What really
is important to note is that so far only a
tiny minority of USneoAmericans stood up and started
to pro-actively do something.
What the world needs to see is a massive uprising in
the DividedStatesoftheSouthernNorthAmerica (DSSNA),
if we shall believe them, that they are not themselves behind
the scam or "tolerating" it.
No more fears -
so NO 4 more years!
-------------------
Machine Error Gives Bush Extra Ohio Votes
By John McCarthy
The Associated Press
Friday
05
November 2004
COLUMBUS,
Ohio - An error with an electronic voting system gave President Bush
3,893 extra votes in suburban Columbus, elections officials said.
Franklin
County's unofficial results had Bush receiving 4,258 votes to Democrat
John Kerry's 260 votes in a precinct in Gahanna. Records show only 638
voters cast ballots in that precinct. Bush's total should have been
recorded as 365.
Bush
won the state by more than 136,000 votes, according to unofficial
results, and Kerry conceded the election on Wednesday after saying that
155,000 provisional ballots yet to be counted in Ohio would not change
the result.
Deducting
the erroneous Bush votes from his total could not change the election's
outcome, and there were no signs of other errors in Ohio's electronic
machines, said Carlo LoParo, spokesman for Ohio Secretary of State
Kenneth Blackwell.
Franklin
is the only Ohio county to use Danaher Controls Inc.'s ELECTronic 1242,
an older-style touchscreen voting system. Danaher did not immediately
return a message for comment.
Sean
Greene, research director with the nonpartisan Election Reform
Information Project, said that while the glitch appeared minor "that
could change if more of these stories start coming out."
In
one North Carolina county, more than 4,500 votes were lost in this
election because officials mistakenly believed a computer that stored
ballots electronically could hold more data than it did.
And
in San Francisco, a malfunction with custom voting software could delay
efforts to declare the winners of four races for county supervisor.
In
the Ohio precinct in question, the votes are recorded to eight memory
locations, including a removable cartridge, according to Verified
Voting Foundation, an e-voting watchdog group. After voting ends, the
cartridge is either transported to a tabulation facility or its data
sent via modem.
Kimball
Brace, president of the consulting firm Election Data Services, said
it's possible the fault lies with the software that tallies the votes
from individual cartridges rather than the machines or the cartridges
themselves.
Either
way,
he said, such tallying software ought to have a way to ensure that the
totals don't exceed the number of voters.
County
officials did not return calls seeking details.
Matthew
Damschroder, director of the Franklin County Board of Elections, told
The Columbus Dispatch that on one of the three machines at that
precinct, a malfunction occurred when its cartridge was plugged into a
reader and generated a faulty number. He could not explain how the
malfunction occurred.
Damschroder
said people who had seen poll results on the election board's Web site
called to point out the discrepancy. The error would have been
discovered when the official count for the election is performed later
this month, he said.
The
reader
also recorded zero votes in a county commissioner race on the machine.
Other
electronic machines used in Ohio do not use the type of computer
cartridge involved in the error, state officials say.
Meanwhile,
in San Francisco, a glitch occurred with software designed for the
city's new "ranked-choice voting," in which voters list their top three
choices for municipal offices. If no candidate gets a majority of
first-place votes outright, voters' second and third-place preferences
are then distributed among candidates who weren't eliminated in the
first round.
When
the San Francisco Department of Elections tried a test run on Wednesday
of the program that does the redistribution, some of the votes didn't
get counted and skewed the results, director John Arntz said.
"All
the
information is there," Arntz said. "It's just not arriving the way it
was supposed to."
A
technician from the Omaha, Neb. company that designed the software,
Election Systems & Software Inc., was working to diagnose and fix
the problem.
-------
Kerry Won
Greg Palast
November 04, 2004
Bush
won Ohio by 136,483 votes. Typically in the United States, about 3
percent of votes cast are voided—known as “spoilage” in election
jargon—because the ballots cast are inconclusive. Palast’s
investigation suggests that if Ohio’s discarded ballots were counted,
Kerry would have won the state. Today, the Cleveland Plain
Dealer reports
there are a total of 247,672 votes not counted in Ohio, if you
add the
92,672 discarded votes plus the 155,000 provisional ballots.
Greg Palast, contributing editor to Harper's magazine,
investigated the manipulation of the vote for BBC Television's
Newsnight. The documentary, "Bush Family Fortunes," based
on his New York Times bestseller, The Best Democracy
Money Can Buy, has been released this month
on DVD .
Kerry won. Here's the facts.
I know you don't want to hear it. You can't face one more hung
chad. But I don't have a choice. As a journalist examining that
messy
sausage called American democracy, it's my job to tell you who got the
most votes in the deciding states. Tuesday, in Ohio and New Mexico, it
was John Kerry.
Most voters in Ohio thought they were voting for Kerry. CNN's exit
poll showed Kerry beating Bush among Ohio women by 53 percent to 47
percent. Kerry also defeated Bush among Ohio's male voters 51
percent
to 49 percent. Unless a third gender voted in Ohio, Kerry took the
state.
So what's going on here? Answer: the exit polls are accurate.
Pollsters ask, "Who did you vote for?" Unfortunately, they don't ask
the crucial, question, "Was your vote counted?" The voters don't know.
Here's why. Although the exit polls show that most voters in Ohio
punched cards for Kerry-Edwards, thousands of these votes were simply
not recorded. This was predictable and it was predicted. [See
TomPaine.com, "An Election Spoiled Rotten," November 1.]
Once again, at the heart of the Ohio uncounted vote game are, I'm
sorry to report, hanging chads and pregnant chads, plus some other
ballot tricks old and new.
The election in Ohio was not decided by the voters but by something
called "spoilage." Typically in the United States, about 3 percent of
the vote is voided, just thrown away, not recorded. When the
bobble-head boobs on the tube tell you Ohio or any state was won by 51
percent to 49 percent, don't you believe it ... it has never happened
in the United States, because the total never reaches a neat 100
percent. The television totals simply subtract out the spoiled vote.
And not all vote spoil equally. Most of those votes, say every
official report, come from African American and minority precincts. (To
learn more, click here.)
We saw this in Florida in 2000. Exit polls showed Gore with a
plurality of at least 50,000, but it didn't match the official count.
That's because the official, Secretary of State Katherine Harris,
excluded 179,855 spoiled votes. In Florida, as in Ohio, most of
these
votes lost were cast on punch cards where the hole wasn't punched
through completely—leaving a 'hanging chad,'—or was punched extra
times. Whose cards were discarded? Expert statisticians
investigating
spoilage for the government calculated that 54 percent of the ballots
thrown in the dumpster were cast by black folks. (To read the report
from the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, click here
.)
