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Who ran a death squad operation in Nicaragua--assassinating teachers and mayors and anyone with leftist leanings--illegally funded by TRADING ARMS TO IRAN, in violation of a specific law passed by Congress against any sort of war on Nicaragua.
Ollie North should have been imprisoned for life--along with Ronald Reagan and all the death squad funders and supporters in our government.
That's when the Democratic Party went wrong--that and Reagan's tax code re-write to favor the rich (death of the progressive tax).
I watched those Iran/Contra hearings, and I saw with my own eyes the smiles, the winks and the nods that Daniel Inouye and other Dems gave to death squads in Nicaragua. I date the decline of the Democratic Party into a shill for Corporate/War Industry interests to that moment. It is only now starting to recover--in fits and starts--as the Party of the people, prodded by our massive grass roots democracy movement (--which took a near lethal blow, in the 2004 stolen election, but which is back on its feet now in 2006--with new understanding of how traitors and thieves have been kept in power.)
I still feel anger, and that sickening feeling of powerlessness and hopelessness that only our own Democratic leaders can induce when they fail us, as they did in those hearings. Fascists, thieve, traitors, mass murderers--we know who they are. But Democrats--who are THEY? The silent, the collusive, the slithery--people like Christopher Dodd (--the Bilderberg 'Democrat' who helped Tom Delay and Bob Ney engineer the "Help America Vote Act), and John Kerry, Hillary Clinton, Diane Feinstein, and the other opportunists who voted for Bush's heinous war, and even Barack Obama, who wasn't a Senator when the war vote took place, but who fudged his war position this way, at the DNC in 2004: We must "never ever go to war without enough troops to win the war, secure the peace, and earn the respect of the world." How's that for an opportunistic statement on the most unjustified and unnecessary war in modern history?
I think we do ourselves a disservice--we, the great progressive American majority--when we think that we are powerless to elect a president who truly represents the interests of the American people, and when we accept the choice given to us, between outright fascism and more subtle corporate fascism; and the choice between belligerent militarism, and less visible forms of coercion and violence. I think we should have compassion for leaders who may be caught in a vise of spying, blackmail, anthrax attacks, disinformation, bullying and every kind of fascist Bushite tactic, and who bend to the Corporate Rulers because they see no other choice. Comply, or be destroyed. Still, we ARE the majority, we who want peace and justice at home and broad, and we DESERVE better leaders, and better representation, and we in fact HAVE the power to achieve it. The war profiteering corporate news monopolies have been UNABLE to successfully propagandize us, on Bush's war or anything else, with the sole exception of their successful effort to convince the majority that we are the minority--and even that is now changing. We are beginning to perceive this rightwing coup for what it is: a small minority that has been given a BIG TRUMPET. But will we also be able to perceive that our very compromised Dem Party leadership is the Corporate Rulers' fallback position--now that they have made such enormous gains, and have committed such massive looting and corrosion of good government, under the Bush Junta?
I DO think that the Democratic Party is our only vehicle for change. That's the reality. And it has a good history--the party of FDR, and labor unions, and the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act, and the antiwar movement of the 1960s (with the Democratic Party being the only Party to produce true antiwar candidates, Eugene McCarty, Bobby Kennedy and George McGovern), and the women's movement, and so much else. It WAS the party of the people, and it can be again, and is showing some signs of recovery, especially at the grass roots level (and with Howard Dean's chairmanship of the DNC). I approve of voting for, and supporting, all Democrats* this time around, whoever they are, in order to get some clout (the clout of the majority in Congress) for the GOOD Democrats, people like John Conyers, Henry Waxman, Barbara Boxer, Ted Kennedy, and Russ Feingold, who would chair committees. And perhaps this way we MAY get real election reform (--although I think that may not be possible even in a Dem Congress--because of the billions of dollars in e-voting contracts that have corrupted our election system; real reform may only be achievable by a backdoor strategy at the local level, of pressuring local officials on their handling and counting of Absentee Ballot votes**).
In any case, let us never forget that it was a DEMOCRATIC Congress that passed the law specifically forbidding a U.S. war on Nicaragua--even if the Dems did not then truly enforce the law, when it was violated (--leaving Iran/Contra criminals free to rise again in the Bush regime!). That law signaled a profound change in U.S. policy in Latin America--including, for instance, executive orders forbidding the assassination of foreign leaders--like socialist president Allende in Chile--and this breathing space from brutal U.S. interference helped the democracy movements to overthrow dictators throughout Latin America, and to begin to elect real governments.
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*(I think one exception is Diane Feinstein. She's so far ahead, she is in no danger of losing--unless Diebold were to flip over something like a 60/40 vote, which I highly doubt that they will risk, to unseat a rightwing Democrat like Feinstein. And if they do it, our votes are meaningless anyway. So I am recommending a vote for Green party Senate candidate Tom Chretien, to "send a message to" Feinstein. Go left! She had no opposition in the Dem primary, unfortunately. So there is nothing to influence her rightwing stances, for six more years--except a protest vote NOW. However, if she were in any danger of losing, I wouldn't recommend this. Dem control of the Senate, for committee chair purposes, is too important to risk on a protest vote. There is virtually no such risk in a protest vote against Feinstein. )
**(The Absentee Ballot vote this time is going to be huge. It is a major revolt of the voters--who are individually choosing to vote by AB, in an effort to get around the rigged machines. I think it can be turned into an Election Reform movement, at the local level, with an EFFECTIVE backdoor strategy. If we can pressure local election officials to, a) HAND-COUNT the Absentee Ballots (as they should be doing), and b) post the results BEFORE Absentee Ballot votes are scanned into the rigged electronic system--then we have a PAPER BALLOT SYSTEM BY DEFAULT. I think this will be easier to accomplish than tackling Diebold and brethren head on, and trying to dislodge all the corruption around those contracts, which has impacted both Dem and Repub election officials and legislators. An Absentee Ballot voters movement for honest counting of AB votes! AB voting is up to 50% and 60% of the vote in some places. That's A LOT OF PEOPLE! But it's unorganized--and the corporate news monopolies are already "spinning" it at voters choosing "convenience." THEY certainly understand the danger to the rigged e-voting system--a system that has put our election results under direct Corporate control--if this movement gets organized!)
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