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End Game Democracy: America Sells its Soul & Loses the World

Bravo Zulu Bywyd 11-11-2004

An open letter to the world community:

" I say we had better look our nation searchingly in the face, like a
physician diagnosing some deep disease."
--Walt Whitman, "Democratic Vistas"

Now we have come the End of the colonial experiment known as the "United
States of America." It has ended as the founders had warned it would likely end,
with concentration of wealth, corruption, and despotism despoiling its
democratic foundations. Unfortunately, it has also ended with madmen and criminals
holding an arsenal of planet-scorching weapons, a black-hole of an economy sucking
down the world, and a murderous culture bent on revenge.

As a child of this colonial republic, a veteran of its military, a keeper of
the flame of rebellion, I now see no hope of recovery for a dead horse
poisonously floating down stream. America has been infected, subverted, polluted,
corrupted, plundered, stolen by corporate raiders and warmongers. Its elections have
been hacked, hijacked and sidetracked with partisan smears and lies, failed
technology, and corrupted media. It has become mired in manipulations of terror,
invasions and occupations of distant lands, and endless bloody warfare. It has
been seized by the most hated men in history, with designs on running it into
the ground while swindling the last of its treasure.

Therefore, I encourage the people of the world to resist this deadly
corrupted regime at every turn. Challenge its false preachments of democracy. Boycott
its bloody dollars. Invade it with music, media and magic. Shame us the way we
deserve to be shamed. Do not allow your executives to support this war machine
and its campaigns of extermination. Testify to the true Christian values opposed
to murder, torture, theft and arrogance, which is what keeps the Bush regime
afloat.

To my fellow Americans, I ask you to hold on to your principles, your power,
your ideals. Do not sell your soul to the devils of terror and murder,
regardless of how patriotically it is packaged. Do not see me as your enemy, but as your
most idealistic countryman. I am not an alien occupying your outlands, I am not
stealing your children's inheritance, I am not setting the world on fire in
your name. I am telling you that this experiment called "America" can only exist
with truth, justice, and inalienable power vested in the People. When elections
fail utterly, impeachment must be carried out. It is our civic duty, and the
last hope for survival.

Democracy wasn't meant to be sold to the highest bidder, wrenched away by the
most ruthless backstabbers and liars, or given to wealthy media moguls as a
plaything. Democracy isn't meant to be "tyranny of the majority," as it has become
in a hatefully divided America today. Democracy should reflect the
representative values of the society in which it exists, not be imposed as vengeful
"victory" of a vocal and reactive minority. America's democracy has been broken,
becoming a hulking monstrosity threatening the entire world.

The Bush regime's (alleged) "victory" is not America's victory. The only
thing America won is greater scorn and shame, corruption and death, all laced with
terror. What we have lost is our legitimacy, our respect, our ideals, our peace
of mind, our hopes and our treasures. All given to an arrogant, sawed-off son
of a spymaster with a fake cowboy accent and his calculating cronies. Oh yes,
and the Bin Ladens.

One last torch to pass in the dark: Anyone well-versed in psychological
warfare should clearly have keyed in that Bush and Bin Laden are coordinating their
assault on the world. Do you think a strategist such as Osama Bin Laden would
suddenly appear at a critical "surprise" turning point and tell Americans not to
vote for Bush, if he didn't want them to do just that? Think about it, America,
that well-timed video was as golden to Bush's future as all the treasure
squandered on smear campaigns, and as crucial to his gaining power as the 9-11
attacks.

They've been mining the nationalist playbook "My Struggle," written by
another sawed-off, power-mad little man a generation ago. And remember it's always
the "good" religious people that carry out these campaigns of terror,
extermination, and vengeance, allegedly with the blessings of their "God." Beheadings for
God, death camps for God, satellite-directed nuclear bombs for God, what's the
difference in the End?

Listen to the Planet crying. Your children deserve a true Revolution today--
don't delay!

"Your enemy is not surrounding your country. Your enemy is ruling your
country."
-- George W. Bush

May the Forest be with You...