And here's the key: Florida is terribly typical. The majority of
ballots thrown out (there will be nearly 2 million tossed out
from Tuesday's election) will have been cast by African American and
other minority citizens.
So here we go again. Or, here we don't go again. Because
unlike last time, Democrats aren't even asking Ohio to count these
cards with the not-quite-punched holes (called "undervotes" in the
voting biz).
Ohio is one of the last states in America to still use the
vote-spoiling punch-card machines. And the Secretary of State of Ohio,
J. Kenneth Blackwell, wrote before the election, “the possibility of a
close election with punch cards as the state’s primary voting device
invites a Florida-like calamity.”
But this week, Blackwell, a rabidly partisan Republican, has warmed
up to the result of sticking with machines that have a habit of eating
Democratic votes. When asked if he feared being this year's Katherine
Harris, Blackwell noted that Ms. Fix-it's efforts landed her a seat in
Congress.
Exactly how many votes were lost to spoilage this time? Blackwell's
office, notably, won't say, though the law requires it be reported.
Hmm. But we know that last time, the total of Ohio votes discarded
reached a democracy-damaging 1.96 percent. The machines produced their
typical loss—that's 110,000 votes—overwhelmingly Democratic.
The Impact Of Challenges
First and foremost, Kerry was had by chads. But the Democrat wasn't
punched out by punch cards alone. There were also the
'challenges.'
That's a polite word for the Republican Party of Ohio's use of an old
Ku Klux Klan technique: the attempt to block thousands of voters of
color at the polls. In Ohio, Wisconsin and Florida, the GOP laid plans
for poll workers to ambush citizens under arcane laws—almost never
used—allowing party-designated poll watchers to finger individual
voters and demand they be denied a ballot. The Ohio courts were
horrified and federal law prohibits targeting of voters where race is a
factor in the challenge. But our Supreme Court was prepared to let
Republicans stand in the voting booth door.
In the end, the challenges were not overwhelming, but they were
there. Many apparently resulted in voters getting these funky
"provisional" ballots—a kind of voting placebo—which may or may not be
counted. Blackwell estimates there were 175,000; Democrats say 250,000.
Pick your number. But as challenges were aimed at minorities, no one
doubts these are, again, overwhelmingly Democratic. Count them up, add
in the spoiled punch cards (easy to tally with the human eye in a
recount), and the totals begin to match the exit polls; and, golly,
you've got yourself a new president. Remember, Bush won by 136,483
votes in Ohio.
Enchanted State's Enchanted Vote
Now, on to New Mexico, where a Kerry plurality—if all votes are
counted—is more obvious still. Before the election, in TomPaine.com, I
wrote, "John Kerry is down by several thousand votes in New Mexico,
though not one ballot has yet been counted."
How did that happen? It's the spoilage, stupid; and the provisional
ballots.
CNN said George Bush took New Mexico by 11,620 votes. Again, the
network total added up to that miraculous, and non-existent, '100
percent' of ballots cast.
New Mexico reported in the last race a spoilage rate of 2.68
percent, votes lost almost entirely in Hispanic, Native American and
poor precincts—Democratic turf. From Tuesday's vote, assuming the same
ballot-loss rate, we can expect to see 18,000 ballots in the spoilage
bin.
Spoilage has a very Democratic look in New Mexico. Hispanic voters
in the Enchanted State, who voted more than two to one for Kerry, are
five times as likely to have their vote spoil as a white voter.
Counting these uncounted votes would easily overtake the Bush
'plurality.'
Already, the election-bending effects of spoilage are popping up in
the election stats, exactly where we'd expect them: in heavily Hispanic
areas controlled by Republican elections officials. Chaves County, in
the "Little Texas" area of New Mexico, has a 44 percent Hispanic
population, plus African Americans and Native Americans, yet George
Bush "won" there 68 percent to 31 percent.
I spoke with Chaves' Republican county clerk before the election,
and he told me that this huge spoilage rate among Hispanics simply
indicated that such people simply can't make up their minds on the
choice of candidate for president. Oddly, these brown people drive
across the desert to register their indecision in a voting booth.
Now, let's add in the effect on the New Mexico tally of provisional
ballots.
"They were handing them out like candy," Albuquerque journalist
Renee Blake reported of provisional ballots. About 20,000 were given
out. Who got them?
Santiago Juarez who ran the "Faithful Citizenship" program for the
Catholic Archdiocese in New Mexico, told me that "his" voters, poor
Hispanics, whom he identified as solid Kerry supporters, were handed
the iffy provisional ballots. Hispanics were given provisional ballots,
rather than the countable kind "almost religiously," he said, at
polling stations when there was the least question about a voter's
identification. Some voters, Santiago said, were simply turned away.
Your Kerry Victory Party
So we can call Ohio and New Mexico for John Kerry—if we count all
the votes.
But that won't happen. Despite the Democratic Party's pledge, the
leadership this time gave in to racial disenfranchisement once again.
Why? No doubt, the Democrats know darn well that counting all the
spoiled and provisional ballots will require the cooperation of Ohio's
Secretary of State, Blackwell. He will ultimately decide which spoiled
and provisional ballots get tallied. Blackwell, hankering to step into
Kate Harris' political pumps, is unlikely to permit anything close to a
full count. Also, Democratic leadership knows darn well the media would
punish the party for demanding a full count.
What now? Kerry won, so hold your victory party. But make sure the
shades are down: it may be become illegal to demand a full vote count
under PATRIOT Act III.
I used to write a column for the Guardian papers in
London.
Several friends have asked me if I will again leave the country. In
light of the failure—a second time—to count all the votes, that won't
be necessary. My country has left me.
----------
Compilation by Earthrainbownetwork:
Banana Democracy Headed
by Ayatollah Bush - this compilation is archived at
http://www.earthrainbownetwork.com/Archives2004/EmpireDarkness17.htm
This compilation which is replete with evidence indicating that
Tuesday's election was yet another neocon coup d'etat, and completely
rigged in favor of Bush, should vindicate all those who like me refuse
to believe what they said on the telievision and in the
McNews.
There is no need to put any more spin to this fact than what the
title of this compilation alludes to...
Draw your own conclusions..
"Dr. Blass obtained this information when he was on the
staff at Bay Point School," Fisher stated. Bay Point School is a
juvenile correctional facility in the Miami area. "I was told the
school is a suspected training ground in computer science and
programming for juvenile delinquents who manipulate electronic voting,
without a true audit trail. It is believed that this activity is
taking place not only there but in several schools like these
nationwide. If true, then Bay Point School could be the Florida
connection."
Worthy of Your Attention
Blatant Exit Poll - Final Count Disparities Analysis By Faun
Otter - Vote Fraud Expert (11-5-4) MOST CONVINCING THAT THERE WAS
INDEED MASSIVE VOTE RIGGING!
