|
CounterPunch
November
7, 2002
To the Barricades!
by LORENZO HAGERTY
Another fake election is over, and no one should
be surprised at the results. What do I mean by "fake"
you ask? Well, just look at what has transpired in the weeks
leading up to "election" day:
- Florida prevented 91,000 legally registered
voters from casting their ballots, and the majority of them were
people of color. They did this by using the already discredited
and politically questionable list of felons and dead people that
they used to rig the 2000 election for the governor's brother.
- In Minnesota, the corporate-controlled
media prevented a Libertarian candidate from participating in
the crucial debate between a tired old Democrat and the anointed
business candidate . . . this is a state with a sitting Libertarian
governor.
- Poor candidates were completely drowned
out in a tidal wave of special interest campaign money, much
of which was collected directly by Bush himself.
- U.S. taxpayer money was used to fly
Bush and his cronies around the country so they could spread
more fear with their rhetoric about terrorists and the imminent
destruction of all things American by Middle Easterners.
- For some mysterious reason, no exit
polling data was released. Thus, particularly in precincts that
used computer terminals for voting, there was no way to determine
how much fraud was being committed by election officials.
- The power elite and their media lackeys
intentionally obscured real issues, like the loss of jobs, corporate
graft that is robbing our pension plans, and the devastation
caused by a phony war on drugs.
I could go on, but you already know the
story. The real question is "What are you going to do about
it?" Are you going to roll over like just another wage slave,
or are you going to stand up and be counted? For now, you still
have a choice, but if you assume you can wait until November
of 2004 to do something about the death of democracy in this
country, you have already lost.
It is time for us to be brutally honest
with ourselves. We are being lied to by the media and by almost
every politician in Washington. Of course, the lies are extremely
well packaged. For example, look at how skillfully the Bush-Cheney
junta forced Congress to spend most of the pre-election period
in a debate about whether we should abandon everything this once
great nation stood for and adopt a first strike policy. Striking
out in blind fear, as Congress has authorized our emperor to
do, is simply un-American. How anyone could vote for a member
of Congress that supported a first strike policy is beyond me.
Yet almost all of those fearful and cowardly congress-people
who voted for this insane policy were re-elected.
If we are to have any hope at all of
unseating the oligarchy and returning to a republic, we must
act now . . . TODAY! What makes you think you can wait another
two years to effect change? We have already seen how a crazed,
military-trained sniper can paralyze a city. If such a madman
were loose in your city next election day, would you go out to
vote? When you think about all of the insidious ways the will
of the people can be thwarted on election day, it isn't hard
to see that the usurpers who have captured the machinery of our
government don't have to declare martial law to keep us in check.
All they need is a few homegrown terrorists and a media machine
to fuel the fear, and we sheep will remain indoors, watching
sitcoms and dreaming about our new SUVs.
Are you an American or a slave? Are you
going to sit behind your double-locked doors until November 2004
and hope for the best, or are you going to stand up and be counted?
We have a war to stop! We have a democracy to restore! And we
can't do it by staying home and watching TV.
If we can't trust the government, and
if we can't trust the news media, whom can we trust? Each other!
We can and should trust the common sense of one another. The
days of quietly keeping your opinions to yourself at work, church,
school, and in other public places is over. The moment has arrived
for each and every one of us to speak out. To me, there is no
discernable difference any more between the Democrats and the
Republicans, but that doesn't mean I have no choices at the polls.
I think we actually have a three party system: Green, Libertarian,
and Rebublicrat. But I don't think those first two parties will
have much of a chance unless we begin today to rebuild a free
America. In November 2004, our cry will be "To the Polls."
Until then, the best way to let the world know that there are
still some freedom-loving people in this country is to turn out
into the streets. First we demonstrate our unwillingness to send
our children to be slaughtered in a quest to enrich a few oil
companies and their military cousins like the Carlyle Group.
Once we have prevented the Bush-Cheney junta from depleting our
treasury and spilling innocent blood, we can focus on the important
business of restoring democracy to this land.
Let our cry not be "Poor me. What
can I do," but "TO THE BARRICADES!"
Lorenzo Hagerty
can be reached at: hagerty@matrixmasters.com
Copyright (C) 2002 by Lorenzo Hagerty
Yesterday's
Features
Bruce Jackson
Don't
Mourn, Bake!
Anthony Gancarski
Jeb
Bush: Left-Liberal?
