A Much Better World is Possible

EDITORIAL

On November 3, the world awoke to the results of yet another controversial US election: Bush somehow won, with Ohio being the key state. Kerry’s quick concession disturbed most Democrats and many more proclaimed the election ‘stolen’. (See Steve Moore’s article p. 75.)

Indeed, evidence of Republican ‘dirty tricks’ abounded. The CEO of Diebold, manufacturer of the infamous (no paper trail) electronic voting machine, was quoted a year prior that he was “committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes for the President”. Just following, it emerged that Diebold was fined $2.6 M for selling the State of California faulty touch-screen voting machines in a previous election. (Sacramento Bee, 11/11/04.) How a nation – claiming to be the world’s model of democracy – can use a voting system with no audit trail is totally illogical. Josef Stalin, however, would have been delighted: “Those who cast the votes decide nothing. Those who count the votes decide everything.”

The Bush team’s expected ‘October Surprise’ materialized just in time (Oct. 30) – Osama bin Laden on video for mass media dissemination. This unauthenticated Osama, or his sound-alike, claimed responsibility for 9/11 – completely contradicting his earlier statements of mid-September 2001. Most forget that in late September 2001, the Taliban offered to extradite America ’s bogey man, if the White House could prove his involvement in 9/11, but the US declined. Now we can see why: Bush and company needed him as a patsy for the war.

Whichever candidate won really didn’t matter. Both backed the illegal war and ongoing occupation of Iraq . In fact, Kerry pledged 100,000 more troops (over and above the 135,000 there now), saying he could fight the ‘War on Terror’ better than Bush. As author Arundhati Roy said, “It’s not a real choice – it’s an apparent choice. Like choosing a brand of detergent. Whether you buy Ivory Snow or Tide, they’re both owned by Proctor & Gamble.”

Clearly American-style democracy is dysfunctional. Though millions of Americans opposed the Iraq war, both presidential candidates supported it. The Founding Fathers warned us in the Declaration of Independence, “Whenever any form of Government becomes destructive of these ends [Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness], it is the right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government.” Now would seem to be a good time to do this.

Churchill is often quoted as saying, “Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time-to-time.” He meant our current ‘representative’ form of government. Today it would better be called ‘mis-representative’ democracy, because immediately upon getting elected, we practically expect most politicians to break their promises and deliberately mis-represent us. Look at Kerry: he promised every vote would count and every vote would be counted. Hah!

Why is the system so corrupt? Because most (and probably all) political campaigns are funded mainly by a wealthy minority with diametrically opposite views to the majority. So we end up with a plutocracy ... rule by the rich. Newly-elected members have an immediate conflict-of-interest: they must choose between representing those who voted for them (one person one vote) or paying back political favors to donors (one dollar one vote).

When enough of us realize that the ‘representative’ form of democracy doesn’t work, we can start building a true democracy where we vote on issues (like the war on Iraq ) directly. In this New Information Age we are collectively usually better informed on most issues than our elected representatives and we now have many new ways to cast our votes without all the expense of an election.

With Bush back in power and the New World Order back at the top of his agenda, we must act now before it’s too late – that is before the plutocrats install their so-called New World Order (a ‘nation-less’ one-world government run by transnational corporations) as depicted in the film Rollerball.

If 9/11 were the New World Order’s cause for war, it is also its Achilles heel. Sooner or later all lies are found out. That’s why 9/11 is such an important issue. As you’ll see in this issue (beginning next page), many of us believe that the ‘official story’ about what happened on 9/11 is a Big Lie. If it is proven to be so, sooner rather than later, the whole project for the New World Order will come crashing down. Hopefully, out of its ashes will rise a better world, based on a true democracy – for which we have all been yearning.

A much better world is possible – One person – many votes – on many important issues. Call it what you will: citizen-centred democracy, participatory democracy or simply direct democracy – we’ll know it when we see it!

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For more stories, plus many more extras, please get your copy of Issue #9 at our on-line store.

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