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<H2><FONT size=4>Why I’m Voting Green</FONT></H2>
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<H6 class=date><FONT size=4>Posted on Oct 29, 2012</FONT></H6>
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<P style="FONT-SIZE: small"><FONT size=4><STRONG>"The flimsy excuses used by
liberals and progressives to support Obama, including the argument that we can’t
let Romney appoint the next Supreme Court justices, ignore the imperative of
building a movement as fast and as radical as possible as a counterweight to
corporate power. The Supreme Court, no matter what its composition, will not
save us from financial implosion and climate collapse. And Obama, whatever his
proclivity on social issues, has provided ample evidence that he will not alter
his servitude to the corporate state. "</STRONG></FONT></P>
<P style="FONT-SIZE: small"><FONT size=4><STRONG>By </STRONG></FONT><A
href="http://www.truthdig.com/chris_hedges/"><FONT size=4><STRONG>Chris
Hedges</STRONG></FONT></A></P>
<P style="FONT-SIZE: small"><FONT size=4><STRONG>The November election is not a
battle between Republicans and Democrats. It is not a battle between Barack
Obama and Mitt Romney. It is a battle between the corporate state and us.
</STRONG></FONT></P>
<P style="FONT-SIZE: small"><FONT size=4><STRONG>And if we do not immediately
engage in this battle we are finished, as climate scientists have made clear. I
will defy corporate power in small and large ways. I will invest my energy now
solely in acts of resistance, in civil disobedience and in defiance. Those who
rebel are our only hope. And for this reason I will vote next month for
</STRONG></FONT><A href="http://www.jillstein.org/"><FONT size=4><STRONG>Jill
Stein</STRONG></FONT></A><FONT size=4><STRONG>, the Green Party candidate,
although I could as easily vote for </STRONG></FONT><A
href="http://www.voterocky.org/"><FONT size=4><STRONG>Rocky
Anderson</STRONG></FONT></A><FONT size=4><STRONG> of the Justice Party. I will
step outside the system. Voting for the “lesser evil”—or failing to vote at
all—is part of the corporate agenda to crush what is left of our anemic
democracy. And those who continue to participate in the vaudeville of a
two-party process, who refuse to confront in every way possible the structures
of corporate power, assure our mutual destruction.</STRONG></FONT></P>
<P style="FONT-SIZE: small"><FONT size=4><STRONG>All the major correctives to
American democracy have come through movements and third parties that have
operated outside the mainstream. Few achieved formal positions of power. These
movements built enough momentum and popular support, always in the face of
fierce opposition, to force the power elite to respond to their concerns. Such
developments, along with the courage to defy the political charade in the voting
booth, offer the only hope of saving us from Wall Street predators, the assault
on the ecosystem by the fossil fuel industry, the rise of the security and
surveillance state and the dramatic erosion of our civil liberties.
</STRONG></FONT></P>
<P style="FONT-SIZE: small"><FONT size=4><STRONG>“The most common way people
give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any,” </STRONG></FONT><A
href="http://alicewalkersgarden.com/"><FONT size=4><STRONG>Alice
Walker</STRONG></FONT></A><FONT size=4><STRONG> writes.</STRONG></FONT></P>
<P style="FONT-SIZE: small"><FONT size=4><STRONG>It was the Liberty Party that
first fought slavery. It was the Prohibition and Socialist parties, along with
the Suffragists, that began the fight for the vote for women and made possible
the 19th Amendment. It was the Socialist Party, along with radical labor unions,
that first battled against child labor and made possible the 40-hour workweek.
It was the organizing of the Populist Party that gave us the Immigration Act of
1924 along with a “progressive” tax system. And it was the Socialists who
battled for unemployment benefits, leading the way to the Social Security Act of
1935. No one in the ruling elite, including Franklin Roosevelt, would have
passed this legislation without pressure from the outside.<BR><BR>“It is the
combination of a social movement on the ground with an independent political
party that has always made history together, whether during abolition, women’s
suffrage or the labor movement,” Stein said when I reached her by phone as she
campaigned in Chicago. “We need courage in our politics that matches the courage
of the social movements—of Occupy, eviction blockades, Keystone pipeline civil
disobedience, student strikes, the Chicago teachers union and more. If public
opinion really mattered in this race, we [her presidential ticket] would win. We
have majority support in poll after poll on nearly all of the key issues, from
downsizing the military budget and bringing the troops home, to taxing the rich,
to stopping the Wall Street bailouts, to breaking up the banks, to ending the
offshoring of jobs, to supporting workers’ rights, to increasing the minimum
wage, to health care as a human right, through Medicare for all. These are the
solutions a majority of Americans are clamoring for.” </STRONG></FONT></P>
<P style="FONT-SIZE: small"><FONT size=4><STRONG>The corporate state has
successfully waged a campaign of fear to disempower voters and citizens. By
intimidating voters through a barrage of propaganda with the message that
Americans have to vote for the lesser evil and that making a defiant stand for
justice and democracy is counterproductive, it cements into place the agenda of
corporate domination we seek to thwart. This fear campaign, skillfully