Bravo Zulu Bywyd

Burning Bush Bulletin Board
http://burnbush.blogspot.com
11-11-2004

George W. Bush Must Answer to the People:
Send Your Vote to Impeach to your Representative!
http://impeachbush.org/

High Crimes & Misdemeanors in the White House
How much do you know about impeachment? Take our quiz and find out!
http://www.historychannel.com/exhibits/impeach/whthous3.html

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A four-year nightmare: It is not anti-American to reject this imperial power

Mike Marqusee

The Guardian

"I will sleep and dream of great danger" ran the opening line of an email from
a friend in Brooklyn. It was 4am eastern standard time and the last hope of a
Kerry victory - or, more precisely, a Bush defeat - had dissolved into the
night. "I believe the field day Bush will have for the next four years will create a
nightmare worse than anything this country has seen."

Make no mistake, the fear and despair evoked across the globe by the US
election result are shared by many millions of US citizens. Indeed, their grief, their
frustration, has a peculiar intensity - because there's no loathing like the
loathing within families. The 55 million Kerry voters who went to the polls
primarily motivated by a burning desire to dump Bush are no more reconciled to his
rule this morning than they were a few days ago.

Bush will claim a mandate, but there's no reason we should accept the claim.
The result confirms that this is a wartime leader who does not speak for, or
enjoy, the confidence of half the population.

There will be those in Europe who will seize on this result to urge us to
reconcile ourselves to the superpower and its peculiar ways. And it will be claimed
that a refusal to do so is tantamount to "anti-Americanism". This charge has
been fouling the atmosphere since 9/11. It is alleged that the left or Europe is
blindly hostile to America and Americans. As a US passport-holder long resident
in London, I know that this charge is baloney.

Anti-Americanism has become a catch-all charge levied against anyone who
engages in a radical critique of America's global power, its sway over the lives of
billions who had no vote in Tuesday's election. People rebel against US hegemony
for the same reasons they rebelled against the dominance of earlier imperial
powers, not out of a distaste for the culture of the rulers but out of an
objection to undemocratic, unaccountable, self-serving rule by remote elites of
whatever culture.

A disbelief in the prerogatives or the beneficence of the American empire is
not anti-American. Nor is it anti-American to be alarmed by features of US
political culture, an alarm shared by many millions of Americans.

Bush supporters should be wary of crowing too soon. This election result will
do nothing to placate those Americans who cry out for health care, a living
wage, and decent public services. It will not reverse the leftwing tide in Latin
America. And it will do nothing to curb resistance in Iraq. As casualties mount,
there is bound to be increasingly militant opposition to White House war
policies among a widening spectrum of US citizens, including serving GIs.

My friend in Brooklyn fears for his children's future. He sees them growing up
in a benighted, detested land, their liberties, living standards and security
menaced by the triumphant neocons. He's right to dream of danger. But the
millions of US voters who queued for hours to register their protest against Bush
should reflect in their hour of despair that they are by no means alone - not
within their own country and not within the human community at large.

� Mike Marqusee writes on politics and popular culture

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America Uber Alles: Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid Nov. 4, 2004

Once more, BS and paranoia talk. The Shrub is back in and the terror may begin
anew. He now can continue the rape of the environment, the destruction of
rights, the stomping of the poor, the butt-kissing of the rich and the guarantee
that we will find ourselves in a Nazi like regime fueled by redneck (I am using
that term to cover ones like George W. Bush, not the good, hardworking
Southerners that have open eyes and minds. I'm a Texan myself after all) bigotry and
ignorance.

Bush is already working his stupidity and will do everything in his power to
render this country the land of the rich, white, Christian heterosexuals and the
graveyard of rights and all that do not fit his image of the lily-white, bible
thumping, baby making, wealthy straight Americans.

In four years he can do so much damage, so much fear and paranoia can be
generated, so many rights removed for all but his butt-kissing cronies. Be afraid
all, be very afraid.

Elizabeth Clark, Texas USA

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The word that defines Bush's reelection is fear. He ran a campaign of fear,
Chaney being quoted on the campaign trail, "Because if we make the wrong choice,
then the danger is that we'll get hit again."