So, what do we actually see when comparing exit polls with actual
results? There is skew - but ONLY in states which the Republicans had
previously stated to be target states in play. The skew is in the same
direction every time; that is to say in favor of Bush. The exit poll
results are not scattered about the mean as the alternative theory
predicts. They are all on the Kerry side of the vote counts as issued
by the states except for a hand full of states which hit amazingly
close to the exit poll figures. (...) Taking the figures and
measuring the size and direction of the poll to supposed vote count
discrepancy, we find the variance between the exit poll and the final
result:
- Wisconsin: Bush plus 4%
- Pennsylvania: Bush plus 5%
- Ohio: Bush plus 4%
- Florida: Bush plus 7%
- Minnesota: Bush plus 7%
- New Hampshire: Bush plus 15%
- North Carolina: Bush plus 9%.
Exit Polls, Final Count - Not Even Close! -- GRAPHICALLY
EXPLICIT!
Message from Matthew - November 4
Only the Truth Will Set Us Free (a MUST SEE! Recommended by many
people!)
Heal The Money System Heal Society - Recommended by Suzanne
Phillips
How a cleverly devised banking system robs the average person of
the right to a decent life while providing enormous wealth for its
corporate owners and stockholders.
Give Dubya a brain game
US Seals Off Falluja as Assault Begins (11/05/2004)
Falluja is now shut off from the outside world; the U.S. military
has blocked roads and have warned they will "arrest any man under
the age of 45 found trying to leave or enter the city". A ground
assualt on Falluja and Ramadi is expected within days. Resistance
fighters in Ramadi have been reinforcing their positions and
stockpiling food and water, but civilians in Falluja are worried that
they could quickly run out of food due to the US blockade. While some
Fallujans have abandoned their city expecting post-election
destruction, over 100,000 residents remain. Kofi Annan has warned the
US and Britain about the humanitarian disaster that could come with a
military assault. The assault on Falluja appears to have been timed to
come after the US election, due to a fear by Bush that high US
casualties could have hurt his re-election chances. While both
political parties in the US spoke in support of an attack on Falluja,
the Bush election victory has worried many Iraqis since it seems to
provide a popular mandate for Bush's policies in the region. One
difference between the looming assault on Falluja and the assault last
April will be the participation of British troops. CLIP - Many more
related and other news at
http://english.aljazeera.net/HomePage
10,000 Troops Ring Fallujah, Prepare for Massive Battle (Nov
5)
J'Accuse! War Crimes and Iraq (Nov 5)
(...) In a recent commentary in the Financial Times, Jakob
Kellenberger, president of the International Committee of the Red
Cross, wrote: "The struggle against terrorism cannot be
legitimate if it undermines basic values shared by humanity. The right
to life and protection against murder, torture and degrading treatment
must be at the heart of the actions of those engaged in this struggle.
The struggle will lose credibility if it is used to justify acts
otherwise considered unacceptable, such as the killing of people not
participating in hostilities." CLIP
Analyst Raises Prospect of Strikes on Iran
Outrage in Ohio: Angry residents storm State House in response to
massive voter suppression and corruption (November 3 - VERY
COMPREHENSIVE ARTICLE!)
Toledo, Ohio Hundreds of angry Ohio residents marched through the
streets of Columbus-Ohio's Capital-this evening and stormed the
Ohio State House, defying orders and arrest threats from Ohio State
Troopers. "O-H-I-O ! suppressed democracy has got to go,"
they chanted. After troopers pushed and scuffled with people, nearly a
hundred people took over the steps and entrance to the State's giant
white column capital building and refused repeated orders to disperse
or face arrest. People prepared for arrests, ready to face
jail-writing lawyers phone numbers on their arms, signing jail support
lists and discussing non-cooperation and active resistance (linking
arms, but not fighting back). A freshly painted banner held on the
steps read "ONE VOTE DENIED = DEMOCRACY IN TROUBLE! 100'S OF
1000'S OF VOTES SURPRESSED = DEMOCRACY FAILED" articulated the
crisis. An unprecedented massive grassroots voter registration and get
out the vote effort and widespread opposition to Bush went up against
the massive coordinated Republican effort to suppress, intimidate and
possibly steal millions of votes. In addition to the voter suppression
and intimidation is the fact that Bush campaign co-chair Secretary of
State Kenneth Blackwell is in charge of the election and vote
counting. But much deeper questions about fundamental flaws in the
system hang in the air. CNN's exit poll showed Kerry beating Bush
among Ohio women by 53 percent to 47 percent. Kerry also defeated Bush
among Ohio's male voters 51 percent to 49 percent. Investigative
reporter Greg Palast in an article today titled "Kerry Won"
details how the deciding states, Ohio and New Mexico, if all votes
were actually counted, would have gone to Kerry. Palast explains,
"Although the exit polls show that most voters in Ohio punched
cards for Kerry-Edwards, thousands of these votes were simply not
recorded. The election in Ohio was not decided by the voters but by
something called "spoilage." Typically in the United States,
about 3 percent of the vote is voided, just thrown away, not
recorded." But that is just a piece of it. The Ohio state House
takeover was the culmination of an eight-hour long afternoon of
protest at the state capitol by Ohio student and youth groups (The
Columbus and Toledo Leagues of Pissed Off Voters, and Reach
Out-Bowling Green) together with Columbus residents followed by a 300
strong 6pm march led by the Central Ohio Peace Network. The earlier
speak-out featured a litany of people who experienced or witnessed
voter suppression, intimidation and disenfranchisement before and
during the election. Thousand of Ohio voters had been disenfranchised
by partisan poll challengers, intimidation incidents, polling places
opening late, lines up to four and five hours long -- often in the
rain. Here are a few of their stories: (...) But even before election
day, the Baltimore Chronicle reported November 1 that "Through a
combination of sophisticated vote rustling-ethnic cleansing of voter
rolls, absentee ballots gone AWOL, machines that "spoil"
votes---John Kerry begins with a nationwide deficit that could easily
exceed one million votes." Troy, Michigan Republican State Rep.
