BBC-TV: "Set up to steal it again."
Is 2008 already fixed?
Friday, October 10, 2008
Friday October 10, 2008
"A lot of Europeans wonder: Why are Americans so crazy, they keep reelecting this guy?” Well the answer is, we don’t! They keep stealing these elections! And they stole it in 2000, they stole it in 2004, and they’re all set up to steal it again!" - Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on BBC Television Newsnight.
On Friday at 6pm and 10pm Eastern Time, BBC America will bust open the story of the systematic attack on US voters that could easily cost Barack Obama the White House. (Watch the promo below)
Or watch it, beginning Friday night, at www.Gregpalast.com.
Newsnight investigative reporter Greg Palast travels from the Native pueblos of New Mexico to the war-zone of the 8 Mile neighborhood of Detroit to meet some of the three million voters who have been disappeared by a GOP campaign draining voter rolls of the poor, the dark-skinned, the defenseless.
In Detroit, Palast is bounced out of the local McCain headquarters - housed under the black flag (literally) of foreclosure profiteers. We meet Robert Pratt, a union worker, who fears he will lose his home - and his vote.
Are the Republicans turning a economic devastation into an electoral bonanza?
BBC Reporter Palast follows the path of investigation laid out by civil rights attorney Robert F. Kennedy Jr. - encountering along the way the Republican Party lawyers, funders - and Karl Rove. The GOP charges that the Democrats have registered five million fraudulent voters, a claim backed by a recent US government report.
Palast meets the report's author - who claims her words were turned upside down. And they went to court to stop her from speaking out.
Democrats don't have clean hands either, as Palast discloses: from the Acoma Pueblo, we find Natives (almost all Democrats) who've had their ballots illegally junked by local Democrats.
But whichever party attacks the poor, it's McCain that's the winner.
Newsnight is the British Broadcasting Corporations premier current affairs show. Broadcast earlier this week in London, it exposed the story of the mass purge of voters in Colorado, re-reported in the New York Times.
The show will be repeated 8am Eastern on Sunday.
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Greg Palast and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. are co-authors of "Steal Back Your Vote" the investigative comic book and voter guide - available at StealBackYourVote.org. Jesse Jackson says "download it - and fight back."
Funding for the investigations was provided by the Nation Institute/Puffin Foundation.
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You can already watch the story on BBC News's website at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7658856.stm
But what will we do?
Nothing.
Nothing we can do because A)corporate media will follow the party message, B)we control no military (please don't say private gun ownership is to help the people fight the government--that's absurd), and C)most importantly, most of us don't care as long as we can go to Wal-Mart and buy more stuff we don't need.
Mr. Palast,
I have watched and read your columns for the past eight years. You correctly predicted the second election theft in 2004. That being said, your newest "warning" about election sounds as though a. You know something and are doing nothing or b. You are tacitly hoping for another theft. Either way, it is obvious you know nothing of the current political climate in the United States. This election has already been decided, yes.
What you fail to understand is that Mr. Obama is on the cusp of one of the most complete landslides in our country's history. Yet here you are again crying "gloom and doom" with a glee that would do justice to Darth Cheney. Either come back to the U.S. and do something productive or stay in the UK, but for the love of God, sir, SHUT UP! The United States has much important work to do after Mr. Obama wins, and what we do not need are “chicken littles” talking about the sky falling. Using one last paraphrase: "Lead, follow, or get the hell out of the way!"
Sincerely, a Korean War Veteran.
Much too naive. Here's what will happen.
http://www.populistamerica.com/might_makes_reich
"Democrats don't have clean hands either, as Palast discloses: from the Acoma Pueblo, we find Natives (almost all Democrats) who've had their ballots illegally junked by local Democrats."
This doesn't make sense. My friend who is a very active Democrat and lives in Santa Fe has no idea what this is all about.
Why would Democrats "junk" other Democrats' ballots???
I suspect that those who are most subject to this “block the vote” practice are likely not watching your show or reading Rolling Stone magazine. So the more significant question is can the Obama campaign with its millions of dollars and its cadre of lawyers combat this situation? Secondly, what are they doing to address this challenge? If the only solution is the recommendation that Kennedy suggested, which is to vote early and don’t mail in your ballot, then the worse case scenario would seem to be to have those vehicles with loudspeakers circulate in those neighborhoods where the concentration of the potentially disenfranchised are situated. And start now. JBJ