His previous term was marked by periodically jolting the public into a panic
with his terror alert scale.

And the word I have heard most this morning, the morning of the reelection, is
fear. Fear not of terrorists, but of what George Bush will bring to America in
the next four years. Fear of the Patriot Act listening in on our phone calls,
reading our mail and searching our homes. Fear of persecution amongst LGBTs.
Fear of a draft, environmental devastation, and of the loss of choice. Fear of
what the President will not be afraid to do now that he is in his final term.

This is a dark day for America. Bush won by the popular vote, because he scared
a slight majority into voting for him. How else could a man who failed on
economy, freedom at home, the Iraq war and increasing homeland security win this
election?

I am afraid of what is coming, for America, and the world.

Meghan O'Dea Chattnooga, TN

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So what is on the calendar for the next four years? Most countries will, of
course, just sit it out. They will continue to reject the "you're either for us or
you're for the terrorists" test, and maintain their own policies. Support for
American actions in Iraq will decline and troops will be moved out. Even British
involvement there will be questioned as Tony Blair finds his closeness to
President Bush is an electoral liability. Foreigners main concern will be to isolate
themselves from the financial strains of the money being poured in Iraq, and
the growing American deficit. (If you are planning a European holiday, do it now
because the weakness of the dollar is likely to get worse.)

There are, of course, people who are very happy with the result. The Russian
leadership are delighted; they can use America's posturing over terrorism to
cloak their own actions in their unhappy Muslim fringe. And Israel is very happy
that they can rely on unquestioning support as they secure their land grab in the
West Bank.

And then there are the people who hate America and wish it ill. They are
rubbing their hands at the prospect of keeping the American army stretched on rack,
where they are free to goad and plague and kill young Americans.

Osama must be raising a congratulatory cup of tea to President Bush today. If
the American population had not been frightened to death by their own leaders,
he would not have so much significance. His status is increased by the attention
America has granted him. Another winner from the election.

Should we be suprised that the American people do not seem to appreciate the
risk they have taken? Perhaps not. After all, Richard Nixon was re-elected AFTER
the Watergate scandal had lifted the lid on a pot of corruption.

Eric George Queensland, Australia

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Kerry Won. Democracy Lost.
Here are the Facts.
TomPaine.com
by Greg Palast

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. At 1:05 a.m. Wednesday
morning, CNN's exit poll showed Kerry beating Bush among Ohio women by 53
percent to 47 percent. The exit polls were later combined with�and therefore
contaminated by�the tabulated results, ultimately becoming a mirror of the apparent
actual vote. 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.

Whose Votes Are Discarded?

And not all votes 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). Nor are they demanding we look at
the "overvotes" where voter intent may be discerned.

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.

Full Article:

http://www.gregpalast.com/detail.cfm?artid=392&row=0

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Mutant Corporatism & Rigged Elections

By Mike Whitney

If you believe that George Bush won last night's election "fair and square"
then forget about reading this article. If you know however that tens of thousands
of people who lined up for up to four hours at a time in Ohio and Florida to
have their vote counted, were not standing there to endorse the aggression and
suicidal policies of the current administration then read on.

The unprecedented high turnout coupled with new registrations ( that were
overwhelmingly in favor of John Kerry) suggest that there was foul play at the
voting booths. As a result, consumer investigator and activist Bev Harris (founder
of Black Box Voting) "is conducting the largest Freedom of Information action in
history. On election night, Black Box Voting blanketed the US with the first in
a series of public records requests, to obtain internal computer logs and other
documents from 3,000 individual counties and townships."

If the Bush people are so confident in their victory let them "put up or shut
up."

The fact of the matter is (as every reasonable person who hasn't been
hoodwinked by the pageantry of election night fraud realizes) that the election was
stolen again in full view of the American public. The Republican owned voting
machines prevailed over exit poll projections and the will of the American people.

If that's not the case, then let's investigate the computer logs.