John Pappageorge, a Michigan Bush campaign Co-Chair, was quoted in
July 16 edition of the Detroit Free Press as saying, "If we do
not suppress the Detroit vote, we're going to have a tough time in
this election." Blacks comprise 83 percent of Detroit's
population, and the city routinely elects Democratic candidates by
substantial margins. The British Broadcasting Company has also
disclosed a memo to top Republican officials in Florida identifying
voters in predominantly black precincts for possible challenge. The
secretaries of state, usually the chief election official at the state
level, in four battleground states--Michigan, Missouri, Florida, and
Ohio have all taken top campaign posts for Bush and have been accused
of manipulating state election laws to restrict voter access on behalf
of Republicans. Ultra-right Ohio Secretary of State, J. Kenneth
Blackwell, the co-chair of the Ohio Bush campaign, together with the
Ohio Republican Party are at the center of this nationwide effort to
steal the election through voter suppression, intimidation and
corruption. CLIP - More related articles at
http://indymedia.us/en/index.shtml
Grand Theft Election (Nov 5)
Karl Rove, the political sorcerer who is called "turd
blossom" by his political master George W. Bush has his nasty
fingerprints all over the 2004 Election in a scam that can best be
called "Grand Theft Election."There was something very wrong
in Ohio, which Bush claims he won handily. Not only had the head of
computer voting machine maker Diebold and Ohio's Republican
establishment of Governor Bob Taft and Secretary of State Kenneth
Blackwell conspired to suppress registration and voter turnout in
heavily Democratic precincts but the Ohio Secretary of State web site
was only reporting results from 9 counties as of 11:30 AM on November
3, just three hours before John Kerry conceded the election to Bush.
Totaling the results from the 9 counties (Fayette, Fairfield, Geauga,
Jefferson, Portage, Mahoning, Trumbull, Richland, and Washington),
John Kerry was clearly ahead. A 10th county, Columbiana, suspiciously
showed up as "NO RESULTS. "The totals from the 8 Ohio
counties reported on the Secretary of State web site were: BUSH:
267,771 KERRY: 294, 648 (...) The fact that Diebold machines were used
in the Ohio rip-off should make O'Dell and Timken the subjects
of criminal investigations. Of course, that will not happen in a GOP
vassal state like Ohio. But why not a civil suit by those of us
nationwide who voted for Kerry and had our presidency stolen from us
as a result of racketeering and corrupt practices by a cabal of
Republicans and fat cat corporate types? CLIP
Vote Fraud in Ohio? (November 5, 2004)
Now that the data is beginning to trickle in from the November
2nd election, many across the nation are raising an eyebrow to results
that do not seem to mesh with reality. CLIP
The Ultimate Felony Against a Democracy (Nov 4)
The hot story in the Blogosphere is that the "erroneous"
exit polls that showed Kerry carrying Florida and Ohio (among other
states) weren't erroneous at all - it was the numbers produced by
paperless voting machines that were wrong, and Kerry actually won. As
more and more analysis is done of what may (or may not) be the most
massive election fraud in the history of the world, however, it's
critical that we keep the largest issue at the forefront at all time:
Why are We The People allowing private, for-profit corporations,
answerable only to their officers and boards of directors, and loyal
only to agendas and politicians that will enhance their profitability,
to handle our votes? (...) Why have we let corporations into our
polling places, locations so sacred to democracy that in many states
even international election monitors and reporters are banned? Why are
we allowing corporations to exclusively handle our vote, in a secret
and totally invisible way? Particularly a private corporation founded,
in one case, by a family that believes the Bible should replace the
Constitution; in another case run by one of Ohio's top Republicans;
and in another case partly owned by Saudi investors? Of all the
violations of the commons - all of the crimes against We The People
and against democracy in our great and historic republic - this is the
greatest. Our vote is too important to outsource to private
corporations. It's time that the USA - like most of the rest of the
world - returns to paper ballots, counted by hand by civil servants
(our employees) under the watchful eye of the party faithful. Even if
it takes two weeks to count the vote, and we have to just go, until
then, with the exit polls of the news agencies. It worked just fine
for nearly 200 years in the USA, and it can work again. CLIP
"If You Want to Win an Election, Just Control the Voting
Machines (January 31, 2003)
When the polls closed in Chicago, American Free Press was at the
Cook County clerk's office to see how the secretive private company
that operates the voting machines in America's third largest city
actually controls the counting of the votes (...) I was surprised to
see so few people attending such an important event. In France, scores
of citizens watch the vote count in each polling station. (...)
After calling and personally visiting ES&S headquarters in Omaha
and Chicago, I can say it is the most secretive company I have ever
come across. In August, I visited ES&S company headquarters on
John Galt Blvd. in Omaha. Although the company says it is the largest
voting machine company in the United States, they were unable to
provide any information about their company or their products. The
ownership of the company is a closely-guarded secret. I asked to meet
with Todd Urosevich, one of the two brothers that founded the company.
Bob and Todd Urosevich started ES&S as a company called Data Mark
in the early 1980s. Today, Bob Urosevich heads Ohio-based Diebold
Election Systems, a competitor of ES&S and the second largest U.S.
manufacturer of electronic voting machines. Together, the
computerized ballot scanners and touch-screen voting machines systems
made by ES&S and Diebold recorded some 80 percent of all votes
cast in the recent U.S. presidential election. (...) "I've
observed elections across Europe, I added, "from France and
Germany to Serbia and Holland. Everywhere in Europe voting is done on
paper ballots that are counted by the citizens -- except
Holland.
Presidential Votes Miscast on e-Voting Machines Throughout The
Country (Nov 4)
Voters from at least half a dozen states reported that
touch-screen voting machines had incorrectly recorded their choices,
including for president. Voters discovered the problems when checking
the review screen at the end of the voting process. They found, to
their surprise, that the machines indicated that they voted for one
candidate when they had voted for another. When voters tried to
correct the problem, the machine often made the same error several
times. While in most cases the situation was reportedly resolved, many
voters remain uneasy about whether the proper vote was ultimately
cast. Meanwhile, voting experts are concerned that other voters are
experiencing the problem, but failing to notice that the machine is
indicating the wrong choice on the "summary" screen.
Election observers with the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and
Verified Voting Foundation (VVF) reported today that the problem,
which some voting officials initially attributed to fluke "voter
error," is evidently widespread and may even be relatively common
with touch-screen machines. CLIP
Faun Otter: Vote Fraud - Exit Polls Vs Actuals
Within parts of the U.S. progressive community there is already
widespread concern that electronic voting fraud may provide an
explanation for the astonishing 8 million vote gain made by George W.
Bush in the 2004 presidential U.S. election. Already there a variety
of odd phenomena which have aroused suspicions about this
possibility:For example :- In Florida Bush received a million extra
votes, while Kerry received only 500,000 extra votes, in spite of a
massive Democratic Get-Out-The-Vote(GOTV) and registration campaign in
that state; - In Florida's Broward County, a democratic stronghold and
heavily black community, unauditable voting machines recorded a 33%
(70,000+) vote gain on Bush's 2000 results and a much smaller gain to
Kerry - again Broward was the scene of a massive GOTV campaign;
CLIP
More Evidence TheVote Was Rigged (Nov 5)
I don't want rain on the parade but I am getting quite a few
emails from various sources citing possible irregularities with the
voting process. So, I did a little research myself on the net to see
what I could find. As a political scientist I could not resist. (...)
