-Caveat Lector- RadTimes # 113 November, 2000 An informally produced compendium of vital irregularities. "We're living in rad times!" ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- QUOTE: "What is the ballot? It is neither more nor less than a paper representative of the bayonet, the billy, and the bullet. It is a labor-saving device for ascertaining on which side force lies and bowing to the inevitable. The voice of the majority saves bloodshed, but it is no less the arbitrament of force than is the decree of the most absolute of despots backed by the most powerful of armies." --Benjamin Tucker, 'Instead Of A Book' ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Contents: --------------- --TABD: Corporate Conspiracy --White House war goes nuclear as Bush plays military card --Hundreds of Overseas Ballots Rejected --GOP Goes To War Over Military Votes --Allegations of voting rights violations need investigation --Voters Beware: Intervention In The Name Of Democracy ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Begin stories: ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- TABD: Corporate Conspiracy By Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman Corporate rule is not built on a conspiracy. But that does not mean that corporations never conspire. Sometimes corporate executives do gather in secret meetings and work to plot collective approaches to advance Big Business's broad interests. Case in point: the TransAtlantic Business Dialogue (TABD). The TABD is a grouping of top corporate executives from multinational corporations in the United States and Europe. TABD CEOs meet annually with top U.S. and European government officials, most recently this past week in Cincinnati. The TABD's mission is to boost trade and investment between the United States and Europe, as well as throughout the world. The CEOs in TABD are vigorously urging the launch of a new World Trade Organization (WTO) negotiating round (the project that was stifled in Seattle), and for other enlargements of the WTO. But the TABD's unique mission is to focus on the U.S.-EU relationship, and push forward a deregulatory agenda that it hopes to then impose on the entire world. The TABD is explicit that its concerns go way beyond traditional tariff issues. "Elected representatives agreed in the Uruguay Round [the last completed negotiating round of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), which led to the creation of the WTO] to largely remove traditional tariffs as inefficient restraints on economic liberty," proclaims the TABD's 2000 Mid-Year Report. "The new obstacles to trade are now domestic regulations." "Non-tariff barriers to operations should be tackled with the same zeal," as tariffs were reduced, the report insists. The TABD inventory of domestic regulations that constitute "obstacles to trade" is remarkably expansive. Among the areas where TABD has registered complaints: differential standards for review of chemical safety, the U.S. requirement that products be labeled with U.S. customary units (inch/pound) instead of the metric system, differing national standards for regulating electromagnetic fields (relevant to cell phone regulation), restrictions on direct-to-consumer pharmaceutical advertising in the EU, and potential U.S. emissions regulations for diesel engines for recreational boats that may differ from the EU's. The TABD also argues that the U.S. product liability system is a "serious impediment to transatlantic trade and investment." A consistent theme of the TABD's list of complaints is inconsistency between countries' regulations. The TABD CEOs view diversity of regulatory approaches -- what should be viewed as among the blessings of democracy -- as itself a trade barrier. To achieve uniformity, TABD ardently supports regulatory "harmonization" -- formal international mechanisms to establish single global standards. A second choice is Mutual Recognition Agreements (MRAs), by which different regulatory regimes are declared equivalent, and products cleared in one country are given a free pass into another -- even if the first country's regulatory system is in fact inferior to the importing country's. For almost every regulatory complaint TABD lodges, the organization's proposed solution is either harmonization or an MRA. The effort has been enormously successful, with MRAs in place or in progress for everything from electrical safety to pharmaceutical safety, and harmonization in place or underway for areas ranging from road safety to aircraft noise. TABD-style uniformity virtually always involves the use of the weaker standard, meaning consumer, environmental and worker well-being is put at risk. Even more worrisome is how TABD uniformity would block regulatory evolution. Once standard-setting is placed at the international level, it is largely removed from the reach of citizen movements, making it far, far harder to protest and lobby for strengthened biotech regulations, for example. The MRAs also thwart regulatory enhancement, by enabling domestic manufacturers to say that stiffer standards will unfairly disadvantage them against importers who get a free pass under other countries' weaker rules. To ensure that its anti-democratic demands are attended to by the purportedly democratic governments of the United States and the EU, TABD issues yearly scorecards on the trading partners' compliance with TABD recommendations. And now it has established an "early warning system," so that Big Business can force items onto the U.S.