According to Lynn Landis' article "Could the AP rig the Election": "The
Associated Press (AP) will be the sole source of raw vote totals for the major news
broadcasters on Election Night.... They refused to confirm or deny that the AP
will receive direct feed from voting machines and central vote tabulating
computers across the country. But, circumstantial evidence suggests that is exactly
what will happen.

And what can be downloaded can also be uploaded. Computer experts say that
signals can travel both to and from computerized voting machines through wireless
technology, modems, and even simple electricity."

Landis just confirms what is already known about "sketchy" electronic voting
and how it invites vote tampering. Her connection between election machinery,
vote totals and the AP, however, has not previously been made.

She goes on to explain that, "AP spokespeople would not give out information on
who sits on their board, however AP leadership appears quite conservative."

Landis continues: "Burl Osborne, chairman of the AP board of directors, is also
publisher emeritus of the conservative The Dallas Morning News, a newspaper
that endorsed George W. Bush in the last election. Kathleen Carroll, senior vice
president and executive editor of AP, was a reporter at The Dallas Morning News
before joining AP. Carroll is also on the Associated Press Managing Editors
(APME)'s 7-member executive committee. The APME "works in partnership with AP to
improve the wire service's performance," according to their website. APME vice
president, Deanna Sands, is managing editor of the ultra conservative Omaha
World Herald newspaper, whose parent company owns the largest voting machine
company in the nation, Election Systems and Software (ES&S)."

It's a cozy relationship considering that ES&S voting machines count 50% of all
the votes in the country. The second largest company, Diebold, is also tied to
the Republican Party and promised (in a comment by Wally Diebold that got
widespread attention on the internet) to "deliver the vote" in Ohio to President
Bush.

Both Wally and ES&S apparently succeeded admirably in their task of undermining
the election.

Many readers are probably wondering what happened to the "Help America Vote
Act" that was passed by Congress to avoid the problems of Florida 2000? As Landis
reports in an earlier article: "What Congress really did was to throw $2.65
billion at the states, so that they could lavish it on a handful of private
companies that are controlled by ultra-conservative Republicans, foreigners and
felons." (Diebold, ES&S and Sequoia were among the big winners)

None of the facts related to the presidential election add up. Voter
registration went up from 105 million to 120 million. In Ohio alone it went up a whopping
17%. Whenever registration has surged like this in the past, it has always
favored the challenger and precipitated a change in government.

Not so, this time, and Republican pollsters are eager to convince us that the
reason for this is a renewed interest among the American public for "moral
values". Is that it or are the results simply an indication of massive (but well
calculated) voter fraud?

The exit polling was equally skewed, showing a clear victory for Kerry. Exit
polling has traditionally been a reliable way of determining the outcome of
elections. Not so in Bush-world, where vote totals are invariably higher for Bush in
the contentious areas that ultimately decide the election.

Give strategist Karl Rove his due; he knew what had to be done and did it. The
rest, of course, has been papered over by the pollsters, pimps and pundits in
American press corps.

Do we need to remind ourselves that representative government can only be
established by the power of the vote? It is the electoral process that confers
legitimacy on government. Without a popular mandate state power can only be
vindicated through force of arms.

Last night American democracy was skillfully subverted and replaced with a
mutant form of corporatism that operates independent of the will of the people.
It's impossible to know what the long term affects of this will be, but it is a
development that should greatly concern us all.

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The Hacking of Democracy: Tuesday's Electoral Disaster
By William Rivers Pitt

Some of the problems with this past Tuesday's election will sound all too
familiar. Despite having four years to look into and deal with the problems that
cropped up in Florida in 2000, the 'spoiled vote' chad issue reared its ugly
head again. Investigative journalist Greg Palast, the man almost singularly
responsible for exposing the more egregious examples of illegitimate deletions of
voters from the rolls, described the continued problems in an article published
just before the election ( http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/110204V.shtml ), and
again in an article published just after the election (
http://www.gregpalast.com/detail.cfm?artid=392&row=0 ).

