I guess the diebold machines didn’t work because the Afghani tribesmen couldn’t read.

They have used their own form of government and elections for thousands of years, lets leave them alone and let them get on with their subsistance lifestyle.

MEET THE NEW US STOOGE. SAME AS THE OLD US STOOGE.

KARZAI GOES ROGUE

Our scene is set in an alien land where we are ‘battling to defend freedom’. (*) Only the locals think it means turning them, their wives, their children and their grandparents into hamburger in mass quantities, which they resist, mightily. - The Doors - Apocalypse Now - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1b26BD5KjH0

The US’s trained old poodle appears to have learned some new tricks. Hamid Karzai, aka US Stooge, aka the Unocal Mayor of Kabul is showing distressing signs of independence.

We should expect a ‘coup’ any day now and remember the fate of the Diem brothers in Vietnam in 1963. - http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB101/index.htm

If Richard Holbrooke doesn’t like it, it must be because he was planning to fix the election for a new stooge to replace Karzai. Richard Holbrooke the US butcher who helped implement the ‘El Salvador Option’ in El Salvador. And then repeated the process in Iraq. And now in Afghanistan - the use of US-trained death squads to murder, torture and commit genocide, until the locals sue for surrender.

John Pilger - Torture is _so_ American - School of the Americas - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5L1VdlktOw

For the Afghans the suggestion was that it was better to keep their present corrupt leader because he and his gang have already looted the treasury. Whereas the new men will be hungry to do so anew.

Say. Wait a minute. Does that apply to the Neocons versus the Democrats. Neocons - $35T (T as in Trillion) looted so far. Banking - $27T, War profiteers and fraudsters - $3-4T, every other Neocon and his dog. - $X G (G as in Gazillion - many Trillion more).

“There are only two ways to win an insurgency. Ethnic cleansing. Or genocide.” “The surge - mass. civilian. slaughter”—US aerial bombing—Pepe Escobar - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1q0WU-o_KHc

“God, I love the smell of napalm in the morning.” - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bPXVGQnJm0w

Call for Captain Willard. Willard the homicidal Captain who butchers Colonel Kurtz (Marlon Brando). Played by Martin Sheen - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xGTe1vF679U

It isn’t really going to get any better. But we won’t recognize it. Until the last helicopter leaves the roof of the US embassy. Again. - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AeDq_tCCj3o

Fade out - The Doors - Apocalypse Now - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1b26BD5KjH0

Ah, nightmares, nightmares. That could never happen. A nuclear-armed superpower would never be led by people that bone-headedly stupid.

In the Loop - Trailer - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQrqMkCuHqA

Cinema’s greatest swearing. Ever. ‘purview’ - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=reTHiReUNo4#t=01m07s

(*) tm Rarl Kove

Anyone ever notice how politicians everywhere make sure there are no real legal penalties for vote fraud?

Not just in Afghanistan, but everywhere.  What’s the penalty for fixing an election in the US?

I suspect that if a few low level operatives somehow got caught they might get a slap on the wrist jail term.  Just guessing, but probably less time than if they got caught with a pound of pot.  And that’s if they managed to get caught in a system where the election commissions are controlled by the two parties and the attorneys general are controlled by the winning party.

But, you’d never see any penalty to any politician who benefits from vote fraud.  Maybe a fine, their campaign committee has to pay, which they raise from setting up a new account for their owners to put more money into.

You’ll never see any politician putting forward a law that would set mandatory minimums for politicians who benefit from rigging elections.  I’d say a minimum of a prison term of twice the length of the term of office would be fair.

Subvert our sacred democracy by trying to rig an election to win an office for four years, and you risk spending a mandatory minimum of eight years in a federal prison.  Do you think politicians might shy away from breaking the rules if there was such a penalty?

And hey, since our politicians are so big on the death penalty as a deterrent, why not apply it to campaign fraud?  After all, in a real democracy, there is nothing more sacred and more fundamental to the society than its free and fair system of elections.  In a system where the power lies with ‘we the people’, free and fair elections are the only check and balance that the people hold.  Tampering with that is the ultimate attack on the very foundations of democracy.  Can there be a greater crime against a democratic society?

So, if the death penalty is such a great deterrent, shouldn’t we be using it to protect the important and fundamental institution of democracy in our great free and democratic society?

Election fraud in the Afghaniscam? Wow, go figure. So, what happens when the
U.N. declares that Hamid buddy stole that election? Sanctions? Send in the U.S.
military? The U.S. declares “mission accomplished” in the Afghaniscam and gets
out? Hmmm, that seems ever so unlikely to happen.