At least five more US soldiers have died in Iraq. For
what? The neo-con wet dream of a Three Stooges Reich,
and nothing more. They certainly did not die for
democracy. The Ukrainian people, with their
demonstration of courage, defiance and civil
conscience, put the American people to shame. They
certainly did not die for freedom of the press. The
Ukrainian government controlled news organization,
with their demonstration of courage, defiance and
journalistic conscience, put the US mainstream news
media to shame. They certainly did not die for
enlightened or responsible political leadership. One
of the two major political parties has let itself
become the bitch of a fascist cabal, and the other
major political party has capitulated in cowardice and
denial. Did they die for Abu Ghraib? Did they die for
the political operatives who outed Valery Plame? Did
they die for whoever enabled the double agent Chalabi?
Did they die for the Bush abomination’s pre-9/11
negligence and post-9/11 incompetence? Did they die so
that the Bush abomination could keep Cat Stevens out
of the country and imprison Martha Stewart while Osama
bin Laden remains alive and at large? Did they die so
that the Bush abomination could wage an insane war
over lies about WMD while the snail mail anthrax
killer remains unidentified, at large and in
possession of real WMD within the continental US? Did
they die so that we could fracture the Western
Alliance and sink into a Mega-Mogadishu in Iraq? Did
they die for a phony “energy crisis” that brought the
putsch that installed a professional body builder as
Governor of California? Did they die to jump-start the
heroin trade in Afghanistan and bring down the street
price of hard drugs in Europe? Did they die so that we
could lose another four years we cannot afford to lose
in the struggle to come to grips with the impact of
global warming and AIDS in Africa? Did they die so
that the CIA could be purged not because of
“intelligence breakdowns” (it was the Bush national
insecurity team that failed us, not the CIA) but
because they spoke truth to power about Iraq and 9/11,
unlike the US mainstream news media, which has carried
the Bush cabal’s filthy water, or the Democratic
Party, which now drinks that filthy water? Did they
die so that the US federal surplus could be gutted for
two reckless tax cuts while homeland security and
research into renewable energy resources go are
malnourished? And no, the world is not a safer place
for us or anyone else now that Saddam Hussein has been
toppled. Indeed, we would have all been better
off…Margaret Hassan would be alive and doing good
works today. There were no car bombings in Hussein’s
Iraq. There were no beheadings. TIt had been a long time since Hussein gassed his own people with Rumsfeld’s blessing. The sad,
despicable truth is that they attacked Iraq, not
because it was a threat, but because it was so
weak…Yes, there was torture in Hussein’s Iraq, but
there is torture in Bush’s Iraq too. There was no democracy in Hussein’s Iraq, but there will be no real
democracy in Bush’s Iraq either. There is no real
democracy in Bush’s America. No, we are not better off
with Saddam Hussein deposed and the US military mired
in a Mega-Mogadishu in the desert. No, we could have
focused our national attention on who really failed
this country before and after 9/11 and what really
happened in the 2000 and 2004 elections. We could have asked why the
exit polls were wrong for the first time in our
history, twice in a row, against all odds and to the
favor of Bush…Here are some important news stories and
opinion pieces. Please review them and share them with
others…Support the citizen revolt in OnNoNo, Fraudida
and other allegedly “red states” like Oklahoma and
North Carolina, where the Electoral Uprising was
sabotaged with fraud and vote suppression…Contribute
to Bev Harris and www.blackboxvoting.org. Contribute
to the bastions of the Information Rebellion,
www.buzzflash.com, www.truthout.org and
www.democrats.com. Contribute to www.moveon.org...Do not contribute to the Democratic Party until they clarify their position and decide to take the stand they promised to take in this election...
John McCarthy, Associated Press: The Rev. Jesse
Jackson said Sunday that the Ohio Supreme Court should
consider setting aside Bush's win in Ohio and that
Congress should investigate how Ohioans voted…
The counting of provisional ballots and wide gaps in
vote totals for Kerry and other Democrats on the
ballots in certain counties have raised too many
questions to let the vote stand without further
examination, Jackson said.
"We can live with winning and losing. We cannot live
with fraud and stealing," Jackson said…
Since the election, several complaints have surfaced:
The Green and Libertarian parties asked a U.S.
District Court judge to order an immediate recount.
The judge agreed with the state that a recount cannot
begin until Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell
certifies the statewide vote, sometime between Dec. 3
and 6. The two parties are raising the $113,600, or
$10 per precinct statewide, needed to force a recount.
People for the American Way, a national watchdog
group, is trying to stop the Cuyahoga County Board of
Elections in Cleveland from rejecting 8,099 of the
24,472 provisional ballots cast there. The ballots
were thrown out because voters did not properly
complete them or cast them at polling places that were
not their own.
An error was detected in an electronic voting system,
giving President Bush 3,893 extra votes in suburban
Columbus. Elections officials caught the glitch and
the votes will not be added to the official tally.
Some groups also have complained about thousands of
punch-card ballots that were not tallied because
officials in the 68 counties that use them could not
determine a vote for president. Votes for other
offices on the cards were counted.
Bob Fitrakis & Harvey Wasserman, Columbus Free Press:
Preaching to a packed, wildly cheering central Ohio
citizen congregation, Rev. Jesse Jackson blasted the
presidential election back into the national headlines
Sunday. Jackson said new findings cast serious doubt
on the idea that George W. Bush beat John Kerry in
Ohio November 2. A GOP "pattern of intentionality" was
behind a suspect outcome, he said. At stake is "the
integrity of the vote" for which "too many have died."
"We can live with losing an election," he said. "We
cannot live with fraud and stealing."
Jackson is the first major national figure to come
here challenging the idea that Ohio has given George
W. Bush a second term in the White House. Jackson
emphasized that the vote "has not yet been certified"
and demanded the removal of Ohio Secretary of State
Kenneth Blackwell from supervising the recount, which
Jackson termed a case of "the fox guarding the chicken
house." Blackwell co-chaired the Bush-Cheney campaign
in Ohio and has been widely criticized for a series of
partisan decisions that have thus far indicated Bush
carried the state. Exit polls by Zogby and CNN showed
Ohio going for Kerry with 53% and 51% respectively,
which would win him presidency in the Electoral
College.
Bob Fertik. www.democrats.com: Rev. Jesse Jackson
broke through the "media blackout" on the Stolen
Election. Jackson actually spoke for himself on
Crossfire:
NOVAK: Reverend Jackson, you know, I don't know if you
noticed it, but Senator Kerry said, let's -- this,
let's put this behind us. There's no way we can make
up enough votes in Ohio to carry the state.
And, you know, Jesse you may not have noticed it, but
it was -- John Kerry was the candidate. You weren't
the candidate. Why can't you go along with John on
this? JACKSON: I fought for the right to vote before
John Kerry ever decided to run for the presidency. The
principle is bigger than him.
The election is not certified 27 days later. The count
continues. You know, before the election even started,
there were 30,000 people they sought to eliminate, to
say they had the wrong wait of paper, and the judge
overruled that. Then the provisional ballots, there
were 155,000 of them. They're not yet counted,
because, in the spring of the year, if you were in the
county, you could vote.
They shifted it to, you could only vote in the
precinct in November. But since they consolidated many
precincts, it led to much confusion. There are also
92,000 unprocessed ballots. And so, 27 days later, the
process continues. John Kerry conceded much too
quickly.
BEGALA: Well, Reverend, but Kerry did lose Ohio
reportedly by 136,483 votes. You don't really think
that there's 137,000 more Kerry votes there, do you?
JACKSON: Well, there are several things at work here.
No. 1, Ellen Connally ran for Supreme Court in the
same election. And, in the Cleveland area, Cuyahoga
County, Kerry had 120,000 votes more than she had.
Down in the area of Butler, Clermont and Warren, she
had 190,000 votes more than Kerry had.
That suggests that something went awry. And that's why
we need a thorough investigation with forensic
computer analysts to see, in fact, was there
electronic vote tampering? All we know today is that
the counting is not over. And why wouldn't it be three
weeks later that you do not have a certified election?
Thom Hartman, www.commondreams.org: Even more glaring,
a consortium of news organizations found and reported
on the front page of The New York Times (and other
papers) on 12 September 2001, that in Florida "...a
statewide recount -- could have produced enough votes
to tilt the election his [Gore's] way, no matter what
standard was chosen to judge voter intent." (The Times
apparently chose to bury this fact - that Gore
actually won the 2000 election - in the 15th paragraph
and behind a misleading headline because the nation
had been attacked on 9/11 the day before.)
Not only was the election of 2000 stolen by the Bush
brothers, but it was proven by the later statewide
recount that - even after Jeb's knocking thousands of
African Americans off the rolls - Gore still would
have won Florida had all the votes been counted.
This was outrageous news, enough to bring people into
the streets. And there were demonstrations - loud and
angry ones. But they were round-the-clock in front of
Al Gore's VP residence in Washington DC (shouting with
bullhorns "Get out of Dick Cheney's house!"), outside
(and often within) vote-counting headquarters' in
Florida, and entirely composed of Republicans.
