Saddam is to be sentenced any minute. The timing on this has obviously been manipulated — freaking disgraceful. If ever a trial needed to be professional and transparent, this one did … overwhelming evidence has already determined the mans fate; there’s nothing to lose by dotting the I’s and crossing the T’s with care. Yet now, as sectarian violence escalates, anything that happens next simply appears to be political, cynical or vengeance-based.
And the the blood sacrifice, as Mike Whitney tells us below, could well be our own. When you read actual reports, you get the feeling that the Rosy Glow in Rummy and Dub’s cheeks has to be painted on by Karen each morning … and will turn to gray the day the helicopters begin a hasty evacuation.
Just more Kabuki Theatre that history will vilify.
Jude
Baghdad clamped under heavy security ahead of expected Saddam verdict
Associated Press, Boston Herald
Saturday, November 4, 2006
BAGHDAD, Iraq - U.S. and Iraqi forces set up extra checkpoints in Baghdad, boosted patrols and blocked traffic across a main bridge in advance of Sunday’s expected guilty verdict against Saddam Hussein.
The ousted dictator has been on trial for murder and crimes against humanity and could get the death penalty. Violence is already running high, with police finding the bodies of 87 torture victims throughout the capital between 6 a.m. Thursday and 6 p.m. Friday.
A verdict is expected to set off further bloodshed, underscoring the trial’s failure to bring reconciliation to a country fractured ever deeper along sectarian lines.
An aide to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said authorities are clamping a 12-hour curfew on Baghdad and three surrounding provinces starting at 6 a.m. Sunday. Not just cars, but people will be barred from the streets.
The curfew will cover all of Baghdad province, Salahuddin province, which includes Saddam’s hometown of Tikrit, and the Sunni insurgent hotbeds of Diyala and Anbar provinces.
Leave for all military personnel has been canceled indefinitely and vacationing soldiers recalled to active duty.
New checkpoints sprang up around main roads, including within the heavily fortified Green Zone that houses Iraqi government offices and the U.S. and British embassies. Larger than usual numbers of policemen and U.S. troops patrolled city streets, while U.S. Army Stryker armored vehicles blocked traffic on both sides of the al-Jumhuriyah Bridge, one of the capital’s most heavily guarded because it carries traffic past the Green Zone.
“We received orders to tighten security measures and to use any available policemen to tighten the security,” police Lt. Ali Abbas said.
Any violence would be met with a stern response, said a spokesman for the Interior Ministry, which commands the police.
“We warn anyone who intends to exploit this event that our response will be tough and severe,” police Brig. Abdul-Karim Khalaf told The Associated Press without elaborating.
Many of Saddam’s fellow Sunni Arabs are predicting a firestorm if the ex-president is sentenced to death. On the other hand, majority Shiites, who were persecuted under Saddam but now dominate the government, are likely to be enraged if he escapes the gallows.
Setting the tone, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, a Shiite, said late last month that he expects “this criminal tyrant will be executed.” He said that would help break the will of Saddam followers in the largely Sunni Arab-led insurgency against U.S. forces and their Iraqi government allies.
Saddam and seven co-defendants - including a half brother - have been on trial since Oct. 19, 2005, for their alleged roles in the deaths of about 150 Shiites in the town of Dujail after an assassination attempt against the president in 1982.
A second trial against Saddam - for alleged genocide against the Kurds - began in August and more charges are expected to follow. It is unclear whether those cases would move forward if Saddam is condemned to hang.
On Wednesday, one of Saddam’s lawyers said a death sentence would “open the gates of hell” to the roughly 140,000 U.S. troops in Iraq.
Bushra al-Khalil, a Lebanese lawyer who was thrown out of Saddam’s trial in May, also accused President Bush of exploiting the verdict - which comes two days before hotly contested U.S. Congressional elections - for “electoral purposes.”
In a letter addressed to the presiding judge, Saddam’s 10-member defense team, including former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark, wrote that it would be premature to deliver the verdict on Sunday “because the court did not receive the final defense statements yet.” It was not possible to confirm that the judges had received the letter.
Hussein Verdict Near After Trial With ‘Serious Shortcomings’
Ellen Knickmeyer, Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, November 4, 2006
BAGHDAD, Nov. 3 — The Americans serving as legal advisers for Saddam Hussein’s trial likened it to the judgment at Nuremberg. But as the trial nears its conclusion, with announcement of a verdict scheduled for Sunday, they admit the reality turned out messier.
From the day the proceedings opened 12 1/2 months ago, spectacle attracted more attention than substance. Images of Hussein’s co-defendants coming to court in their underwear and sitting with their backs to judges, and of Hussein himself shouting with his finger perpetually thrust in the air, stole the scene from the aging, downtrodden Iraqis testifying to wrongs done them by their country’s former leader.
Outside the courtroom, the onset of sectarian killing between Sunni Arabs and Shiite Muslims, the majority sect that now rules Iraq, made the U.S.-backed quest to convict Hussein increasingly irrelevant for many Iraqis. The alleged crime for which he and seven others were being tried occurred more than two decades ago, in 1982, when an attempt to assassinate Hussein in the Shiite town of Dujail unleashed a lethal campaign of retaliation against its residents.
“What Saddam did to Dujail is the same as this government is doing now,” said Naeem Khalid, a 42-year-old taxi driver in Baghdad’s Karrada district. “At least what Saddam did was in self-defense.”
Nevertheless, when the Iraqi High Tribunal announces the verdict for Hussein and his co-defendants, the ruling will be of tremendous importance, Western legal experts say.
“It was quite a messy trial, as the whole world knows,” said Michael P. Scharf, a professor of international law at Case Western Reserve University who advised Iraqi officials during the trial. But “all the arguments about a fair trial are pretty much moot if the evidence is not in question,” he added.
The trial is the first of its kind against a former leader to be conducted in his own country, by his own people. As in the Nuremberg trials, when the World War II Allies prosecuted leading Nazi figures for war crimes, world opinion and history will judge whether the new Iraqi government and its U.S. patrons conducted a fair trial or a victor’s vendetta.
In addition, Hussein’s trial may also set an unintended but potentially crucial legal precedent for the Bush administration, Scharf said. By cracking down on Dujail in response to one assassination attempt and in a bid to discourage others, Hussein was dealing with a continuing threat, like President Bush after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Scharf said.
“The biggest question of our time, that we’re living through right now, is where do you draw the line on war in terror? This is the first trial in modern time to address that issue,” Scharf said by telephone from the United States.
“It’s a question the United States is facing right now in Afghanistan, Iraq, Guantanamo Bay,” Scharf said. The findings “are going to be just as applicable to the United States as to Saddam Hussein.”
In Baghdad, U.S. officials close to the trial deny that the announcement of the verdict, set for two days before U.S. congressional elections, was timed to give a boost to the Republican Party.
“If we had that kind of power to set dates like that, the trial would have been concluded in about five months,” said one of the officials, who all spoke on condition they not be identified further. “The fact of the matter is: No way.”
Testimony from more than 80 Iraqis laid out the case over 40 court sessions: On July 8, 1982, while Iraq was locked in a war with both Iran and Shiite rebels allied with Iran, attackers armed with automatic weapons opened fire as Hussein’s motorcade toured Dujail. “Bullets were in front of me and here and there,” Hussein testified. “It was God who wanted to save me.”
