David Swanson: Well, if Americans were sufficiently well informed, they would do things nonviolently as well, but.......
Dennis Loo: (laughing loudly)..... well, you know, grab them by the shirt collar.....
David Swanson: ...yes...it's interesting because among those who ARE relatively well informed, when you bring up the topic of impeachment, at least for the past several months and probably the next two weeks at least, you never hear "there's not a good case, there's no evidence, there's no grounds." What you hear is this litany of fears: Fear of Cheney being president, fear of looking radical, fear of it not being plausible and draining energy from something else and so on. Do you get those sorts of responses, and how do you reply to them if you do?
David Swanson: (laughing)... no I think that those are excellent answers and are ones that I have tried to use as well; I think in addition, it can be useful to point out to people that Cheney is largely running things now, and to have him upfront as the face of the Republican Party would be advantageous to us, but I think your first answer is the fundamental answer; we can't let this pass, and impeachment is not for selecting a president, it's for removing a criminal president, and then we'll address the next one when he or she is in there.
Dennis Loo: Yes, absolutely. Were you and I alone in the world today to recognize that this was going on, it would still be a fight that you and I would have to fight, and then we would have to bring other people along, but it isn't only you and I, in fact; roughly 50% of the American population, the people in polls since last year, the fall of last year or late summer of last year, Zogby, at least, began polling people and asking Americans, if Bush lied about the reasons for going to war in Iraq, would you favor the articles of impeachment being drawn up? If he has been spying on Americans without court warrant, would you be in favor of articles of impeachment being drawn up, 40% to 50% of the people have been saying yes, so we, in fact, there is a huge latent support for impeachment. The Democratic Party is ignoring this as an organization. If they really were a party of opposition, they could sweep the chambers of Congress simply by saying this is our platform; we need to impeach this administration, but they are not doing that obviously, so the situation, those people who say that it's not possible politically to impeach this administration, and that we would be unwise, are contributing to the demise of everything that many of these people say is so sacred; the U.S. Constitution, international law and so on and so forth; they have just taken a hatchet to these things. They are taking a bark saw to the Constitution, and the Democrats.... even the New York Times said on the Military Commissions Act of 2006, they said if you are going to filibuster anything, filibuster this, and the Democrats didn't. What did they do? John Kerry, Senator Feinstein, when they took the vote on the floor of the Senate, what did they say about this bill? Did they say this thing is unthinkable, it is barbaric? No, they didn't say these things, they said, "Oh the GOP is going to use this against people who vote No in the November elections," as if partisan bickering was the issue here, as if their careers was the issue, as if the elections of 2006 were the issue; no, the issue is much more fundamental than that, but they didn't speak to it.
David Swanson: Right, and even if you buy the importance of the elections happening in two weeks, there's the debate over what's the best way to win them, but even should the Democrats playing their hands the way they have been, should they manage to win, given honest and fair elections, there's the question of whether the elections will be honest and fair, and I know that unlike a lot of people arguing for impeachment, you put at the very top of your list the stealing of elections; can you talk a little bit about that and what you expect to see on November 7?
Dennis Loo: Yes, I'm glad you brought that up. I saw a poll yesterday where two thirds of the people polled said they're afraid that hackers could very likely modify the vote in November. I think that's an astounding figure.
David Swanson: Well and they're right.
