-Caveat Lector- from: http://www.newsmakingnews.com/ Click Here: <A HREF="http://www.newsmakingnews.com/">NewsMakingNews Secret Connections Covert Operat…</A> ----- I CAN TELL YOU WHO LOST by Husayn Al-Kurdi © 2000 The Portland Free Press 10/21/00 Halloween came one week late this year. A corporate-fascist Democrat, an Oily Nazi born with a silver spoon in his mouth and a consumer advocate pretending to "revive" a "democracy" that never existed joined in conducting an electoral charade whose formal outcome is remains uncertain as we go to press. Although we do not have a declared winner, I can tell you who lost. We, the American people, and the people of the world, lost. The plutocracy selects, the beguiled voters elect and the most powerful and dangerous entity in known history is "confirmed" and thus certified as the system of choice. Every four years, we collectively practice falling off the turnip truck, pleasing our overlords and confirming their uncontested hegemony. Just as I can tell you who lost, I can identify the usual winners — those who have owned and operated the country for over 200 years. The distribution of membership in socio-economic classes has been a constant. In 1953, a study published by the University of Chicago assessed the class situation in the following terms: upper-upper 1.4% lower-upper 1.6% upper-middle 10% lower-middle 28% upper-lower 33% lower-lower 25% (source: M. Lloyd Warner, American Life: Dream and Reality, University of Chicago, 1953) Note that 86% of the population are in the "lower-middle" down to "lower-lower" category. The picture hasn’t changed much since then, or since 1776. As exemplified by the Bush Pit Vipers, the Clintons and Gores, et al., a Criminal Lawyer Politician (I repeat myself) Managerial Elite runs the political circus on behalf of itself and its sponsors. Muckraker Lincoln Steffens summarized the situation over a century ago when he declared, "That’s the system. It’s an organization of social treason, and the political boss is the chief traitor". Our "society" is run by its worst elements, as described by poet E.E. Cummings: "A politician is an arse upon which everyone has sat except a man". Although Nader is a reformist who seeks to make the system more palatable as opposed to uprooting it, he did accurately describe the two principal contestants for captain of the Titanic. We had the spectacle of a "Giant corporation running for president, disguised as a person" vs. a "Fork-tongued, Pinocchio-nosed certified political coward". Actually, the terms are interchangeable, with both Gore and Bush filling either description. Nader’s explicit goal was to gain 5% of the vote, get federal matching funds and turn the Greens into a "disciplinary watch-dog" on the Republicrats. He is undeniably pro-capitalism. His "consumer interest group" approach is part and parcel of the panoply of pseudo-"Alternatives" paraded by the Establishment to stultify popular aspirations. As Nader-hanger-on and erstwhile "progressive" figure Jim Hightower put it, "We better be building something new or these people are going to be in serious rebellion". Of course, Hightower hopes that "This ends up in the Democratic Party". Nader confirmed his system-enhancing thrust in Harper’s (September 2000): "Change invariably begins with people whom the defenders of the status quo denounce as agitators, communists, hippies, weirdoes. And then, 10 or 20 years later, after the changes have taken place, the Chamber of Commerce discovers that everybody’s profits have improved". The capitalist "bottom line" herein invoked is the very "principle" to be done away with as the practical basis for what currently passes itself off as "society". The Socialist Party Platform of 1912 describes a situation similar to our own, in which, "Under this system the industrial equipment of the nation has passed into the absolute control of a plutocracy", with "multitudes of unemployed" (we have up to 10 million homeless persons and many millions who are out of work but not "officially" unemployed) and "Republican and Democrat Parties reminding the faithful servants of the oppressors". Similar plaintsecho through our history, from the "Anti-Federalists" of the aborted Revolution of 1776 to a variety of populist and popular insurgencies spanning over over the past century. Whether at the birth of America, my father’s birth year (1912), the period when I was growing up (the 1950s) or the present day, the configuration of power and the system for which it stands has been a constant given. It has given us the world war, mass murder, brutal exploitation and insufferable oppression. As stated by Frederick T. Martin in Matthew Josephson’s The Robber Barons (1934): "It matters not one iota which political party is in power, or what President holds the reins of office. We are not politicians or public thinkers; we are the rich, we own America; we got it God knows how; but we intend to keep it if we can . . .". Two metaphors come to mind. One is that conjured up by Ace Hayes elsewhere in this issue — that of scorpions in a bottle: We the people stinging each other on command. The other involves a scenario in which they rattle our cage once too often, causing enough people to see the enemy clearly enough to start vanquishing it. Husayn Al-Kurdi is Editor of the Portland Free Press. Contact: Husayn Al-Kurdi ph: 503/625-7692 fax: 503/625-6150 e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ===== Florida Vote Fraud: ORANGE YOU GLAD THEY'RE