Where were the protesting Democrats? Other than those
in a few of Florida's African American communities and
the Congressional Black Caucus, they were largely
invisible. If Democrats and progressives had taken to
the streets in mass numbers nationwide that November
and December, it's entirely probable that the Supreme
Court would have backed off and allowed a statewide
recount to continue, and Al Gore would have been
president for the past four years, instead of George
W. Bush. Ironically, the Democratic Party knows how to
highlight election fraud and start national movements
to bring down administrations that try to steal
elections. A Party-affiliated group has helped do it
four times in the past four years.
But not in Ohio, Florida, or anywhere else in the USA.
Instead, the National Democratic Institute for
International Affairs (Madeleine K. Albright,
Chairman) has joined up with a similar organization
affiliated with the Republican Party (the
International Republican Institute - John McCain,
Chairman), other NGOs, and US government agencies to
support the use of exit polls and statistical analyses
to challenge national elections in Ukraine, Serbia,
Belarus, and the former Soviet republic of Georgia.
In three of those four nations they succeeded in not
only mounting a national challenge, but in reversing
the outcomes of elections.
The election reversals were accomplished by funding
local groups - most made up of a core of activists and
college students - who worked to topple regimes that
had rigged their own re-elections.
Mel Gilles, Mathew Gross: Watch Dan Rather apologize
for not getting his facts straight, humiliated before
the eyes of America, voluntarily undermining his
credibility and career of over thirty years. Observe
Donna Brazille squirm as she is ridiculed by Bay
Buchanan, and pronounced irrelevant and nearly
non-existent. Listen as Donna and Nancy Pelosi and
Senator Charles Schumer take to the airwaves saying
that they have to go back to the drawing board and
learn from their mistakes and try to be better, more
likable, more appealing, have a stronger message,
speak to morality. Watch them awkwardly quote the
bible, trying to speak the new language of America.
Surf the blogs, and read the comments of dismayed,
discombobulated, confused individuals trying to figure
out what they did wrong. Hear the cacophony of voices,
crying out, “Why did they beat me?”
And then ask anyone who has ever worked in a domestic
violence shelter if they have heard this before.
They will tell you, every single day.
Deutsche Welle: Alleging responsibility for war crimes
and torture at Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison, a human
rights group has filed a criminal complaint in Germany
against US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other
top US officials.
The New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights
(CCR) and Berlin's Republican Lawyers' Association
said they and five Iraqi citizens mistreated by US
soldiers were seeking a probe by German federal
prosecutors of leading US policymakers.
They said they had chosen Germany because of its Code
of Crimes Against International Law, introduced in
2002, which grants German courts universal
jurisdiction in cases involving war crimes or crimes
against humanity.
It also makes military or civilian commanders who
fail to prevent their subordinates from committing
such acts liable.
Deutsche Welle: Germany's Code of Crimes Against
International Law is a unique piece of legislation
that allows Germany to prosecute crimes against
international law anywhere in the world.
The law has been in effect since July 2002 and was
implemented in response to the formation of the
International Criminal Court, which became operative
at the same time.
The law is meant to enable Germany to prosecute all
crimes against humanity. "Regardless of the law of the
place of commission, the German criminal law is also
applicable to … acts committed outside of Germany,"
the law reads.
Brett Arends, The Boston Herald: Stephen Roach, the
chief economist at investment banking giant Morgan
Stanley, has a public reputation for being bearish.
But you should hear what he's saying in private.
Roach met select groups of fund managers downtown last
week, including a group at Fidelity.
His prediction: America has no better than a 10
percent chance of avoiding economic "Armageddon."
Press were not allowed into the meetings. But the
Herald has obtained a copy of Roach's presentation. A
stunned source who was at one meeting said, "it struck
me how extreme he was - much more, it seemed to me,
than in public."
Roach sees a 30 percent chance of a slump soon and a
60 percent chance that "we'll muddle through for a
while and delay the eventual Armageddon."
Philippe Martin, Libération: `The dollar is falling
again and will continue to fall. The direction is not
really in question, but the manner, brutal or orderly,
with or without a financial crisis, has not yet been
determined. Let's first review a few figures to get a
good sense of the scale of the American problem. The
current account deficit (the difference between what
Americans import and what they export to the rest of
the world) at a new historic record will represent
about 5.4% of American income in 2004. Every year, the
deficit must be financed by growth in net debt to the
rest of the world. This now stands at around 2.6
trillion dollars, 23% of the United States' income. In
comparison, France's net external position is a
positive 7% of its income…As with global warming, the
Bush administration minimizes the risks so as not to
have to take any action that might be politically
costly. The chain reactions generated by a brutal
freefall of the dollar, precipitated by the markets,
might not, all the same, be very pretty. By pushing
operators to sell American assets to avoid losses,
such a dollar drop could precipitate a Stock Exchange
fall, a brutal increase in interest rates, not to
mention the failure of a certain number of financial
institutions that had invested heavily in dollars. In
cartoons, the hero continues along his trajectory
above the abyss before suddenly falling straight down
into it. In the same way, overvalued currencies have
the tendency to stay that way until the day the
markets consider that they are no longer sufficiently
compensated for the risk of a crash. The probability
of such a catastrophe scenario is perhaps low, perhaps
as low as for a brutal global heating, but it is not
zero. The absence of international cooperation sends
the markets a dangerous signal that for the moment, we
are working without a [safety] net.
JOYCE MCCLOY, www.newsobserver.com: "NC has the worst
election problem in the country right now." --
Computer scientist Dr. David L. Dill of Stanford
University
"A Florida-style nightmare has unfolded in North
Carolina in the days since Election Day, with
thousands of votes missing and the outcome of two
statewide races still up in the air." -- AP Newswire,
Nov 13
Our key decision-makers are ignoring the seriousness
of the problem:
"Except for the lost votes in Carteret County, Gary
Bartlett, executive director of the North Carolina
State Board of Elections, called the problems 'easily
remedied and lessons learned.'" AP Newswire, Nov 13
North Carolina's election problems will not be that
easily remedied. This year's disaster shows that many
election workers are in over their heads.
Problems with voting machines, central tabulators
using outdated and secret software, registration
confusion, poll worker training, provisional ballots
and absentee ballots are not easily remedied.
Add to all this the lack of a voter-verified paper
ballot and you have no disaster recovery plan…
Lost: 4,500 votes in Carteret County -- paper ballots
verified by voters and retained by the election
officials would have saved these votes.
Omitted: an entire precinct of 1,209 votes in Gaston
County.
Missing: 12,000 more votes in Gaston County not
reported. The election director hired a voting machine
technician to upload the county vote totals and did
not oversee the process.
Bamboozled: Guilford County bought vote-tabulating
software that used outdated technology and with
insufficient vote storage. As a result, Guilford
County's public vote totals for president were off by
22,000 votes.
More votes than cast: Craven County reported 11,283
more votes for president than cast, voting with the
same software as in Guilford County.
Bob Nichols, bobnichols@cox.net: That looks like what
the secretly programmed machines did for Sen. Kerry in
President Bush's easily won Presidential Election
victory in Oklahoma.
All 77 counties use the Optech Eagle voting machines
and Tabulator's made by ES&S, Sen Hagel's republican
company.
The respectable, conservative "Tulsa World" newspaper
reported Nov 3rd that Kerry was winning in 57 of the
states's rural counties., with 70% of the vote
counted. Turns out that the famous November 3rd report
was probably not supposed to be printed.
It represented the counting when the tabulating was
about 70% "complete," as they used to say in the old
Soviet Unon.
The "official" State of Oklahoma Election Board vote
totals released later show Kerry not winning; but,
losing in all the state's 77 counties, including the
57 rural counties. Yea, somebody really messed up, big
time, and published a partially completed and, I guess
you would haver to call it, "fixed" vote.
ASSOCIATED PRESS: The Pakistan army said today it will
withdraw hundreds of troops from a tense tribal region
near Afghanistan where Osama bin Laden and his top
deputy were believed to be hiding.
The withdrawals from the South Waziristan area come
after several military operations by thousands of
troops against remnants of bin Laden's Al Qaeda
organization and its supporters in recent months.
Although the tribal region is considered a possible
hiding place for bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman
al-Zawahri, a senior Pakistan general said earlier
this month that no sign of bin Laden has been found.
Guardian: Two more of America's top spies were
reported yesterday to be leaving the CIA, as an
attempt to fix the troubled agency appeared
increasingly to be dividing its ranks and driving out
its most experienced officials.
The latest departures were undercover operatives, and
so were not named in yesterday's press reports, which
described them as "barons" in the top level of the
CIA's clandestine service - officially called the
directorate of operations - in charge of its European
and Far East divisions.
The New York Times quoted a former intelligence
official as saying the two were "very senior guys" who
were leaving because they were "uncomfortable" with
the management team brought in by the new CIA
director, Porter Goss.
There have been other high level resignations since Mr
Goss was appointed by President Bush in September. The
head of the directorate of operations Stephen Kappes
and his deputy Michael Sulick both resigned last week,
after the departure of the CIA deputy director, John
McLaughlin.
Jim Wasserman, www.commondreams.org: On issues from
global warming to corporate reform, public pension
funds controlled by union officials and Democrats in
states carried by Democratic presidential candidate
John Kerry increasingly see themselves as
counterweights to Republican control of the nation's
political agenda.
As Bush plans a second term, multibillion-dollar
investment funds _ especially in so-called "blue
states" such as California, New York, Connecticut and
Illinois _ have already forged alternate agendas on
clean energy, the environment, executive pay, even gay
marriage rights that can run counter to "red state"
values.
