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where you use some of the country's resources (in this case, oil) to help THE PEOPLE, to diversity the economy (if you are too dependent on one resource), to provide grants and loans to small businesses--as well as funding medical clinics, schools, community centers and other facilities in chronically under-served areas--and using government resources, NOT to further enrich the super-rich, and NOT to burden your society with blood-sucking corporations, but to fund research for innovative products for SMALL business and agricultural ventures.
Hugo Chavez has been painted as a communist and a dictator by our corporate news monopolies. It is a LUDICROUS and sneaky smear--with about as much evidence behind it as there was for WMDs in Iraq. The Bolivarian revolution in Venezuela is creating a MIXED capitalist/socialist economy with a strong component of social justice. Its purpose is FAIRNESS. And it is backed by about 60% of the voters, in the most heavily monitored elections in history. It is the will of the majority to use some of the oil revenues (long ago nationalized) to address the huge discrepancy in wealth between the tiny rich oil elite and the vast population of the poor and the brown. And the methods being used show both creativity and wisdom--in business, in agriculture, in infrastructure, in education and medical care, and in regional economic and political cooperation.
This is the sort of thinking and planning that is now occurring ALL OVER Latin America, with the election of leftist governments--in Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Chile and Bolivia, as well as Venezuela--virtually the entire continent (with growing leftist movements in Peru, and even in Columbia--also, course in Mexico--and in Nicaragua). One of the keys is TRANSPARENT elections--the result of a lot of hard work by the OAS, the Carter Center, EU election monitoring groups and local civic groups.
Transparent elections = good, leftist (majorityist) government.
Non-transparent elections = the Bush junta.
We can have good government here, too. But first we have to restore our right to vote. How do we do that?
We have a crisis coming in November with Stolen Election III of the Bush era. Although a lot of good people are working like mad on various election reform activities, there is nothing on the horizon to prevent a third stolen election. Our voting system is now run by Bushite corporations who are "tabulating" all of our votes with TRADE SECRET, PROPRIETARY programming code, and virtually no audit/recount controls.
I think the Absentee Ballot protest is the way to go. Flood the system with MOUNTAINS of AB votes. Refuse to vote on any of these election theft machines. Bring the system down NOW.
The U.S. fascist coup is a very difficult to dislodge, as we have learned to our grief. But it's sort of a left-handed (ahem) compliment of the vultures who are looting our treasury, dismantling our Constitution and killing and torturing people in our name, that they have taken such elaborate measures to defeat the will of the majority of Americans. Our votes are vitally important to world peace, to saving our planetary environment, and to curtailing the US-based global corporate predators who are destroying everything for everybody. That's WHY they took our right to vote away. That's also why we are subjected to 24/7 fascist propaganda. The miracle is that the propaganda HASN'T worked. Americans are holding tight to their peaceful and progressive beliefs--as polls over the last two years overwhelmingly show. But the election fraud story--especially this most lethal manifestation of it, electronic voting--is THE most black-holed story of all. It's taking a lo-o-o-ng time for word of mouth to get around, about the specifics of this new mechanism of election theft: secret electronic code.
We've got to bust this election theft system--and soon. THIS November. The AB voting protest can do that--if it gets big enough (and it's already up to 50% in Los Angeles).
Bust the Machines--Vote Absentee!
(Note: AB voting is not "safe." And it will NOT result in an accurate vote count this fall. But neither did the Montgomery bus boycott end segregation all by itself. What it did was create PANIC in the entrenched political/financial system of bigotry. That's what we want to do. Refuse to use their machines! Let all that EXPENSIVE, shiny, new, election theft technology sit idle! Give it a great big "vote of no confidence." CREATE the conditions for reform. FORCE reform. PUSH it. NOW!)
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