William Evan
A Diplomatic
Strategy
How Carter and Castro Could Avert War on Iraq
William A. Cook
Blinded
by the Right
Pierre Tristam
Hypocrisy
at Camp Delta
Mayor Walid Hamad
Settlers
and Trash
Matt Siegfried
Questions
of War
Alexander Cockburn and
Jeffrey St. Clair
Nosedive:
the Democrats the Day After
New
Print Edition of CounterPunch Available Exclusively
to Subscribers:
- The Shafts of Death: Bush, Coal Mines, and Death
in the Tunnels;
- Speak Memory!: Carter and the Draft;
- Daniel Pipes' World: Smearing Pro-Arab Academics;
- Ashcroft's Gays: the War on Free Speech;
- Saddam's Amnesty: Could It Happen Here?
- Criminalizing Dissent: a history and preview;
- Iraq 1987: When the Going Was Good;
- Egypt in Turmoil: an Anthropologist's Account;
- Green and Grounded: Profiled at the Gate.
Remember, the CounterPunch website is
supported exclusively by subscribers to our newsletter. Our worldwide
web audience is soaring , with about seven million hits a month
now. This is inspiring, but the work involved also compels us
to remind you more urgently than ever to subscribe and/or make
a (tax deductible) donation if you can afford it. If you find our site useful please: Subscribe
Now!
Or Call Toll Free 1 800 840 3683
home / subscribe
/ about us
/ books
/ archives
/ search
/ links
/
|
October 26
/ 27, 2002
Michael Wolff
A Place
of Tears
Ilija Trojanow
Bali Mon Amour
Ben Tripp
Crocodile Tears
Hope Shand and Silvia Ribeiro
The Great Containment:
GM Fallout from Mexico to Zambia
M. Junaid
Alam
The Wolf Who Cried Wolf:
Charging Anti-Semitism & Extending the Iron Wall
Gavin Keeney
The Fusion Thing:
Landscape + Architecture
Adam Engel
A Good Man is Hard to Misfit
Anis Shivani
Is America Becoming Fascist?
Jason Leopold
Is Thomas White Fit to Lead the Army?
Philip Farruggio
Let Them Eat (Crumb) Cake
Josh Frank
The Grassroots of Hope
Anthony Gancarski
Concerned Citizen: episode 5
Night School
M. Shahid
Alam
The Civilizing Mission
October 25, 2002
Wayne Madsen
Pappy
Bush on Wellstone:
"Who Is This Chickenshit?"
Stuart Timmons
Harry
Hay Dead at 90:
He Paved the Way for Modern Gay Activism
Vanessa Jones
Australia
Votes Green:
Historic No Vote to US War Plans
Ben Terrall
Rep.
Tom Lantos' Big Lie
Ismael Hossein-Zadeh
Behind
the Drive for War:
The Escalating Bush Military Budget
Will Youmans
Israel's and Divestment
Norman Madarasz
Lula
on the Verge
October 24,
2002
Jo Freeman
How the
Christian Coalition Boosts Israel
Ben Tripp
George
W.: Caught Between Iraq and a Hard Place
Harry Browne
Ireland's Dreary Yes to Nice
Anis Shivani
A Guide
for the Perplexed:
the Major Countries of the World as Defined by the Office of
Strategic Influence
T.W. Croft
America's
New Improved War
William Hughes
A Free
Press, But for Whom?
Alan Farago
Jeb Bush and the Environment
October 23,
2002
Daniel Wolff
Pataki,
Witt and the Indian Point Nuke
Wayne Madsen
A Saudiless
Arabia
Sam Bahour
and Paul de Rooij
Abritrary
Imprisonment
Chris White
Why I Oppose
the US War on Terror:
an ex-Marine Sergeant Speaks Out
Anthony Gancarski
Back to Bali
Adam Engel
Twilight
(of the Idols) Zone
Robert Fisk
How to Shut Up Your Critics
October 22,
2002
Jack McCarthy
A Letter
to C. Hitchens
Carol Norris
This Message
Brought to You by Breast Cancer, Inc.
Joanne Mariner
Just
Say "Not Until We're Married":
Legislating Morality and Understanding HIV/AIDS Prevention
Kathleen Christison
Excuse Me?
How Israel Justifies Killing Palestinians
Linda Heard
Iraq War
Mongering:
A Game of Chess with Lives at Stake
Roger Peacock
Marketing the War on Iraq
Resources:
100s of Links
About 9/11
CounterPunch:
Complete
Coverage of 9/11 and Its Aftermath
Five
Days That
Shook The World:
Seattle and Beyond
By
Alexander Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
Photos by Allan Sekula
(Click Here to Order from CounterPunch
Online at 20% Off Amazon.com's price!)
Read
Whiteout and Find Out
How the CIA's Backing of the Mujahideen Created the World's Most
Robust Heroin Market and Helped to Finance the Rise of the Taliban
and Osama bin Laden
Whiteout:
CIA, Drugs & the
Press
by Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
|