COUNTING BY HAND? by Martin Cannon © 2000 A little more than a week ago I wrote a piece on vote fraud which now requires a few follow-up observations. November 9, the date of that piece, now seems like a more naïve era; we have learned to recognize that devilish fellow "chad" as a member of our election-day family, and we all know something of his deceptive ways. At that time, I made a couple of suggestions concerning the uses and abuses of chad -- suggestions that probably struck many readers as outrageous. But recent stories have borne out those concerns. Consider, for the moment, the problem of "taped chad." I wrote: "According to the "Washington Post" (November 9) roughly 100,000 Florida ballots listed no preference for the office of president, although votes were cast for lesser offices. While there are always a few such ballots in every election, can we actually believe that an astoundingly high percentage of Florida voters refused to register an opinion on the main race? It is far easier to accept that someone counting ballots simply applied small pieces of tape to cover the punched holes, before running the card through the tallying machine." Many probably scoffed at my suggestion that campaign "fixers" stuck small pieces of tape to a certain number of pro-Gore ballots. Today (November 18), the online magazine "Salon" carries an exactly similar charge -- in mirror image, originating from a Republican governor. Before proceeding, one should keep in mind that Republicans now have one purpose in mind: Convincing the public that manual vote recounting constitutes a form of "mind reading" -- and never mind the fact that Governor Bush once signed a law mandating hand recounts in his own state of Texas. Bush supporters routinely conjure up the specter of "Karnac the Magnificent." (Must conservatives be so robotic? Must they always repeat the line of the day, and even the joke of the day, in exactly the same words, over and over again?) You didn't need ESP to predict that propagandists would bolster the party line by hyperbolizing any real or alleged imperfections in the counting rooms. One of the chief hyperbolizers now appears to be Montana Governor Mark Racicot. Quoting from the Salon piece: "The Bush team has obtained sworn statements from recount workers in Palm Beach County, Racicot said, testifying to an evil new breed of chad, the "taped chad," in which a punched-out chad, apparently indicating a vote for Bush, was taped back onto the ballot. Among other allegations there: "Bush ballots were found in the Gore pile" in an act of "sabotage"; "ballots have been used as fans"; "ballots have Post-it notes on them"; elderly workers have been "exhausted" and "angry" and "fatigued." First, let's deal quickly with the subsidiary charges. I have no doubt that elderly workers are tired and frustrated, but that is to be expected: It is the Republicans who want this business done at a breakneck speed. The "fanning" business seems silly. Are we talking about only one or two instances? And is anyone claiming that ballots ended up misplaced or unfairly trashed? The allegation that Bush ballots ended up in the Gore pile is serious, and deserves investigation. We need names, numbers and other specifics. Until this information becomes available, everyone should keep in mind that the party making this allegation once also maintained (quite falsely) that Palm Beach was a Pat Buchanan stronghold. Republican spokesmen have also complained, in recent days, that vote counters are "swimming" in displaced chads. Oddly, this tableau has not appeared in any news footage, despite the many cameras in the counting rooms. Still, let us suppose that a few loosened chads have dropped onto floors or laps: So what? Many chads stayed in place by only one or two corners (indeed, this phenomenon is the whole point of a manual recount), and one would expect some of those bits of paper to fall away during the recount. Remember, under Florida law, a "swinging door" chad is a vote -- one that is every bit as valid as clean hole in the ballot. If a door swings wide open, the law views the ballot the same way. Now let's look into Ricicot's claims of taped chad. As a moment's thought will tell you, a taped chad will fool only a machine, not a by-hand examiner. A piece of tape will cover a punched hole, and thereby convince a tabulating machine that the elector had no choice for president. The human eye can rectify the problem which the machine missed. Thus, Ricicot is arguing in FAVOR of manual recounting! So much for the Republican propaganda line. Now let's go back to the key line in the Salon story: "...a punched-out chad, apparently indicating a vote for Bush, was taped back onto the ballot." Note that weasel word "apparently." If Ricicot really had a specific example of a "Bush" ballot taped up to look like a no-choice ballot, we'd have seen that damning piece of evidence splayed all across our television screens. Not only that. No "fixer" could hope to change an election by taping just one or two ballots. Obviously, anyone rigging an election would want to reconfigure dozens, hundreds, thousands of ballots in key precincts. In such precincts, one would expect to see a suspiciously high percentage of ballots offering an "undervote" -- defined as a ballot showing choices for lower offices, but not for president. And lo, there is indeed just such a suspicious pattern. Unfortunately for Ricicot's thesis, that pattern shows itself in Democratic, not