They also view themselves as an increasingly important
check on corporate power under a Republican-dominated
government that typically promotes fewer regulations
on business and financial markets. Their muscle comes
in the billions of dollars invested in corporate
America.
"We've had no choice but to step up," said
California's Democratic state Treasurer Phil
Angelides, a director of the nation's largest and
third-largest pension funds with combined values of
nearly $300 billion. "This administration has turned
its back on ordinary investors, or on issues of
substantial concern to our economy."
While the primary mission of enormous
Democrat-controlled pension funds such as California's
$177 billion Public Employees Retirement System and
New York State's $118 billion Common Retirement Fund
is to produce income for their millions of public
sector retirees, how they do it often has fierce
partisan overtones.
Restore the Sanctity of the Vote, Break the
Corporatist Stranglehold on the US Mainstream News
Media, Repudiate the 9/11 Cover-Up and the Iraq War
Lies
Full texts and URLs follow…
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/113004Y.shtml
Jesse Jackson Joins Critics of Ohio Vote
By John McCarthy
The Associated Press
Sunday 28 November 2004
COLUMBUS | Although John Kerry has conceded the
election and the Democratic Party is largely on the
sidelines, critics of Ohio's vote count on Nov. 2 have
found plenty to gripe about - uncounted punch-card
votes, disqualified provisional ballots and too many
votes for President Bush.
The Rev. Jesse Jackson said Sunday that the Ohio
Supreme Court should consider setting aside Bush's win
in Ohio and that Congress should investigate how
Ohioans voted.
Bush defeated Kerry in Ohio by 136,000 votes,
according to unofficial results.
"This is about the integrity of the vote. This is
not about the Kerry campaign," said Jackson, who
supported the Democrat for president.
On the morning of Nov. 3, less than 12 hours after
Ohio's final votes were cast, Kerry called Bush to
congratulate him on his victory.
His campaign figured he would not get enough of the
155,000 provisional ballots, or those cast by voters
whose registrations could not be confirmed at polling
places, to overtake Bush's total.
The counting of provisional ballots and wide gaps in
vote totals for Kerry and other Democrats on the
ballots in certain counties have raised too many
questions to let the vote stand without further
examination, Jackson said.
"We can live with winning and losing. We cannot live
with fraud and stealing," Jackson said.
Attorney Cliff Arnebeck, who has represented
political activist groups, said he would ask the Ohio
Supreme Court, probably on Wednesday, to take a look
at the election results. If the court decides to hear
the case, it can declare a new winner or throw the
results out.
Since the election, several complaints have
surfaced:
• The Green and Libertarian parties asked a U.S.
District Court judge to order an immediate recount.
The judge agreed with the state that a recount cannot
begin until Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell
certifies the statewide vote, sometime between Dec. 3
and 6. The two parties are raising the $113,600, or
$10 per precinct statewide, needed to force a recount.
• People for the American Way, a national watchdog
group, is trying to stop the Cuyahoga County Board of
Elections in Cleveland from rejecting 8,099 of the
24,472 provisional ballots cast there. The ballots
were thrown out because voters did not properly
complete them or cast them at polling places that were
not their own.
• An error was detected in an electronic voting
system, giving President Bush 3,893 extra votes in
suburban Columbus. Elections officials caught the
glitch and the votes will not be added to the official
tally. Some groups also have complained about
thousands of punch-card ballots that were not tallied
because officials in the 68 counties that use them
could not determine a vote for president. Votes for
other offices on the cards were counted.
Elections officials concede some mistakes were made
but no more than most elections.
"There are no signs of widespread irregularities,"
Blackwell spokesman Carlo LoParo said.
The Ohio Democratic Party believes every effort
should be made to get an accurate count, but it is not
planning legal action of its own, spokesman Dan Trevas
said.
________________________________________ Jesse
Jackson Demands Ohio Presidential Recount,
Blasts GOP Election Officials, and
Says Kerry Supports the Process
By Bob Fitrakis & Harvey Wasserman
Columbus Free Press
Monday 29 November 2004
COLUMBUS - Preaching to a packed, wildly cheering
central Ohio citizen congregation, Rev. Jesse Jackson
blasted the presidential election back into the
national headlines Sunday. Jackson said new findings
cast serious doubt on the idea that George W. Bush
beat John Kerry in Ohio November 2. A GOP "pattern of
intentionality" was behind a suspect outcome, he said.
At stake is "the integrity of the vote" for which "too
many have died." "We can live with losing an
election," he said. "We cannot live with fraud and
stealing."
Jackson is the first major national figure to come
here challenging the idea that Ohio has given George
W. Bush a second term in the White House. Jackson
emphasized that the vote "has not yet been certified"
and demanded the removal of Ohio Secretary of State
Kenneth Blackwell from supervising the recount, which
Jackson termed a case of "the fox guarding the chicken
house." Blackwell co-chaired the Bush-Cheney campaign
in Ohio and has been widely criticized for a series of
partisan decisions that have thus far indicated Bush
carried the state. Exit polls by Zogby and CNN showed
Ohio going for Kerry with 53% and 51% respectively,
which would win him presidency in the Electoral
College.
Blackwell says a complex series of rules allows him
to limit a recount to just a few days. He says he may
certify the Ohio vote between December 3d and 6th,
with any recount due to be completed December 13, when
Ohio's electors are scheduled to meet.
Jackson has demanded Blackwell recuse himself,
saying "the owner of the team can't also be the
referee." A broad-based legal team--now including
Jackson's PUSH/Rainbow Coalition as Plaintiff--is
preparing to file an election challenge asking the
election results be overturned. Jackson says computer
forensic experts must be given full access to
electronic voting machines that have provided no paper
trail, but which could be electronically analyzed from
within. Jackson said he has spoken with Democratic
candidate John Kerry, who indicated his support for
the recount process.
New findings indicate that Kerry's margins in 37
(of 88) Ohio counties are suspiciously low when
compared to those garnered by Judge Ellen Connally, an
unsuccessful Democratic Supreme Court candidate. The
calculations focus on standardized county-wide ratios
between bottom-of-the-ticket tallies won by Judge
Connally versus those won by Kerry in heavily
Republican, rural counties. According to a wide range
of experts, there appears to be a systematic removal
of Kerry votes by hackers who overlooked the Connally
votes, which now clearly infers something went wrong.
"It's simply not credible that a vastly underfunded
African-American female candidate at the bottom of the
ticket could outpoll John Kerry in Butler County,"
said Cliff Arneback, a lead attorney for the
challenging legal team. Jackson said the situation
"does not pass the smell test."
Before some 500 supporters, Jackson preached a
litany of doubt surrounding the Ohio outcome,
prompting at least 50 congregants to file affidavits
documenting their own experiences trying to vote
November 2. Several hundred such documents have been
filed at a series of hearings in Columbus, Cincinnati,
and Cleveland.
According to the sworn testimony, a systematic
denial of voting machines to inner city precincts
resulted in waits of three, five and even eleven hours
for thousands of voters, many of whom left in
frustration without casting their ballots. Charges of
intimidation, misinformation, faulty registration
lists and denial of provisional ballots are listed. So
are serious questions about the integrity of touch
screen machines, many of which were widely reported to
have turned Kerry votes into Bush votes. In Warren
County, Homeland Security was inexplicably invoked to
bar independent observers and the media, leaving the
vote count under control of Republicans. In the
Franklin County precinct of Gahanna, 4258 votes were
registered for Bush where only 628 people voted. In
another county, a GOP election official took voting
results to his private home for final, unsupervised
reporting.
"We need federal supervision of federal elections,"
said Jackson. "Right now we have 50 separate but
unequal ways to vote. There can be no safe harbor for
a flawed process that leaves people disenfranchised.
"You can't have public elections on privately-owned
machines, especially where one of the owners has vowed
to deliver the state for George Bush," Jackson added,
referring to Wally O'Dell, a major Bush supporter and
CEO of Diebold, a leading Ohio-based supplier of
electronic voting machines and voting software.
"You can hack these machines," Jackson said. "The
playing field is uneven. These numbers will not go
away. We as Americans should not be begging a
Secretary of State for a fair vote count. We cannot be
the home of the thief and the land of the slave."
"This is not about John Kerry versus George Bush,"
said Jackson. "This is about Medgar Evers and Fannie
Lou Hamer and Viola Liuzzo. About Goodman, Cheney and
Schwerner, and twenty-seven years in prison for Nelson
Mandela," he said, referring to heroes of the
movements for equal rights. "It's about a will to
dignity. It's not too much to ask for our vote to
count."
-------
Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman are co-authors of
the upcoming ANOTHER STOLEN ELECTION: VOICES OF THE
DISENFRANCHISED, 2004 (freepress.org). Fitrakis is
publisher and Wasserman is senior editor of
freepress.org. Fitrakis is co-counsel for the Alliance
For Democracy which has announced that it will file a
lawsuit to ensure a fair recount of the votes in Ohio.
http://blog.democrats.com/node/1577
Stolen Election 2004: Tuesday Update
by Bob Fertik on November 30, 2004 - 12:16am.
Rev. Jesse Jackson broke through the "media blackout"
on the Stolen Election. Jackson actually spoke for
himself on Crossfire:
NOVAK: Reverend Jackson, you know, I don't know if you
noticed it, but Senator Kerry said, let's -- this,
let's put this behind us. There's no way we can make
up enough votes in Ohio to carry the state.
