Reply #5: "the things America could do to undercut people like (Hugo) Chavez"? Why? [View All]

[Peace Patriot]

Why undercut Hugo Chavez? He's a good president. He's taking care of his people and representing his country's interests in the world. He was genuinely elected, which can't be said of ANY U.S. office-holder, not with Bushite corporations, Diebold/ES&S, "counting" all our votes with "trade secret," proprietary programming code. Sorry, non-transparent elections are NOT elections. They are tyranny and Corporate Rule. Venezuelan elections, on the other hand, are wide open to scrutiny (open source code), and are the most heavily monitored elections in history (--by the OAS, the Carter Center and EU groups--all of whom pronounced the elections honest and aboveboard).

So WHY "undercut" this democratically elected president, who, with his brown (indigenous, Spanish and black) face, and leftist views, represents the vast population of the poor and brown--oppressed and brutalized for centuries, often by US-backed dictatorships--who are finally coming into their rightful power in South America?

We should be FRIENDS with Venezuela. We should be HELPING the democracy and social justice movement there. We should be APPLAUDING their great achievements of transparent elections, constitutional government and education, medical care, housing and small business assistance for the poor. Why "undercut" them? Hm?

Because even our best and most liberal Democratic politicians are the representatives of our Corporate Rulers, and not of us. And now they are being hand-picked by rightwing corporations whom they have permitted to gain secret control over vote counting. They represent the oil companies and other global corporate predators just as much as the Bush Junta does--but they are more hypocritical and dishonest and sneaky about it.

I'm good and sick of them--lo these many years (40!) as a loyal Democratic Party member, supporter and voter. They are just playing games, and feathering their own nests. They don't believe in democracy any more. Harkin voted for Bushite corporate control of our elections--as did almost all of them (with only two exceptions*). That was the end of it. That was the vote, in Oct 2002, that ended this democracy. That WAS the fascist coup. And they were all in on it. It wasn't the Iraq war vote (bad as it was). It was the vote on HAVA.

If you're going to conduct an unjust, illegal war--and rob the peoples' treasury--in a democracy, you have to rig the elections. That's what they did. And they were almost all in on it.

So, when Harkin says he wants to "undercut" Hugo Chavez--with clean water, and medical care, and education--and he implies that the $350 billion wasted on slaughtering Iraqis and stealing their oil WOULD HAVE BEEN used to uplift the poor in Venezuela, he is just lying. That is just crap. The $350 billion was for war profiteers! It was to boost Cheney's and Harkin's and all of their stock portfolios, in this military-industrial complex economy. Not one penny of it would have been used to help Venezuela's poor. CHAVEZ is providing clean water, and medical care, and education, IN SPITE OF our global corporate predators who would rob them blind, and have been doing so for decades, via World Bank/IMF policy. Is Harkin's idea of providing clean water Bechtel privatizing the water in Bolivia and then jacking up the prices to the poorest of the poor, even charging poor peasants for collecting rainwater? That is crap and Harkin knows it. That's robbery and oppression--of the worst kind.

The only answer is to make these people--our Diebold (s)elected Democrats--accountable to the people again, with TRANSPARENT vote counting! We have what may be only a slim window of opportunity to do so, this fall, with a massive Absentee Ballot protest, aimed at getting rid of the electronic voting machines.

See my posts on the Absentee Ballot protest:
(What do you expect from the Diebold Congress?)
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x2851762
(Diebold is WHY Congress is so bad)
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x2854648
(Diebold 'smoking gun' in GA! Vote Absentee this fall!)
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x2855386

THROW DIEBOLD, ES&S AND ALL ELECTION THEFT MACHINES INTO 'BOSTON HARBOR' NOW!

BUST THE MACHINES--VOTE ABSENTEE THIS NOVEMBER!

If enough people do it--if everybody who despises the Bush Junta (60% to 70% of the American people) votes by AB this fall--the reign of these diabolical machines will be OVER.

Then, and only then, will we be able to start real reform--one plank of which must be for the U.S. to STOP "undercutting" real democracies all over the world.


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*(Hillary Clinton and Charles Schumer voted against HAVA--the only Dem Senators who did. Surprise, surprise. But I figure it has more to do with New Yorkers' attachment to their old, reliable, unriggable lever machines, than to Clinton's or Schumer's belief in democracy.)