Darkness visible : US diplomacy in Nicaragua

[Judi Lynn]

Darkness visible : US diplomacy in Nicaragua
by toni solo,
March 4th 2011

".....for now the thought
Both of lost happiness and lasting pain
Torments him : round he throws his baleful eyes,
That witnessed huge affliction and dismay,
Mixed with obdurate pride and steadfast hate."

Paradise Lost, Book One
Any Hollywood film director casting for Lucifer and his fallen host for a film of Milton's "Paradise Lost" need look no further than the generation of US diplomats contemporary with John Dmitri Negroponte. Negroponte was the suave, cynical, death squad manager supreme of the United States Foreign Service. He cut his teeth with Henry Kissinger and George Herbert Bush in the era of the murderous Phoenix Program in Vietnam and the bloody, treacherous coup against Salvador Allende in Chile.

He later graduated to run Ronald Reagan and Jean Kirkpatrick's dirty war in Honduras and, behind the backs of the US people, their narcotics-linked terror war against Nicaragua throughout the 1980s. >From there he went on to supervise similar operations to help complete the Bush Jr. regime's destruction of Iraq. It is impossible to exaggerate the sadistic cruelty and sleek hypocrisy of Negroponte and his colleagues. Among these, Robert J. Callahan might be termed the long distance running delivery-boy of the Negroponte generation. He worked with Negroponte in Honduras and in Iraq. Now he is back in Central America rolling back democracy and prosperity for the impoverished majority as hard as he can.

Ambassador Callahan seldom allows his smug death's head smirk to slip. But he did so recently in Managua, when challenged about US claims to moral authority in the matter of democratic elections. A pro-Sandinista reporter asked Callahan how he justified his constant disparaging remarks about Nicaragua's electoral process in the light of the blatant fraud perpetrated in Florida during the 2000 presidential elections in the United States. Callahan replied by blurting out a series of blunders, alleging that the Florida election only suffered "mechanical" problems and that "it was the most observed election in history".

The literature documenting the electoral fraud in that Florida election is so extensive that only someone of Callahan's obdurate prideful deceit and steadfast hate of democracy could try and bluster it out of existence. The Florida Republicans manipulation of electoral databases, the deliberate allocation of sub-standard voting machines to areas likely to vote democrat, the relentless efforts to harrass voters likely to vote democrat - all of that is incontrovertible. All those entrenched anomalies were compounded by the blatant politicization of key decisions in relation to electoral procedure right up to the US Supreme Court judgment which split the Supreme Court justices straight down party political lines.

More:
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL1103/S00088/darkness-visible-us-diplomacy-in-nicaragua.htm

[Peace Patriot]

1. The disgrace of Florida '00 was far surpassed by the plague of 'TRADE SECRET' code voting machines

...spread throughout the USA during the 2002 to 2004 period. The writer makes brilliant points about Negroponte, Callahan and their Miltonian evil but gets a bit muddled in explaining the Supreme Court crowning of George Bush in 2000.

Granted, writer Toni Solo was trying to explain just how egregious Callahan's remarks about Florida '00 were. ("The most observed election in history..." Jeez. If ONLY it had been observed by the Carter Center, the OAS and other international monitors!) But what has happened since is FAR WORSE and much simpler to explain.

One. Private. Far-rightwing connected. Corporation. Produces. 80% of the vote totals. In. The. USA. Using. "TRADE SECRET" code. With. Virtually. No. Audit/recount controls.

You want to understand how Americans could elect this Scumbag Congress? We didn't. You want to understand how Wisconsin, the most progressive state in the country, elected Walker? They didn't.

It's that simple. It ain't the media. It ain't the money. (Well, they are problems, too.) IT'S THE 'TRADE SECRET' VOTING MACHINES! That's the capper. What media and money can't buy, the 'TRADE SECRET' code--code that you and I are not permitted to review--can magically produce: rightwing assholes ruling over people who want good government, social justice, fairness and peace, and DICTATING bad government, injustice, unfairness and war.

Yes, it is putrid for an evil-doer like Callahan to be preaching to Nicaraguans about election integrity. Spiders and snakes fly out from his mouth as he speaks. But his death squad past and Florida '00 aren't the half of his ghoulish hypocrisy. U.S. democracy has been utterly demolished by the coup d'etat of 'TRADE SECRET' voting machines.

And I try never to express this horrible reality without saying that it is still possible to change this. The Anthrax Congress, which did this to us, did NOT require the purchase and use of 'TRADE SECRET' voting systems. They merely provided a $3.9 billion e-voting boondoggle so the thing could be accomplished by filthy lobbying. There is NO federal law mandating these diabolical machines. Control over voting system decisions still resides at the local/state level, where ordinary people still have some potential influence. We could throw these machines out and return to a paper ballot count (or an "open source code" system) tomorrow, if enough people demanded it of their county registrars or state legislators. Until we do this, we don't have a democracy.