And, you know, Jesse you may not have noticed it, but
it was -- John Kerry was the candidate. You weren't
the candidate. Why can't you go along with John on
this?
JACKSON: I fought for the right to vote before John
Kerry ever decided to run for the presidency. The
principle is bigger than him.
The election is not certified 27 days later. The count
continues. You know, before the election even started,
there were 30,000 people they sought to eliminate, to
say they had the wrong wait of paper, and the judge
overruled that. Then the provisional ballots, there
were 155,000 of them. They're not yet counted,
because, in the spring of the year, if you were in the
county, you could vote.
They shifted it to, you could only vote in the
precinct in November. But since they consolidated many
precincts, it led to much confusion. There are also
92,000 unprocessed ballots. And so, 27 days later, the
process continues. John Kerry conceded much too
quickly.
BEGALA: Well, Reverend, but Kerry did lose Ohio
reportedly by 136,483 votes. You don't really think
that there's 137,000 more Kerry votes there, do you?
JACKSON: Well, there are several things at work here.
No. 1, Ellen Connally ran for Supreme Court in the
same election. And, in the Cleveland area, Cuyahoga
County, Kerry had 120,000 votes more than she had.
Down in the area of Butler, Clermont and Warren, she
had 190,000 votes more than Kerry had.
That suggests that something went awry. And that's why
we need a thorough investigation with forensic
computer analysts to see, in fact, was there
electronic vote tampering? All we know today is that
the counting is not over. And why wouldn't it be three
weeks later that you do not have a certified election?
NOVAK: Reverend Jackson, in 1960, the first election I
covered, they stole the election from Richard Nixon in
Illinois. In Texas, there was a difference of less
than 12,000 votes. And they took care of those very
nicely. But Nixon never protested. They Republicans
never protested because, in the interests of the
country, they didn't want to have -- put the country
through something.
You surely don't want some kind of a question of
whether who won this election, when it's not 10,000 or
12,000 votes. It's, as Paul says, what, 136,000 votes.
JACKSON: Well, we should be better 44 years later in
the counting of an election. I mean, if we can protest
an unfair election, a questionable one in Ukraine, why
can't we have a good one here in our own country?
The point is, there are court suits asking, A, that
all ballots be counted. So far, Mr. Novak, all ballots
have not been counted; 92,000 unprocessed ballots have
not been counted; 155,000 provisional votes have not
all yet been counted. And so to expect all votes to
count is reasonable. Whether Kerry win or loses, let
the winner win and the loser lose, but count all the
votes. That's a reasonable democratic expectation.
On Countdown with Keith Olbermann, Jackson came under
attack from Katherine Harris Kenneth Blackwell, who
repeated the GOP propaganda attack that Jackson is
just seeking publicity. “I think what happened is that
Jesse Jackson ran around the block and tried to get
out in front of a parade that was already on the
march.”
When Olbermann challenged his partisanship, Blackwell
immediately blamed the Democrats.
As to the audit of the perception of conflict of
interest in Blackwell’s other role as Honorary
Co-Chair of the Bush-Cheney Ohio Campaign, he seemed
less definitive. “We have a bi-partisan system in Ohio
where the Hamilton County Chairman of the board of
elections, Tim Burke, is also the Democrat chairman of
the Democrat party in that county.” I’ll pause the
quote here to note that said party does business as
the Democratic Party and the Republicans’ obsession
with that little ‘ic’ has always seemed peevish to me,
even when it’s coming out of John McCain’s mouth.
Blackwell continued: “The same for Dayton. The
Democrat Chairman is the Chairman of the Board of
Elections in Montgomery County.”
This is interesting, and this is troubling (why should
you be able to be both Chairman of the Montgomery
County Democratic Party and Chairman of the Montgomery
County Board of Elections?). But it also seemed to be
self-evidently irrelevant - something akin to the
political version of “They started it,” whether the
‘they’ are Republicans or Democrats.
Blackwell's most important statement was his implicit
promise to conduct an ordinary legal recount upon
request from the Glibs:
Last week, the incoming president of the association
of county election officials mused out loud about a
suit to stop the Glibs, so I asked Blackwell if he was
saying that his office would take no step to try to
prevent the recount. “Once they ask for a recount, we
will provide them with a recount… we will regard this
as yet another audit of the voting process.”
Does that mean Blackwell will conduct a speedy recount
- as the Glibs want - or will he let local Republican
officials drag it out past the 12/13 meeting of the
Electoral College, when it will become much harder to
challenge the Stolen Election? Olbermann didn't ask,
so Blackwell didn't tell.
At the end, Olbermann asked Blackwell about the rumors
that he met with Bush on Election Day.
I went for a straight yes-or-no on the latest ‘sources
say’ story from the many and varied internets: did he,
or did he not, meet with President Bush, in Ohio, on
election day. “That’s just hogwash, absolutely zero,
not true. And it’s the sort of mythology that grows
out of, you know, a lot of people with a lot of time
on their hands and the imaginations of Jonathan
Swift.” While earning points for referencing the
author of Gulliver’s Travels, Secretary Blackwell also
threw a gauntlet down at the feet of the net’s Baker
Streets Irregulars: there darn well better not be
anybody willing to swear an oath they saw such a
meeting take place.
Finally, the Cobb/Badnarik "Glib" Team filed official
requests for a recount in New Mexico and Nevada.
The New Mexico presidential election was marred by
reports of voter suppression and problems with
electronic voting machines. In Nevada, the lack of
paper trails or receipts for electronic voting
machines is the primary concern.
Hmm. Don't they know Nevada is the only state that
does require paper trails for its touchscreen
machines?
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/1129-26.htm
How To Take Back A Stolen Election
by Thom Hartmann
"Never again!" says the slogan in an email I received
from an activist friend. "Never again will we allow a
stolen election in the USA!"
But how are we going to stop it?
The major American political parties have an answer -
it's already working for them in the Ukraine - but
it's very much a sword that can cut two ways.
Interestingly, it was first used in the US.
On December 4, 2000, in time to change the outcome of
the Electoral College vote, Greg Palast published an
article in Salon.com, made into a BBC television
documentary shortly thereafter, that laid out solid
evidence of massive electoral fraud in Florida,
perpetrated against the majority-Democratic-voting
African American community by Katherine Harris and Jeb
Bush. Without this fraud, Gore would have easily
carried the state.
Even more glaring, a consortium of news organizations
found and reported on the front page of The New York
Times (and other papers) on 12 September 2001, that in
Florida "...a statewide recount -- could have produced
enough votes to tilt the election his [Gore's] way, no
matter what standard was chosen to judge voter
intent." (The Times apparently chose to bury this fact
- that Gore actually won the 2000 election - in the
15th paragraph and behind a misleading headline
because the nation had been attacked on 9/11 the day
before.)
Not only was the election of 2000 stolen by the Bush
brothers, but it was proven by the later statewide
recount that - even after Jeb's knocking thousands of
African Americans off the rolls - Gore still would
have won Florida had all the votes been counted.
This was outrageous news, enough to bring people into
the streets. And there were demonstrations - loud and
angry ones. But they were round-the-clock in front of
Al Gore's VP residence in Washington DC (shouting with
bullhorns "Get out of Dick Cheney's house!"), outside
(and often within) vote-counting headquarters' in
Florida, and entirely composed of Republicans.
Where were the protesting Democrats? Other than those
in a few of Florida's African American communities and
the Congressional Black Caucus, they were largely
invisible. If Democrats and progressives had taken to
the streets in mass numbers nationwide that November
and December, it's entirely probable that the Supreme
Court would have backed off and allowed a statewide
recount to continue, and Al Gore would have been
president for the past four years, instead of George
W. Bush.
Ironically, the Democratic Party knows how to
highlight election fraud and start national movements
to bring down administrations that try to steal
elections. A Party-affiliated group has helped do it
four times in the past four years.
But not in Ohio, Florida, or anywhere else in the USA.
Instead, the National Democratic Institute for
International Affairs (Madeleine K. Albright,
Chairman) has joined up with a similar organization
affiliated with the Republican Party (the
International Republican Institute - John McCain,
Chairman), other NGOs, and US government agencies to
support the use of exit polls and statistical analyses
to challenge national elections in Ukraine, Serbia,
Belarus, and the former Soviet republic of Georgia.
In three of those four nations they succeeded in not
only mounting a national challenge, but in reversing
the outcomes of elections.
The election reversals were accomplished by funding
local groups - most made up of a core of activists and
college students - who worked to topple regimes that
had rigged their own re-elections.
As Ian Traynor - one of the finest investigative
reporters working in the world today - notes in a 26
November 2004 article in The Guardian titled "US
Campaign Behind the Turmoil in Kiev," "the campaign is
an American creation, a sophisticated and brilliantly
conceived exercise in western branding and mass
marketing that, in four countries in four years, has
been used to try to salvage rigged elections and
topple unsavory regimes."
The campaign to unseat corrupt regimes is funded by
groups affiliated with both the Democratic and
Republican parties, Traynor notes, as well as the US
State Department, the US Agency for International
Development, and non-governmental organizations
including George Soros's Open Society Institute and
the late Eleanor Roosevelt's organization Freedom
House (a group whose board of directors is now chaired
by the notorious former CIA director R. James
Woolsey).
