Sen. Tom Harkin's remarks on Hugo Chavez

[NNN0LHI]

http://www.crgazette.com/2006/09/22/Home/tomharkinchavezquotes.htm


<snip>"Let me put it this way. I can understand the frustration and the anger of certain people around the world because of George Bush’s policies."

Bush came to office, as you may remember, saying that he wanted a new humble or humility in foreign policy and reaching out to other countries

"I thought, well, that might be pretty good. But what it is – it’s just been a very heavy-handed – we’re gonna do it our way and to heck with everybody else. So I can understand the frustration and the anger. I mean, I’ve sensed it myself as I’ve traveled, as I’ve met with world leaders and other parliamentarians around the world."

"After 9/11 – think about this – after 9/11, every country in the world was on our side – including Venezuela, by the way, I might add. We tend to forget that two days after 9/11, thousands of Iranians marched in a candlelight procession in Tehran in support of the United States. Every Muslim country, basically, was on our side. Just think, in five years, President Bush has squandered all that – just totally, totally squandered it all."

"Boy, I can understand the anger and the frustration of a lot of poor people around the world who see us, the richest country in the world, putting $350 billion now in a war – an unnecessary, unprovoked war in Iraq – and yet they can’t get clean water. They can’t get medical care. A lack of opportunity in education in so many areas. These are the things that America could be doing to undercut people like Cesar Chavez and others, and yet we’re not doing it. If anything, George Bush is just fanning the flames of a Cesar Chavez. Hmmm? Oh, Hugo Chavez! What’d I say, Cesar Chavez? Hugo Chavez. Where’d I get Cesar? Oh, my gosh. Memory banks. Farm worker’s union. But you get what I mean."

[mike_c]

1. I'm glad to see someone responding with something other than...

...a knee jerk reflex!

[ShortnFiery]

2. I concur. Very refreshing - gives me hope. eom

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

3. This "underc utting strategy" would be the True American Way.

When watching the rise of Islamic fundamentalism some 25 years ago, two thoughts came to my teenage mind:

1) And they say Communism is the Big Monster? Yeah, right.

2) Why don't they buy them out? Pour money, investment, infrastructure in those countries, with one big string attached: secularization.

[roody]

4. Go, Tom!!

Keep atoning for having voted to give Chimp war powers.

[Peace Patriot]

5. "the things America could do to undercut people like (Hugo) Chavez"? Why?

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.)