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Edited on Sat Mar-24-07 08:01 PM by Peace Patriot
The majority of Americans figured out that this war was wrong before it began. 56% of the American people opposed the Iraq War in Feb. '03, before the invasion, and even before Colin Powell's 100% pack of lies to the UN was fully exposed. 56%! (That would be a landslide in a presidential election--and more than likely was.) And that was in a context of relentless, 24/7, war propaganda. The American people are not stupid. They have been disenfranchised.
My favorite comparative statistic, for what it shows about the intelligence of Americans, is this: While 56% of the American people opposed the war from the beginning, about 50% believed that Saddam had WMDs, and/or had something to do with 9/11. Think about this. That 56% who opposed the war had to have included SOME people who had these bits of Bushite disinformation rattling around in their heads. So the portion of people who just flatout didn't trust Bush and opposed the war was supplemented by a portion of people who were trying very hard to think for themselves, and make up their own minds about what was right, in a relentless flood of propaganda. And their thinking must have gone like this: Yeah, he may have WMDs, but it is not a serious threat, certainly not worth a war. Or, yeah, he may have had something to do with 9/11, but it was minor, and not worth a war.
I just love these two stats: 56% against the war, 50% brainwashed on WMDs/9-11, but SOME portion of the brainwashed rising out of the brainwashing and saying, 'Hey, wait a minute. So what? Why not let the UN handle it?'
Now it's about 75% who know that it was all bullshit, and who oppose the war and want it ended. And both that initial 56% and this 75% cannot get their will enforced. Why is that?
Well, friends, maybe, just maybe, it has something to do with the bill that was passed at nearly the same moment that the Iraq War Resolution was passed--and was equally unconstitutional: "The Help America Vote for Bush Act" of October 2002 (aka, HAVA), by which $3.9 billion in boondoggle funding was appropriated to fast-track electronic voting machines all over the country, machines run on 'TRADE SECRET,' PROPRIETARY programming code, owned and controlled by Bushite corporations, with virtually no audit/recount controls. And they are...
DIEBOLD: Until recently, headed by Wally O'Dell, a Bush-Cheney campaign chair and major fundraiser (a Bush "Pioneer," right up there with Ken Lay), who promised in writing to "deliver Ohio's electoral votes to Bush-Cheney in 2004"; and
ES&S: A spinoff of Diebold (similar computer architecture), initially funded by rightwing billionaire Howard Ahmanson, who also gave one million dollars to the extremist 'christian' Chalcedon Foundation (which touts the death penalty for homosexuals, among other things).
These are the people who "counted" 80% of the nation's votes in 2004, under a veil of corporate secrecy. And, funny thing is, they still are.
So, who in this Congress was really elected, and who wasn't? We cannot know. In many states, there is no paper trail at all--no ballots to count. Just Diebold/ES&S electrons, run on secret code. In some places--the best--there is a lousy 1% audit (easily manipulable by these extremely insider hackable machines). The voting machines and central tabulators that were installed almost everywhere during the 2002 to 2004 period--in a multi-billion dollar crash program--have been proven to be extremely insecure and insider hackable. Numerous topnotch computer experts and Ph.D.'s warned against them. In they went, anyway, against all reason, and in defiance of the most fundamental principle of democracy: transparent vote counting.
Things are the reverse of what they should be. It's up to we, the people, with our limited resources, to prove who didn't win an election, rather than our election officials having to prove who did. That is a formula for tyranny. And that is what we have.
Take FL-13, for instance, last November. 18,000 votes for Congress in Democratic precincts were 'disappeared' by ES&S voting machines, in an election that was decided by some 300 votes (and of course decided for the Republican, who never suffer from these computer "anomalies"). When the Democrat's lawyers took the matter to court, and requested to review ES&S's 'TRADE SECRET' vote counting code, to try to figure out what happened to those votes, ES&S refused, and maintained that their right to profit from our election system trumps the right of voters to know how their votes were counted (or not counted)--even in a stinking election like this one. And the corporatist judge of course agreed! What are voters thinking, that they have any rights to voting information! The audacity! This is the Corporate Kingdom, don't you understand?
