The Smoking Gun Fired The Shot No One Heard

Welcome Comrades,

There's a famous joke about modern life by Lily Tomlin that goes, "No matter how cynical I get, it's impossible to keep up." I feel like that a lot lately.

It may not always seem like it, but I have always been a bit skeptical about conspiracy theorists and doomsayers. I don't like thinking the worst about people. I believe, at heart, I am an optimist. Winston Churchill said he didn't think there was any point in being anything else, and he had to deal with Hitler! If that doesn't shake your faith in humanity, then nothing will. I guess I always thought that most negative reports were exaggerated by human nature's love for disaster. Most politicans aren't really bought and paid for, most corporations aren't really soulless sharks relentlessly devouring resources and labor with no regard for consequences, there's really no international banking conspiracy, etc. I mean, I knew that it was bad out there in the real world, but not Evil, you know? Then, I read, "The Best Democracy Money Can Buy," by Greg Palast, an investigative journalist for the BBC. It's hard to stop shuddering as I realize it's much worse than I'd ever imagined.

Greg Palast is famous for breaking the story about erroneous voter purging in Florida during the 2000 presidential election. You heard about it, right? Almost 100,000 people were mistakenly identified as felons and denied the right to vote. Most of these were African-American and Democrats. Let's see, now, how much did Bush win Florida by... oh, yeah, 537 votes! Well, the whole thing could just be an honest mistake. After all, it's not like Bush has any connections in Florida... Anyway, the purges came to light when Madison County Elections Supervisor, Linda Howell, recieved a notice informing her that she would not be allowed to vote. OK, so everyone makes mistakes. It's possible there was no agenda between the list of people to be purged sent from Texas to the new private accounting firm, ChoicePoint, that was processing the names for the state of Florida at a cost of $2,317,800. They replaced the previous person who did the job for $5,700. That's not a typo. That's over 2 million dollars increase in expenditure for a system that didn't work. Or did it? As of this year, the problem is scheduled to be fixed by 2003. Too late to affect the gubernatorial election in Florida - won by Republican Jeb Bush. How interesting...

There's so much more to make you lose sleep in this book. How the IMF, World Bank and WTO systematically destroy the economies of third world countries allowing American big business to buy up industries and services at fire sale prices. How Exxon wiggled out of the 5 billion dollar fine for the Exxon Valdez oil spill, paying only 50 million (that was covered by insurance.) How PepsiCo got former Pepsi lawyer, Richard Nixon, to order the CIA to assasinate Salvadore Allende, the legally elected, but socialist president of Chile in 1970 because Pepsi feared the nationalization of it's bottling operations there. How Monsanto forced scientists to falsify research regarding BST, the bovine growth hormone approved by the FDA under the watchful eye of Michael Taylor, deputy FDA commissioner who now works for - wait for it - Monsanto!

I want you all to read this. It's an assignment. I don't want to be the only one with my teeth clenched because this book gave me an aneurism.

A quick word about Trent Lott: Were his comments misconstrued as racist? Well, he does come from the only state in the union not to ratify the XIIIth amendment. You know, the one that abolished slavery.

Hasta la victoria siempre,

TVD

--- 12/30/02

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