Betreff: Kerry Won ! - but now what?
Von: "ECOTERRA Intl."
Datum: Sat, 06 Nov 2004 10:15:50 +0300
An: undisclosed-recipients:;

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 Buyhas 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."

- Taken from "Cover-Up Of 2000 And 2004 Florida Vote Continues" at http://www.rense.com/general59/FLORID.HTM

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!
http://rense.com/general59/blatantexitpollfinal.htm
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!
http://img103.exs.cx/img103/4526/exit_poll.gif

Message from Matthew - November 4
http://www.earthrainbownetwork.com/Archives2004/MatthewNov4-04

Only the Truth Will Set Us Free (a MUST SEE! Recommended by many people!)
http://www.911truth.org/

Heal The Money System Heal Society - Recommended by Suzanne Phillips
http://federal-reserve.net/
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
http://www.imgag.com/product/full/ap/3067907/graphic1.swf


US Seals Off Falluja as Assault Begins (11/05/2004)
http://www.indybay.org/archives/archive_by_id.php?id=2601&category_id=48
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)
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/110604V.shtml

J'Accuse! War Crimes and Iraq (Nov 5)
http://www.counterpunch.org/hallinan11052004.html
(...) 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
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/110604C.shtml

Outrage in Ohio: Angry residents storm State House in response to massive voter suppression and corruption (November 3 - VERY COMPREHENSIVE ARTICLE!)
http://michiganimc.org/feature/display/7644/index.php
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)
http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/MAD411A.html
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)
http://www.washingtondispatch.com/spectrum/archives/000712.html
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)
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/1104-38.htm
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)
http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0131-01.htm

How A Private Company Counted Our Votes (Nov 5, 2004) http://rense.com/general59/howaprivatecompany.htm
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)
http://www.infowars.net/Pages/Nov_04/041104_votes.html
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
http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0411/S00072.htm
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)
http://rense.com/general59/rig.htm
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
http://www.projectcensored.org/publications/2005/6.html

How George W Bush Won the 2004 Presidential Election
http://www.tom-davis.org/activism/unverifiable-voting/voting-summary.html

Transcript of John Kerry's Concession Speech (03 November 2004)
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/110404W.shtml
(...) 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)
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20041104/ap_on_el_pr/voting_problems
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)
http://www.rense.com/general59/steI.HTM
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)
http://rense.com/general59/shots.htm

Cover-Up Of 2000 And 2004 Florida Vote Continues (11-1-4)
http://rense.com/general59/FLORID.HTM
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)
http://rense.com/general59/dill.htm
"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)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A61706-2004Jul19?language=printer
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)
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/31/opinion/31SAT1.html
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
http://www.ejfi.org/Voting/Voting-20.htm


George Bush won the popular vote - and pigs are flying
http://bellaciao.org/en/article.php3?id_article=4161
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
http://indyvoter.org/

Pledge of Action to Stop a Stolen Election
http://www.nov3.us/
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)
http://www.fairelections.us/
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
http://www.journalscape.com/bboerner/2004-11-04-09:30/
(...) 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)
http://iht.com/bin/print_ipub.php?file=/articles/2004/11/02/news/observe.html
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)
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/110604Y.shtml
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)
http://www.reuters.co.uk/printerFriendlyPopup.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=616225
(...) 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.

Americans Moving To Canada, The 51st State - So You Wanna Come To Canada, EH? http://www.willthomas.net/Convergence/Weekly/Military_Draft_2005.htm

US Results Could Spur A Canadian Brain Gain (Nov 5)
http://rense.com/general59/USresultscouldspur.htm
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

17 Reasons Not To Slit Your Wrists - Michael Moore (Nov 5) http://rense.com/general59/17reasonsnottoslit.htm

Draft Agency Checks That Students Register For Draft (Nov 5)
http://www.propagandamatrix.com/articles/november2004/041104filesnotice.htm

America 2004 Is Germany 1930 (VERY PROVOCATIVE - FOUND THROUGH RENSE.COM)
http://www.hermes-press.com/germany1930.htm
(...) * 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)
http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/TAR410A.html
(...) 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???)
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/110504W.shtml

Bush Is Expected to Continue Rightward Drift (November 3, 2004)
http://www.civilrights.org/issues/affirmative/details.cfm?id=25933
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)
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2004-11/uom-pcm110304.php
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)
http://www.terradaily.com/2004/041105064733.z8cyaw3c.html

Solar Hydrogen: The search for water-splitting materials brightens up (Oct. 30, 2004)
http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20041030/bob10.asp

<> <> <> <> <> <> <> <>

1.

Date: 03 Nov 2004
Subject: Re: Hybrid Series: Oh dear!... Four! More! Years!
From: Lindsay McLeod Espinoza <lindsay.mcleod@bluewin.com>

Dear Jean
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
http://www.girasol-andalucia.com/

<> <> <> <> <> <> <> <>

2.

AN EXCELLENT COMMENT FROM A LONG-TIME ERN SUBSCRIBER

Date: 03 Nov 2004
From: James Lawler <jlawler15@cogeco.ca>
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

<> <> <> <> <> <> <> <>

3.

A MOST CLEAR-EYED COMMENT FROM ANOTHER LONG-TIME ERN SUBSCRIBER

Date: 3 Nov 2004
From: Peter Phillips <peter.phillips@sonoma.edu>
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
http://www.projectcensored.org/

---

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.