Woolsey's participation aside, Traynor's report
implies that this coalition of political,
governmental, and philanthropic groups is more
interested in promoting the will of the local people
than in propping up regimes friendly to the US. One of
the four candidates they've supported in the past four
years was even openly anti-US (Kostunica in Serbia).
The common denominator among the nations targeted is
that in all four there was widespread evidence the
regimes in power were planning to steal the elections.
One of the keys to making the program work is tight
organization and planning before the election begins.
The resistance movement is carefully branded with a
single-phrase slogan such as "He's Finished" or "High
Time," and an uncomplicated logo is designed - like
the fist used in Serbia or the ticking clock used in
Ukraine - that's easily reproduced on posters and
stencil-spray-painted in public places.
On Election Day, Traynor reports, the apparatus
springs into action. Their main tool is a nationwide
set of exit polls along with election observers
supplied by credible organizations like the
Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe
(OSCE - which monitored the 2004 US elections and
raised questions about non-transparent electronic
voting machines). The exit poll results are released
to the public before the official results, putting the
regime in power in the difficult position of being
reactive rather than proactive in declaring victory.
Because in each of these nations the media - radio,
TV, and newspapers - are either controlled by,
beholden to, or owned by supporters of the regime in
power, the disparity between the exit polls and the
official election result is trumpeted through
non-traditional media like the internet, local
activist groups, and mass rallies, until a critical
mass is achieved, forcing the mainstream
(regime-friendly) media to cover the story.
At the same time, nations who claim the ideal of free,
fair, and transparent elections are encouraged to
speak out, further inflaming the issue. This is no
accident, of course - Traynor reports that the US
government itself invested over $44 million in
challenging the results of the Serbian election, and
is estimated to have put $14 million into supporting
groups challenging the recent Ukrainian election.
Thus, we have the irony of US Secretary of State Colin
Powell saying of the Ukrainian election: "We have been
following developments very closely and are deeply
disturbed by the extensive and credible reports of
fraud in the election. ... We call for a full review
of the conduct of the election and the tallying of
election results."
In many ways, such campaigns are exactly what
Republicans did in 2000, when they organized an
airlift of aides from Tom DeLay's office in Washington
DC to riot in the Florida offices where votes were
being recounted. That Ukraine-like guerilla theater
led to national media coverage and the intervention of
the US Supreme Court. The theater of protest - most
Americans thought the angry people banging on the
vote-counting windows were Floridians and didn't
realize most had been flown in from Washington DC -
became its own story and helped forge public pressure
to shut down the Gore campaign's attempt to determine
the real Florida count. It was also so effective at
grabbing the headlines that it eclipsed the Greg
Palast's scoop showing criminal and widespread
disenfranchisement of African Americans in Florida.
Here we are again, in 2004, with another dubious
election.
And, although evidence of fraud and vote rigging in
the 2004 US election is mounting today, there was no
widespread mobilization like the ones we encouraged in
other nations or saw in Florida in 2000. Thus, it's
extremely unlikely national institutions like the
mainstream media, Congress, or the Supreme Court will
seriously challenge or even expose to the general
public the many deficiencies of this election.
Because the Democratic party and progressive activists
failed to plan a PR response to election-rigging in
Florida and Ohio (among other states), such efforts
(and some damning and shocking new revelations) are
now being carried in "new media" like the internet by
folks like Bev Harris, Greg Palast, and Bob Fitrakis,
and in foreign media like New Zealand's "The Scoop",
and the BBC.
Many Democrats and progressives believe now is the
time for national advocacy groups to organize an
effort similar to the one our nation has been
promulgating in the former Soviet states and the
Republicans used in Florida in 2000. The blueprint is
laid out in Ian Traynor's article in The Guardian at
www.guardian.co.uk/ukraine/story/0,15569,1360236,00.html,
and the template is both simple, straightforward, and
already demonstrated to work.
The next national elections will be held in the United
States in 2006, and there's a lesson for us in the
1972 midterm elections.
Although Richard Nixon won a landslide re-election
that year, carrying every state except Massachusetts,
he was out of office within 18 months because the
House and Senate were in Democratic hands and Senator
Sam Irvin was able to proceed with an investigation of
Nixon's crimes while in office. Opposition control of
Congress is about the only way to hold a president
accountable: Republican control of Congress led to the
impeachments of Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton. (And
when a President appoints his own attorney as the
nation's head prosecutor - Attorney General - it
becomes virtually impossible to prosecute the
President outside of the House or Senate.)
Thus, the first key to returning America to multiparty
rule and re-opening the political process will be in
electing progressive Democrats (and Independents like
Vermont's Bernie Sanders) to the US House and Senate
in 2006.
But first we must prepare to take on a Republican
machine that has already corrupted the electoral
process in the past three elections, and knows how to
"pull a Ukraine" in any state at any time with single
a phone call to Jim Baker or Tom DeLay. In a
preemptory move, Republicans are now calling for an
end to exit polls in the USA because, as RNC Chairman
and former Enron lobbyist Ed Gillespie noted on
November 4th, "In 2000 the exit data was wrong on
Election Day, in 2002 the exit returns were wrong on
Election Day, and in 2004, the exit data were wrong on
Election Day - all three times, by the way, in a way
that skewed against Republicans and had a dispiriting
effect on Republican voters across the country."
Each of those three "skewed" elections was an
opportunity for national mobilization.
In 2000 it could have been to highlight the removal
from voting rolls in Florida of tens of thousands of
African American Democrats. The 2002 election could
have revealed the "trade secret" software running
non-paper-trail voting machines in Georgia that defied
the polls and threw out Max Cleland (helping establish
Republican control of the Senate in 2002). And the
2004 election could have again raised questions about
voting machines, Florida purge rolls moving to other
states, dirty tricks (phone calls to registered
Democrats telling them their polling places had
changed, etc.), and, as Fitrakis has documented,
disclosed patterns of precinct and machine placements
in Ohio (and other states) that caused thousands -
perhaps hundreds of thousands - of Ohio Kerry voters
to give up and leave 10+ hour lines because they had
to go to work or pick kids up from school.
Some will suggest this is a dangerous strategy because
Republicans will simply organize their own exit polls,
PR machine, and national mobilization. To them, I'd
point out that this is already happening.
Republicans are getting ready, and have known since
2000 how well this can work in America. Without a
countervailing grass-roots but national response,
we'll continue to move toward a Stalinist type of
state, with single-party rule, "purges" of the
intelligence and law enforcement communities,
increasing limits on civil liberties, and widespread
cynicism about politics leading to increasing
nonparticipation in the process. .
As generations of activists have taught us, we can't
wait around for politicians to fix a corrupted
political system. It's going to take - as the
Ukrainians are now showing us - involved and active
citizens to make this happen, and that requires an
organizational framework to cut through the political
and media fog.
And now is the time to begin.
Thom Hartmann (thom at thomhartmann.com) is a Project
Censored Award-winning best-selling author and host of
a nationally syndicated daily progressive talk show.
www.thomhartmann.com His most recent books are "The
Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight," "Unequal Protection:
The Rise of Corporate Dominance and the Theft of Human
Rights," "We The People: A Call To Take Back America,"
and "What Would Jefferson Do?: A Return To Democracy
http://mathewgross.com/blog/archives/001041.html
The Politics of Victimization
[Mel Gilles, who has worked for many years as an
advocate for victims of domestic abuse, draws some
parallels between her work and the reaction of many
Democrats to the election.-- Mathew Gross]
Watch Dan Rather apologize for not getting his facts
straight, humiliated before the eyes of America,
voluntarily undermining his credibility and career of
over thirty years. Observe Donna Brazille squirm as
she is ridiculed by Bay Buchanan, and pronounced
irrelevant and nearly non-existent. Listen as Donna
and Nancy Pelosi and Senator Charles Schumer take to
the airwaves saying that they have to go back to the
drawing board and learn from their mistakes and try to
be better, more likable, more appealing, have a
stronger message, speak to morality. Watch them
awkwardly quote the bible, trying to speak the new
language of America. Surf the blogs, and read the
comments of dismayed, discombobulated, confused
individuals trying to figure out what they did wrong.
Hear the cacophony of voices, crying out, “Why did
they beat me?”
And then ask anyone who has ever worked in a domestic
violence shelter if they have heard this before.
They will tell you, every single day.
The answer is quite simple. They beat us because they
are abusers. We can call it hate. We can call it fear.
We can say it is unfair. But we are looped into the
cycle of violence, and we need to start calling the
dominating side what they are: abusive. And we need to
recognize that we are the victims of verbal, mental,
and even, in the case of Iraq, physical violence.
As victims we can’t stop asking ourselves what we did
wrong. We can’t seem to grasp that they will keep
hitting us and beating us as long as we keep sticking
around and asking ourselves what we are doing to
deserve the beating.
Listen to George Bush say that the will of God excuses
his behavior. Listen, as he refuses to take
responsibility, or express remorse, or even once,
admit a mistake. Watch him strut, and tell us that he
will only work with those who agree with him, and that
each of us is only allowed one question (soon, it will
be none at all; abusers hit hard when questioned; the
press corps can tell you that). See him surround
himself with only those who pledge oaths of
allegiance. Hear him tell us that if we will only
listen and do as he says and agree with his every
utterance, all will go well for us (it won’t; we will
never be worthy).