The retribution all but wiped out Dujail. Of 148 townspeople charged, all signed confessions — allegedly under torture — and were condemned. Mistreatment killed 46 of them before they could be executed. Ten of the 148 were boys ages 11 to 17. The government held them in prison until they turned 18, then hanged them.
Hundreds more townspeople were forced to a remote desert camp, where many men, women and children died. Bulldozers razed Dujail’s orchards.
When the Americans led the invasion of Iraq in 2003, they made a priority of prosecuting Hussein, both for the Dujail incident and in larger cases involving alleged campaigns of genocide against the Shiites of southern Iraq and the Kurds of the north. The trial of Hussein and others in connection with the so-called Anfal campaign aimed at exterminating the Kurds in 1988 is currently in progress.
The U.S. government spent $128 million in funds earmarked for Iraqi reconstruction just on exhuming five mass graves, and poured millions more in U.S. funds into renovating the courthouse in Baghdad’s Green Zone, training Iraqi court officials and conducting and guarding the proceedings. Preparations included repeat viewings of “Judgment at Nuremberg,” a 1961 Hollywood film, Western officials said.
American advisers to the Dujail trial say it was the yellowing files of Hussein’s bureaucracy — execution orders allegedly signed by Hussein, reports held together with straight pins or bound with shoelaces by the officials who prepared them — that provided much of the evidence linking the defendants with the retaliation in the town. Hussein’s own courtroom statements could be equally damning, according to Scharf and the U.S. officials in Baghdad.
“Where is the crime?” Hussein demanded at one point, speaking of his government’s confiscation of the orchards.
“I signed that decision,” he continued, “and nobody forced me to sign that decision.”
“I am Saddam Hussein, and at the time of leadership, I am responsible,” he said.
Lapsing into the presidential third person, he added, “It is not his habit to rely on others.”
What many saw as courtroom antics distracted from the testimony and drew international criticism. Co-defendants frequently stood up in court to declare, “Long live Saddam Hussein!” Hussein repeatedly cursed the tribunal’s three judges, the U.S. occupation and U.S. leaders, ordering Bush “to hell with his father.”
A co-defendant, Barzan Ibrahim, Hussein’s half brother and former security chief, at times attended court in his underwear, turning his back to judges to show his contempt. Tariq Aziz, a witness and once Hussein’s top envoy, testified in his pajamas. Hussein staged hunger strikes. He and his fellow accused frequently walked out on or boycotted the proceedings.
At other times, especially as the trial wore on, Hussein could be decorous and easily the most charismatic figure in the courtroom. He bested his prosecutors in pointed exchanges and sometimes expressed sympathy for weeping witnesses, his copy of the Koran always at hand.
Officials in Iraq’s Shiite-led government tried several times to rein in the defendants, triggering complaints by international rights groups; Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and some U.N. agencies all faulted the proceedings.
“Undoubtedly, there have been serious, serious shortcomings,” said Richard Dicker, director of Human Rights Watch’s international justice program.
The trial’s chief judge resigned midway through the proceedings, complaining that Shiite and Kurdish political leaders and officials were pressuring him for being too easy on Hussein. The judge in line to succeed him was blocked by Shiite officials because he had been a member of Hussein’s Baath Party. Such intervention “constitutes improper political interference and undermining of the political independence of the court,” Dicker said.
Judges allowed prosecuting attorneys to introduce evidence without giving the defense a chance to preview it, something Dicker called “trial by ambush.”
As the defense was laying out its own evidence near the end of the trial, the new chief judge, Raouf Rasheed Abdel-Rahman, shut down testimony with some defense witnesses still waiting to take the stand. “We are done with witnesses. . . . If those 26 were not able to make the case, then 100 will not,” Abdel-Rahman declared.
The turmoil outside also intruded. Gunmen assassinated three of Hussein’s lawyers and other lawyers working for his co-defendants.
“It’s fair to say that really the tribunal failed to meet key fair-trial standards in its conduct of this Dujail trial,” Dicker said by telephone from New York. The failures, he said, will “put into serious question the legitimacy of the verdict.”
If the verdict for Hussein is guilty and the sentence death, the 69-year-old former dictator would go to the gallows. Western analysts differed over whether such an outcome could be supported.
Dicker rejected the idea that Hussein convicted himself with his courtroom boasts. “I was never clear what the scope of the responsibility he was assuming was,” Dicker said.
Scharf, on the other hand, described Hussein’s statements of accountability as capping the case and called the procedural shortcomings incidental.
A five-judge panel has been preparing the verdicts for months. Charged with capital crimes, in addition to Hussein, are Ibrahim and former vice president Taha Yassin Ramadan; the rest of the defendants were comparatively low-ranking Baath Party functionaries and are believed by observers to have the best chance of acquittal.
Any convictions would automatically go to a nine-judge appellate panel. The panel has unlimited time to rule, but once it does, any sentences must be carried out within 30 days.
Iraq’s Defense Ministry announced Friday that it was putting its soldiers on alert and canceling vacations in anticipation of the judges’ ruling.
“This is a precaution in case a verdict is issued against the tyrant, no matter what the verdict might be,” said Mohammed al-Askari, a ministry spokesman.
Saddam Verdict Could Be November Surprise
Sunday’s verdict in the trial of Saddam Hussein could be a November surprise for President Bush.
CBS
Nov 3, 2006
Three years after his capture, Saddam Hussein may be hanged if an Iraqi court finds him guilty of killing nearly 150 Shiite villagers while he was dictator.
Some Iraqis never thought they’d see this day. But will the first trial verdict after the U.S. invasion bring justice?
Jamal Dajani broadcasts Arab stories for American audiences at LINK TV.
“Many people believe the trial is a charade, that it has not been done with balance and fairness,” said Dajani.
He says the 9-month trial was riddled with problems. Among them: Hussein’s defiant outbursts and the killing of three defense lawyers.
The trial was supposed to unite Iraqis behind their new government.
“They thought perhaps if we showed Arab world or Middle East we’ll bring the criminal to justice, then that will heal the divisions. Instead, it’s created divisions and controversy around it,” Dajani said.
With sectarian violence already soaring, Iraq’s army is preparing for a bloody backlash, whatever the verdict.
Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki says his Shiite party expects nothing less than a death sentence and Hussein’s fellow Sunnis may launch attacks if he gets it.
“Believe me, the doors of hell will be opened in Iraq and its neighbors of Iraq,” said defense lawyer Ziyad Kheleel Annajdawi.
Hussein’s lawyers complain Sunday’s verdict was timed to give President Bush and the Republicans a boost two days before close congressional elections.
CBS 5 Political Analyst Joe Tuman said, “I’m sure the administration hoped and hopes it will be vindication of their policies because they got Saddam Hussein.”
But more bloodshed could fuel Democrats’ attacks against the war.
Polls show seven in 10 Americans don’t think President Bush has a plan for Iraq.
“For those people who still worry about terrorism in this country, the question remains whether or not our being in Iraq assists us in fighting or gives terrorists a distraction and doesn’t make us any safer,” Tuman said.