-EU negotiating agenda. Among the top U.S. side concerns: Italian restrictions on genetically modified foods and a European environmental regulation requiring electronics manufacturers to provide for the recycling of discarded products. Unfortunately, these series of recommendations are not just corporate wish lists. When the TABD speaks, the governments listen (in fact, top public officials are in the room with the CEOs at their annual gatherings). "It is difficult to overstate the effect the TABD has had on trade liberalization," Undersecretary of Commerce Timothy Hauser told a Congressional committee in 1997. "Virtually every market-opening move undertaken by the United States and the EU in the last couple years has been suggested by the TABD." But now, with help from groups like Corporate Europe Observatory <www.xs4all.nl/~ceo> and Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch <www.tradewatch.org> which have been tracking the TABD for years, the growing movement against corporate globalization is learning of TABD's scheming. With hundreds of informed and militant protesters shining a spotlight on TABD last week in Cincinnati, the CEOs in TABD have at least been deprived of the power that comes from being able to hatch their deregulatory plots in secret. How effectively TABD will be able to function in the light of day remains to be seen. ---- Russell Mokhiber is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Corporate Crime Reporter. Robert Weissman is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Multinational Monitor. They are co-authors of Corporate Predators: The Hunt for MegaProfits and the Attack on Democracy (Monroe, Maine: Common Courage Press, 1999). ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- White House war goes nuclear as Bush plays military card <http://asia.dailynews.yahoo.com/headlines/world/article.html?s=asia/headlines/001119/world/afp/White_House_war_goes_nuclear_as_Bush_plays_military_card.html> WASHINGTON, Nov 18 (AFP) - The war of words went nuclear Saturday in the battle for the White House as Republican George W. Bush accused Democrat Al Gore of subverting the will of the US military in order to gain power. In a stunning rhetorical blast bordering on a charge of treason, the Bush campaign said Gore had "gone to war" against soldiers stationed abroad through a Democratic scheme to throw their votes out in Florida. "We are concerned that a targeted effort by the Democratic Party sought to throw out as many as a third of the overseas absentee ballots" received in Florida, Bush campaign spokeswoman Karen Hughes said in Austin, Texas. Many of those, she added, were "the votes of the men and women of our United States Armed Forces who are serving the cause of freedom throughout the world. "No one who aspires to be commander in chief should seek to unfairly deny the votes of the men and women he would seek to command," Hughes said in political broadside directed squarely at Gore. She was flanked by the Republican governor of the state of Montana, Marc Racicot, who was presented as a former US Army prosecutor who served overseas and who launched a more incendiary volley of charges at Gore. "I am very sorry to say it but the vice president's lawyers have gone to war in my judgment against the men and women who serve in our armed forces," Racicot said. "The Democrats have launched a statewide effort to throw out as many military ballots as they can." Friday marked the deadline in the battleground state of Florida for receipt of absentee ballots, many of which traditionally come from overseas military personnel thought likely to support Bush in the presidential contest. Final but still uncertified results announced by a top state official after those approximately 2,000 absentee votes were counted gave Bush a lead in the state of 930 votes out of six million that were cast. Racicot charged that on Friday alone at least 900 ballots from Florida voters serving in the US military were thrown out for questionable reasons in many of the state's counties on orders from Gore supporters. "These judgments are being made by Democrat panels in those individual counties," he said. Florida election supervisors said ballots could be thrown out if they were not postmarked on time or were otherwise improperly completed. Shortly before Hughes fired the Bush campaign's volley, another staunch Bush loyalist and admired national war hero, retired general Norman Schwarzkopf, issued a blistering attack of his own on the Gore campaign. "It is a very sad day in our country when the men and women of the armed forces are serving abroad and facing danger on a daily basis ... are denied the right to vote for president of the United States who will be their commander in chief," Schwarzkopf said in Tallahassee, Florida. Schwarzkopf was the top US military commander on the ground during the 1991 Gulf War prosecuted by Bush's father, former president George Bush, and won a strong reputation there as a straight talker and a winning patriot. The charges of manipulating the military vote from the Bush campaign marked one of the sharpest and riskiest escalations of rhetoric in the battle for the presidency that broke out after the November 7 election and remains unresolved. The Pentagon had no immediate comment on the Bush charges, which came ahead of a hearing Monday in the Florida Supreme Court that could set the rules for determining who becomes the next US president. "It is sad and disappointing that the Bush campaign has made a decision to inject raw, crass partisan politics into a process that should be guided by our laws," said Gore spokesman Chris