The Big FixBy Chris Floyd04/07/05 "Moscow Times" - - Let's face
the facts. The game is over and we -- the "reality-based community," the believers in genuine democracy and law, the heirs
of Jefferson and Madison, Emerson and Thoreau, the toilers and dreamers, all those who seek to rise above the beast within
and shape the brutal chaos of existence into something higher, richer and imbued with meaning -- have lost. The better world
we thought had been won out of the blood and horror of history -- a realm of enlightenment that often found its best embodiment
in the ideals and aspirations of the American Republic -- is gone. It's been swallowed by darkness, by ravening greed, by
bestial spirits and by willful primitives who now possess overwhelming instruments of power and dominion.
A gang of
such spirits seized control of the U.S. government by illicit means in 2000 and maintained that control through rampant electoral
corruption in 2004. The re-election of President George W. Bush last November was a deliberately shambolic process that saw
massive lockouts of opposition voters; unverifiable returns compiled by easily hackable machines operated by avowed corporate
partisans of the ruling party; and vast discrepancies between exit polls and final results – gaps much larger than those
that led elections in Ukraine and Georgia to be condemned as manipulated frauds. Indeed, a panel of statisticians said last
week that the odds of such a discrepancy occurring naturally were 959,000 to 1, the Akron Beacon-Journal reported.
The
copious documentation of the Bush fraud keeps growing. Last month, experts using actual machines and returns from the 2004
election showed Congress how a lone hacker could skew a precinct's results by 100,000 votes without leaving a trace. More
than 40 million votes in 30 states were cast on such computer systems, BlackBoxVoting noted.
Late last year, Congress
heard sworn testimony from Florida programmer Clint Curtis, who created vote-rigging software in 2000 at the request of Tom
Feeny, a Bush Family factotum. Feeny wanted Curtis (a fellow Republican) and his employer, Yang Enterprises, to produce untraceable
programs that could "control the vote" as needed, investigator Brad Friedman reported. Feeny also told Curtis of Bush plans
to "suppress the black vote" with "exclusion lists." This is exactly what happened. BBC investigator Greg Palast has shown
that tens of thousands of legitimate African-American voters were deliberately "purged" from the rolls by a private Republican-controlled
corporation hired by Florida Governor Jeb Bush. Afterwards, Feeny -- who had been Jeb's running mate in his first gubernatorial
campaign -- was rewarded for his dutiful service with a plum congressional seat.
In 2002, Raymond Lemme, a Florida
state government inspector, took up Curtis' charges, which included other corruption allegations involving Feeny, Yang Enterprises
and a Yang employee charged with peddling military technology to the Chinese. In June 2003, Lemme told Curtis he had "tracked
the corruption all the way to the top" and that "the story would break in a few weeks." On July 1, 2003, Lemme was found dead
in a Georgia hotel room, just across the Florida border.
Local police ruled that Lemme, a happily married man eagerly
planning his daughter's wedding, had suddenly decided to slash his wrists. At first they said there were no photos of the
death scene; but then the pictures turned up on the Internet and were confirmed as authentic by the embarrassed police. The
photos clearly contradicted the original suicide report on several points -- presenting evidence, for example, that Lemme
had been beaten before his death. The investigation was reopened after Curtis' Congressional testimony -- and then abruptly
shut down after local police spoke to a never-identified "someone" in the Florida state government.
Needless to say,
nothing has been done to clarify the murk surrounding Lemme's convenient death. Nor has there been any action toward rectifying
the highly profitable degradation of the American electoral process -- beyond the appointment of yet another "blue-ribbon
panel" of Establishment worthies to oversee "election reform." The seriousness of this endeavor can be seen in the man appointed
to co-chair the effort: James Baker, the notorious Bush family fixer (and Saudi bagman) who spearheaded the sabotage of the
2000 vote in Florida. Baker's presence on the panel ensures that nothing will be done to lessen the ruling clique's chokehold
on power.
So let's have no illusions about where we are. Gangsters are in charge, and nothing and no one will be allowed
to challenge their dominion. They are waging aggressive war to cement their position and that of their allies: the energy
barons, the arms merchants, the construction and services cartels, the investment bankers. These power blocs now command monstrous
resources and unfathomable profits; they can buy out, buy off or bury any force that opposes them. Meanwhile, they use the
loot of the stolen Republic -- its blood and treasure -- as fuel for their ever-expanding war machine: Bush now has a "secret
watch-list" of 25 more countries ripe for military intervention, the Financial Times reported.
With more war crimes
afoot, last month Bush issued an official "National Defense Strategy" that openly declares "judicial processes" as one of
the enemies confronting the United States, actually equating them with terrorism, The Associated Press reported. Law is "a
strategy of the weak," says the Bush Doctrine, in a chilling echo of Hitlerian machtpolitik: Might makes right. The judicial
process must not be allowed to "constrain or shape" American behavior in any way, the gangsters declared.
Think of
it: Law is now the enemy. Democracy, as we've seen above, is the enemy. This, the demented code of criminals and tyrants,
has become the ruling doctrine of the United States -- replacing the Constitution, replacing the noble struggle for liberty
and enlightenment with the howl of the beast, with a freak show of avarice and death.
AnnotationsThe Death of Raymond LemmeBradblog.com, March 8, 2005
Clint Curtis Testifies Before Judiciary Committee PanelBradblog.com, Dec. 13, 2004
Report to Judiciary Committee: Diebold Machines HackedBlack Box Voting, March 8, 2005
Exit poll analysis points to 2004 election corruptionAkron Beacon Journal, April 1, 2005
US Scatters Bases to Control EurasiaAsia Times, March 30, 2005
US Draws Up List of Unstable CountriesFinancial Times, March 28, 2005
Bush: U.S. To Bear Burden of Iraq CostsAssociated Press, April 4, 2005
Oil prices soar above 58 dollars for first timeAgence France Press, April 4, 2005
US Taxpayers Give Lion's Share To MilitaryPNN Online, April 4, 2005
National Defense Strategy: Legal Challenges, Terrorism Threaten U.S.Associated Press, March 18, 2005
Defense Strategy OKs First StrikesLos Angeles Times, March 19, 2005
The Bush-Cheney Media EnterprisesAlterNet, April 3, 2005
US relied on 'drunken liar' to justify Iraq warThe Observer, April 3, 2005
Long Before WMD Panel, Evidence Showed Bush Wanted War Despite IntelligenceA Tiny Revolution, March 31, 2005
If You Build It, They Will KillTomDispatch, April 1, 2005
Military Bases Abroad are ExpandingThe Nation, March 31, 2005
Coordinated attack on your voting rights happening NowDaily Kos, March 31, 2005
Bechtel Sees Record Revenue in 2004San Francisco Chronicle, March 29, 2005
The New AristocracyProvidence Journal, March 28, 2005
Top Bush Insider Joins HalliburtonWashington Examiner, March 22, 2005
Source:
Information Clearing House