Various people sent me mail saying that it is awfully fishy that the
exit polls and final results were substantially different in some
places. I hope someone will follow this up and actually do a careful
analysis. Does anyone know of a Website containing all the exit poll
data? If we go to computerized voting without a paper trail and the
machines can be set up to cheat, that is the end of our democracy.
Switching 5 votes per machine is probably all it would take to throw
an election and nobody would ever see it unless someone compares the
computer totals and exit polls. I am still very concerned about the
remark of Walden O'Dell a Republican fund raiser and CEO of Diebold,
which makes voting machines saying he would deliver Ohio for President
Bush. CLIP
Project Censored #6 The Sale of Electoral Politics
Transcript of John Kerry's Concession Speech (03 November
2004)
(...) My friends, it was here that we began our campaign for the
presidency and all we had was hope and vision for a better America. It
was a privilege and a gift to spend two years traveling this country,
coming to know so many of you. I wish that I could just wrap you up in
my arms and embrace each and every one of you individually all across
this nation. I thank you from the bottom of my heart. CLIP - Quite
moving and worth a read if you did not hear him on TV...
Computer Loses 4,500 Votes in N.C. (Nov 4)
JACKSONVILLE, N.C. - More than 4,500 votes have been lost in one
North Carolina county because officials believed a computer that
stored ballots electronically could hold more data than it did.
Scattered other problems may change results in races around the
state.
Fixed - The Stealing Of Another Election (Nov 3)
Kerry winning Exit Polls - FRAUD LOOKS PROBABLE - SoCalDem has
done a statistical analysis... On several swing states, and EVERY
STATE that has EVoting but no paper trails has an unexplained
advantage for Bush of around +5% when comparing exit polls to actual
results. In EVERY STATE that has paper audit trails on their EVoting,
the exit poll results match the actual results reported within the
margin of error. So, we have MATCHING RESULTS for exit polls vs.
voting with audits vs. A 5% unexplained advantage for Bush without
audits. Maybe Dubayah believes God will see him through this, but it's
going to take more than blind faith to pull the wool over the data and
the facts. Analysis of the polling data vs actual data and
voting systems supports the hypothesis that evoting may be to blame in
the discrepancies. Nevada has evoting but with verified receipts. In
that state the Exit Polling matches the actual results within .1%
accuracy. However for other swing states Bush has unexplainable
leads. CLIP
Screen Shots Show CNN Changed Exit Poll Data! (Nov 3)
Cover-Up Of 2000 And 2004 Florida Vote Continues (11-1-4)
Fraud.orgBlack Box Voting.org - A senatorial candidate in
the 2004 election is suspected of suppressing vital information
regarding the electronic manipulation of votes in the 2000 elections.
This system of fraud, if still in place, can be used again in the 2004
general election this coming Tuesday, November 2. Dr. Piotr Blass, a
U.S. senatorial candidate in the state of Florida, is reported to be
withholding evidence which reveals details regarding the manipulation
of votes using the names of individuals who have been placed on the
felons list. CLIP
Stanford Prof On Black Box Secrecy (Nov 3)
"Why am I always being asked to prove these systems aren't
secure? The burden of proof ought to be on the vendor. You ask them
about the hardware. "Secret." The software? "Secret."
What's the cryptography? "Can't tell you because that'll
compromise the secrecy of the machines." Federal testing
procedures? "Secret" Results of the tests?
"Secret" Basically, we are required to have blind
faith."
Maryland Activists Want E-Voting Receipts (July 19, 2004)
By Melanie Vaughan-West arrived at the Maryland State House in
Annapolis last Tuesday to demand something she never had before -- a
receipt for her vote. The pastor of the nearby Broadneck Baptist
Church gathered with approximately 100 other people in front of the
state capitol to add her voice to the small-but-growing chorus of
complaints that electronic touch-screen voting machines are more
susceptible to fraud and manipulation than their paper-based
predecessors. CLIP
How to Hack an Election (January 31, 2004)
Absolute irrefutable proof, from the NY Times no less, that the
new voting machines allow elections to be hacked. Concerned citizens
have been warning that new electronic voting technology being rolled
out nationwide can be used to steal elections. Now there is proof.
When the State of Maryland hired a computer security firm to test its
new machines, these paid hackers had little trouble casting multiple
votes and taking over the machines' vote-recording mechanisms. The
Maryland study shows convincingly that more security is needed for
electronic voting, starting with voter-verified paper trails.When
Maryland decided to buy 16,000 AccuVote-TS voting machines, there was
considerable opposition. Critics charged that the new touch-screen
machines, which do not create a paper record of votes cast, were
vulnerable to vote theft. The state commissioned a staged attack on
the machines, in which computer-security experts would try to foil the
safeguards and interfere with an election. They were disturbingly
successful. It was an "easy matter," they reported, to
reprogram the access cards used by voters and vote multiple times.
They were able to attach a keyboard to a voting terminal and change
its vote count. And by exploiting a software flaw and using a modem,
they were able to change votes from a remote location.Critics of new
voting technology are often accused of being alarmist, but this
state-sponsored study contains vulnerabilities that seem almost too
bad to be true. Maryland's 16,000 machines all have identical locks on
two sensitive mechanisms, which can be opened by any one of 32,000
keys. The security team had no trouble making duplicates of the keys
at local hardware stores, although that proved unnecessary since one
team member picked the lock in "approximately 10 seconds."
CLIP
How They Could Steal the Election This Time
George Bush won the popular vote - and pigs are flying
There is no possible way that Dubya won the popular vote- it
simply isn't true. Consider this quote from a poster on
democraticunderground.com, "I know dozens of 2000 Bush voters
that are voting for Kerry this time, and none that have switched the
other way." This pretty much sums it up, 2000 the race was a dead
heat, and now after four years of the Bush nightmare we’re supposed
to believe he has even more support? I don't buy it, sure some people
are in denial about how bad Bush really is, but most Americans I know
realize that our country is headed for disaster, and nobody wants more
of this bullshit these lying bastards are sticking us with. I don't
believe that Bush has anywhere near 50% support from the people of
America - not even close. CLIP
League of Pissed Off Voters
Pledge of Action to Stop a Stolen Election
We do not concede our democratic rights. 11/04/04 (...) Thousands
of people in nearly 40 cities took to the streets yesterday. No one
has the authority to undermine our rights, to silence our voices and
our vote. There are many unanswered questions about the integrity of
this election and we need to continue to demand answers. We urge you
to continue your efforts to protect voters' rights and push for
investigations into voting irregularities, and to transform your
frustration, depression, and outrage into action. FOUR THINGS YOU CAN
DO TO DEMAND DEMOCRACY - CLIP
Fair Elections (Bill Moyer's site)
Help us replace our corrupt campaign finance system, which is
funded and controlled by a tiny number of very powerful private
interests, and help us replace our fraud-prone voting system, with
clean, transparent, accountable and democratic systems, where people
can get elected based on their character, track record, and ideas,
rather than their wealth or ability to raise large sums of money. Help
us take our country back so that we can finally have a nation of, by,
and for the people, rather than of, by, and for the wealthy powerful
interests.