And watch the Democratic Party leadership walk on
eggshells, try to meet him, please him, wash the
windows better, get out that spot, distance themselves
from gays and civil rights. See them cry for the
attention and affection and approval of the President
and his followers. Watch us squirm. Watch us descend
into a world of crazy-making, where logic does not
work and the other side tells us we are nuts when we
rely on facts. A world where, worst of all, we begin
to believe we are crazy.
How to break free? Again, the answer is quite simple.
First, you must admit you are a victim. Then, you must
declare the state of affairs unacceptable. Next, you
must promise to protect yourself and everyone around
you that is being victimized. You don’t do this by
responding to their demands, or becoming more like
them, or engaging in logical conversation, or trying
to persuade them that you are right. You also don’t do
this by going catatonic and resigned, by closing up
your ears and eyes and covering your head and
submitting to the blows, figuring its over faster and
hurts less is you don’t resist and fight back.
Instead, you walk away. You find other folks like
yourself, 56 million of them, who are hurting, broken,
and beating themselves up. You tell them what you’ve
learned, and that you aren’t going to take it anymore.
You stand tall, with 56 million people at your side
and behind you, and you look right into the eyes of
the abuser and you tell him to go to hell. Then you
walk out the door, taking the kids and gays and
minorities with you, and you start a new life. The new
life is hard. But it’s better than the abuse.
We have a mandate to be as radical and liberal and
steadfast as we need to be. The progressive beliefs
and social justice we stand for, our core, must not be
altered. We are 56 million strong. We are building
from the bottom up. We are meeting, on the net, in
church basements, at work, in small groups, and right
now, we are crying, because we are trying to break
free and we don’t know how.
Any battered woman in America, any oppressed person
around the globe who has defied her oppressor will
tell you this: There is nothing wrong with you. You
are in good company. You are safe. You are not alone.
You are strong. You must change only one thing: stop
responding to the abuser. Don’t let him dictate the
terms or frame the debate (he’ll win, not because he’s
right, but because force works). Sure, we can build a
better grassroots campaign, cultivate and raise up
better leaders, reform the election system to make it
failproof, stick to our message, learn from the
strategy of the other side. But we absolutely must
dispense with the notion that we are weak, godless,
cowardly, disorganized, crazy, too liberal, naive,
amoral, “loose”, irrelevant, outmoded, stupid and soon
to be extinct. We have the mandate of the world to
back us, and the legacy of oppressed people throughout
history.
Even if you do everything right, they’ll hit you
anyway. Look at the poor souls who voted for this
nonsense. They are working for six dollars an hour if
they are working at all, their children are dying
overseas and suffering from lack of health care and a
depleted environment and a shoddy education. And they
don’t even know they are being hit.
Mel Gilles at 07:31 PM on November 07, 2004
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/120104X.shtml
Rumsfeld Sued for Alleged War Crimes
Deutsche Welle
Tuesday 30 November 2004
Alleging responsibility for war crimes and torture
at Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison, a human rights group
has filed a criminal complaint in Germany against US
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other top US
officials.
The New York-based Center for Constitutional
Rights (CCR) and Berlin's Republican Lawyers'
Association said they and five Iraqi citizens
mistreated by US soldiers were seeking a probe by
German federal prosecutors of leading US policymakers.
They said they had chosen Germany because of its
Code of Crimes Against International Law, introduced
in 2002, which grants German courts universal
jurisdiction in cases involving war crimes or crimes
against humanity.
It also makes military or civilian commanders who
fail to prevent their subordinates from committing
such acts liable.
"No Other Place to Go"
"We filed these cases here because there is simply
no other place to go," CCR vice president Peter Weiss
said in a statement, adding that the US Congress had
"failed" to seriously investigate the abuses. "It is
clear that the US government is not willing to open an
investigation into these allegations against these
officials."
The Center for Constitutional Rights noted that
while several US soldiers were facing court martial
for the abuse and sexual humiliation of prisoners at
the US-run Abu Ghraib detention center in Iraq, their
superiors looked set to escape discipline.
The complaint names Rumsfeld, former CIA director
George Tenet, Under Secretary of Defense for
Intelligence Steven Cambone, Lieutenant General
Ricardo Sanchez, Brigadier General Janis L. Karpinski
and other military officers who served in Iraq.
Five Victims Part of the Case
"From Donald Rumsfeld on down, the political and
military leaders in charge of Iraq policy must be
investigated and held accountable," CCR president
Michael Ratner said in a statement issued in
Frankfurt, Germany.
The CCR said that the five Iraqis it was
representing had been victims of mistreatment
including electric shock, severe beatings, sleep and
food deprivation and sexual abuse.
It noted that Sanchez and other officers involved
in the case were based in Germany. Germany's federal
prosecutor now has to decide whether the case warrants
further investigation.
Explaining the Code of Crimes against
International Law
Deutsche Welle
Tuesday 30 November 2004
Germany's Code of Crimes Against International Law
is a unique piece of legislation that allows Germany
to prosecute crimes against international law anywhere
in the world.
The law has been in effect since July 2002 and was
implemented in response to the formation of the
International Criminal Court, which became operative
at the same time.
The law is meant to enable Germany to prosecute
all crimes against humanity.
"Regardless of the law of the place of commission,
the German criminal law is also applicable to … acts
committed outside of Germany," the law reads.
While the law could be interpreted as an
obligation to act in cases of crimes against
international law, a clause leaves it up to
prosecutors to decide whether alleged crimes should be
brought before a German court.
Prosecution can be dropped in cases where neither
the victim nor the perpetrator of a crime are German
citizens. If the accused is not in Germany nor can be
expected to come to Germany, prosecution can also be
dropped.
Germany's Justice Minister Brigitte Zypries
justified these limitations by saying that Germany
should not act as a "global policeman" by prosecuting
all crimes against international law regardless of
where they have been committed.
-------
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/112804K.shtml
Economic 'Armageddon' Predicted
By Brett Arends
The Boston Herald
Tuesday 23 November 2004
Stephen Roach, the chief economist at investment
banking giant Morgan Stanley, has a public reputation
for being bearish.
But you should hear what he's saying in private.
Roach met select groups of fund managers downtown
last week, including a group at Fidelity.
His prediction: America has no better than a 10
percent chance of avoiding economic "Armageddon."
Press were not allowed into the meetings. But the
Herald has obtained a copy of Roach's presentation. A
stunned source who was at one meeting said, "it struck
me how extreme he was - much more, it seemed to me,
than in public."
Roach sees a 30 percent chance of a slump soon and
a 60 percent chance that "we'll muddle through for a
while and delay the eventual Armageddon."
The chance we'll get through OK: one in 10. Maybe.
In a nutshell, Roach's argument is that America's
record trade deficit means the dollar will keep
falling. To keep foreigners buying T-bills and prevent
a resulting rise in inflation, Federal Reserve
Chairman Alan Greenspan will be forced to raise
interest rates further and faster than he wants.
The result: U.S. consumers, who are in debt up to
their eyeballs, will get pounded.
Less a case of "Armageddon," maybe, than of a
"Perfect Storm."
Roach marshalled alarming facts to support his
argument.
To finance its current account deficit with the
rest of the world, he said, America has to import $2.6
billion in cash. Every working day.
That is an amazing 80 percent of the entire
world's net savings.
Sustainable? Hardly.
Meanwhile, he notes that household debt is at
record levels.
Twenty years ago the total debt of U.S. households
was equal to half the size of the economy.
Today the figure is 85 percent.
Nearly half of new mortgage borrowing is at
flexible interest rates, leaving borrowers much more
vulnerable to rate hikes.
Americans are already spending a record share of
disposable income paying their interest bills. And
interest rates haven't even risen much yet.
You don't have to ask a Wall Street economist to
know this, of course. Watch people wielding their
credit cards this Christmas.
Roach's analysis isn't entirely new. But recent
events give it extra force.
The dollar is hitting fresh lows against
currencies from the yen to the euro.
Its parachute failed to open over the weekend,
when a meeting of the world's top finance ministers
produced no promise of concerted intervention.
It has farther to fall, especially against Asian
currencies, analysts agree.
The Fed chairman was drawn to warn on the dollar,
and interest rates, on Friday.
Roach could not be reached for comment yesterday.
A source who heard the presentation concluded that a
"spectacular wave of bankruptcies" is possible.
Smart people downtown agree with much of the
analysis. It is undeniable that America is living in a
"debt bubble" of record proportions.
But they argue there may be an alternative
scenario to Roach's. Greenspan might instead
deliberately allow the dollar to slump and inflation
to rise, whittling away at the value of today's
consumer debts in real terms.
Inflation of 7 percent a year halves "real" values
in a decade.
It may be the only way out of the trap.
Higher interest rates, or higher inflation: Either
way, the biggest losers will be long-term lenders at
fixed interest rates.
You wouldn't want to hold 30-year Treasuries,
which today yield just 4.83 percent.
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/112904H.shtml
Dollar Plunge, Specter of the Crash
By Philippe Martin
Libération
Monday 22 November 2004
The dollar is falling again and will continue to
fall. The direction is not really in question, but the
manner, brutal or orderly, with or without a financial
crisis, has not yet been determined. Let's first
review a few figures to get a good sense of the scale
of the American problem. The current account deficit
(the difference between what Americans import and what
they export to the rest of the world) at a new
historic record will represent about 5.4% of American
income in 2004. Every year, the deficit must be
financed by growth in net debt to the rest of the
world. This now stands at around 2.6 trillion dollars,
23% of the United States' income. In comparison,
France's net external position is a positive 7% of its
income.