Arab media are giving unprecedented attention to the midterm elections, even more coverage than the presidential elections in Egypt and Yemen.
Arabs hope Democrats win Congress and change U.S. foreign policy to pull out of Iraq.
Baghdad is Surrounded: “The American Era in the Middle East has ended”
By Mike Whitney, Information Clearing House
11/03/06
Don Rumsfeld is not a good leader. In fact, he is a very bad leader. Leadership is predicated on three basic factors: Strong moral character, sound judgment, and the ability to learn from one’s mistakes. None of these apply to Rumsfeld. As a result, every major decision that has been made in Iraq has been wrong and has cost the lives of countless Iraqis and American servicemen. This pattern will undoubtedly continue as long as Rumsfeld is the Secretary of Defense.
Here’s a simple test: Name one part of the occupation of Iraq which has succeeded?
Security? Reconstruction? De-Ba’athification? Dismantling the Iraqi military? Protecting Saddam’s ammo-dumps? Stopping the looting? Body armor? Coalition government? Abu Ghraib? Falluja? Even oil production has been slashed in half.
Every facet of the occupation has been an unmitigated disaster. Nothing has succeeded. Everything has failed.
Everything.
Never the less, Rumsfeld assures us that “these things are complicated” and that we should just “Back off”.
It was Rumsfeld’s decision to replace America’s first Iraqi Viceroy, General Jay Garner after Garner wisely advised that we maintain the Iraqi military, leave many of the Ba’athists in the government (to maintain civil society) and convene leaders from the three main groups (Sunni, Shia and Kurds) to form a coalition government. This didn’t square with Rumsfeld’s plans to revolutionize Iraqi society and transform it into a neoliberal Valhalla; so Garner was unceremoniously dumped for Kissinger’s protégé, Paul Bremer.
Once Bremer was installed, things started heading downhill fast and have only gotten worse ever since.
Apart from the immense damage to Iraqi society, the enormous human suffering, and the massive loss of life; there is also the astronomical cost of the war which has been purposely concealed by the Defense Dept. Originally, the war was supposed to “pay for itself in oil revenues”. (according to neocon Paul Wolfowitz) That, of course, never happened but, the real costs appeared in this week’s Washington Post in an article by Jim Wolf called “Pentagon Expands War-funding Push”. The article states:
“With the passage of the fiscal 2006 supplemental spending bill, war-related appropriations would total about $436.8 billion for Iraq, Afghanistan and enhanced security at military bases, the non-partisan Congressional Research Service said in a Sept 22 report….this is in addition to the more than $500 billion sought by President Bush in his baseline fiscal 2007 national defense request.”
That’s right; we’re spending a whopping $1 trillion a year for a war that we’re losing!
Still, don’t expect accountability from the Pentagon where taxpayer dollars are carelessly flung into the Mesopotamian black-hole with utter abandon. Heads never role because no one in charge ever accepts responsibility for their mistakes.
So, “Back off”!
On another matter, an editorial appeared in Tuesday’s New York Times, “The Untracked Guns of Iraq” which stated:
“More than 500,000 weapons were turned over to Iraqi Ministries of Defense and Interior since the American invasion –including rocket-propelled grenade launchers assault rifles, machine guns and sniper rifles—only 12,128 were properly recorded. Some 370,000 of these weapons, some of which are undoubtedly being used to kill American troops, were paid for by U.S. taxpayers, under the Orwellian-titled Iraq Relief and Reconstruction Fund.”
In other words, we’re handing over state-of-the-art weaponry to the men who are killing American troops and, yet, no one is held responsible? How does that work? Apparently, the buck never stops at the Rumsfeld War Department; it just gets passed along to until it lands on a swarthy-looking Middle Eastern fellow or perhaps a garrulous leftist railing against the war on his blogsite.
A growing number of establishment-elites are frustrated with Rumsfled’s bungling and are ready for a change. But that doesn’t matter because the Sec-Def has the backing of powerful constituents in the banking, corporate and defense industries as well as neoconservative aficionados in many of Washington’s preeminent think-tanks. He also has Bush’s support, which is a mere formality since Cheney and Rumsfeld run the government anyway. The bottom line is, Rumsfeld is “here to stay”.
The real problem with Rumsfeld is that he is incapable of thinking politically, and it’s impossible to win in war unless one has clearly defined political objectives.
After 3 and a half years of violence and mayhem we still know as little about the Iraqi resistance as we did in March 2003. This is inexcusable. In addition, there’s been no attempt to engage the representatives of the resistance in political dialogue. How can we possibly reach a political solution without dialogue and negotiation?
It is shortsighted in the extreme to think that violence-alone can produce a victory.
It will not.
In war, violence is not an end in itself; it is a means to achieving a political goal. The over-reliance on military force, absent any communication or negotiation with the enemy, shows a fundamental misunderstanding of the purpose of warfare.
An article by Dahr Jamail “US Military adopts Desperate Tactics” (IPS) illustrates this point:
“Increased violence is being countered by harsh new measures across the Sunni dominated al-Anbar province west of Baghdad. Thousands have been killed here by the Multi-National Forces (MNF) and Iraqi allies, and the situation is getting worse every day…..We have no role to play because the Americans always prefer violent solutions that have led from one disaster to another,” said on member of the Fallujah city council.
Here again, we see that “overwhelming force” without clearly defined political objectives just generates more violence. It is entirely futile, and yet, the policy remains unchanged.
Rumsfeld flattened Fallujah nearly 2 years ago thinking that the destruction of the city of 300,000 would “send a message” to the Sunnis; convincing them that it was useless to resist. His action, which was enthusiastically applauded by right-wing pundits and politicians in America, produced exactly the opposite response. The resistance is now stronger than ever, the attacks on American troops have increased dramatically, and al-Anbar province is no longer under U.S. control.
Anyone with even a superficial understanding of psychology could have predicted the outcome, but Rumsfeld blundered on with his iron-fisted tactics regardless of the facts.
Rumsfeld’s over-reliance on force has spread turmoil throughout the Sunni-heartland making it virtually ungovernable. The sectarian violence is now so bad that a leaked-Pentagon report prepared by the US Central Command says the country is in a state of “chaos”. This is the logical corollary of the Rumsfeld approach and it is unlikely to change.
For American troops in Iraq, there is a worse scenario than chaos; that is defeat. Patrick Cockburn’s 11-1-06 article “Baghdad is under Siege” in the UK Independent provides the chilling details of an armed Iraqi resistance which has now cut off supply lines to the capital and threatens to make America’s ongoing occupation impossible. Cockburn says:
“Sunni insurgents have cut the roads linking the city to the rest of Iraq. The country is being partitioned as militiamen fight bloody battles for control of towns and villages north and south of the capital….The country has taken another lurch towards disintegration. Well armed Sunni tribes now largely surround Baghdad and are fighting Shia militias to complete the encirclement. The Sunnis insurgents seem to be following a plan to control all approaches to Baghdad.”
Baghdad is surrounded and the predicament for American troops is increasingly tenuous. The battle is being lost on all fronts. So, what is Secretary Rumsfeld’s response to these new and urgent developments?