Republican, areas. Indeed, this pattern goes right to the heart of Republican objections to a manual recount. According to the Palm Beach Post of November 12: "Nearly half of the 28,036 ballots that Palm Beach County tossed out in the presidential election came from areas of the county that are mostly black or elderly, a Palm Beach Post computer analysis shows. Those ballots were thrown out because the voter either didn't vote for president or voted for two presidential candidates. "Almost 10 percent of the ballots cast in precincts where most of the voters are over age 65 were thrown out, the Post found. And 16 percent of the ballots cast in majority-black precincts were thrown out -- more than double the percentage of ballots thrown out from overwhelmingly white precincts." The piece goes on to allege that "poor eyesight" may have caused the under- and over-voted ballots. (Of course, the mainstream media will go to any length to blame accident rather than conspiracy.) We are supposed to believe that black Floridians have worse eyesight than whites. Oddly enough, eyesight improved when the same voters expressed preferences in the non-presidential races. According to the Palm Beach County elections office, undervoting and overvoting affected fewer than one percent of the Senate race ballots, as opposed to more than four percent in the main contest. And why were optometric concerns more worrisome in Palm Beach THIS year, as opposed to previous election years? Nearly 11,000 ballots in Palm Beach were undervotes, displaying no choice for President. That number more than doubles the 1996 amount, according to the Palm Beach County elections office. Apparently, people see worse now than they did four years ago. Either the Center for Disease Control should investigate this sudden outbreak of "poor eyesight," or we should all suspect electoral hugger-mugger. Governor Ricicot would have us believe that we should blame Democrats for any odd pieces of tape hand-counters may have noticed on various ballots. If so, then why does the undervote pattern consistently work to Republican advantage? Why would Democrats invalidate their own votes? Don't confuse those 11,000 undervotes with the roughly 19,000 "overvotes" in Palm Beach county, a problem which has received far more publicity. "Overvotes" refer to ballots punched twice for the same office. Republican propagandists (such as dateless wonder Ann Coulter) maintain that those mis-punched ballots occurred because Democrats cater to "stupid" people. Granted, the stupid are with us always -- but the number of overvotes in Palm Beach and other pro-Democratic areas far exceeds what we've seen in previous election years. We cannot blame that bloated number solely on the notorious butterfly ballot, because the overvote problem occurred in other areas of Florida, where voters faced standard ballot designs. Some news accounts have offered a darker explanation for the double-punching surge. A story published in the London Times of November 13 (but oddly ignored in this country) reports that Democratic leaders have been looking into the many claims that black voters received pre-punched ballots. There can be no innocent explanation for such a situation. (Unfortunately, we do not yet have names or other specifics attached to these claims.) At this point, Ricicot's fulminations resemble a pre-emptive strike. By raising the issue of taped chad first, the Republican party is now positioned to deflect blame when election workers start complaining in front of tape recorders and TV cameras (as they surely will) that they encountered mysterious additional artifacts when they eyeballed individual ballots. I suspect that taped chad may become a big issue for at least one or two news cycles. GOP spinners will try to present the problem as proof of Democratic, not Republican, chicanery. Eventually, moderate pundits will mutter predictable banalities about "problems on both sides." No-one in the chattering classes will focus on the key question: Where does the undervoting take place? Does the pattern favor Gore or Bush? Since the undervote problem consistently works against Gore, we know which side to blame. Also noteworthy: Pro-GOP print hacks now loudly bray about a handful of convicted felons who, allegedly, were allowed to vote in the 2000 election. Oddly, these pundits never mention the voters who have complained that FALSE reports of felony convictions prevented election participation. (Reuters, November 15.) Nor do these pundits ever discuss the many and persistent reports of black voters intimidated from visiting the voting booth by police harassment. Nor do we hear much discussion of voters in pro-Gore areas who were asked for multiple forms of identification. Nor have we been given any reasonable explanation for the "missing" ballot boxes found in various Miami precincts. (Reuters, November 12.) Note the pattern. Voting "irregularities" regularly take place among Gore's people. If, as the Bushies now proclaim, the Democrats practice vote fraud, why on earth would they injure their own numbers? ----- ----- Aloha, He'Ping, Om, Shalom, Salaam. Em Hotep, Peace Be, All My Relations. Omnia Bona Bonis, Adieu, Adios, Aloha. Amen. Roads End <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! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'—with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright frauds—is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. 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