disseminated by the $2.5 billion spent on political propaganda, has silenced
real political opposition. It has turned those few politicians and leaders who
have the courage to resist, such as Stein and Ralph Nader, into pariahs, denied
a voice in the debates and the national discourse. Capitulation, silence and
fear, however, are not a strategy. They will guarantee everything we seek to
avoid. </STRONG></FONT></P>
<P style="FONT-SIZE: small"><FONT size=4><STRONG></STRONG></FONT></P>
<DIV style="FONT-SIZE: small" class=ad_300x250_box_right>
<P style="FONT-SIZE: small"><FONT size=4><STRONG>“The Obama administration has
embraced the policies of George W. Bush, and then gone much further,” Stein
said. “Wall Street bailouts went ballistic under Obama—$700 billion under Bush,
but $4.5 trillion under Obama, plus another $16 trillion in zero-interest loans
for Wall Street. Obama continues offshoring our jobs. Bill Clinton brought us
NAFTA, which was carried out under George W. Bush. It was vastly expanded under
Obama to labor abusers in Colombia, and to Panama and South Korea. The
Transpacific Partnership, being negotiated behind closed doors by the Obama
White House, is NAFTA on steroids. It continues to send our jobs overseas. It
undermines wages at home. It overrides American sovereignty by establishing an
international corporate board that can overrule American legislation and
regulations that protect workers as well as our air, our water, our climate and
our food supply.” </STRONG></FONT></P></DIV></DIV></DIV></DIV>
<P style="FONT-SIZE: small"><FONT size=4><STRONG>Obama, who has claimed the
power of assassinating U.S. citizens without charge or trial, increased the
drone war and has vastly expanded the wars in the Middle East. He is waging
proxy wars in Yemen, Pakistan and Somalia. His assault on civil liberties—from
his use of the Espionage Act to silence whistle-blowers to Section 1021 of the
National Defense Authorization Act to the FISA Amendment Act—is worse than
Bush’s. His attack on immigrant rights has also outpaced that of Bush. Obama has
deported more undocumented workers in four years than his Republican predecessor
did in eight years. There is negligible difference between Obama and Romney on
the issue of student debt, which has turned a generation of college students
into indentured servants. But the most important convergence between the
Republicans and the Democrats is their utter failure to address the perilous
assault by the fossil fuel industry on the ecosystem. It was Obama who undercut
the international climate accord reached last year at Durban, South Africa,
saying the world could wait until 2020 for an agreement.</STRONG></FONT></P>
<P style="FONT-SIZE: small"><FONT size=4><STRONG>“Obama is promoting oil
drilling in the Arctic, where the ice cap has already collapsed to one-quarter
of its size from a couple decades ago, and he’s opened up our national parks for
drilling,” Stein said. “He has given the green light to </STRONG></FONT><A
href="http://www.dangersoffracking.com/"><FONT
size=4><STRONG>fracking</STRONG></FONT></A><FONT size=4><STRONG>. He has
permitted the exhaust from shale oil [extraction] to go into the atmosphere. He
is building the southern pass of the </STRONG></FONT><A
href="http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/join_the_blockade_of_the_keystone_pipeline_20121015/"><FONT
size=4><STRONG>Keystone pipeline</STRONG></FONT></A><FONT size=4><STRONG>. He
brags that he has built more miles of pipeline than any other
president.</STRONG></FONT></P>
<P style="FONT-SIZE: small"><FONT size=4><STRONG>“There is a protracted drought
in 60 percent of the continental U.S.,” Stein said. “There are record forest
fires and rising food prices. We have just now seen the 12 hottest months on
record. Storms are growing in destructiveness. All this is happening with less
than 1-degree Celsius temperature rise. Yet we are now on track for a 6-degree
Celsius warming in this century alone. This is not survivable. The most
pessimistic science on climate change has underpredicted the rate at which
climate change is advancing.” </STRONG></FONT></P>
<P style="FONT-SIZE: small"><FONT size=4><STRONG>The flimsy excuses used by
liberals and progressives to support Obama, including the argument that we can’t
let Romney appoint the next Supreme Court justices, ignore the imperative of
building a movement as fast and as radical as possible as a counterweight to
corporate power. The Supreme Court, no matter what its composition, will not
save us from financial implosion and climate collapse. And Obama, whatever his
proclivity on social issues, has provided ample evidence that he will not alter
his servitude to the corporate state. For example, he has refused to provide
assurance that he will not make cuts in basic social infrastructures. He has
proposed raising the eligibility age for Medicare, a move that would leave
millions without adequate health care in retirement. He has said he will reduce
the cost-of-living adjustment for Social Security, thrusting vast numbers of
seniors into poverty. Progressives’ call to vote for independents in “safe”
states where it is certain the Democrats will win will do nothing to mitigate
fossil fuel’s ravaging of the ecosystem, regulate and prosecute Wall Street or
return to us our civil liberties. </STRONG></FONT></P>
<P style="FONT-SIZE: small"><FONT size=4><STRONG>“There is no state out there
where either Obama or Romney offers a way out of here alive,” Stein said. “It’s
up to us to create truly safe states, a safe nation, and a safe planet. Neither
Obama nor Romney has a single exit strategy from the deadly crises we face.”
</STRONG></FONT></FONT></P></DIV></BODY></HTML>