Rumsfeld held a press conference in which he blasted his critics for “focusing too much on the bad news coming out of Iraq” and announced the launching of a new public relations campaign which will attempt to elicit greater support for the ongoing occupation. The Pentagon plans to “develop messages” to respond to the negative news-coverage and, as Rumsfeld said, “correct the record.”
“Correct the record”? Is the Pentagon planning to “repackage” the war even while the Resistance is tightening its grip around the capital?
What type of madness is this? This is not the behavior of serious men. This is just more of the same “faith-based,” public relations hucksterism which leads nowhere. The worsening situation in Iraq will not improve by ramping-up the propaganda-machine, appealing to American chauvinism, or attacking critics of the war. This is real life; not some skit that’s been choreographed to dupe the Washington press corps. We need leaders who are capable of grasping the situation in realistic terms and initiating political dialogue with the warring parties. All the cheerleading and yellow ribbons in the world will not create a viable solution for the impending catastrophe.
The American people are way ahead of Rumsfeld on the issue of Iraq. Nearly 70% now believe that the war was a “mistake” and a clear majority is looking for candidates who will support a change in policy. A poll conducted by the New York Times/CBS News on 11-2-06 shows that “a substantial majority of Americans expect Democrats to reduce or end American military involvement in Iraq if they win control of Congress.” That tells us in stark terms that the public wants to “get out now”. The November 7 midterms will be a referendum on Bush’s “war of choice” and a flat rejection of the conflict which Rumsfeld so desperately wants to popularize. So far, the Democrats are showing substantial leads in all the polls.
The media has been a steadfast ally to the Bush troupe and given them a “free pass” throughout the conflict. They successfully drew an Iron Curtain around Iraq and kept the public from knowing about the 650,000 men, women and children were savagely butchered in Bush’s Petrol-War. Despite their best-efforts, however, public opinion has shifted away from the present policy and the American people are looking for an end to the fighting.
Rumsfeld’s plan for “a new kind of war” that depends on high-tech, laser-guided weaponry, massive counterinsurgency operations, and a submissive “embedded” media has fallen on hard times. The tremors can already be felt from Baghdad to Washington D.C. As Richard Haass, President of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) said in the November issue of Foreign Affairs, “The American era in the Middle East, the forth in the region’s modern history, has ended.” All that’s left is to sweep up the pieces of a failed policy and head home.
What’s right and good doesn’t come naturally. You have to stand up and fight for it - as if the cause depends on you, because it does. Allow yourself that conceit - to believe that the flame of Democracy will never go out as long as there’s one candle in your hand.
~ Bill Moyers
(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.) casinos about macaucasinos burma aboutcasino jackpot allcity casinos new jersey alanticiowa ameristar casino council bluffsoregon casino 7 featherscasino 2007 directory and foam29 casino palms Map
November 4th, 2006
A wave of change is upon us. The pundits, by non-partisan consensus, are expecting a Blue tsunami on Tuesday and all that’s left at question is how high the wave will surge — just enough? Or a wipe out.
After Kerry went down in flames in ‘04, it was evident that unless the voting machine situation was addressed we would need just such a perfect storm with votes to spare in order to overcome the discrepancies that the opposing party is capable of handing us … and this election will be, say the pundits, an “experiment,” with rules changing even as we speak, and states scrambling to refine their procedures and train their personnel. Each has their own system, which is part of the problem … some states have instituted paper trails, but not all … some are requiring ID cards, but not all. It’s a national mess. And this year, broadcasters are staying Far Away from exit polls. The vulnerabilities of the voting system will show up in the neck-n-neck races … MO and TN, which are also the critical races for Senate.
But the wave is Blue to its roots, much of it netroots — even the governorships are going Blue. Had Enough? was the right question at the right time. There’s not an ounce of credibility left in this administration. Go here for an example. And here for an excellent read on lying to the troops.
The Pubs are doing their targeting calls, moving their base out even more strongly than they did in 2004 — but the Independents, by 2/3rds, have turned on them. The Dems are energized to vote and many of the Indys are going with them. Meanwhile, nothing the Dubby has said has contributed anything much to the process … he’s lost the public ear on Iraq — and his holy homeboy Pastor Ted’s admission that a little unholy sex and meth did happen while the wife and five kiddies weren’t looking can’t be helping to trot out the evangelicals — talk about major myth-busting and disenchantment!
Add the news today that the Army Times, Air Force Times, Navy Times and Marine Corps Times are all demanding Rummys replacement — and tomorrow, Uncle Dick is set to tell us all that it doesn’t matter what the public thinks, we’re going full speed ahead in Iraq [article below.]
Yesterday, widely read moderate Tom Friedman wrote an article containing this wake-up line:
“George Bush, Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld think you’re stupid. They think they can take a mangled quip about President Bush and Iraq by John Kerry — a man who is not even running for office but who, unlike Bush and Cheney, never ran away from combat service — and get you to vote against all Democrats in this election.”
So, it’s looking good, kids — but we can’t take a thing for granted in this political climate … even what happens next if we go Blue from top to bottom.
As one of my favorite astrologers says:
Right now, as we approach critical mass, our spiritual discipline continues to be disenchantment—the hard work of giving up foolish dreams, faded hopes, and forlorn fears.
~ Bill Herbst
So help get out the vote this weekend by calling or by offering to take folks to the polls — keep a clear and vivid Intention and a hopeful heart. But lets also remember that we’re mid-way through a remarkable process of reclaiming the ACTUAL hopes and foundations of this nation … of this planet … and this is just another, albeit critical, step.
Stunning Fiori ‘toon first. Voting tips, e-addresses and phone numbers you’ll want are included here, analysis of the current situation — and last, an excellent interview about race, disenfranchisement, liberal lethargy, Cynthia McKinney and Video the Vote.
Jude
Beware Those Animal-Sacrificing Pelosi Liberals!
Mark Fiore
November 2nd, 2006
Cheney: ‘Full Speed Ahead’ on Iraq
Vice President Tells ABC News That Election, Public Sentiment Will Not Influence War Policy
ED O’KEEFE, ABC
Nov. 3, 2006
Four days before the election, as Republican candidates battle to save their seats in Congress amid a backlash over the war in Iraq, Vice President Dick Cheney told ABC News the administration is going “full speed ahead” with its policy.
“We’ve got the basic strategy right,” Cheney told George Stephanopoulos in an interview to be broadcast Sunday on “This Week.”
Watch the full interview this Sunday morning, including the vice president’s candid comments on John Kerry’s gaffe this week and Hillary Clinton.
October was one of the deadliest months in Iraq for U.S. troops. Cheney said that while the administration’s policy may not be popular, “This is the right thing for us to be doing.”
In the most recent ABC News/Washington Post poll, 57 percent of Americans said that the war was not worth fighting. The poll also showed President Bush’s job approval rating dropped to 37 percent, the second-lowest mark of his presidency.
Cheney said that even with pollsters predicting that Democrats would likely make gains in both houses of Congress Tuesday, voter sentiment would not influence Bush’s Iraq policy.
“It may not be popular with the public — it doesn’t matter in the sense that we have to continue the mission and do what we think is right. And that’s exactly what we’re doing,” Cheney said.
“We’re not running for office. We’re doing what we think is right.”