Onward Christian Soldiers (4 Nov 2004) DO THE MATH ON WHAT REALLY
HAPPENED
(...) While I don't know if Mr. Diebold CEO delivered on his
promise to deliver Ohio's electoral votes to Bush via rigging two
points bear repeating: 1. As Randi Rhodes pointed out, do you really
believe we had a record turnout and that people stood in hours in the
rain, etc. to maintain the status quo? 2. AFAIK few people are talking
about the difference between the exit polling showing Kerry doing well
with the final vote. I find this unconvincing in light of
this
noting the polling of early voters *had* been done. (...)
These are reversals of the early voting pattern and eerily mirrors the
particularly troubling comment from the first link - "The exit
polls missed the mark very badly last night (before they were
reweighted to correspond to the actual results). The national exit
poll consistently showed Kerry leading by 3 points -- just the reverse
of the actual vote."This is eerie unless you've read Bev Harris's
Black
Box Voting: Ballot Tampering in the 21st Century and
know that this is something to expect if the voting machines have been
rigged.Folks this isn't the first race or even the second in which
this *exact* same thing happened. Isn't it odd that in the races in
which the final tally was the reverse of the polls, that the
beneficiary is a Republican? (...) But to the voter (of whatever
political flavor) who thinks we had a fair and open election - what
would it take to make you question that assumption? In 2008, when the
Republicans squeak by for another win and more seats in Congress
despite the country being Bushwhacked for another four ruinous years,
will you still believe the people turned out in record numbers to vote
for more of the same?
GLOBAL MONITORS FIND FAULTS (November 3, 2004)
MIAMI - The global implications of the U.S. election are
undeniable, but international monitors at a polling station in
southern Florida said Tuesday that voting procedures being used in the
extremely close contest fell short in many ways of the best global
practices. The observers said they had less access to polls than in
Kazakhstan, that the electronic voting had fewer fail-safes than in
Venezuela, that the ballots were not so simple as in the Republic of
Georgia and that no other country had such a complex national election
system. "To be honest, monitoring elections in Serbia a few
months ago was much simpler," said Konrad Olszewski, an election
observer stationed in Miami by the Organization for Security and
Cooperation in Europe. "They have one national election law and
use the paper ballots I really prefer over any other system,"
Olszewski said. CLIP
No Surrender By Paul Krugman (No Surrender)
President Bush isn't a conservative. He's a radical - the leader
of a coalition that deeply dislikes America as it is. Part of that
coalition wants to tear down the legacy of Franklin Roosevelt,
eviscerating Social Security and, eventually, Medicare. Another part
wants to break down the barriers between church and state. And thanks
to a heavy turnout by evangelical Christians, Mr. Bush has four more
years to advance that radical agenda. Democrats are now,
understandably, engaged in self-examination. But while it's O.K. to
think things over, those who abhor the direction Mr. Bush is taking
the country must maintain their intensity; they must not succumb to
defeatism. CLIP
Americans flock to Canada's immigration Web site (Nov 5)
(...) Canada is one of the few major nations with an large-scale
immigration policy. Ottawa is seeking to attract between 220,000 and
240,000 newcomers next year. "Let's face it, we have a population
of a little over 32 million and we definitely need permanent residents
to come to Canada," said Iadinardi. "If we could meet (the
2005) target and go above it, the more the merrier." (...) The
waiting time to become a citizen is shorter for people married to
Canadians, which prompted the birth of a satirical Web site called
www.marryanamerican.ca.
The idea of increased immigration by unhappy
Americans is triggering some amusement in Canada. Commentator Thane
Burnett of the Ottawa Sun newspaper wrote a tongue-in-cheek guide to
would-be new citizens on Friday."As Canadians, you'll have to
learn to embrace and use all the products and culture of Americans,
while bad-mouthing their way of life," he said.
US Results Could Spur A Canadian Brain Gain (Nov 5)
In the months leading up to the American Presidential election, I
had a number of progressive-minded Americans say to me "If Bush
wins, I'm moving to Canada." They weren't being flippant and they
certainly weren't alone. In fact, Googling the terms "Bush"
+ "I'm moving to Canada" generates an incredible 5,580
hits. (...) According to an article in the San Francisco
Chronicle, countries such as New Zealand and Australia were also
reporting a surge in immigration-related inquiries on the day after
the election. (...) Still, I'm actually hoping that most of them stick
around to continue the fight against Bush's policies. If everyone who
disagreed with Richard Nixon and the Vietnam War had fled the country
in 1972 (when Nixon won a crushing majority), they wouldn't have been
around to witness his resignation and the subsequent defeat of his
successor Gerald Ford. The website Common Dreams has published a list
of Ten Reasons Not to Move to Canada. Among them: (...) Let's be
brutally frank: there are so many reasons that Bush's agenda needs to
be opposed that it would take an encyclopedia to list them
all.
Polls show that Canadians were overwhelmingly opposed to Bush's
re-election, even among Conservative Party supporters. There is much
that we can do to assist those Americans who decide to stick around
and fight. We can push our own government to say no to Bush's Missile
Defence Program. We can insist that Ottawa say no to any renewed
request for Canadian involvement in Iraq. And, we can continue to set
a strong example by maintaining a strong public health care system and
pursuing progressive social policies such as legalizing same-sex
marriage, keeping abortion accessible and decriminalizing marijuana
possession. CLIP
Draft Agency Checks That Students Register For Draft (Nov
5)
America 2004 Is Germany 1930 (VERY PROVOCATIVE - FOUND THROUGH
RENSE.COM)
(...) * In 2000, the American people lost the right to elect
their president when the U.S. Supreme Court committed a coup d'etat by
approving the stealing of the presidency by George W. Bush--in spite
of major media companies paying millions to contrive a "recount"
which they falsely claim proves Bush won the election.
* The 11/14/01 announcement that any person designated as a
terrorist by the President is to be placed under the control of the
Secretary of Defense and not allowed the aid of US or foreign
courts--a giant-step in our march toward a total police state
* Persons are being held in American prisons without being
allowed to contact their attorney
* The consultations between persons in American prisons and their
attorneys are being monitored by "justice" officials
* Men, women, and children can be murdered without
compunction--as at Ruby Ridge and Waco--and the person ultimately
responsible for these "police-state" atrocities will be
promoted to become the head of the agency guilty of these
crimes.
