The Shadow Of Diebold  

Reddit is flooded with politics news today - Hillary Clinton's upset over Obama in the New Hampshire primary has gotten everyone wondering if the automated vote rigging has started early this time round (yes - Diebold are counting the votes again, and somewhere Stalin is smiling to himself).

BradBlog - NH Primary: Pre-Election Polls Wildly Different Than Results Announced for Clinton/Obama
CNN - "Ron Paul, who tied Giuliani in NH, is now officially named "None of the above" by CNN". Ah yes - the liberal media - who says they are just poodles of the neoconservative establishment.
Boston.com - Obama and Paul poll workers kicked out of some precincts
ABC - "It is simply unprecedented for so many polls to have been so wrong. We need to know why."
Presscue - Diebold favors Hillary, hand count for Obama
The Contrarian - Do NH Primary Statistics Show Election Fraud?
CNet - Obama: No warrantless wiretaps if you elect me

Richard Stallman's statement about Ron Paul also ranked highly today.

I support Dennis Kucinich for president. I am confident that he would run the country for the benefit of its citizens, not for the benefit of global business. He is the only candidate whose values and goals I fully support. He also champions impeachment of Bush.

Why would I, as a Liberal, have anything favorable to say about a Republican such as Ron Paul?

I have fundamental disagreements with Ron Paul. I support a welfare state and the New Deal. He wants to weaken social security and medicare, in effect throwing the poor back on their own resources. He wants to abolish income tax, which would mean reliance on taxes that fall most heavily on the poor and let the rich off lightly. This would increase concentration of wealth, which is already dangerously excessive, and the poor would pay for it.

In ordinary times I would simply oppose a candidate with such views, but these are not ordinary times. The Bush regime has contempt for human rights, and most of the 2008 candidates are little better than Bush. Most voted for the disgraceful U. S.A.P. A.T. R.I.O.T. Act, which authorized the Bush regime to collect businesses' (and even libraries') records about individuals without a court order. Most of them voted to launch a war of aggression in Iraq, accepting Bush's patent lies with the innocence of a sheltered child. Obama, who was not in the Senate when those were voted on, nonetheless does not convincingly oppose them.

Aside from Dennis Kucinich and Ron Paul, those candidates that criticize the occupation of Iraq do not show a firm will to end it. They dwell on "mismanagement", as if the worst you could say about Bush's crime was that "he didn't plan it well enough."

The only Democratic or Republican candidate, aside from Kucinich, that clearly stands for human rights, democracy, and an end to torture, secret prisons and the occupation of Iraq is Ron Paul. I urge Republicans to support him for that party's nomination.

copyright (c) 2007 Richard Stallman Verbatim copying and redistribution of this entire page are permitted provided this notice is preserved.