First Reaction to Vanity Fair Report
Cheney also gave his first reaction to the Vanity Fair report that two of the Pentagon’s strongest supporters of the war, Richard Perle and Ken Adelman, now say they would not have supported the invasion if they had known how incompetently the administration would handle it.
Cheney said, “I haven’t seen the piece I’m not going to comment on it. I think there is no question that it is a tough war, but it is also the right thing to do,” he said. “And it is very important that we complete the mission.”
Cheney asserted that the anti-war message is coming primarily from the Democrats, despite their own policy disagreements.
“They haven’t offered up a plan, but they have several different positions — withdraw, withdraw at some future date, cut off funding,” Cheney said. “The fact of the matter is, this is the right thing for us to be doing. We need to succeed here. It has a direct bearing on how we do around the world on the global war on terror.”
On another subject, the vice president touted the Bush administration’s economic policies, arguing that if Democrats take control of Congress, the tax cuts he and the president deem essential would not be extended. Cheney then complained that the White House had not been given enough credit on the economy, which he described as going “gangbusters.”
When asked why he thinks the president doesn’t get enough credit for the economy and the recent news that the nation has a 4.4 percent unemployment rate, Cheney said, “Well, you guys don’t help,” referring to the media.
“What’s news is if there’s bad news, and that gets coverage,” he said. “But the good news that’s out there, day after day after day, doesn’t get as much attention.”
The power of a social movement can beat the GOP double Chickenhawks
Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman
Nov 4 2006
It’s never been more true that the one thing we Americans can say with pride about George W. Bush is that we have never elected him president of the United States.
The regime is even more despised than ever, in part because the derogatory term “chickenhawk” now applies in all its worst double meanings.
And while Bush and Karl Rove crow that they’re about to “win” again, we think they are about to run into their worst nightmare: a full-blown grassroots social movement.
The GOP strategy for stealing 2006 is much the same as in the presidential elections of 2000 and 2004, and in key Senatorial elections in 2002: mass disenfranchisement of mostly urban Democratic voters, combined with mass inflation of mostly rural Republican votes.
The primary tools for disenfranchisement include the decimation of voter registration lists and outright harassment of would-be Democratic voters. In Ohio alone, there has been the electronic disenfranchisement of some ten percent of the state’s registered voters, along with the virtual abolition of the recount process. The attack also includes trashing ballots once cast, combined with fraudulent tabulations and rigged electronic voting machines whose software is kept secret.
The theft is hidden behind the escalating abolition of public reporting mechanisms. In 2006, this will include the virtual elimination of major media support for exit polling. Other staples of public reporting will also be crippled, as is now happening in Cuyahoga County (Cleveland), Ohio, and elsewhere around the US. Needless to say, there is much much more.
The GOP cover line is familiar. Bush/Rove now claim published pre-election polls are inaccurate. As they push/pull the vote count they will explain away unlikely Republican margins in rural areas by conjuring up mythological hordes of “evangelical voters.” America hosts, to be sure, many millions of right-wing Christian voters. But as we have seen in our preliminary examinations of the 2004 ballots, the decisive numbers attributed to them may well exist only in the minds of the corporate media, in rigged loaves & fishes ballot counts, and in the Holy Ghost memory cards of electronic voting machines that cannot be monitored.
The GOP is desperate to keep control of both the Senate and the House. The realest terrors the Republicans face are public investigations into the astounding sinkhole of military, financial, insider theft, predatory sex, educational, ecological and other catastrophes they have wrought. Rarely in U.S. history has a single scrum of dirty tricksters evoked such widespread, abject hatred, for such good reason.
Part of the public ferocity is now doubly bound in the epithet “chickenhawk.”
In the Vietnam era, it referred to war hawks like Bush, Rove, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and other dubious draft dodgers who preached patriotism and war while chickening out on their own military service. In the public mind, there is no hotter place in hell than for hypocrites who send others to die in battles they won’t fight themselves.
Chickenhawk is also nasty street slang for despicable sex offenders who prey on children. The exposure of Republican Congressman Mark Foley’s ghastly pursuit of Congressional pages reveals an astonishing streak of personal and political hypocrisy. Like so many of his fellow sex-obsessed neo-puritan GOP gay-bashers, Foley is gay himself. He is the ultimate poster boy for “moral values” conservatism.
Now we face the question of whether the Democrats will carry one or both houses of Congress. Immoderate, intemperate and incompetent at everything except stealing elections, the GOP has ruled the executive, judicial and legislative branches, as well as the corporate media, with an iron fist. The checks and balances so carefully crafted by the Founders have been obliterated. The consequences have been predictable.
From Iraq to the deficits, from insider theft to pompous theocrats, from the decimation of the environment to the destruction of our educational system, from the dictatorial shredding of our Constitution to the smug arrogance of the sanctimoniously ignorant., the US has never been saddled with a more thoroughly rapacious national regime.
Other US elections have been stolen. But none with such organized thuggery, or such a clear eye to permanent Rovian domination. These were not meant to be one-time thefts. The hacked voting machines, ex-felon disenfranchisement, Jim Crow intimidation, deliberately confusing butterfly ballots and other sinister tricks from Jeb Bush’s Florida 2000 have morphed and multiplied. In our on-the-ground studies of Ohio 2004, we have documented scores of distinct tactics used to steal our state’s electoral votes. More become obvious every day. Like a cancer, they’ve spread nationwide.
At bottom, this regime has updated and expanded for use against the people of the United States the covert tactics used by George H.W. Bush and other stealth operatives to overthrow inconvenient elected leaders throughout the Third World. As in countless targets for covert US takeover, the candidate’s brother took Florida 2000, with the help of a secretary of state simultaneously serving as his campaign chair.
In Ohio 2004, Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell, again the Bush-Cheney campaign co-chair, also ran the election that gave George W. Bush a second term. This year he will count the votes in his own run for governor, and will manipulate the outcome of elections that could tip the balance in both the US Senate and House.
It is, to update an infamous phrase from Malcolm X, the chickenhawks come home to roost.
But the solution is now everywhere to be seen. It is in the birth of a social movement.
There’s been a virtual blackout by the major media, plus indifference and even hostility from the Democratic Party about the subversion of our electoral process.
But the reality that two consecutive presidential elections have been stolen has pierced hearts and minds deep inside the American mainstream. Powerful reports from the Conyers Congressional Committee, the Government Accountability Office, the Carter-Baker Commission, the Brennan Center, Princeton University and others have all come to the same conclusion: it can take just a few keystrokes to steal an election.
After mercilessly attacking those of us who broke this story through the internet—as well as Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s definitive articles in Rolling Stone—major media outlets such as the New York Times, Lou Dobbs, HBO and others have suddenly discovered that our electoral system is more than just broken. Bobby’s father’s admonition to “fear not the path of truth for the lack of people walking on it” has finally turned that path into a highway for the saviors of our democracy.
Throughout the US, millions of citizens despair that the GOP will, in fact, steal this election. And well they might.
But the solution is now everywhere to be seen. It is in the birth of a full-fledged social movement, this time for the restoration of American democracy.
