the ones who have the most money dictate foreign policy.

If you run a huge defense corporation, you're going to donate a lot of money to politicians and make it well known that you favor a militaristic and interventionist foreign policy. When the Cold War ended, you were fishing around for another excuse to justify hundreds of billions in taxpayer dollars being spend on the Dept. of Defense. Then you found the War on Terror. When the War on Terror falls out of fashion, you're going to need another great crusade to justify even more largesse being pushed your way.

Likewise, if you run a huge corporation that has a peculiar interest in a third world country, be it for its resources or its incredibly cheap source of labor to exploit and pillage, you're going to want foreign policy to be changed to favor intervention in the area you want to make money. Like if you want to corner the market in Africa for blood diamonds, of course you're going to spend several million trying to get politicians to support intervention in that part of the world on your behalf.

The point is, ultimately, it doesn't matter if Kerry gets the position or not. His hands are going to be tied. His power will be limited, just like anybody else in that position. He won't be the master of policy. He'll do what the boss tells him to do, and if he doesn't like it, the only thing he can do is resign, and the powers that be will simply find somebody else to represent the game.

I'm not saying he won't make a good Secretary of State. He's one of the better qualified people for the job.

I just think that with the way government in this country has been co-opted by the corporate oligarchy, all we're really doing is just re-arranging the deck chairs on the damn Titanic.

and b) this is an appointment, so he deosn't need to run a campaign and shake down donors. Yes, all politicians are subject to corporate lobbying and gifts of one kind or another, but Kerry's personal fortune makes him a little more bulletproof than most.

That's a polite way of saying Chomsky's analysis is fifty years out of date and was never particularly illuminating to begin with. Let's call it simplistic and leave it at that.

SoS is a cabinet position with advisory responsibilities which I expect JK to exercise fully. He's not simply an ambassador carrying out orders. Also, it's known that Clinton, Rice and Power are all interventionists who pushed Obama in that disastrous direction. Fortunately they didn't push him into bombing Iran, so he's still the decider. But no matter how well intentioned they might have thought all that Bush-legacy regime changing, it's been catastrophic for the nations subjected to it, namely Iraq, Af-pak, Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, Syria, and the dozen or so African countries that buried sitting heads of state in the last five years. And "soft power" means nothing without tanks, planes, bombs and special forces backing it up. So I'm hoping we'll see less of that starting with Syria, and Kerry is said to be on good terms with Assad.