* persons convicted of crimes are being appointed to critical
positions in the Bush administration
As 1930s Germans and twenty-first century Americans wait,
believing things won't get any worse--it's finally too late. The
imperceptible changes have totally transformed you and your society
into a totalitarian state. Self-deception has infected almost
everyone. CLIP
A NEW PROGRESSIVE ERA OR NEOCON FASCIST DICTATORSHIP?
(October 30, 2004)
(...) On the other hand, if Bush retains control of the White
House, we can expect a neocon fascist dictatorship or martial law
emergency regime in 2005 or 2006, possibly as the result of synthetic
terrorism. The neocons are in a desperate flight forward mentality
which seeks to avoid the penal consequences of what they have already
done with Valerie Plame, the Niger yellowcake forgeries, the Israeli
mole scandal, and the Chalabi betrayal of state secrets. The neocon
preference is for early war with Iran. War with Russia and China
cannot be excluded somewhat further down the road. Bush 41 invaded
Somalia even after being defeated at the polls, and this should remind
us that the war and synthetic terrorism dangers will remain high even
if Bush is defeated at the polls. (...) The stolen 2000 election
was a classic neocon cold coup. The synthetic terrorism of September
11 was another coup, this time carried out by the invisible
government. The grant by the Congress to Bush of war powers in 2002
was a violation of the Constitution, as Senator Byrd stressed; this
was another coup which succeeded. The Iraq war of 2003, illegal on the
domestic and international planes, was yet another successful coup.
The planned coup of 2004 called for more synthetic terrorism, a wider
war, and another Bush stolen election. Countervailing factors have so
far prevented a new wave of synthetic terrorism and the opening of a
wider war, say with Iran. The great issue is now whether the planned
stealing of the election through Diebold and voter intimidation can be
checkmated.
Ashcroft Expected to Resign (To be soon appointed at the Supreme
Court???)
Bush Is Expected to Continue Rightward Drift (November 3,
2004)
Having won re-election with little Black political support,
President George W. Bush is expected to appoint three or four
Right-wing judges to the Supreme Court, a move virtually guaranteed to
eventually end the use of affirmative action programs in public
institutions, and preside over a second term that will be
characterized by cuts in domestic programs to offset the $1.9 trillion
tax cuts over the next decade and a $422 billion deficit from his
first term, political experts and activists predict. CLIP
People cause more soil erosion than all natural processes (3 Nov
2004)
ANN ARBOR, Mich.---Human activity causes 10 times more erosion of
continental surfaces than all natural processes combined, an analysis
by a University of Michigan geologist shows.People have been the main
cause of worldwide erosion since early in the first millennium, said
Bruce Wilkinson, a U-M professor of geological sciences. Wilkinson
will present his findings Nov. 8 at a meeting of the Geological
Society of America in Denver, Colo. Many researchers have tried to
assess the impact of human activity on soil loss, but most have only
guessed at how erosion due to natural forces such as glaciers and
rivers compares with that caused by human activity---mainly
agriculture and construction, Wilkinson said. He used existing data on
sedimentary rock distributions and abundances to calculate rates of
natural erosion."If you ask how fast erosion takes place over
geologic time---say over the last 500 million years---on average, you
get about 60 feet every million years," Wilkinson said. In those
parts of the United States where soil is being eroded by human
agricultural activity, however, the rate averages around 1,500 feet
per million years, and rates are even higher in other parts of the
world. Natural processes operate over areas larger than those affected
by agriculture and construction, but even taking that into account,
"the bottom line is, we move about 10 times as much sediment as
all natural processes put together," he said. Because soil
formation proceeds at about the same rate as natural erosion,
Wilkinson's results mean that humans are stripping soil from the
surface of the Earth far faster than nature can replace it. "This
situation is particularly critical," Wilkinson said,
"because the Earth's human population is growing rapidly and
because almost all potentially arable land is now under the plow."
For more information: Bruce Wilkinson --
http://www.geo.lsa.umich.edu/dept/faculty/wilkinson/index.html
Russian president signs Kyoto climate pact (Nov 05, 2004)
Solar Hydrogen: The search for water-splitting materials
brightens up (Oct. 30, 2004)
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1.
Date: 03 Nov 2004
I've subscribed to ERN for just a year or two but massively
appreciate the work you do. I had to reply to this last compilation
because I've been feeling such an incredibly strong sense of optimism
and strength regardless of what has been occurring in the global
sphere and regardless of the impossibility of actively taking time to
tune in to the global meditation and take time and space to
consciously be with the huge community consciously focusing on
creating positive outcome from the current events. In some ways tears
prick my eyes right now to think of my young sons apparently living
through another four years of apparent global control from the same
'corners' as the last four years and before.
But my heart just wont believe it. Whatever the television is
telling me, its just not what is really going on. And if nothing else,
the last four years has made it more than apparent that what parades
across the TV screen (and I only have to witness it because my car
broke down and my parents offered me and the kids a bed for the night
and a car pool run to school in the morning therefore access to their
sky TV in Spain) is only a very limited version of now. My day to day
life and my heart's knowing of what is real and true for me and for
life around me is that this is just further darkening of shadow so
that light becomes all the clearer. All is well. All is as it should
be. All is love.
Thank you. Much love to you. Blessings
Lindsay McLeod Espinoza
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2.
AN EXCELLENT COMMENT FROM A LONG-TIME ERN SUBSCRIBER
Date: 03 Nov 2004
Subject: Analysis of US election results
The election results now allow Bushism to play out to its logical
and disastrous conclusion, eventually helping Americans gain a clear
perspective on what it means. The unfolding disaster in Iraq will be
100% Bush's responsibility and that of the Republicans. A more radical
critique can emerge from the Democratic opposition, which wouldn't
have been possible under a Kerry administration committed to
"winning" by throwing 40,000 more troops into the
mayhem.
The election campaign started the ball rolling, with questioning of
the war beginning with the more radical Democratic candidates and then
becoming legitimized during the election debates--no doubt weakly by
Kerry, but he made it credible to say--1) we shouldn't have gone in in
the first place, and 2) we are making a mess of it now.
Add to this: 100,000 Iraqi civilians killed so far (see Scott Ritter
article, "The war on Iraq has made moral cowards of us
all")--for what justifiable end? Their liberty? Freedom from
tyranny? Making the U.S., and the world, a safer place?
The high state of awareness brought about by this campaign, as
represented by the big voter turn-out, means that the public eye will
be on Bush and this war as never before.