In the past half-century, we’ve seen a social movement for civil rights arise out of a single woman’s refusal to get out of her seat on a public bus. The mass movement to stop the war in Vietnam grew out of the early refusal of a very few individuals to submit to the military draft. Two reporters turned a “third rate burglary” into the resignation of a president who’d just carried the electoral votes of 49 states. Scattered “no nukes” protests in conservative rural communities stopped an atomic power industry that promised a thousand reactors in the US by the year 2000, but was able to deliver less than 150.
Today the movement for green power—solar, wind, biofuel and other natural energy sources—once considered marginal and powerless, has birthed a multi-billion-dollar industry destined to deliver a “Solartopia” powered by clean, cheap, reliable and very profitable renewables.
But election protection remains the wellspring from which all future social movements will flow. So far, we have won the preservation of the ballots from both Florida 2000 and Ohio 2004. In New Mexico and Maryland, a Democratic and a Republican governor respectively are calling for a return to paper ballots. In Ohio and throughout the US, citizen lawsuits are forcing concessions on voter ID, ballot access and other issues critical to the restoration of democracy.
On Tuesday, thousands of fiercely committed activists and everyday citizens will go to the polls not just to vote, but to monitor, to double-check, to facilitate, to protect, to inquire, to film, to investigate, to persist, to prevent, and to not give up. They are bound and determined to make sure that another GOP theft either does not happen, or at least does not go unnoticed this time around.
Toward that end, we now urge any election activist who observes any irregularity or problem with Tuesday’s voting to write us at: democracy@freepress.org
Your report will be published there for all to see, as part of an on-going national record that needs to be compiled, studied and acted upon.
No social movement succeeds immediately. The campaign to save the American electoral system has hung on by a thin thread. Its concerns are just barely hitting the mainstream. This Tuesday, it’s everyone’s duty to do more than just vote. And no matter what the outcome, this issue will be with us for years to come….for as long as it takes.
We have taken our democracy for granted for too long. Merely voting is no longer enough.
It won’t be easy to restore and update the free election process that is our legacy. But we have seen the consequences of two consecutive un-elected presidencies. We know what we’re up against.
And we know there is no alternative to winning, however long it might take.
12 Ways You Can Safeguard the Vote
Fran Korten, Doug Pibel, Paul Mozur and the staff and interns at YES! Magazine
Friday, November 3, 2006 by CommonDreams
Will it happen again? On November 7 we may see voters waiting in long lines, only to find they’re not on the voter rolls. We may see election workers struggling with malfunctioning machines. If you’re worried that we will wake up November 8 to find that, once again, election procedures in key races are in question, read on.
The staff at YES! Magazine has researched the recommendations of voting integrity advocates and offers 12 ways you can protect your own vote—and the fairness of the system. Please forward this checklist to others to help make our election system work. calendar
BEFORE ELECTION DAY
1. Check your registration. Even if you think you’re registered, you may not be. Check online at www.CanIVote.org. Or call your local election officials (find contact information at Overseas Vote Foundation).
2. Mail with care. If you’re voting by mail, check carefully where you need to sign, how to seal the envelope, and how to mark the ballot. And note: Some ballots weigh more than an ounce and require extra postage.
3. Find out who’s in charge. Make a phone list of your county and state election officials—it may save valuable time on Election Day if you need to get registration verification or other information. calendar
ON ELECTION DAY
4. Vote early. If you encounter problems, you’ll have time to sort them out and may be able to help others.
5. Take your government-issued ID (such as your driver’s license). You may not need it, but it’s best to have it.
6. Bring your cell phone, if you have one. If you have problems, or see problems, you can call a hotline immediately (see point #9).
7. Ask for a paper ballot. Some states, such as California, require polling places to have paper ballots available on request. If you don’t want to use a machine, see if your polling place can provide a paper ballot. If machines aren’t working or there are other problems, ask for an emergency ballot (although they may not be available everywhere).
8. Verify your vote. If you’re voting on an electronic voting machine, check the review screen to make sure it reflects your vote. If the machine produces a paper record (28 states require one), read it carefully to make sure it correctly reflects your vote. If it is incorrect, speak to a polling attendant—don’t leave until you’re sure your vote has been properly recorded.
9. Document and report. If you encounter difficulties, or see others experiencing difficulties (excessive lines, voter harassment, malfunctioning machines, etc.), make a detailed record. Get all the facts you can—location, names, specific problem.
We recommend two nationwide networks where you can report problems. One is 1-866-OUR-VOTE (1-866-687-8683), which will have volunteer lawyers in 15 locations standing by to provide assistance. The other is 1-866 My Vote-1 (1-866-698-6831), which will record your problem by voicemail, then forward your call to your local board of elections. Both will enter the information you provide into a database to use to support challenges to problem elections now and demands for reform in the future. calendar
AFTER ELECTION DAY
10. Call your candidate. If there are questions about an election result, urge your candidate not to concede early; encourage that person to follow through with all available challenges and recounts. Ask how you can help.
11. Call your election officials. Let your county and state election officials know that you have concerns about the election and will be monitoring their response. Ask them not to certify the election before all challenges and recounts are finished.
INTO THE FUTURE
12. Work for fair, transparent elections. Voice your questions about voting machines, vote suppression, and election problems promptly. Keep the issue in front of your election officials. If we want clean, trustworthy elections in 2008, we have to start working on it now.
Want more information? Here are three websites from the leading edge on voting issues.
www.verifiedvoting.org
www.VotersUnite.org
www.truthout.org/voters.rights.htm
Voting just isn’t enough
Go beyond conventional wisdom this election season
Sean Gonsalves, Cape Cod Times
11.02.06
Three bits of conventional wisdom from the election season:
1) Barack Obama is the Great Black Hope of the Democratic Party and dark horse candidate for 2008.
I’ve got one thing to say about “Obama-rama.” How come every time a brother is being considered for the top job, the anti-affirmative action crowds starts asking: “Is he the most qualified?” What’s funny is these are the same folks who voted for Dubya. Twice.
And don’t tell me black voters vote for black candidates just because they’re black. Put Condi Rice on the ballot and I guarantee you, most black voters will put N.P. next to her name — Negro, Please.
2) In the wake of revelations that the Bush administration has been playing evangelical voters like “Onward Christian Soldier” at a revival meeting, the Religious Right has rediscovered the 186th Psalm: “O put not your trust in princes, nor in any child of man: for there is no help in them.”
3) The polls indicate the Democrats will regain Congress. Even to a Generation (Malcolm) Xer like me — “you can’t expect a chicken to produce a duck egg” — regime change in Washington would be a good thing, to the extent it sends a message to the “unitary executive,” and the rest of the world, that we haven’t lost our ever-lovin’ minds.
Of these three strands of conventional wisdom, it’s number 3 that inspires in me very little “audacity to hope,” to quote the title of Obama’s new book.
It’s fitting we turned the clocks back over the weekend, just days before Halloween, both of which point to the phrase for this week: poll tax.
Turn back the clock to 1966. U.S. Supreme Court case Harper v. Virginia Board of Elections. Virginia resident Annie Harper filed suit, arguing it was unconstitutional under the equal protection clause of the 14th amendment for Virginia to require that voters pay a tax to cast a ballot — poll taxes being one of several ways segregationists used to disenfranchise blacks in those days.