Four years later, and none of the Florida problems were fixed. In fact, by
all appearances, they spread from Florida to Ohio, New Mexico, Michigan and
elsewhere. Worse, these problems only scratch the surface of what appears to have
happened in Tuesday's election. The fix that was put in place to solve these
problems - the Help America Vote Act passed in 2002 after the Florida debacle -
appears to have gone a long way towards making things worse by orders of
magnitude, for it was the Help America Vote Act which introduced paperless electronic
touch-screen voting machines to millions of voters across the country.

At first blush, it seems like a good idea. Forget the chads, the punch
cards, the archaic booths like pianos standing on end with the handles and the
curtains. This is the 21st century, so let's do it with computers. A simple screen
presents straightforward choices, and you touch the spot on the screen to vote
for your candidate. Your vote is recorded by the machine, and then sent via
modem to a central computer which tallies the votes. Simple, right?

Not quite. Is there any evidence that these machines went haywire on
Tuesday? Nationally, there were more than 1,100 reports of electronic voting
machine malfunctions. A few examples:

In Broward County, Florida, election workers were shocked to discover that
their shiny new machines were counting backwards. "Tallies should go up as more
votes are counted," according to this report. "That's simple math. But in some
races, the numbers had gone down. Officials found the software used in Broward can
handle only 32,000 votes per precinct. After that, the system starts counting
backward."

In Franklin County, Ohio, electronic voting machines gave Bush 3,893 extra
votes in one precinct alone. "Franklin County's unofficial results gave Bush 4,258
votes to Democratic challenger John Kerry's 260 votes in Precinct 1B,"
according to this report. "Records show only 638 voters cast ballots in that precinct.
Matthew Damschroder, director of the Franklin County Board of Elections, said
Bush received 365 votes there. The other 13 voters who cast ballots either voted
for other candidates or did not vote for president."

In Craven County, North Carolina, a software error on the electronic voting
machines awarded Bush 11,283 extra votes. "The Elections Systems and Software
equipment," according to this report, "had downloaded voting information from nine
of the county's 26 precincts and as the absentee ballots were added, the
precinct totals were added a second time. An override, like those occurring when one
attempts to save a computer file that already exists, is supposed to prevent
double counting, but did not function correctly."

In Carteret County, North Carolina, "More than 4,500 votes may be lost in one
North Carolina county because officials believed a computer that stored ballots
electronically could hold more data than it did. Local officials said UniLect
Corp., the maker of the county's electronic voting system, told them that each
storage unit could handle 10,500 votes, but the limit was actually 3,005 votes.
Officials said 3,005 early votes were stored, but 4,530 were lost."

In LaPorte County, Indiana, a Democratic stronghold, the electronic voting
machines decided that each precinct only had 300 voters. "At about 7 p.m. Tuesday,"
according to this report, "it was noticed that the first two or three printouts
from individual precinct reports all listed an identical number of voters. Each
precinct was listed as having 300 registered voters. That means the total
number of voters for the county would be 22,200, although there are actually more
than 79,000 registered voters."

In Sarpy County, Nebraska, the electronic touch screen machines got generous.
"As many as 10,000 extra votes," according to this report, "have been tallied
and candidates are still waiting for corrected totals. Johnny Boykin lost his bid
to be on the Papillion City Council. The difference between victory and defeat
in the race was 127 votes. Boykin says, 'When I went in to work the next day
and saw that 3,342 people had shown up to vote in our ward, I thought something's
not right.' He's right. There are not even 3,000 people registered to vote in
his ward. For some reason, some votes were counted twice."

Stories like this have been popping up in many of the states that put these
touch-screen voting machines to use. Beyond these reports are the folks who
attempted to vote for one candidate and saw the machine give their vote to the
other candidate. Sometimes, the flawed machines were taken off-line, and sometimes
they were not. As for the reports above, the mistakes described were caught and
corrected. How many mistakes made by these machines were not caught, were not
corrected, and have now become part of the record?

