Reply #51: I agree with most of what you say, lagavulin--and welcome to DU!

[Peace Patriot]

But I don't think it's over. I think the revolution has just begun. And the South Americans are showing us the way--with hard work over a long period of time on TRANSPARENT elections, by grass roots activists, civic groups, the OAS, EU election monitors and the Carter Center. Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Chile, Venezuela, Bolivia. Next Peru, and Mexico. Huge, profound, unstoppable leftist/socialist movement, covering virtually the entire map of South America already.

Transparent elections = good, leftist government, of, by and for the people.

Non-transparent elections = the Bush junta.

Just think of what the South Americans have had to overcome to achieve this--decades of assassinations, death squads, dictators, torture, and centuries of economic exploitation, all supported and fomented by the U.S. gov't and our Corporate Rulers.

It may be a hard slog--through every state/local jurisdiction--but it CAN be done. It is doable. It is a specific, concrete rallying point and goal. TRANSPARENT elections!

In Chile, they just elected their first woman president, socialist Michele Batchelet--who was tortured by the US-backed dictator Pinochet, and lost her family to that junta. In Bolivia, they just elected their first indigenous Indian president, socialist Evo Morales--born of coca leaf growers in the mountains, who campaigned with a wreath of coca leaves around his neck! (--symbol of resistance to the murderous US "war on drugs"; sacred plant to the indigenous, essential to survival in the cold, high altitudes of the Andes). That election was preceded by the Bolivians throwing the Bechtel Corporation out of their country in a popular uprising (Bechtel had privatized the water in one Bolivian city and had jacked up the price of water to the poor).

It CAN be done. And it must be done. And it is up to us. We have an historic duty to get this fascist junta off of everybody else's backs, as well as our own, and to restore democracy in the United States, no matter how long it takes, no matter how difficult it is. Each of us, as individuals, doing our part--and together as a conscious community of patriots and lovers of peace and justice. We are brain-washed to want easy, quick solutions, and to despair and feel demoralized and disempowered when individual battles are lost. We need to think long-term--and to see and study the OVERWHELMING examples available, in the recent past, and happening RIGHT NOW, as in South America, of the undefeatable progressive trend of history. We, as individuals, are products of that trend. Our country has been the world's leader of that trend--with the mechanisms of democracy, voting and free speech, permitting us to correct course when our country goes astray (as we did, for instance, in the '70s and '80s, regarding CIA assassinations/death squads in So./Central America, the Iran-Contra war on Nicaragua, and the Vietnam war itself), and to implement progressive values (Voting Rights Act, Civil Rights Act, end of segregation, Roe vs Wade, and other advances).

We must not allow ourselves to become depressed at temporary defeats, no matter how bad they seem, and no matter how darkly one can paint the overall circumstances of our country.

Indeed, no matter how bad it gets, we must never stop fighting for our democracy and for peace and justice. Be depressed and demoralized, if you must. Everybody needs some down-time. It's definitely understandable. But simply listing all the horrendous negative evidence of a country that is in very great trouble may be accurate, but it isn't enough. What are the mechanisms of change? How can they be recovered? What is in people' hearts? What is there to build upon, locally and nationwide? Where do you start? What should we use our time and energy, and remaining liberty, to support? How to strategize in this situation? These are the things we need to be thinking of--not how hopeless it all is.

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Some resources:

www.votersunite.org (MythBreakers - easy primer on electronic voting--one of the myths is that HAVA requires electronic voting; it does not.)
www.verfiedvoting.org (great activist site)
www.UScountvotes.org (monitoring of '06 and '08 elections)
www.solarbus.org/election/index.shtml (fab compendium of all election info)
www.freepress.org (devoted to election reform)
www.TruthIsAll.net (analysis of the 2004 election)
Sign the petition (Russ Holt, HR 550, great bill-has 169 sponsors). http://www.rushholt.com/petition.html
www.debrabowen.com (Calif Senator running for Sec of State to reform election system)
www.votepa.us (well-organized local group of citizen activists in Pennsylvania, where important legal issues are at stake, including state's rights over election systems)

Also of interest:

Bob Koehler (-- four recent election reform initiatives in Ohio, predicted to win by 60/40 votes, flipped over, on election day, into 60/40 LOSSES!--the biggest flipover we've seen yet; the election theft machines and their masters are now dictating election policy!)
www.tmsfeatures.com/tmsfeatures/subcategory.jsp?file=20051124ctnbk-a.txt&catid=1824&code=ctnbk

Amaryllis (Diebold, ES&S, Sequoia lavish lobbying of election officials - Beverly Hilton, Aug. '05)
www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x380340

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Throw Diebold and ES&S election theft machines into 'Boston Harbor' NOW!

:think: :patriot: :woohoo: :patriot: :think: