Is it just me, or does the world seem to be spiraling out of control faster then anyone can fathom? Recent events in the news feel less and less like reality, and more like the strange parallel world that Louis Carroll envisioned in his tale of Alice and her adventures in Wonderland. Black is white, up is down. Our leaders are exposing themselves daily as the incompetent stewards of the public domain that many of us have feared for some time. Nobody's driving the train.
Recently, Russia held their Parliamentary elections that many felt were a test for former KGB strongman Vladimir Putin's United Russia Party ahead of the upcoming Presidential poll in 2012. The elections were fraught with allegations of ballot box stuffing, police intimidation and the nations top independent election monitor was charged by Russian prosecutors just days before. It appears there was a concerted effort on the part of the United Russia Party to pull a fast one on the Russian people and the international community. And why wouldn't they?
I was a 19 years old kid during the U.S. Presidential election of 2000. I had, despite being Canadian through and through, held a keen interest in U.S. politics even as a grade school kid. I'm not totally sure where it stemmed from, but by the time I was in my early 20's I was a full blown political junkie. I recall watching that election on T.V. as the results poured in that night, as the results tightened, I knew I was going to see something I had never witnessed before. I had always gone to bed knowing who the President-Elect was, but here it was 2 and then 3 in the morning and the talking heads were still trying to figure out what had taken place. First Florida was called for Bush, then Gore, then Bush again. Something strange was going on in Florida, beyond the allegations of understaffed polling stations and malfunctioning machines, but none of us could have guessed what would take place next.
I recently watched "Bush Family Fortunes; The Best Democracy Money Can Buy," a BBC piece made by Greg Palast, an investigative reporter who blew the cover on the big fix in Florida. He uncovered documents that proved that African Americans in some (mostly Democrat held) districts had been purged from the voter rolls after a "clerical error" on the part of the election commission after trying to purge convicted felons. The commission was headed by Florida Secretary Of State, Katherine Harris who also happened to be the Florida Co-Chairperson of the Bush for President team. The documents not only detailed the methods used, but also warnings by the company contracted to "verify" the list, Database Technologies (DBT) that the methods they were instructed to use were bound to cause errors, meaning some would be declared ineligible to vote. The emails between DBT and Florida election officials clearly states that the officials wanted a large number of these individuals, among them a preacher to be ineligible to vote, despite the fact the database contained errors such as one man being convicted of a crime 7 years into the future. The solution? Black out the conviction dates. When interviewed for the film, Clayton Roberts, director of the Division of Elections, became very agitated and stormed off camera after being asked about the $4 million contract given to DBT to verify the list.
Something went very wrong in the sunshine state. It is estimated that 12,000 eligible voters, mostly African Americans, were turned away from the polls that fateful November day. In a state that was won by Bush by only 537 votes, those 12,000 votes (not to mention the nearly 175,000 "spoiled" votes) could have made a difference in not only the final results, but also in the course of history. I often wonder what the world would be like had George W. Bush never been given the keys to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. Would we have seen a war in Iraq? Would the massive deregulation of Wall Street that started under Bill Clinton have been continued to be allowed to snowball into the 2008 crisis that world leaders all seem clueless to fix? Would there have been a 9/11 or Patriot Act? Of course we'll never know. The recount in Florida turned into a partisan circus, with Republican Congressional aides staging fake protests in order to stop the count. The count was eventually stopped by the Supreme Court ruling that "officially" gave Bush the Presidency. The court ruled 5-4 in favor of Bush despite the fact that two justices, Scallia and Thomas both had conflicts of interest (Scallia's son represented the Bush team in his father's court, Thomas's wife's job was to vet resumes for the Bush transition team).
I'm afraid I have only scratched the surface of this story, but you get the idea. And don't get me wrong, election fraud has been going on since time immemorial. Hell even JFK out "Nixoned" Nixon in the 1960 Presidential Election with allegations of ballot box stuffing in Chicago and other places. Powerful people will always find ways to manipulate the system for their own gain. It's the uglier side of human nature.
I suspect as the demonstrations in Moscow heat up over the next few days, there will be those in power that will condemn the inevitable use of force against demonstrators. It's a world rich with hypocrisy we live in. I can hear Hillary Clinton already telling Putin and Medvedev to respect the rights of those peaceful protesters to address grievances with their government. Where are these calls for sanity when kids at UC Davis or pregnant women in Seattle are pepper sprayed by American cops? And where are these same politicians when voters in their own country are disenfranchised?
One of the great dangers of the unprovoked invasion of Iraq is that it set a dangerous precedent to the rest of the world. One of the dangers of allowing Bush to steal Florida in 2000 is it also sets a precedent, one that plays out in most elections around the world. Putin knows that if Bush can get away with it, so can he. And if cops in Toronto, or New York or London can brutalize and arbitrarily arrest it's citizens, why can't cops in Moscow? I guess that's my point. If we think we can do whatever we need to in the name of "national security" or "protecting the children" then so can the rest of the world. There's a strange "do as I say, not as I do" attitude in the west that didn't work on most of us as children and won't work now. We in the west have lost our "moral high ground" through the events of the past decade plus. It's up to us, not politicians like Clinton to condemn and resist this trend, or one day ten years from now, we'll wake up like I often do wondering, "what the hell happened to us?"
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