The flaws within these machines are well documented. Professors and
researchers from Johns Hopkins performed a detailed analysis of these electronic
voting machines in May of 2004. In their results, the Johns Hopkins researchers
stated, "This voting system is far below even the most minimal security standards
applicable in other contexts. We identify several problems including
unauthorized privilege escalation, incorrect use of cryptography, vulnerabilities to
network threats, and poor software development processes. We show that voters,
without any insider privileges, can cast unlimited votes without being detected by
any mechanisms within the voting terminal software."

"Furthermore," they continued, "we show that even the most serious of our
outsider attacks could have been discovered and executed without access to the
source code. In the face of such attacks, the usual worries about insider
threats are not the only concerns; outsiders can do the damage. That said, we
demonstrate that the insider threat is also quite considerable, showing that not only
can an insider, such as a poll worker, modify the votes, but that insiders can
also violate voter privacy and match votes with the voters who cast them. We
conclude that this voting system is unsuitable for use in a general election."

Many of these machines do not provide the voter with a paper ballot that
verifies their vote. So if an error - or purposefully inserted malicious code -
in the untested machine causes their vote to go for the other guy, they have no
way to verify that it happened. The lack of a paper ballot also means the end
of recounts as we have known them; now, on these new machines, a recount amounts
to pushing a button on the machine and getting a number in return, but without
those paper ballots to do a comparison, there is no way to verify the validity
of that count.

Worst of all is the fact that all the votes collected by these machines are
sent via modem to a central tabulating computer which counts the votes on
Windows software. This means, essentially, that any gomer with access to the central
tabulation machine who knows how to work an Excel spreadsheet can go into this
central computer and make wholesale changes to election totals without anyone
being the wiser.

Bev Harris, who has been working tirelessly since the passage of the Help
America Vote Act to inform people of the dangers present in this new process,
got a chance to demonstrate how easy it is to steal an election on that central
tabulation computer while a guest on the CNBC program 'Topic A With Tina Brown.'
Ms. Brown was off that night, and the guest host was none other than Governor
Howard Dean. Thanks to Governor Dean and Ms. Harris, anyone watching CNBC that
night got to see just how easy it is to steal an election because of these new
machines and the flawed processes they use.

"In a voting system," Harris said on the show, "you have all the different
voting machines at all the different polling places, sometimes, as in a county
like mine, there's a thousand polling places in a single county. All those
machines feed into the one machine so it can add up all the votes. So, of course,
if you were going to do something you shouldn't to a voting machine, would it be
more convenient to do it to each of the 4000 machines, or just come in here and
deal with all of them at once? What surprises people is that the central
tabulator is just a PC, like what you and I use. It's just a regular computer."

Harris then proceeded to open a laptop computer that had on it the software
used to tabulate the votes by one of the aforementioned central processors.
Journalist Thom Hartman describes what happened next: "So Harris had Dean close
the Diebold GEMS tabulation software, go back to the normal Windows PC desktop,
click on the 'My Computer' icon, choose 'Local Disk C:,' open the folder titled
GEMS, and open the sub-folder 'LocalDB' which, Harris noted, 'stands for local
database, that's where they keep the votes.' Harris then had Dean double-click
on a file in that folder titled Central Tabulator Votes,' which caused the PC
to open the vote count in a database program like Excel. 'Let's just flip
those,' Harris said, as Dean cut and pasted the numbers from one cell into the other.
Harris sat up a bit straighter, smiled, and said, 'We just edited an election,
and it took us 90 seconds.'"

Any system that makes it this easy to steal or corrupt an election has no
business being anywhere near the voters on election day.

Full Article:

http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/110804A.shtml

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CommonDreams.org

The Ultimate Felony Against Democracy
by Thom Hartmann
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?

Maybe Florida went for Kerry, maybe for Bush. Over time - and through the
efforts of some very motivated investigative reporters - we may well find out (Bev
Harris of www.blackboxvoting.org just filed what may be the largest Freedom of
Information Act [FOIA} filing in history), and bloggers and investigative
reporters are discovering an odd discrepancy in exit polls being largely accurate in
paper-ballot states and oddly inaccurate in touch-screen electronic voting
states Even raw voter analyses are showing extreme oddities in touch-screen-run
Florida, and eagle-eyed bloggers are finding that news organizations are
retroactively altering their exit polls to coincide with what the machines ultimately
said.