A current account deficit is not always a bad
thing. It is also not always associated with currency
devaluation. The nature of America's current account
balance, however, changed profoundly with Bush's
arrival in power in 2000. From the mid 1990s until
2000, the American deficit reflected a strong level of
investment, particularly in the new economy, and a too
weak level of American household savings. The
productive American investment financed by the influx
of foreign capital carried within itself the promise
of reimbursement for the debts contracted. The deficit
was not a synonym for the decline in the dollar
because the world was buying dollars in order to
invest in the United States. Starting in 2001,
investment collapsed, but the external deficit has
remained since there have been progressively worse
public deficits that have had to be financed since
then. The Bush era has generated the reappearance of
the "twin deficits": the world no longer finances
productive investment, but the American budget deficit
attributable to the largesse offered to the richest
taxpayers and to the increase in public expenditures
linked to the war against terrorism and Iraq. So while
the influx of private capital flows dries up,
financing the deficit today depends dangerously on
Asian, particularly the Japanese and Chinese, central
banks' purchases of American Treasury bills. These
banks have accumulated close to 2.0 trillion dollars
worth of American financial assets. That's the main
reason why the dollar has not yet fallen sharply. For
the moment, the Chinese government considers a loss of
value in its dollar-denominated assets, in the case
where the dollar would collapse in the future, to be
less dangerous than a dollar fall today, which would
slow down Chinese exports and endanger the objective
of quasi-full employment and ultimately, the country's
social stability. For the moment.
We can imagine the rosy scenario that would repeat
the soft landing that followed the 1985 Plazza
agreement between the United States, Europe, and
Japan. Then, the dollar fell 40% in two years without
causing a panic, a financial crisis, or a rise in
protectionism. France's growth was not penalized
either.
However the transatlantic ambiance is no longer
really on track for multilateral agreements and the
markets know it. It's enough to state what such an
agreement would have to contain today to understand
how difficult it would be to conclude. First of all,
on the European side, a commitment to further reforms
to re-launch economic growth and to increase
productivity gains in the intangible goods sector and,
consequently, to increase our imports. Recent
experience in these areas is rather disappointing. A
little less European cacophony over the dollar would
be welcome. Then, an agreement by the Chinese and the
Japanese to accept the revaluation of their
currencies, an idea they have rejected up till now.
Finally, and above all, a commitment from America to
reduce its budget deficit, which can only happen
through an increase in taxes. That is very unlikely,
given the second Bush administration's ideological
rigidity on the subject.
As with global warming, the Bush administration
minimizes the risks so as not to have to take any
action that might be politically costly. The chain
reactions generated by a brutal freefall of the
dollar, precipitated by the markets, might not, all
the same, be very pretty. By pushing operators to sell
American assets to avoid losses, such a dollar drop
could precipitate a Stock Exchange fall, a brutal
increase in interest rates, not to mention the failure
of a certain number of financial institutions that had
invested heavily in dollars. In cartoons, the hero
continues along his trajectory above the abyss before
suddenly falling straight down into it. In the same
way, overvalued currencies have the tendency to stay
that way until the day the markets consider that they
are no longer sufficiently compensated for the risk of
a crash. The probability of such a catastrophe
scenario is perhaps low, perhaps as low as for a
brutal global heating, but it is not zero. The absence
of international cooperation sends the markets a
dangerous signal that for the moment, we are working
without a [safety] net.
________________________________________
Philippe Martin is a professor at Paris-I and a
researcher at the Centre d'enseignement et de
recherches et d'analyses socio-économiques
(Ceras-CNRS) [Center for Socio-economic Teaching,
Research, and Analysis].
________________________________________
Translation: t r u t h o u t French language
correspondent Leslie Thatcher.
-------
http://www.newsobserver.com/opinion/story/1867424p-8200319c.html
North Carolina's ballot blues
By JOYCE MCCLOY
WINSTON-SALEM -- We've got a problem:
"NC has the worst election problem in the country
right now." -- Computer scientist Dr. David L. Dill of
Stanford University
"A Florida-style nightmare has unfolded in North
Carolina in the days since Election Day, with
thousands of votes missing and the outcome of two
statewide races still up in the air." -- AP Newswire,
Nov 13
Our key decision-makers are ignoring the seriousness
of the problem:
"Except for the lost votes in Carteret County, Gary
Bartlett, executive director of the North Carolina
State Board of Elections, called the problems 'easily
remedied and lessons learned.'" AP Newswire, Nov 13
• • •
North Carolina's election problems will not be that
easily remedied. This year's disaster shows that many
election workers are in over their heads.
Problems with voting machines, central tabulators
using outdated and secret software, registration
confusion, poll worker training, provisional ballots
and absentee ballots are not easily remedied.
Add to all this the lack of a voter-verified paper
ballot and you have no disaster recovery plan.
This is the case with more than 40 counties using
touchscreen or "dial a vote" machines. The security of
their votes depends on the software, source code and
hardware of the voting machines. Election workers'
ability, or lack thereof, to operate and troubleshoot
the machines can affect the security of the votes as
well.
Lost: 4,500 votes in Carteret County -- paper ballots
verified by voters and retained by the election
officials would have saved these votes.
Omitted: an entire precinct of 1,209 votes in Gaston
County.
Missing: 12,000 more votes in Gaston County not
reported. The election director hired a voting machine
technician to upload the county vote totals and did
not oversee the process.
Bamboozled: Guilford County bought vote-tabulating
software that used outdated technology and with
insufficient vote storage. As a result, Guilford
County's public vote totals for president were off by
22,000 votes.
More votes than cast: Craven County reported 11,283
more votes for president than cast, voting with the
same software as in Guilford County.
The State Board of Elections has relied on the advice
of voting machine salesmen and turned a deaf ear to
the good advice and warnings of computer scientists.
Voting machine salesmen gain access to some election
officials via a private organization called the
Election Center. This organization's mission is to
educate and inform election officials, yet it admits
to accepting money from voting-machine companies. The
Election Center hosts conferences for election
officials at which salesmen provide parties, prizes
and even a dinner cruise on the Potomac. North
Carolina's director of elections, Gary Bartlett, sits
on the board of directors of the center.
• • •
Continued computer breakdowns and miscounts prove the
need for a voter-verified paper ballot. This is not a
receipt but a paper printout of the ballot, to be
verified by the voter and kept by the election
officials in case of recount, audit or computer
breakdown.
The State Board of Elections can do the right thing by
consulting computer scientists to recommend real
requirements for our voting systems. It should also
allow sufficient time for a thorough review by outside
experts, to ensure that North Carolina's voting system
is the most secure and trustworthy in America.
Joyce McCloy is coordinator of the N.C. Coalition for
Verified Voting (ncvoter.net).
http://www.votersunite.org/article.asp?id=3861
Gaston investigates election tally errors
Maker of vote-counting machinery asked to check
equipment
BINYAMIN APPELBAUM Charlotte Observer 16 November
2004
GASTONIA - Gaston Elections Director Sandra Page said
for the first time Monday that her office is
investigating why more than 13,000 votes were excluded
from the county's unofficial election results.
Page said the investigation so far pointed to an
interrupted download as the likely cause of the
exclusion of about 12,000 early votes. She said human
error by poll workers probably resulted in the
omission of 1,200 votes from a Dallas precinct.
The Gaston elections office has faced mounting
criticism for its initial failure to count the votes
and because almost a week passed after the Nov. 2
election before the errors were corrected. The errors
were caught before the county submitted its official
results to the state, and they did not change the
outcome of any local race.
Monday was Page's first day at work since last Tuesday
she has been home sick and she said she moved quickly
to find out what went wrong.
Page said she has asked the company that manufactured
Gaston's vote-counting machines, Diebold Election
Systems of McKinney, Texas, to review the operation of
its equipment. A spokesman for Diebold confirmed that
the company is doing so.
The county pays a technician from Diebold to operate
its systems on Election Day. That person was in charge
of transferring early votes from electronic storage to
the counting computer. Diebold believes the
transmission was interrupted, said spokesman David
Bear.
"It's understood that it was an interruption, and now
the question is why didn't we" catch it, Bear said.
Page said she was also planning to speak with poll
workers at the Dallas precinct about the possibility
that they transmitted their votes incorrectly to the
elections office on Election Day.
The laptop computer used to transmit results from the
Dallas Civic Center recorded only a single vote from
each of the precinct's voting machines, Page said.
The votes are transferred from the machines to the
laptop by disk. Page believes the error occurred
because poll workers removed the disks from the laptop
too quickly.
"These aren't computer people," she said.
http://okimc.org/newswire.php?story_id=344
Voting Machines Count Backwards in Okla.
by Bob Nichols Saturday, Nov 27 2004, 3:13am
bobnichols@cox.net
national / elections & legislation / news report
57 Rural Counties Affected - Vote Fraud Suspected
Rural Oklahoma Voting machines know how to count
backwards.
(Oklahoma City) November 18, 2004 - Rural Oklahoma
Voting machines know how to count backwards.
That looks like what the secretly programmed machines
did for Sen. Kerry in President Bush's easily won
Presidential Election victory in Oklahoma.
