Taking the Florida show south of the border
posted by Rick at 6:52 AM

Greg Palast is at it again.

The investigative reporter's work has been deemed not ready for prime time by the corporate media in the US, so now he reports for the BBC and the Guardian in a country where they have no "First Amendment rights" but somehow they have freer speech than we in George W. Bush's America.

Anyway, Palast and his team have uncovered evidence that our government is paying ChoicePoint, the company that helped Brother Jeb disenfranchise thousands of Florida Democrats in 2000, $67 million to compile dossiers on the citizens of Venezuela and a handful of other Latin American countries....

The choice of which nation's citizens to spy on caught my eye. While the September 11th highjackers came from Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Lebanon and the Arab Emirates, ChoicePoint's menu offered records on Venezuelans, Brazilians, Nicaraguans, Mexicans and Argentines. How odd. Had the CIA uncovered a Latin plot to sneak suicide tango dancers across the border with exploding enchiladas?

What do these nations have in common besides a lack of involvement in the September 11th attacks? Coincidentally, each is in the throes of major electoral contests in which the leading candidates -- presidents Lula Ignacio da Silva of Brazil, Nestor Kirschner of Argentina, Mexico City mayor Andres Lopez Obrador and Venezuela's Chavez -- have the nerve to challenge the globalization demands of George W. Bush.

The last time ChoicePoint sold voter files to our government it was to help Governor Jeb Bush locate and purge felons on Florida voter rolls. Turns out ChoicePoint's felons were merely Democrats guilty only of V.W.B., Voting While Black.

Palast also notes that our government is paying tens of thousands of dollars to the organizers of this Sunday's recall election in Venezuela, "who claim to be armed with computer lists of the registered." Hmmm...

read Palast's full article here: Will The Gang That Fixed Florida Fix the Vote in Caracas this Sunday?