But in all the discussion about voting machines, let's never forget the concept
of the commons, because this usurpation is the ultimate felony committed by
conservatives this year.

At the founding of this nation, we decided that there were important places to
invest our tax (then tariff) dollars, and those were the things that had to do
with the overall "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" of all of us.
Over time, these commons - in which we all make tax investments and for which we
all hold ultimate responsibility - have come to include our police and fire
services; our military and defense; our roads and skyways; our air, waters and
national parks; and the safety of our food and drugs.

But the most important of all the commons in which we've invested our
hard-earned tax dollars is our government itself. It's owned by us, run by us (through
our elected representatives), answerable to us, and most directly responsible
for stewardship of our commons.

And the commons through which we regulate the commons of our government is our
vote.

About two years ago, I wrote a story for these pages, "If You Want To Win An
Election, Just Control The Voting Machines," that exposed how Senator Chuck Hagel
had, before stepping down and running for the U.S. Senate in Nebraska, been the
head of the voting machine company (now ES&S) that had just computerized
Nebraska's vote. The Washington Post (1/13/1997) said Hagel's "Senate victory against
an incumbent Democratic governor was the major Republican upset in the November
election." According to Bev Harris, Hagel won virtually every demographic
group, including many largely black communities that had never before voted
Republican. Hagel was the first Republican in 24 years to win a Senate seat in
Nebraska, nearly all on unauditable machines he had just sold the state. And in all
probability, Hagel run for President in 2008.

In another, later article I wrote at the request of MoveOn.org and which they
mailed to their millions of members, I noted that in Georgia - another state
that went all-electronic - "USA Today reported on Nov. 3, 2002, 'In Georgia, an
Atlanta Journal-Constitution poll shows Democratic Sen. Max Cleland with a
49%-to-44% lead over Republican Rep. Saxby Chambliss. 'Cox News Service, based in
Atlanta, reported just after the election (Nov. 7) that, "Pollsters may have
goofed" because 'Republican Rep. Saxby Chambliss defeated incumbent Democratic Sen.
Max Cleland by a margin of 53 to 46 percent. The Hotline, a political news
service, recalled a series of polls Wednesday showing that Chambliss had been ahead
in none of them.'" Nearly every vote in the state was on an electronic machine
with no audit trail.

In the years since those first articles appeared, Bev Harris has published her
book on the subject ("Black Box Voting"), including the revelation of her
finding the notorious "Rob Georgia" folder on Diebold's FTP site just after
Cleland's loss there; Lynn Landes has done some groundbreaking research, particularly
her new investigation of the Associated Press, as have Rebecca Mercuri and David
Dill. There's a new video out on the topic, Votergate, available at
www.votergate.tv.

Congressman Rush Holt introduced a bill into Congress requiring a
voter-verified paper ballot be produced by all electronic voting machines, and it's been
co-sponsored by a majority of the members of the House of Representatives. The
two-year battle fought by Dennis Hastert and Tom DeLay to keep it from coming to a
vote, thus insuring that there will be no possible audit of the votes of about
a third of the 2004 electorate, has fueled the flames of conspiracy theorists
convinced Republican ideologues - now known to be willing to lie in television
advertising - would extend their "ends justifies the means" morality to stealing
the vote "for the better good of the country" they think single-party
Republican rule will bring.

Most important, though, the rallying cry of the emerging "honest vote" movement
must become: Get Corporations Out Of Our Vote!

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.

When I lived in Germany, they took the vote the same way most of the world does
- people fill in hand-marked ballots, which are hand-counted by civil servants
taking a week off from their regular jobs, watched over by volunteer
representatives of the political parties. It's totally clean, and easily audited. And
even though it takes a week or more to count the vote (and costs nothing more than
a bit of overtime pay for civil servants), the German people know the election
results the night the polls close because the news media's exit polls, for two
generations, have never been more than a tenth of a percent off.

We could have saved billions that have instead been handed over to ES&S,
Diebold, and other private corporations.