Lehane. Political analysts expressed shock at the accusations levelled by the Bush campaign and underlined that they differed dramatically from other charges that the Florida vote was riddled with extreme irregularities. "It's a near-nuclear escalation of the partisan conflict that is going to make any rebuilding difficult," said Allan Lichtman, professor and presidential historian at American University in Washington. "I think it's incredibly dangerous. This invoking of the military does almost amount to an implicit charge of treason. I just hope people step back from the rhetorical brink and let the court system do its work," he said. Barbara Ehrenreich, a Florida-based political commentator and author of a recent book on the history of war, described the accusations from the Bush camp as "alarming." "There's always an issue in this country on whether the military is really under civilian control," she said, adding that Democrats were routinely accused by Republicans and the military establishment of weakness. The charges from Bush bore a resemblance to rhetorical appeals to the military heard amid power struggles in "banana republics" and other less-developed democracies, Ehrenreich said. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Hundreds of Overseas Ballots Rejected <http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/ap/20001117/el/recount_overseas_5.html> By BRENT KALLESTAD Associated Press Writer Friday November 17 TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) - More than 1,000 overseas absentee ballots were thrown out Friday as Republicans complained of a coordinated challenge by Democrats, particularly against ballots from military personnel. In some counties, half or nearly all of the ballots were rejected, many of them military ballots that apparently didn't have postmarks. Orange County, for example, rejected 117 of its 147 overseas ballots. ``The party of the man who wants to be the next commander-in-chief is trying to throw out the votes of the men and women he will be commanding,'' charged Jim Post, a Republican lawyer in Duval County, where 107 ballots were rejected. ``We had a lot of ballots with no postmarks so we had to declare them invalid,'' said Dick Carlberg, assistant elections supervisor in Duval County. Thomas Spencer, a Miami attorney for Bush, said the GOP legal team would weigh whether to sue this weekend. ``One of the problems with those ballots is it is so difficult under Florida and federal law that you almost have to be a rocket scientist to comply,'' he said. Earlier this week, Mark Herron, a Tallahassee lawyer helping shepherd Democratic presidential election lawsuits through the local courts, sent a five-page letter to Democratic attorneys throughout Florida giving them tips on how to lodge protestsagainst overseas ballots. Such protests must be lodged before the ballot is taken out of the envelope. The letter, given to The Associated Press by a Republican source, focused on protesting military ballots, which are assumed to be heavily in favor of Bush, and included a section on military postmarks. Herron didn't return a telephone call for comment Friday. Republicans circulated a letter dated Friday from Navy Capt. E.M DuCom, deputy director of the military postal service, who said military mail is required to be postmarked. But he added, ``There are instances when time constraints do not allow for proper postmarking/cancellation of the mail. The last flight may be departing the ship and the mail has to get on it.'' Ed Gillespie, a Republican strategist working for Bush in Florida, said 110 of 113 write-in ballots, mostly from military forces, were invalidated by officials in Miami-Dade County. He said more than half were thrown out because they had no witness or witness address listed but ``the form doesn't indicate that a witness is necessary.'' With all but about a few counties reporting, Bush was leading Gore by more than 600 votes, including overseas totals and those already certified by the state, an AP survey showed. Counties have until noon Saturday to report their results to Secretary of State Katherine Harris (news - external web site), who will not be able to certify the election until after the Florida Supreme Court meets Monday to hear arguments about ongoing hand recounts in South Florida. But the latest battle was over the overseas ballots. ``There are more attorneys than there are ballots,'' said Bob Edwards, Chairman of the Republican Executive Committee for Walton County, where five votes were tossed out, including those of four people who had already voted absentee. More than three-quarters of Orange County's 147 overseas absentee ballots were rejected by that county's canvassing board. Supervisor of Elections Bill Cowles said he was shocked by that number but attributes the 117 rejections to voters failing to keep their records current. However, Republicans handed out an affidavit from the chief postal clerk of the aircraft carrier USS John F. Kennedy to counter Democratic challenges to envelopes without postmarks. ``It is not unusual for mail being sent by naval personnel, whether embarked on naval vessels or otherwise, not to have a postmark,'' said Edgardo Rodriguez. In Hillsborough County, 74 of the 135 overseas ballots were rejected after Democrats raised concerns about postmark or signature problems. Alachua County rejected half of the 56 overseas ballots received. St. Lucie rejected 13 of 14 and Lake County, all five. The overseas counting process was painstakingly slow in some counties, with canvassing board members taking several minutes to discuss whether to accept or reject each ballot. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- GOP Goes To War Over Military Votes Sunday,November 19, 2000 By DEBORAH ORIN Led by Gulf War commander Norman Schwarzkopf, allies of George W. Bush angrily accused Team Gore yesterday of "going to war" against overseas ballots from U.S. troops. Schwarzkopf, in a statement, said it was sad that troops "facing danger on a daily basis" were denied the right to vote "because of some technicality out of their control." Montana Gov. Marc Racicot, speaking for Bush, charged: "The vice president's lawyers have gone to war against the men and women who serve in our Armed Forces in an effort to win at any cost." He estimated that 900 to 1,100 military ballots - and possibly as many as 1,400, according to some reports - were disqualified on Democratic challenges over issues like the lack of a dated postmark. Gore aides deny deliberately challenging troops, but Gore spokesman Doug Hattaway said the vice president's campaign is "happy" that Bush didn't get as many votes from overseas ballots as he'd expected. "Gov. Bush did not receive the number of votes he expected to receive in the overseas ballots, and we expect to make up the difference in [hand counts] in South Florida," Hattaway said. The overseas ballots went nearly 2-1 for Bush, more than tripling his lead from 300 to 931. Some independent analysts voiced concern that Team Gore's effort to block military ballots will badly hurt him if he becomes commander-in-chief. "If it is true that Democratic lawyers targeted the military votes, then it's going to be a real problem for him if he is elected," said University of Virginia professor/analyst Larry Sabato. "This kind of story lives forever in the military - that someone might become commander-in-chief by having his representatives try to disqualify every available military ballot on the basis that they'd be for Bush." Florida law is contradictory on whether an overseas ballot must have a postmark to be counted or can be dated and signed inside. Officials at the military postal service concede that military mail, through no fault of the sender, can lack a postmark because it was rushed onto the first available plane. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Allegations of voting rights violations need investigation Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting <www.fair.org> November 17, 2000 Since November 7, major media outlets have devoted enormous attention to the aftermath of the presidential election in Florida. But one critical aspect of this story has received relatively little attention: the allegations of a pattern of voting irregularities and discrimination against African-Americans and other minority groups that may violate the 15th Amendment and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Upon request from major civil rights groups, including the NAACP and the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, the Justice Department is deciding whether to pursue a federal investigation into allegations of significant harassment of minority voters in Florida and elsewhere throughout the country. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 makes it illegal to intimidate, threaten, coerce or prevent any individual from exercising his or her right to vote. These are some of the disturbing and highly newsworthy charges that deserve more media attention: --Charles Weaver, publisher of Community Voice, a Fort Myers African American weekly paper, witnessed "intimidation, harassment and apparent illegal activity" at a polling place he visited. ''There were illegal poll watchers, threatening people, telling them, 'I know where you work. You're going to get fired,''' Weaver told the Inter Press Service (11/14/00). The same article reported that Tallahassee police set up traffic checks at the entrance to a polling place in a black neighborhood; that police in Newport News, Va. stopped people at checkpoints; and some black voters were turned away from polls in St. Louis for not having voter registration cards, even though registration cards were not required from white voters. --In an NAACP public hearing held in Miami (C-Span, 11/11/00), Stacy Powers, a former police officer who currently serves as news director for Tampa radio station WTMP, spoke of witnessing numerous voting irregularities in her election day travels through city neighborhoods. Powers testified that she saw people being turned away from several polling places in the black community after being told their names were not on voting lists. When Powers reminded poll workers that an individual can legally sign an affidavit and vote even if their name isn't on an official list, she said, she was ejected from several polling places (Daily News, 11/17/00). -- Miami's Donnise DeSouza testified that she was denied the right to vote after being shuttled to several polling places and told her name was not on the list. When she checked with the elections board the next day, she said, she found her name was in fact on the list. Many other voters were told they'd been dropped from the rolls as convicted felons, even though they had never been arrested, and that names of black college students who registered this summer never showed up on voter lists, according to the NAACP hearings (Daily News, 11/17/00). --According to the New York Times (11/17/00), more than 26,000 ballots were disqualified in the largely Republican area of Duval County-- four times the total in 1996. The Times notes that nearly 