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Both good and bad. Probably Carter was waiting for certain gears to be set in motion, as to ousting Bush-Cheney peacefully, and securing the realm. Carter is a real solid democrat with a small d. (His work in South America on transparent elections over the last decade has been awesome. A mighty transformation is under way there, toward social justice, peace and cooperation, and one of the most important contributors to it has been honest elections.) But he is not stupid. He knows how perilous our situation is. People have asked, why doesn't the Carter Center monitor OUR elections? But it's not that easy. We're talking about overturning an entrenched fascist coup in the most powerful and dangerous country on earth, by people who are the most powerful and dangerous cabal the world has ever seen. You don't start messing with them without significant backing--and without a significant stirring among the people toward taking their country back. He's seeing that now, with the Obama campaign. Obama's supporters are the best thing that has happened in this country in a very long time--an activated citizenry, a palpable rebellion against the way things are. He can work with that. What he can't work with is a supine citizenry--flattened, demoralized, disempowered--combined with a political establishment that has been cowed by spying and blackmail, and is severely corroded by corruption and complicity in war crimes. Things are changing from the bottom up, mostly--the best way they COULD change.
I think--and have thought for a long time--that there is also something happening in the military, in the intelligence community, and among some politicians and possibly also some business people and corporate types. (War becomes very bad for business, after a certain point.) A sense of alarm seemed to shoot through our political establishment, at a certain point. I think it maybe came to a head with Rumsfeld's resignation in Dec '06, but started earlier, possibly during Katrina, when I had the distinct impression that the Bush White House was cracking to pieces, behind the scenes. And, since around the time of Rumsfeld's resignation, it's been one revelation after another, of worse and worse crimes. Rumsfeld's resignation occurred days after the '06 Congressional elections--and Pelosi's weird "impeachment is off the table" announcement. Although the elections didn't give us an anti-war Congress, they certainly indicated that that's what the people WANTED. I think that something occurred at that point, with regard to the political establishment's gaging of the tolerances of the American people; they understood that attacking Iran was not going to go down well--might actually cause a revolution--and they traded no impeachment for no attack on Iran (with Bush-Cheney), and/or no impeachment if they'll just go away (and not declare martial law and suspend elections, etc.).
Some of these very same people--who may have been bargaining with Bush-Cheney--had also been colluding with them on stolen elections (the "trade secret" code voting machines, etc.), war, and fascist policy, but Bush-Cheney had gone too far. Some of the bargainers were good guys. Some of them are not. But there was a consensus that Bush-Cheney have to go--and given their control of the levers of power, and complete lack of conscience, that is a tricky business, indeed.
It's interesting what was happening in South America simultaneously--which I was watching very closely. In summary, it was a rebellion of ALL Latin American leaders--left AND right--against Bushite interference in Venezuela. There was a coup/assassination plot against Chavez that year, hatched in Colombia, which of course has been the recipient of $5.5 BILLION in Bushite military aid, and is a cauldron of corruption, like Bush-Washington DC. The Latin America leaders had had it, and even the rightwing president of Mexico publicly lectured Bush--on his visit there in spring '06--on the SOVEREIGNTY of Latin American countries, mentioning Venezuela as the example. This--and the rest of the story--of course went completely unreported here. I picked up on it, cuz I was so interested in the big shift to the left in South America.
www.BoRev.net has a hilarious map of South America, which says it all. Unknown to most of us, half the hemisphere has gone democratic. And, from now on--although there are still some vestiges of U.S. colonial rule (mostly in Central America)--we're going to be dealing with EQUALS, and with countries who, if they don't like Exxon Mobil's attitude, KICK THEM OUT OF THEIR COUNTRY.
Just yesterday, a leftist former bishop overturned 60 years of fascist rule in Paraguay, and was elected president on a platform of social justice. The list of leftist and center-left countries is now as long as your arm. And even the remaining rightwing Latin American countries (with the exception of Colombia) are benefiting from the strong leftist pull of leaders like Chavez in Venezuela, Morales in Bolivia, and Correa in Ecuador. There is a new sense of INDEPENDENCE from the U.S., along with a new sense of cooperation among countries that have suffered such exploitation and bullying by the U.S. for so long. The strongest leftists--the Bolivarians--are pushing for a South American Common Market.
The times they are a-changin'. And if the U.S. government doesn't smarten up, we're going to become a "banana republic" backwater.
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