as ending the embargo. Bush did not commit himself, they said.
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New gestures cited on MIAs Kerry says Hanoi offering more access; [City Edition]
John Aloysius Farrell, Globe staff. Boston Globe (pre-1997 Fulltext).
Boston, Mass.: Dec 18, 1992. p. 3
WASHINGTON -- Sen. John F. Kerry, the chairman of the Senate Select Committee on POW-MIA Affairs, said yesterday that Vietnamese officials have responded to recent American goodwill gestures by becoming more forthcoming on the issue of missing US servicemen in Southeast Asia.
In a telephone interview from Hanoi, where he and the committee vice chairman, Republican Sen. Bob Smith of New Hampshire, are meeting with Vietnamese officials on the POW issue, the Massachusetts Democrat said US officials should soon gain access to select military records they have long sought, including the first Vietnamese accounts of US pilots shot down over the Ho Chi Minh trail in Cambodia and Laos.
Other records were given to the senators yesterday, Kerry said. Some are quite specific -- including details of where US planes were shot down, how pilots died and where their remains were buried. "Significant things are clearly happening," he said.
President Bush announced Monday that the United States was easing its trade embargo with Vietnam, allowing American companies to sign contracts to do business there. Bush's action has left the Vietnamese "very pleased," Kerry said. "It has given them confidence that this is a road worth going down."
(snip)
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Networks provide vital leverage, opportunities to smaller firms looking toward expansion
Brown, Steve.
National Real Estate Investor. Atlanta:
Apr 1993. Vol. 35, Iss. 4; pg. 98, 3 pgs
Full Text (2480 words)
Copyright Argus Business, a Division of Argus Inc. Apr 1993
When the Canadian Consulate decided it was time to find new accommodations in San Francisco, the Canadian government first had to pick a brokerage firm to scout the market.
Representing a foreign government looking for a new U.S. office location is an unusual assignment for Damner-Pike Inc., a six-year-old independent real estate broker located in San Francisco.
Without his firm’s membership in a real estate brokerage network--Boston-based Colliers International Inc.--company principal Peter Pike says he probably wouldn’t have gotten the assignment.
“We were recommended by our Canadian Colliers affiliate, which has represented the Canadian Consulate in a number of cities,” says Pike, whose company concentrates on office leasing and investment sales in the city by the bay. “The San Francisco consulate wanted to take advantage of the soft office market and expand into a new location.” Damner-Pike leased the consulate a 20,000 sq. ft. space in a Fremont Street office tower.
(snip)
INDEPENDENT FIRMS GAIN GLOBAL ABILITY
For Colliers International, meeting the needs of its clients and member firms had literally meant going to the ends of the earth.
Founded in 1979, Colliers now has 130 offices stretching from America to the Far East, Latin America and Europe. Newest members of the network represent China, Mexico, Hungary and Italy.
In February, Colliers was the first U.S. real estate affiliate to open an office in Vietnam. Colliers officials anticipate an opening of American and Vietnamese relations in the next few years.
“We wanted to be in on the ground floor when American companies are ready to do business in Vietnam,” says Colliers president Stewart Forbes. “I went over there in December, and we actually obtained the first license to do real estate transactions in Vietnam.”
Colliers’ international connections are paying off for the brokerage affiliation, with deals ranging from working with U.S. property companies that are expanding to Latin America to representing Indonesian buyers acquiring office buildings in Texas.
“Certainly, the bread and butter of our business is still domestic,” says Forbes. “But we definitely see corporations growing more and more interested in the availability of our international services.”
The transfer of expertise through Colliers’ information and referral network go both ways. Many real estate firms in lesser-developed nations depend on Colliers members for upgrading their operations. “There are great differences in the level of expertise and professionalism that exists outside the United States,” Forbes says. “That gives us the opportunity to transfer some of our real estate knowledge into these developing countries.”
Tough real estate markets at home in the United States have translated into a boost in business through the Colliers system. “We are reporting our best results ever, in terms of the level of our referral revenues,” Forbes says. “When times are tougher and the competition is stiffer, you have to draw on every resource you have,” he says.
(snip)
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No Limit to How Low Kerry Will Go in Hunt for Big Money
Lowell Ponte.
Insight on the News. Washington: Feb 17-Mar 1, 2004.
(snip)
Kerry prevented a vote on the Vietnam Human Rights Act (HR 2833), which would have made lifting trade restrictions contingent on communist Vietnam restoring basic human rights. By stopping this measure from becoming law, Kerry protected Marxist Vietnam from pressure to free its slave society.
Through much manipulation and arm-twisting, Kerry persuaded his now-defunct committee to vote unanimously that no POWs remained in Vietnam. And with the disappearance of this issue and the proposed human-rights legislation, Kerry gave Bill Clinton and the Democratic Party the pretext they needed to begin reopening trade that could help keep the Marxist Vietnamese dictatorship afloat. Those given first place in line for such trade opportunities, of course, were the biggest contributors to Democrats such as Kerry and Clinton.
The year after his committee's vote to give communist Vietnam a clean bill of health, the strangest thing happened. In December 1992, Vietnam signed its first huge commercial deal worth at least $905 million to develop a deep-sea commercial port at Vung Tau to accommodate all the trade that was to come. It signed the deal with a company called Colliers International. At the time, the chief executive officer of this company was C. Stewart Forbes, who happens to be Kerry's cousin.
When the Democratic Party decided to give Kerry a leg up toward its presidential nomination by holding its 2004 National Convention in Boston, certain big corporations rushed to pony up money for the Democratic event. One of the first of these rushing to fill Democratic coffers was Spaulding & Slye Colliers, the current corporate partnership involving Colliers International, which anted up $100,000. Money is fungible, and part of the Vietnam millions channeled to Colliers International easily can be inferred to be comingled in this $100,000 donation to the Democratic National Convention.
This July as you watch the red, white and blue balloons fall from that Boston convention ceiling to celebrate the newly selected Democratic presidential nominee John F. Kerry, think of the red ones as being purchased and used to seduce you by communist Vietnam.