Former
US President James Carter has criticized the US electoral process,
describing it as riddled with "financial corruption” that dramatically
favors the elite.
"We have one of the worst election processes in the world right in
the United States of America, and it's almost entirely because of the
excessive influx of money,” Carter said speaking at the Carter Center
last month.
Carter said the candidates in the upcoming presidential election,
Republican Mitt Romney and incumbent President Barack Obama will be
receiving a staggering 6-billion dollars in funding their election
campaigns to ensure corporation profit interest trumps the interests and
well being of the American population at large.
"You know how much I raised to run against Gerald Ford? Zero. You
know how much I raised to run against Ronald Reagan? Zero,” Carter said
while referring to his party’s presidential fundraising campaign that
accepted only public funding.
Press TV has conducted an interview with Co-founder of the
Muslim-Christian-Jewish Alliance, Dr. Kevin Barrett to further discuss
the issue.
The program also offers the opinions of two other guests: managing
director of AMT Capital Partners Mr. Mike Harris and political analyst
and writer, Linh Dinh. The following is an approximate transcription of
the interview.
Press TV: Dr. Barrett, we have been talking about, hopefully
you heard us, but in general now what our two guests are saying, that
basically, the country (the US) has been taken over.
What does it mean for the country itself when it seems that it has
been hijacked by these special interest groups, by corporations, by
other entities; but it is not being run in the way the American people
would want it to be run?
Barrett: Well, that is right. There is a paradox here because
the American people realize that the two major parties are lying
24/7/364 and yet there are third parties running good candidates in
elections including the presidential elections.
We have Merlin Miller running on a ‘third alternative party‘ticket’.
He has actually come right out and stated forthrightly that 9/11 was a
Zionist-Israeli sponsored coup d’état in America.
It is the first time that a presidential candidate has ever been
that forthright. We also have Roseanne Barr on the Peace and Freedom
Party Ticket and we have Garry Johnson on the Libertarian Ticket. I am
forgetting who is on the Green Party Ticket, but these are candidates
who are not beholden to the special interests.
Unfortunately, the American voters have been successfully propagandized and manipulated by the corporate monopoly media.
And they have been drawn into this play, this fictitious scenario
that is being staged between the two major parties as if it were an
actual fight over real issues and it is not, it is basically two wings
of the same party and that same party is owned by special interests.
There are nuance differences between the Democrats and Republicans.
This year the Republicans are owned by the extremist Likud faction of
the Israeli Party, shall we say, and it is very interesting that Dov
Zakheim is the lead foreign policy advisor for the Romney campaign.
Dov Zakheim is on everyone’s list as the number one
suspect in the 9/11 attacks who swindled 2.3 trillion dollars from the
Pentagon that was announced missing on September 10th 2001 by Donald
Rumsfeld and that was presumably used to finance the 9/11 coup d’etat.
This is the man who is the number one advisor for Mitt Romney. It
makes the Obama side look actually relatively good, which is really
saying something because Obama is also owned by the same pro-Israel
interest in foreign policy and by other corrupt interests in domestic
policy.
Press TV: How likely are we going to see Americans protesting
on the election day? Because as Mr. Dinh has talked about, the world’s
perspective sometimes, of Americans, it does appear to many people in
the outside, not living in the United States, that Americans accept it
and they are apathetic and really are not even caring to take the time
to even protest, your take?
Barrett: Well, unfortunately there is some truth to that. If
you ask the average American, which is worth....., let me just back up a
moment here and say that I think that both of the previous guests are
perfect, absolutely right, on the money in their statements.
And in particular it is pretty hard to exaggerate just how great the
margin is between the people who stay home and the winning candidate.
In an average American election, as we heard about 25 percent of the
eligible voters vote for the winner, about 20 percent of the eligible
voters vote for the loser of the two major parties and the other 55
percent stay home; so that means that more than twice as many people are
staying home and not voting as vote for the winning candidate.
And I think that speaks volumes about the state of American democracy today. We really do not have one anymore.
The 9/11 coup d’état was only the latest in a series of coups d’état
in America including the murders of the Kennedy brothers, and the Bush
hijacking and overthrowing of the Carter presidency by making a deal
with the leaders of Iran to keep the American hostages locked up until
after the election.
That is what destroyed the Carter presidency in a CIA-sponsored coup
d’état led by the drug smuggling wing of the CIA under the Bush family,
America’s leading crime family.
So really it is hard to overstate corruption and lack of democracy
in the American system and I think that is probably one of the reasons
why 55 percent of the eligible voters stay home every presidential
election. More than twice as many (boycott the election) as vote for the winning candidate and I
am sure that will happen again this year. Probably it will be 60
percent that stay at home this year, I would imagine.
Press TV: Dr. Barrett I am going to ask you the same question
that I asked Mr. Dinh. When Mr. Harris talked about..., he said that
basically you need regime change in the United States, which of course
means revolution in the United States.
Do you agree with that? Is that the only thing that is going to change your status quo?
Barrett: Yes, we do need some kind of revolution in the
United States; hopefully a non-violent one. We need to take the country
back from the special interests and especially the banking criminal
syndicate and related criminal syndicates that have made the US
essentially a government by organized crime.
And as for how to do it? You know, I do not see a single compelling
third party candidate right now that I would necessarily urge everyone
to vote for. People could boycott the election, they could vote for
their favorite third party candidate. Merlin Miller is the one who is
the most appealing to me right now.
They could even write in someone. I actually published a blog piece
saying I am considering writing in Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the president of
Iran.
I think that is making a bit of statement. They actually
publish the write-in votes in the newspaper sometimes. Unfortunately
some of them are just people who write in Mickey Mouse or Donald Duck or
something...
But when the local newspaper points out that somebody voted for
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at least it would make people think. The Iranian
president’s speech to the UN, I thought, was quite brilliant as have
been his other speeches to the UN.
They have been vilified by the Zionist-controlled media here in the
US and so, you know, what better way to tell the powers that be that we
are not accepting what they tell us then by writing in someone like
that.
So there are a lot of ways that people can protest and work for
regime change in the US, but honestly I do not think that what we do
with the elections is really the issue. We need to get organized and get
focused outside of the electoral system, we need to mobilize people;
the Occupy movement and similar moves to get people on the streets I
think are better means for effecting that kind of revolutionary change.
And I think getting a million people to Washington DC and refusing
to leave, sitting down and making them call every single person out. For
them to actually physically remove a million people from Washington DC
that would take a long time.
That is what Martin Luther King wanted us to do before he was
assassinated. That is why they killed him. One of these days we are
going to do that, Insha’Allah [God willing]