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On two different occasions in the past week I confronted leading election fraud investigators with a simple question: Since you know that the 2000 and 2004 elections were stolen, you know that nothing in our electoral system has changed except for the worse since then, and you know that there is no possible outcome of the 2008 election other than continuing wars of aggression (crimes against humanity), why are you still encouraging people to vote?
Greg Palast, who was talking by phone to an Activist San Diego meeting where his parents were present, responded with a rambling monologue that his father agreed had not answered my question. Richard Hayes Phillips, who was doing a book signing and talk for the local chapter of Progressive Democrats of America, actually put his hands over his ears so he wouldn't have to listen to me.
I've often been berated for saying that people who vote for war criminals are complicit in war crimes. What should I say, that people who vote for war criminals are not complicit in war crimes? Of course they are.
But it isn't just that our nation is engaged in war crimes. We are using known war criminals to carry out our wars of aggression. Talking about the private military contractors we use in Iraq, Jeremy Scahill in his book, Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army writes:
There was also controversy about former apartheid-era security forces from South Africa, whose presence came to light only after some were killed. "The mercenaries we're talking about worked for security forces that were synonymous with murder and torture," said Richard Goldstone, a retired justice of the Constitutional Court of South Africa who also served as chief prosecutor of the UN war crimes tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda. "My reaction was one of horror that that sort of person in employed in a situation where what should be encouraged is the introduction of democracy. These are not the people who should be employed in this sort of endeavor."
Most Americans know that our wars of aggression are based on lies and have killed millions of innocent people. Most Americans claim to oppose these war crimes and many go so far as to sign petitions to Congress or even to get themselves beaten and arrested protesting in Congress or in the streets. But when I ask them why they continue to vote in elections that they know are rigged and where the only possible outcome is more war, why they continue to authorize with their votes, crimes against humanity which they claim to oppose, they change the subject or cover their ears.
These are not people who need to be awakened to the truth. These are people who know the truth and just don't care.
