This is a forwarded message to all activists and media lists from Dr. Brian O'Leary who was science and energy policy advisor and speechwriter on science and energy policy issues for four previous US Presidential Candidates.

More info on Dr. O'Leary is at:

http://www.independence.net/oleary

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From: "Brian O'Leary"
To: "David Crockett Williams" gear2000@l...
Subject: Why we must vote for Nader
Date: Tuesday, October 03, 2000 12:08 PM

Hi, David,

Because my cyber abilities are severely limited (I've never done a mass-mailing for example) and my computer is busted most of the time, I wonder if you could circulate this as widely as possible within your network, including Steve Kaplan, Remy Chevalier and all the rest. The only bit I'm not sure of substantiating is the Gore/Occidental Petroleum deal, which I had learned of from only one source.

(RMNEWS: This can be substantiated by going to http://www.worldnetdaily.com and looking for Michael Savage's column on the Elk Hills Oil Reserve.)

Suffice to say, that if we are to have the proper revolution we desire (clean energy, hemp, etc.), we absolutely will need to put our support behind Mr. Nader. It almost sickens me the number of e-mails I'm getting to vote for Gore, and yet my cyberlimitations seem to be unable for my voice to be heard.

The following statement, I want shouted from the mountaintops, given to all our friends such as Steve, Remy Chevalier, etc. Perhaps you could make the following statement available to all whom you wish to hear it; it's a counterpoint that must be heard, and it's my only trump card in this strangest of years.

Thanks for helping.

Why I'm Voting for Nader
Brian O'Leary, Ph.D., copyright 2000

I've been deeply disturbed, dismayed and sometimes depressed with the recent movement of folks I admire and respect with their plea to vote for Mr. Gore, which is spreading like wildfire on the internet.

Therefore, as never before in my limited cyberpresence, I must protest and offer some of my reasons for voting for Mr. Nader.

What I hear primarily is a fear of "the burning Bush", that oilman and his golden-parachute henchman, Mr. Cheney, master of smart bombs that kill people, and could kill more. Let me say at the outset that I don't want those gentlemen (?) in there any more than the rest of you.

They're spoiled fraternity boys aggrandized by the silliest most superficial media I have seen in my sixty years here (Sorry, Mr. Gore isn't much better).

But I also see fear and ignorance in the anti-Nader, pro-Gore statements that are full of shallow myths ("A vote for Nader is a vote for Bush") ("Nader has no credentials besides being a
consumer advocate") (etc). I wish to not only dispel these myths, but to also point outfrom my own considerable Washington experience, that not only is Mr. Nader superbly qualified, but we have a clear choice independent of the unprecedently inordinate influence of big money interests that are destroying our environment and individual freedom.

Mr. Nader therefore needs our support.

We are in a revolution of human affairs, a paradigm shift, where defensive voting has no place...sorry, it's too late for that.

A week ago I keynoted a Forum to Convert to a Hydrogen Economy in Ft. Collins. We discussed what it would take to get off our life-destroying fossil fuel economy.

The only standing ovation I got was when I said I'd vote for Ralph Nader.

These were professors, technical people, no dummies.

The support came only because of the simple fact that Mr. Nader is the only candidate who supports the rapid conversion to a clean energy economy.

Recently my colleague Dennis Weaver and I heard Nader speak here in Montrose.

Nader epitomizes honesty, intellectual rigor, compassion, the desire to get off fossil fuels, universal health care, legalizing commercial hemp in order to save our forests, and busting the awesome power of international corporatations.

Gore has been bought out. This is important stuff, the essence of my entire research over the past two years, Over the past four decades, I have advised and written speeches for McGovern, Kennedy, Mondale, Udall and Jackson.

The Gore people also asked me to help, but I refused the opportunity for the following reasons: he has all but abandoned the precepts of "The Earth in Balance", has accepted campaign contributions from the likes of Occidental Petroleum, who won the bid for the pipeline to the pristine Arctic Wildlife Refuge, advocates the largest peacetime military budget in American history, oversees the largest incarceration rate in the world
for victimless crimes, and is basically bought out.

So what if Gore has the support of the Sierra Club and other "environmental" groups? My new book in progress well documents how those groups have sold out too. Those endorsements mean absoloutely nothing to me.

Perhaps most importantly, I cannot vote for someone defensively. I'd rather live with four years of Bush, then switch to Nader (whom I'll be heartily supporting in future years, if he has the courage to run again) than to buy into the lesser evil of the unprecedently money-ridden neopolik of America; I feel we need to expose this outrageous corruption and cooption of the media, and not vote defensively.

A 10-15 % showing could go a long way in hearing Nader's voice, so far considered a joke by the media of the likes of Pat Buchanan.

We need a revolution here, not more of the same; I'm shocked at how the fear of Bush would have created so much defensiveness and pretty much a guarantee of the same shameful American "prosperity" which is leading the world down the tubes.

Whatever has happened to democracy, where we vote our consciences? We're collectively crazy!!!

I told an audience of 4000 in Houston last week that the next time I would have a temper tantrum is when someone tells me that a vote for Nader is a vote for Bush. No, a vote for Nader is a vote for Nader.

Nader happens to be an excellently qualified candidate who refuses to be bought out, and could make a big difference. Gore is just another mish-mash of decadent (although admittedlly morally better) of Clintonism, of Blairism, etc.

So you have a choice to join the revolutionary team, or sell out again! Being a revolutionary might take another four years but will be much better on the other side.

I've also heard from various quarters that Nader doesn't have the credentials. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Nader is a much misunderstood man.

In fact, he is more of a Washington insider than the insiders themselves, but he's incorruptable. He has maintained the same modest studio apartment for decades.

I worked with him briefly on nuclear power issues during the 1970s while I was consultant to the U.S. House subcommittee on energy and the environment headed by Mo Udall who was running for president. Nader tirelessly drafted legislation, worked endlessly with the committee congressmen (and myself) day and night creating a leveling off of nuclear power plant new
starts.

More than any "lobbyist" he was always in the public interest and against the corporate, big money interest, an interest which has totally corrupted our culture, including Mr. Gore himself.

The fat cats have taken over Washington, it's so obvious, and Mr.
Nader is one of a handful of public interest advocates (much, much more than just a consumer advocate).

He will be remembered in history as a great selfless American hero, well-versed in Washington affairs, while Nero fiddles as Rome burns, and as the current Administration or a truly awful Bush administration figure out ways of rearranging the deck chairs of the Titanic, taking their oil profits (the analogue to the iceberg awaiting) and figuring out ways to get to the
first lifeboat.

If you or some of your subscribers vote for Nader, it will be clean, honest, incorruptable, and essential for the environment.

I have seen the process of Mr. Gore selling out. Don't trust he'll return to his "environmentalism" any more than existing
"environmental" groups allow SUVs to pollute the air, for global warming/climate change to change a la Kyoto celebrated by Mr. Gore, which is way too little too late, or for one acre of forests per second to be irrevokably destroyed, while the Clinton/Gore administration raids and arrests native Americans for growing commercial hemp in South Dakota (Nader's words
for these actions: "medieval")

Please vote for Nader, or we're in big trouble.

Thanks.

Best, Brian
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