9,000 of these ballots were cast in predominately African-American communities around Jacksonville, which registered support for Al Gore over George Bush at a ten-to-one ratio. (The November 17 Daily News places the number of rejected African-American votes in Duval County at more than 12,000, nearly 60 percent of disqualified ballots). --Derek Drake, an editor of the black weekly newspaper Central Florida Advocate, told the London Financial Times (11/16/00) that Haitian Americans and Hispanics, unlike whites, were often asked for two forms of identification. "There was either something of a conspiratorial nature going on or there was mass incompetence," Drake said. In a recent column for the Los Angeles Syndicate (11/12/00), the Reverend Jesse Jackson noted that ballot boxes in black communities went uncounted, voters were turned away after being told there were no ballots left, and Creole speakers were not allowed to assist Haitian immigrants voting for the first time. Such exclusionary voting practices are hardly limited to Florida, or to racial minorities. According to a Federal Election Commission report cited by the Center for an Accessible Society, more than 20,000 U.S. polling places fail to meet the minimal requirements of accessibility, depriving people with disabilities of their fundamental right to vote. (Some of their stories are documented by the Center's magazine, Ragged Edge Online, at <http://www.raggededgemagazine.com/1100/1100votestory.htm>.) In New York City, Columbia University journalism students reported that citywide voting irregularities included broken ballot booths, the denial of translation assistance and insufficient instructions given to first-time Russian voters hoping to support a write-in candidate, and the transposing of the Chinese characters for "Republican" and "Democrat" on wall posters at polling places and on columns in ballot machines (City Limits Weekly, 11/13/00). As Juan Gonzalez of the Daily News noted (11/17/00), "Congress passed the Voting Rights Act specifically to dismantle the Jim Crow laws -- including poll taxes and literacy tests -- that kept blacks from voting in the South for most of the 20th Century." Major media should investigate the allegations of fraud, harassment, intimidation and voter profiling in Florida and throughout the country, to determine whether or not the 2000 election included civil rights violations akin to latter-day Jim Crow voter discrimination. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Voters Beware: Intervention In The Name Of Democracy By Deirdre Griswold Nov. 23, 2000 Workers World How many times in recent days have we heard politicians and media pundits invoke the "will of the people"? Once the messy recounts are over and a president has been chosen, they say, the government can go about its normal business of carrying out the "will of the people." That is the American Way, the great democratic process that begins at the ballot box in the United States. The problem with this view is that, stuffed ballot boxes or not, U.S. elections certainly do NOT serve "the will of the people." This political system was designed to uphold the will of the privileged few. It didn't start with this election, but has been going on for over 200 years. However, the false issue of democracy has been used so often by administrations in Washington to intervene around the globe that a short review of how elections are used to advance imperialist schemes is in order. EXCUSE FOR YUGOSLAV INTERVENTION The claim by "experts" in Washington that elections in some other country have been flawed has been used more than once as an excuse for intervention. First comes political and economic pressure. Then, if that doesn't work, there may be outright military invasion. The most recent and flagrant example of this is, of course, the massive intervention of the U.S. and European capitalist countries in Yugoslavia's presidential election. Little effort was made to conceal the millions spent on posters, fax machines, television ads and other means to propel the candidacy of Vojislav Kostunica. This plus threats of a new war and promises to rebuild the shattered country evidently succeeded in winning him the popular vote. We say evidently because, now that the media are paying so much attention to the U.S. election, it is obvious that there are many, many ways to change the outcome of voting-- from "losing" ballots to intimidating voters to disenfranchising large numbers of people. Maybe this didn't happen in Yugoslavia, but it has certainly happened here, in the country that appointed itself to decide if Yugoslavia's elections were fair. Why does the U.S. ruling class prefer Kostunica to former President Slobodan Milosevic? "Democracy" hasn't got a thing to do with it. Kostunica is committed to accepting economic and political dictates from the U.S., the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. Foreign corporations are already taking the measure of Yugoslavia's state-owned industry, which the new "reformers" are preparing to sell to the highest bidder. THE MAKING OF PRESIDENT YELTSIN The loudest shouting about democracy can be in reality the excuse for massive election fraud. With the help of spin masters in the media, the people chosen by Washington to carry out its agenda are given "legitimacy" in elections bought and paid for by the U.S. For example, the International Monetary Fund openly gave Boris Yeltsin a $10-billion loan just before the Russian election in 1996 to buy him the presidency. It allowed him to outspend the Communist Party candidate, Gennadi Zhu ganov, by 10,000 to one at a time of great economic crisis. There, too, the clear threat that there would be a dangerous return to the Cold War if the left won helped tip the vote. "Democracy is served," said all the Western commentators when Yeltsin won. He soon became the most unpopular leader in Russian history, earning a 5-percent approval rating that put him below Ivan the Terrible and Rasputin. And no wonder. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, living conditions for the masses in all its former republics have deteriorated more sharply than did conditions in the capitalist West after the stock market crash and Great Depression of the 1930s. All this has been done in the name of "American democracy." Should we be so surprised at how hollow that now turns out to be? Some of the bloodiest conflicts of recent times have come after U.S. pressure actually prevented a real election from taking place. ELECTION SABOTAGED IN VIETNAM Take the U.S. war against Vietnam, for example--that ruinous, one-sided, high-tech assault on a poor peasant country trying to break free of colonial bondage. Its roots go back to 1954, when the Vietnamese liberation forces had just defeated the French colonialists at Dien Bien Phu. Under enormous pressure from the U.S. at international peace talks in Geneva, the Vietnamese reluctantly agreed to a temporary partition of their country. Within two years, however, there were supposed to be nationwide elections. Not one among all the international experts on Southeast Asia doubted that, if real elections were held, the next president of Vietnam would be Ho Chi Minh. He was the hero of the independence movement, having led the fight against both the French and Japanese colonialists for decades. The nationwide elections were never held. The Eisenhower administration dug up Ngo Dinh Diem, an expatriate living in New Jersey, and spent millions to establish him as "president of South Vietnam." In October 1963, after the U.S. military had become directly involved in Vietnam and massive demonstrations had begun in the south against the Diem dictatorship, the Kennedy administration had Diem and his brother assassinated so it could put in someone less known and hated by the Vietnamese people. What the CIA giveth, it can taketh away. Thus began the hand-picking of a long string of "heads of state" in South Vietnam by the great democrats in the U.S. ruling class--until a furious anti-war movement at home and an unstoppable resistance in both north and south Vietnam combined to force an end to the war. ITALY, LEBANON, CHILE, GUYANA, ETC. In the book "Rogue State," published by Common Courage press, former State Department officer William Blum summarizes a long history of U.S. efforts, mostly successful, to throw elections in countries where there were strong political movements that resisted control by U.S. corporations and banks. Blum shows how U.S. operatives, often but not always working for the Central Intelligence Agency, carried out a variety of dirty tactics to affect elections in the Philippines (the 1950s), Lebanon (the 1950s), Indonesia (1955), Vietnam (1955), British Guiana/Guyana (1953-64), Japan (1958-1970s), Nepal (1959), Laos (1960), Brazil (1962), Dominican Republic (1962), Guatemala (1963), Bolivia (1966), Chile (1964-70), Portugal (1974-5), Jamaica (1976), Spain (1981, 82), Panama (1984,1989), Nicaragua (1984, 1990), Haiti (1987-89) and Bosnia (1998). ALL THESE INTERVENTIONS ARE WELL DOCUMENTED. As long as this list may seem, it does not exhaust the subject. Much information has come out in recent years, for example, on how in 1948 the CIA spent millions to produce a victory of the Christian Democrats in Italy against the Communist Party. The CP enjoyed immense popularity among the workers because it had led the Partisan resistance to Mussolini's fascist regime. What does all this show us about the recent U.S. presidential elections and the "will of the people"? That when the issue has been settled, regardless of which candidate and party come out on top, the Pentagon, the CIA, the State Department and all the other institutions of the state that have been shaped over many generations to serve the interests of the class of super-rich capitalists will continue to do their thing. However, the peek that millions of up-to-now unaware people in this country have had at the sordid workings of the political system should bring out some healthy skepticism the next time the rulers of the empire try to enlist their support behind the export of "democracy" abroad via U.S. dollars and guns. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ===================================================== "Anarchy doesn't mean out of control. It means out of 'their' control." -Jim Dodge ====================================================== "Communications without intelligence is noise; intelligence without communications is irrelevant." -Gen. Alfred. M. Gray, USMC ====================================================== "It is not a sign of good health to be well adjusted to a sick society." -J. Krishnamurti ______________________________________________________________ To subscribe/unsubscribe or for a sample copy or a list of back issues, send appropriate email to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>. ______________________________________________________________ <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/">www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance—not soap-boxing—please! 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