The 6-3 majority opinion noted: “a state violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution whenever it makes the affluence of the voter or payment of any fee an electoral standard. Voter qualifications have no relation to wealth.”
Last week, the new Supremes ruled that Arizona’s new voter ID laws — requiring photo Ids and proof of citizenship — will stay in place for the November 7 elections.
This is where the Halloween-aspect comes in. Voter ID? Voter fraud protection, right?
Ah, check under the mask. According to Alex Keyssar, Stirling Professor of History and Social Policy at the Kennedy School of Government, “the rationale for such laws is that they are needed to prevent fraud — although almost nowhere have the laws’ sponsors been able to document the existence of significant fraud occurring because non-legal voters have pretended to be, or impersonated, legal voters.”
Bonnie Sauders, president of the League of Women Voters of Arizona adds: “We see this new requirement as a form of poll tax. The new requirement means that you have to buy something in order to vote (the ID and official application process ain’t free).”
And Justin Levitt, associate counsel with the Democracy Program at the Brennan Center, points out how eligible citizens might have problems getting on the voter rolls in North Carolina or South Dakota because in those states they require a voter’s registration information to match information on motor vehicle registration or Social Security documents.
Then, we’ve got Harvey Wasserman, who co-authored the book “What Happened in Ohio?” telling us that “since 2000, under (Ohio Sec. of State Ken) Blackwell’s supervision, Boards of Elections in Cincinnati, Columbus, Cleveland and Toledo have eliminated some 500,000 voters from their registration rolls. Nearly all are in heavily Democratic urban areas. In a state where some 5.6 million people voted for president in 2004, this represents nearly 10 percent of the electorate.”
The canaries in the mine shaft of democracy are singing. Pull off the Halloween masks and its 1966 again. Poll taxes disguised as voter fraud protection — “democracy” at home — while incumbents stay-the-course of imposing “democracy” hal way around the world.
What we need are anti poll-tax citizens who refuse to turn the clock back, and who realize that voting is just not enough.
This Time, the Election Will Not Be Stolen
Gary Moskowitz, AlterNet
November 4, 2006
Ian Inaba is staging a revolution, and he damn sure wants it televised. His idea is to have videographers monitor voter polling sites during the upcoming mid-term elections and in greater numbers during the 2008 presidential election. Their purpose: bypass the mainstream media and provide real-time, online media coverage of any problems that arise at voting sites.
His plan for action is what he works on when not promoting his new documentary film, “American Blackout,” which looks at the disenfranchisement of the Black vote in America and voting irregularities in the 2000 and 2004 national elections. The film also traces what journalist Greg Palast calls the “political lynching” of Rep. Cynthia McKinney, D-Ga., for openly questioning the Bush administration’s policies involving Iraq and 9/11.
“American Blackout” received a Special Jury Award at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival. The San Francisco Chronicle called it “as much an indictment of liberal apathy as of conservative dirty dealing.” Film Journal International called it a “paid advertisement for Cynthia McKinney.”
Inaba, 35, is a journalist for the Guerrilla News Network. He directed the music videos for “Mosh” by Eminem and “Time and Time Again” by Chronic Future. Inaba also contributed to GNN’s book “True Lies,” about black box voting. The former investment banker is now creating his own grassroots, citizen journalism from his home base in Berkeley.
Inaba spoke with WireTap by phone about his “comfortable” life during San Francisco’s technology “bubble,” his life-changing decision to pursue alternative journalism, making music videos and his frustration with the Democratic Party.
WireTap: I know you’re busy, because we’ve been playing phone tag for about three weeks now. What have you been up to?
Ian Inaba: I finally got a good night’s sleep last night. I’ve been in Ohio doing the Video the Vote campaign, and I was also screening ‘[American] Blackout.’ My film has been utilized in GOTV efforts for black youth and youth in general. The League of Young Voters and SEIU were screening the film, we had about 100 people in both Cincinnati and Columbus. It was a good mix of college kids and union workers.
WT: What kind of response do you get to your film from that crowd?
II: It’s been very supportive, especially with the minority youth audience. We had 300 black youth in Chicago last week and it was amazing. I usually sit out in the hallway during screenings, and I’ll see kids walk out to use the bathroom, and I’m always thinking, “What are you doing?” [Laughs]. But I have 16-year-old kids talking to each other, yelling, saying this film is made for us, this is our history, trying to inspire each other. I don’t even have to say anything but just watch them organize on their own. When I made the film, I wanted to unite communities — African-American working class voters and youth voters — and I wanted them to organize.
WT: During these debates at screenings, is it typically folks of color in the audience or do you see White folks as well?
II: The screenings have been very mixed and the film plays well to both minority and mainstream audiences because I think deep down everyone want to know the truth about our democracy. One young viewer stood up and said, ‘I thought I was aware and political, but this film makes me feel like I have been duped and my eyes have been opened. I will dedicate my life to being aware and hope that others will do the same.’
His sentiment is what came about in me when I started making the film. When you meet someone like [former U.S. Representative] Cynthia McKinney at the heart of the issue, going places that others won’t go, informing others that many don’t have the courage to go. She imposed that in me, and I want to do the same in others.
WT: At discussions following film screenings, do people ever discuss people of color that are members of the Republican Party and how to appeal to those voters?
II: Only about 10 percent of blacks are Republicans. They care about how much taxes they pay. And the religious community against abortion; they get swayed by those hooks. The discussion is more focused on how the Dems take African-American voters for granted.
The Dems should be concerned because a statement I often hear is, ‘Why should we give them our vote?’ But there’s no better alternative, so they do. What I say is don’t vote along party lines, find the best representation, someone who represents you. [Black voters] need to choose their leadership and participate and affect the people who are their representatives. Gather up their common political power and make a political stand. The black vote does matter and does change elections.
WT: Do you mind if I ask what your ethnic background is, and what your upbringing was like?
II: My dad is Japanese and my mom is Scotch-Irish-Norwegian. My dad’s family is from Hawaii, so I’ve spent time there, but I was born in San Francisco and grew up in Berkeley, went to Berkeley High. Then I went to the University of Pennsylvania, Engineering School and the Wharton School [of business], which had more conservative kids than the ones I grew up with. I worked at an investment bank in San Francisco during the internet boom, and then a network security company in the [Silicon] valley.
Life was very comfortable, and things were good. I was working with Check Point [Technologies Software Ltd.], a billion-dollar Israeli software company. The CEO was 28. They hired me because I was 26. I learned so much from them. But it became very corporate.
A founder told me I was too smart to be there and said, ‘You need to have your own thing.’ I said I didn’t want to be processing and making other people really wealthy. That wasn’t the life I wanted, to be the middle-man advisor. So I got back in touch with some high school and college friends that were in [the Guerilla News Network]. I became an independent consultant and started a company. GNN was being started at the same time.
We commissioned them to make our first video right when the bubble burst. We said screw this, let’s go on our own and do online content and video. We did not found GNN, but we helped form it. It was a major turning point for me. It changed everything. All my suits got obviated. I was like, ‘Hey, I can wear clothes like I’m in high school again.’ [Laughs]. You enter an activist world. It had benefits and drawbacks. You no longer are living in a corporate, consumer environment. I went full-on into it. I’m still getting used to it.