Or, if we must have machines, let's have them owned by local governments,
maintained and programmed by civil servants answerable to We The People, using
open-source code and disconnected from modems, that produce a voter-verified printed
ballot, with all results published on a precinct-by-precinct basis.

As Thomas Paine wrote at this nation's founding, "The right of voting for
representatives is the primary right by which all other rights are protected. To
take away this right is to reduce a man to slavery."

Only when We The People reclaim the commons of our vote can we again be
confident in the integrity of our electoral process in the world's oldest and most
powerful democratic republic.

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."

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"Government is not reason, it is not eloquence. It is force! Like fire, it is a
dangerous servant and a fearful master."

-- George Washington

"The Constitution can only end in Despotism as other Forms have done before it,
when the People shall have become so corrupted as to need Despotic Government,
being incapable of any other."
-- Ben Franklin

"Those who cast the votes decide nothing. Those who count the votes decide
everything."

-- Joseph Stalin

"In the next voyage of the Mayflower, after she carried the Pilgrims, she was
employed in transporting a cargo of slaves from Africa."

-- Nathaniel Hawthorne

"When the game is over, the king and the pawn go into the same box."

-- Italian proverb

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"Democracy is a form of government that substitutes election by the incompetent
many for appointment by the corrupt few."

--George Bernard Shaw

"A vote is the instrument and symbol of a freeman's power to make a fool of
himself and a wreck of his country."

-- Ambrose Bierce

"Peace cannot be kept by force. It can only be achieved by understanding."

-- Dr. Albert Einstein

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"You can't hold a man down without staying down with him."

-- Booker T. Washington

"Nothing could have been more obvious to the people of the early twentieth
century than the rapidity with which war was becoming impossible. And as certainly
they did not see it. They did not see it until the atomic bombs burst in their
fumbling hands."

-- H. G. Wells

"Where armies flourish, thorns and brambles grow."

-- Lao Tzu

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"The greatest danger of war seems to me not to lie in the deliberate actions of
wicked men, but in the inability of harrassed men to manage events that have
run away with them."

-- Henry Kissinger

"Today the real test of power is not capacity to make war but capacity to
prevent it."

-- Anne O'Hare McCormick

"Times of general calamity and confusion have ever been productive of the
greatest minds. The purest ore is produced from the hottest furnace, and the
brightest thunderbolt is elicited from the darkest storm."

-- Colbert

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"War is at best barbarism...It's glory is all moonshine. It is only those who
have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded, who
cry aloud for blood, more vengeance, more desolation. War is hell."

-- William Tecumseh Sherman

"War loves to prey upon the young."

-- Sophocles

"You do not see the river of mourning because it lacks one tear of your own."

-- Antonio Porchia

"It was a thought that built this whole portentous war establishment, and a
thought shall melt it away."

-- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent,
but the one most responsive to change."

-- Charles Darwin

"The man who never alters his opinion is like standing water, and breeds
reptiles of the mind."

-- William Blake

"A vote is the instrument and symbol of a freeman's power to make a fool of
himself and a wreck of his country."

-- Ambrose Bierce

"A conservative is a man who is too cowardly to fight and too fat to run."

-- Elbert Hubbard

"Men make counterfeit money; in many more cases, money makes counterfeit men."

-- Sydney Harris

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"We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark. The real tragedy of
life is when men are afraid of the light."

-- Plato

"It is not only what we do, but also what we do not do, for which we are
accountable."

-- Jean Baptiste Moliere

"Without your wounds where would your power be? The very angels themselves
cannot persuade the wretched and blundering children on Earth as can one human
being broken in the wheels of living. In love's service, only the wounded soldiers
can serve."

-- Thornton Wilder

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"Society is like a stew. If you don't keep it stirred up, you get alot of scum
on top."

-- Edward Abbey

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends
on his not understanding it."

-- Upton Sinclair

"Terrorism is the best political weapon for nothing drives people harder than a
fear of sudden death."
-- Adolf Hitler

"A long dispute means that both parties are wrong."

-- Francois Voltaire

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