Dennis Loo: And they're right!! They are absolutely right. The last two presidential elections and a number of other major contests have been stolen through computer fraud, and I do detail a good deal of that in chapter two of the book; it's entitled "Never Elected, Not Once, the Immaculate Deception in the Road Ahead," and there's overwhelming evidence of fraud in the last... especially in 2004, and so what to do? The way we put it, let me speak to this more broadly first. The way we put it in our book is that no matter what happens in the elections of 2006, and no matter who is in Congress at the time, we need to focus our energies primarily on building a mass, irresistible movement that will demand impeachment proceedings, no matter who is in office at the time, so that's the first point. The second point is, do I think that the vote is extremely vulnerable to hacking? Yes, it is. It only really takes, because the central tabulating, because we have 80% or more of the machines that we're using for voting in this country, they are computers, and they send all their material into a central tabulating in every state, you need the equivalent of a high school education...you know, 1 person over a modem can alter the vote undetectably, and I'm sure you're very aware of that, and other people who have been keeping up on this, but I'm surprised that so many people do know about it, so I think that the pre-election polls are showing mass disaffection to the Republicans at this point, but how it's going to go down, you know I was listening to Mark Crispin Miller talk the other day, and he was saying that he has condensed...why would the Republicans who have stolen the last few elections, why would they not steal this, so he's predicting that what they will do is they will say "well security", you know it was security concerns again that somehow turned the tables in favor of the Republicans at the last minute, and that they are somehow going to squeak by this time, so I don't have a crystal ball; I don't know exactly what's going to come down. It's possible that going into the election, that the indications of evangelicals who have been voting for the Republicans may stay home; certainly many of them are talking like that, and that the stealing of the election in 2006 may be so obvious, so blatant this time that they may not be able to get away with it.
David Swanson: Yes, I hope you're right. I hope the margin is big enough combined with the number of Americans who are now prepared to fight, and are going to be poll watchers and reporters and observers, maybe they won't get away with it, but...
Dennis Loo: If I may, I think that a key thrust of our book, is that no matter what happens in the polling booths, however the vote comes down, that if you look at anything that has been really good that has come out of American politics over history had been through mass popular movements demanding change, you know, the civil rights movement, the antiwar movement, the women's rights movement, the labor movement of the 30s, and so on. It took people taking to the streets and acting and participating in the most thoroughly democratic way, which goes well beyond whether or not they go in to pull the lever or push the button or whatever, punch the chad in the voting booth, people have to act, and it was really very painful in November of 2004, because as we know, so many people put so much effort into electing John Kerry, because they really wanted to get rid of Bush and Cheney, and they tried so hard, and then the early returns were so promising, it was very clear from the exit polls that Bush was going to go down in a big, big way, and then mysteriously at 1:36 a.m. Eastern Standard Time, the exit polls make a 5-point swing on the basis of a tiny number of more respondents, which was mathematically impossible, one of the things I point out in my chapter on this, and people were just horrified and depressed, and so, you know, I think we have to really, our point is that we really have to push this issue of people having to take this up in the streets, and we really have to create a wholly different political atmosphere, because there's a reason why the democrats have been complicit in this. It isn't just because they are spineless or they can't get their act together, but there have been some dramatic, fundamental changes going on in the economy in the United States and in the world. You know, we're in the situation today where the 100 largest economic entities in the world today, more than half of them are not countries; they're corporations, and Wal-Mart is bigger than 182 countries, so when you are talking about this kind of globalized capitalism, and the kind of concentrated wealth that means and is accelerating in that direction, then is one person/one vote really capable of standing up against that? Are the democrats capable of standing up against that? They haven't been, and they're not going to be, because in their highest and best expression, the democratic party is FDR new-dealers, and the material basis for the New Deal has been systematically getting wiped away over the last 30 years, so there's a reason why we have been moving in this fascist-like direction, and why the Democrats have not been fighting it, and because, you know, it's all about empire.
David Swanson: I know, and I agree, and it's very depressing and very frightening...
Dennis Loo: Uh huh, very definitely.
David Swanson: ...I'm maintaining a sliver of hope that, should the Democrats, awful as many of them are, have a majority and fight to keep it, that many of the excuses for not moving on impeachment will be gone, not just among the Democrats in Congress, but among activists around the country, and that we will have a window from sometime in November for some number of months, before which everyone believes all their energies must be devoted to a cautious approach on the 2008 election, and during that window, there would seem to be an opportunity to push hard for impeachment with Congressman Conyers able to initiate hearings. Do you have any hope that things may go that way?
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