Moral consciousness in America needs to be directed to a unifying,
over-riding and compelling moral issue. By pushing divisive so-called
moral issues, Bush was able to side-track the voters from the central
choice of war or peace, and the high cost of war and its human tragedy
both to Americans and to Iraqis. Kerry's position on winning the war
undermined any passion for a better world that might have been kindled
into a fire that would take attention away from the pathetic
hot-button issues that Bush was pressing.
The responsibility is on all of us to raise the level of consciousness
by focusing on the revolting facts, asking the right questions, and
offering a new vision of the role a better United States can play to
promote a better world.
All the best,
Jim Lawler
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3.
A MOST CLEAR-EYED COMMENT FROM ANOTHER LONG-TIME ERN
SUBSCRIBER
Date: 3 Nov 2004
Subject: Democracy Fails: Corporations Win
Democracy Fails: Corporations Win
By Peter Phillips
Democracy in the United States is only a shadow in a corporate media
cave of deceit, lies and incomplete information. We stand ignorant of
what the powerful are doing in our name and how the corporate media
ignores key issues affecting us all.
A young professional couple from San Diego stated the weekend before
the election, "we don't think voting will make any difference so
why bother?" Over 80 million eligible voters joined them by
refusing to participate in the most recent election. While having been
a voter for 35 years, I can't fault them for their logic. November 2
gave us a choice between war and more war, corporate globalization and
more corporate globalization; the continuation of gifting billions of
dollars to Israel, the Patriot Act and an expanded Patriot Act; a
police state and a seriously growing police state, media monopoly and
even bigger media monopolies; and wealth inequality or an even greater
wealth divide. With the only alternative to these issues being minor
candidates without a snowball's chance, for many voting seemed
meaningless.
The issues where a choice was offered, abortion, Social Security, and
medical care, were so under-covered by the corporate media that most
voters still don't understand the differences. Voting ended up being a
faith-based decision embedded on visceral reactions to individuals
instead of key societal issues.
The real winners November 2 are the military industrial complex, who
will continue to feed at the 500 billion-dollar military trough and
the corporate media, whose coffers were filled with billions of
dollars for campaign ads.
And can we be sure we actually had a fair election among those who did
vote? Election Systems & Software (ES&S), Diebold, and Sequoia
are the companies primarily involved in implementing the new voting
stations throughout the country. All three have strong ties to the
Bush Administration. The largest investors in ES&S, Sequoia, and
Diebold are government defense contractors Northrup-Grumman,
Lockheed-Martin, Electronic Data Systems (EDS) and Accenture. Diebold
hired Scientific Applications International Corporation (SAIC) of San
Diego to develop the software security in their voting machines. A
majority of officials on SAIC's board are former members of either the
Pentagon or the CIA including:
- Army Gen. Wayne Downing, formerly on the National Security
Council
- Bobby Ray Inman; former CIA Director
- Retired Adm. William Owens, former vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs
of Staff
- Robert Gates, another former director of the CIA.
So we have a CIA/military private firm that programmed the security in
the voting machines for companies owned by some of the largest
military contracts in the country. No wonder the Co-founder of the
Citizens Alliance for Secure Elections, Susan Truitt said November 3:
"Seven counties in Ohio have electronic voting machines and none
of them have paper trails. That alone raises issues of accuracy and
integrity as to how we can verify the count. A recount without a paper
trail is meaningless; you just get a regurgitation of the data. Last
year, Blackwell tried to get the entire state to buy new machines
without a paper trail. The exit polls, virtually the only check we
have against tampering with a vote without a paper trail, had shown
Kerry with a lead. ... A poll worker told me this morning that there
were no tapes of the results posted on some machines; on other
machines the posted count was zero, which obviously shouldn't be the
case."
Our level of non-participation really means democracy has failed in
the US. Democracy is the people making decisions about the important
issues in their lives. Freedom is the ability to act on these
decisions. Without an electoral choice democracy is non-existent and
freedom only means the right to choose your own brand of toothpaste.
Without an active independent media informing on the powerful, we lack
both freedom and democracy.
Peter Phillips is an Professor of Sociology at Sonoma State University
and Director of Project Censored. For a listing of current censored
news stories see
http://www.projectcensored.org/
---
Peter Phillips Ph.D.
Sociology Department/Project Censored
Sonoma State University
1801 East Cotati Ave.
Rohnert Park, CA 94928
707-664-2588
---
AND MY COMMENT WAS:
Now what should be our collective next steps to change the
situation you describe?
Impeachment? Probably impossible since they control most levers
of power now.
Then what? Boycotting all the big corrupt corporations that
bought the White House? Mass civil disobedience? Most people would not
follow and thus it would have little impact. Public education about
all the hidden crimes and issues? Would certainly help but would not
make a dent into the hard core fundamentalists who blindly follow
their maximus leader.
A mobilization of some sort is in order for we cannot simply
stand down and wait in four years from now in the hope the next
elections - if they could ever become safe from covert manipulation -
could resolve this and, besides, the planet cannot afford that long a
wait for real changes. We certainly cannot count on the Democrats for
a true, reliable solution as you indicated in your article.
Then creating a new political party with a collegial leadership
and consensus-based approach to decision-making, a party truly
representing, in a broad and balanced way, the new emerging values in
society and trying to rally all progressive forces behind it in the
hope to break the monopoly on power of the Republicans and Democrats
could possible happen? A long term solution but possibly the only
realistic one right now. Yet, if all the celebrities who supported
Kerry's candidacy and all the brainpower of progressive people could
be harnessed to support the emergence of this Third Way, it could
quickly become a political force to be reckoned with before the next
elections and be a true alternative to the terminally corrupted
two-party system maintaining the United States under the domination of
military-corporate interests.
At least a collective heart/brainstorming session on this and
other possibilities seems in order...
The key to me is to apply the same ingenuity and can-do attitude
that has made the United States the largest economic and military
force on Earth towards creating the political leadership the people
really deserve today. But above all, such a project would need to
apply itself to avoid falling in the same traps of greed,
self-interest, self-serving power trips and lack of spiritually
grounded vision that befall the rest of the political landscape. I'm
not talking leftist versus rightist politics here, but above the fray,
truly higher consciousness based people-serving democracy, something
never done on such a scale before that only the Americans now anxious
enough for real change could achieve, with the assistance and
committed support of all progressive forces worldwide, because this
kind of American beachhead into the future of enlightened democracy on
Earth would also ultimately lead the way for many others to follow, in
their own unique, culturally-adjusted fashion, elsewhere around the
world.
Now that I believe would be the kind of American Dream most
people would ultimately want to support and vote for.
Best regards
Jean
ECOTERRA Intl.