All 77 counties use the Optech Eagle voting machines
and Tabulator's made by ES&S, Sen Hagel's republican
company.
The respectable, conservative "Tulsa World" newspaper
reported Nov 3rd that Kerry was winning in 57 of the
states's rural counties., with 70% of the vote
counted. Turns out that the famous November 3rd report
was probably not supposed to be printed.
It represented the counting when the tabulating was
about 70% "complete," as they used to say in the old
Soviet Unon.
The "official" State of Oklahoma Election Board vote
totals released later show Kerry not winning; but,
losing in all the state's 77 counties, including the
57 rural counties. Yea, somebody really messed up, big
time, and published a partially completed and, I guess
you would haver to call it, "fixed" vote.
A simple comparison of total votes for Kerry between
the staid establishment mouthpiece, the "Tulsa World"
newspaper and the so-called "official" final vote
totals at the State Election Board show fewer votes
for Kerry in 57 counties than the "Tulsa World" does.
Fifty-seven of the 57 counties clearly demonstrate
that Sen Kerry lost 37,982 votes to the ES&S Optech
Machines. During the same time period President Bush
gained a whooping 393,825 votes.
Nice, slick, easy way to win an election. As a man
once said "He stole it fair and square!"
In other words, Kerry lost votes already cast by
voters. The voting machines counted backwards. What
could be simpler than that?
Who programs these things, eh? Why, ES&S Corp., of
course.
It turns out the every vote in the state, all 1.4
Million of them cast, were counted on the same type of
flawed machine, programmed originally by the Hagel's
ES&S company.
Whether they knew the difference or not is not known;
but, spokesmen for the State Election Board would only
say the Machines and Tabulators were fron Optech. They
breathed not a word anout ES&S.
Who really won? Well, nobody really knows! Most people
in Oklahoma still think President Bush won his
Presidential election. Wrong! Time for a re-count,
this time by hand!
Not that Oklahoma's very few Electoral Votes make much
difference in the grand scheme of things. Except, of
course, fraud is suspected in Ohio, too. A recount is
already guaranteed in Ohio. What will Oklahoma
officials do?
"Film at 11." Fat chance!
People in the Great Flyover State of Oklahoma all know
that the Professional Hairdo Anchors in the Oklahoma
TV stations and the Radio Celebrities will not touch
this with a 30 Foot Pole since their right wing owners
keep them on a real short leash.
But, the money is good and the living is easy in
Oklahoma, where "The Oklahoma Observer" says 20% of
the people can't even read. This makes TV and radio
even more important.
If these small state celebrities are reading this, and
you know they are, then these parasites know the
truth. I dare you, Kelley! Go for it! Get a life,
dude! (Kelly Ogle is a local TV personality in
Oklahoma City who specializes in "happy talk"
transitions.)
Watch for more election 2004 reports here as I get to
them. Please circulate and distribute IMC this report
widely. You know that none of us can depend on the
so-called dominant press to do so in the great state
of Oklahoma or the USA anymore.
Meantime, I reminded of the Salsa ad for some company.
When informed that somebody had bought Salsa from a
company in New York City, an ole boy hollers off
screen "Get a rope!"
By the way, what are YOU going to do about this
situation?
Copyright 2004, Bob Nichols. All rights reserved.
Permission for reposting is allowed provided the
complete text and attribution are kept intact. Bob
Nichols is a Project Censored Award winner. He lives
and works as a writer, political commentator and
community organizer in Oklahoma City. Nichols
encourages your comments at bobnichols@cox.net
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1101556813069&call_pageid=968332188492&col=968705899037&DPL=IvsNDS%2f7ChAX&tacodalogin=yes
Pakistani soldiers abandon search for bin Laden
Pakistan will withdraw soldiers from tribal region
considered hiding place for Al Qaeda leadership
ASSOCIATED PRESS
PESHAWAR, Pakistan - The Pakistan army said today it
will withdraw hundreds of troops from a tense tribal
region near Afghanistan where Osama bin Laden and his
top deputy were believed to be hiding.
The withdrawals from the South Waziristan area come
after several military operations by thousands of
troops against remnants of bin Laden's Al Qaeda
organization and its supporters in recent months.
Although the tribal region is considered a possible
hiding place for bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman
al-Zawahri, a senior Pakistan general said earlier
this month that no sign of bin Laden has been found.
Bin Laden, architect of the Sept. 11 attacks against
the United States, has been on the run since U.S.
forces invaded Afghanistan in October 2001, routing
the Taliban rulers, who harbored Al Qaeda militants.
The army will remove checkpoints in Wana, the main
town in South Waziristan, Lt. Gen. Safdar Hussain, the
top general in northwestern Pakistan, said after
meeting with tribal elders Friday.
He said the moves are "in return for the support of
tribesmen in operations against foreign miscreants."
Some troops will remain in the area, he said.
"We have been assured by tribal elders that they will
not allow miscreants to hide in areas under their
control," Hussain said.
Between 7,000 and 8,000 Pakistani forces were deployed
in a three-pronged offensive in the eastern reaches of
the rugged region this month. U.S. military forces
remain largely on the Afghanistan side in hopes of
capturing or killing any Al Qaeda operatives crossing
the border.
Earlier this month, U.S. Army Lt. Gen. Lance Smith,
deputy commander of Central Command, said it was
"essential that Pakistan military continue their
operations" in the area, adding that Pakistan has made
"very, very positive moves" against Al Qaeda and its
supporters in the past six months.
Smith said Pakistan's military was so effective in
pressuring Al Qaeda leaders hiding in the tribal
region of western Pakistan that bin Laden and his top
deputies no longer were able to direct terrorist
operations.
At a news conference Friday, Hussain presented three
captured Central Asians, including two teenage boys,
alleged to be Islamic militants. He said the militants
were using the youths to target military forces.
Pakistani officials have said hundreds of Arab and
Central Asian militants suspected of links with Al
Qaeda were hiding in South Waziristan, supported by
sympathetic tribesmen.
Earlier, provincial Gov. Syed Iftikhar Hussain Shah
said all "innocent people" rounded up from the tribal
regions during the recent military operations will be
released.
He asked tribesmen to give all possible help to the
government in seizing foreign militants and tried to
ease concerns that the government had been targeting
any tribe.
"The misunderstanding between you and the government
appeared when you gave refuge to some foreign
elements, who were neither your friends nor
well-wishers nor of the government," he said.
http://www.nyobserver.com/pages/frontpage4.asp#
http://www.buzzle.com/editorials/text11-25-2004-62147.asp
Two More Top Spies Quit Troubled CIA
Shake-up by new director blamed for resignations. Two
more of America's top spies were reported yesterday to
be leaving the CIA, as an attempt to fix the troubled
agency appeared increasingly to be dividing its ranks
and driving out its most experienced officials.
Two more of America's top spies were reported
yesterday to be leaving the CIA, as an attempt to fix
the troubled agency appeared increasingly to be
dividing its ranks and driving out its most
experienced officials.
The latest departures were undercover operatives, and
so were not named in yesterday's press reports, which
described them as "barons" in the top level of the
CIA's clandestine service - officially called the
directorate of operations - in charge of its European
and Far East divisions.
The New York Times quoted a former intelligence
official as saying the two were "very senior guys" who
were leaving because they were "uncomfortable" with
the management team brought in by the new CIA
director, Porter Goss.
There have been other high level resignations since Mr
Goss was appointed by President Bush in September. The
head of the directorate of operations Stephen Kappes
and his deputy Michael Sulick both resigned last week,
after the departure of the CIA deputy director, John
McLaughlin.
As a Republican congressman Mr Goss was a ferocious
critic of the agency, particularly for its failure to
spot the 19 al-Qaida hijackers who made their way into
the US in 2001 before the September 11 attacks, and
for its inability to track down Osama bin Laden.
The House of Representatives intelligence committee
that Mr Goss chaired issued a report this year saying
the CIA risked becoming a "stilted bureaucracy
incapable of even the slightest bit of success".
However, most of the senior officials who have left to
date were not implicated in the CIA's recent failures.
Mr Kappes and Mr Sulick had only recently taken up
their jobs and were widely regarded inside and outside
the agency as the best leadership team the clandestine
service had had in years.
It appears that it was not Mr Goss's intention to
force Mr Kappes out, and that he tried to persuade him
to stay, but the clumsy behaviour of the new
management team appears to have alienated the
clandestine service chief.
That team is made up of four of Mr Goss's former
congressional staffers. Three of them were once CIA
employees whose careers were cut short; many of the
CIA's current staff claim they failed to make the
grade as spies. In the words of one official who
resigned in the past month, "they're now back to take
their revenge".
The fourth and most senior member of the team is a
former Washington lawyer, Patrick Murray, Mr Goss's
chief of staff.
As a top Republican aide on the House intelligence
committee, he had a tough reputation. According to a
former CIA official quoted in Newsweek magazine, he
tried to lean on the agency to declassify information
that he could use to "embarrass the Democrats".
Much of Mr Goss's career has been accidental. He is
the scion of a wealthy Connecticut family and joined
the CIA after Yale in 1960, when he fell into a
cross-purposes conversation with a recruiter at a jobs
fair.
He thought the man was a representative from his
father's metal company, telling him he had just
stopped by to say hello to his dad's friends. The
recruiter assumed he was the son of a senior agency