I think it's staring us in the face. And the only fault I see in the American people is having too much faith in our Democratic leaders to warn us of this grave assault on our democracy--the complete conversion of our election system to non-transparent, secret, corporate vote counting--by highly partisan Bushite corporations no less. And I can only think that they didn't warn us, and didn't do anything about it--and are still fiddle-fucking around about it (with seemingly clueless bandaid solutions)--because they are benefiting from the election system, from the war, and from Bush-Cheney being in office, OR they are scared, of Diebold/ES&S and other powers-that-be (some of them).
This fascist coup that occurred along with the IWR is screamingly, mind-bogglingly outrageous. Secret corporate vote counting by Bushite corporations is TYRANNY! There is no other word for it. And it is also at the very least a conspiracy of silence on the part of our Democratic leaders, to keep this war going. Why didn't they tell us about this? And why, if they plead ignorance on the technology back in 2002--like they plead ignorance about Bush's baldfaced lies about Iraq--why haven't they remedied it? Why haven't they thrown these scumbag corporations out of our election system? Why haven't they demanded a ballot for every voter and a 100% handcount of every vote? Why? It's a no-brainer.
What they ARE proposing is to give Diebold/ES&S billions more of our hard-earned taxpayer dollars to "fix" an election system that they deliberately broke--and to "fix" it in a way that leaves the 'TRADE SECRET' code in place!
So here's the situation: The people are having to outvote the machines--against a 5% to 10% "thumb on the scales" for Bushites, warmongers and corporatists. That's a consensus guestimate, from various election fraud studies including those of statistical experts. And they did it--in '06--in many cases. They outvoted the machines in an effort to get themselves a half-decent Congress. But the big mandate of this Congress to stop the war--and the votes in Congress to do so--are swallowed up in that 5% to 10% election fraud, in both the primaries (who gets to run) and in the general election (who won). This is the main reason why we have 75% of the people opposed to the war, but their votes could only achieve a 50/50 Congress. Their votes were diluted--changed, bled off to minor candidates or simply 'disappeared,' and phantom votes were created--all totally feasible in the current system, without detection. (1% to 5%, easy--virtually undetectable; 6% to 10%, a bit trickier, but still possible without detection.)
The American people are not stupid. They have been disenfranchised. And their only failure has been their failure to imagine that American politicians, as a whole, would be this disloyal to the idea of democracy, and its most fundamental notion: transparent vote counting. That is a hard, hard thing to take in. And they have had no help from anybody--and those of us who have figured it out have had no help from anybody but each other--in understanding it, and coming to terms with it. It is a fundamental betrayal. It can be sickening. But, ultimately, it's best to know the truth--in fact, it is essential--because otherwise we will keep barking up the wrong tree. It is utterly useless to rant against the REAL Democrats in Congress--the people who were genuinely elected and who truly do represent the American people--for failing to stop the war, even if it is partly their own fault that Congress is so unrepresentative. We need to address them on this fundamental power issue--our right to vote, and our right to have our vote counted in a way that everyone can see and understand--and, if they won't respond, then we MUST find some OTHER way to restore transparent vote counting. I think it can be done at the state/local level--but it will take more time, in a more dispersed and more difficult fight in every venue in the country.
I am not against witnessing against the war--and writing about it. Such witness and writing are very important. And Scott's writings have been crucial to a lot of peoples' knowledge about this war, including my own. But every analysis must include a word about transparent vote counting, so that the power issue here can be understood. It's too easy to go off on a tangent--for instance, a rant against the American people--if you don't grok the power situation. And this is counter-productive. How do you help people by calling them stupid? You just add to the demoralization and feeling of powerlessness that a lot of people already have. Were those 56% of the people who opposed the war from the beginning stupid? Are the 75% who are now opposed to the war stupid? No! They have just had so little help in understanding why their votes aren't changing things, and how things really stand, as to our sovereignty as a people.
So, Scott, if you are reading this--or others who are in a position to reach a lot of people--please take this into consideration, and help people understand why their voting, their political organization and their grass roots activism are not working. We cannot change things without transparent vote counting. It is the fundamental condition for change. It is the bottom-line of our sovereignty. Without it, we don't really have a democracy. We are all serfs and slaves. And, if we want to be full citizens again, we MUST find the way to restore the integrity of our elections: vote counting in full public view.
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