WT: Did you get any flack from activist folks in the beginning? Did anyone call you out?
II: At first, [activists] were like, ‘You can help us write a business plan.’ But then I started doing creative stuff and directing videos. I got more flack from the other side, corporate guys saying, ‘Oh, you’re a documentary filmmaker now,’ and meanwhile, they work for The Carlyle Group [a D.C.-based global private equity investment firm].
But they see my stuff and know it’s quality, not just ‘kids trying to fuck with the system’ kind of thing. Many are appreciative. I have followed some of the most hardcore activists around the country and covered issues like electronic voting machines, depleted uranium, 9/11. If those activists weren’t doing what they do, nobody would know. Bev Harris [executive director of Black Box Voting Inc., an advocacy group opposed to certain electronic voting methods] started a movement with electronic voting machines in 2000 and look how far that issue has come because of her work.
I was following her at the same time as McKinney. Many call them conspiracy theorists and jokingly say they are ‘black helicopter women.’ It takes a lot to investigate stories that may or may not be true. I went down to San Mateo County last weekend because I got a tip about a voting machine situation. Nothing came up, but if I didn’t go out there, no one would have checked it out. In order to find out what is really true, you have to be willing to get it out there. It’s a thankless job.
WT: Your film, “American Blackout,” definitely does not hide your own activist subjectivity. Have people criticized you for the lack of objectivity in the film?
II: People might say, ‘Aren’t you being overtly political or partisan? Do you have an agenda?’ It’s almost like the new McCarthyism, like being partisan is crippling, like you’re not allowed to take a side. With “American Blackout,” how can you talk about voter disenfranchisement — where one party benefits more from this phenomenon, and has been proven to have connections to those tactics — and still look balanced?
Because it’s a two-party system in this country, people are so quick to discount ideas as partisan, but it controls and defines what is allowed to be the political discussion in this country. In order to get grants to do this type of work, they have to be 501 C3, which is nonpartisan money. But when it became clear that [American Blackout] can be seen as more favorable to Dems, the foundations got scared and pulled away funding, after the film was done and while we still had bills. We were trying to do youth outreach which I have seen first had to increase civic participation but our funding got pulled. It happened in conjunction with McKinney having her episode with the police officer on Capital Hill.
WT: Can you describe that incident?
II: On March 29, there was an alleged scuffle with a cop when she attempted to enter one of the Capital buildings on her way to vote, without her ID. A cop allegedly grabbed her, she pushed back and then he let her go, and a day later filed assault charges. They were able to say, ‘here’s crazy Cynthia again.’ And when you hit a cop, you’re gonna lose half of your base. We had been on the road with standing ovations all over the country and then that happened.
WT: And yet McKinney is the central focus of your film. Do you have any regrets about making that choice?
II: Some people have said you made the right movie but with the wrong leading lady. But the reason I made the movie was because of her. She held a hearing on the voting irregularities in Florida, and nobody else did. The people who make the loudest noise are targeted for it, but they are the reason things come up in the first place. She is asking the questions everyone else wants to ask. The Dems have said, ‘Step away from her.’ They are not about exposing the truth, they’re about regaining power.
WT: So why exactly did you make “American Blackout”?
II: We were writing a book called True Lies in 2003. I had to research electronic voting machines, McKinney, the anthrax vaccine and other stories we felt the mainstream press weren’t covering. McKinney was fascinating to me. As I followed her and Bev Harris, McKinney said none of these other issues matter unless we have a fair vote. That made me think.
Then when I asked Bev, “Why do you do this,” she was dumpster diving for documents getting sued by Diebold. She’s a white woman married to a black man, and she said, “I want to make sure my kids’ votes count.” Those two women’s ideas held very strong for me. The Ohio happened and when you see a pattern, and the same excuses, it’s not by chance. It’s a tactic, and it discourages voters.
WT: You mentioned to me in an email prior to this interview that Endtheblackout.org and VideotheVote.org are two grassroots voting efforts that are direct results of your film. Can you elaborate on this?
II: These sites are a call to action. Corporate videographers were the only ones who captured [the election in] Florida and there was a lack of focus on the experience of the voters who were disenfranchised. I think the mainstream press on Election Day is so concerned with calling the winners and losers that they lose site of the voters.
Election night 2004, I remember watching when they showed the images on TV of people waiting in lines, in the rain in Ohio. People were saying hey, isn’t this great that all these people showed up to vote, and I thought no, this isn’t great, people waiting in the rain at midnight is not great. They were not looking at how many voting machines there were and why there were more in some places and not others. People had self-organized to document what happened in 2004 but the stories came out too late. So I wanted to find a way to have these stories be told on Election Day, and I wanted an organized program that will have an ongoing legacy in 2008 and beyond. So we formed Video the Vote to provide guidelines and technical infrastructure so people can do this responsibly and efficiently.
We want to provide same-day footage and provide an alternative narrative in real time, so that we can all have a more complete picture of what occurs in our elections. We’re dispatching videographers all over the country working closely with the Election Protection lawyers and volunteers. We found there is a big desire out there to do this. We’ll do it in November and again in 2008. We already have hundreds of video volunteers nationwide.
WT: Shifting gears a little bit, can you talk about your work making music videos? You made Eminem’s “Mosh” and also filmed a video for the Nine Inch Nails song “The Hand That Feeds” that Trent Reznor rejected. How do your videos connect to a project like “American Blackout”?
II: I like doing videos, when I have good music to work with. They are shorter projects that don’t take three years to complete. And I get to use my imagination and move on it. I think it’s a good vehicle to expose young people to issues. More people saw that Eminem video than will ever see any movie I will ever make. Everyone remembers that video, and it feels good. We hit it at the right time. I knew I wanted to make a voting video, and he could get it out as widely as anybody.
After Nine Inch Nails, it left a bad taste in my mouth. It was a corporate environment and they said I could go as far as I wanted, but I should have known better. So, I poured myself back into [American] Blackout and I guess the awards and recognition means we did OK. When our initial broadcast deal got pulled from table at the last minute because of McKinney I was reminded that even in the documentary world we’re still subjected to corporate censorship. There are still are gatekeepers everywhere. That’s why YouTube is so great.
WT: Yeah, but even YouTube is corporate now.
II: Yeah, but they are still letting the liberal stuff go, even though they’re owned by Google. Always pay attention to infrastructure. Right now, I’m begging groups like Move On to help get the word out, but it shouldn’t be that way. I contacted AlterNet months ago about this story, and it’s only just running now [on WireTap].
Rupert Murdoch doesn’t beg anybody to get his word out. Even in the progressive movement there are gatekeepers. Why has “American Blackout” been out since January and there’s been no coverage? You’d think people would understand the power of working together, but it’s too fragmented, disjointed and even territorial. You see how much more organized they are on the Right. As McKinney says in the film, “All you can say is they are good at what they do, we gotta get better.”
What’s right and good doesn’t come naturally. You have to stand up and fight for it - as if the cause depends on you, because it does. Allow yourself that conceit - to believe that the flame of Democracy will never go out as long as there’s one candle in your hand.
~ Bill Moyers
(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.)
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November 4th, 2006