Guardian Unlimited | Guardian daily comment | Screams will not be heard
Screams will not be heard
This is an information age, but it will be months before we learn the truth about the assault on Falluja
Madeleine Bunting
Monday November 8, 2004
The Guardian
With fitting irony, one of the camps used by the US marines waiting for the assault on Falluja was formerly a Ba'ath party retreat occasionally used by Saddam Hussein's sons. Dreamland, as it was known, has an island in the middle of an artificial lake fringed by palms.
Now the camp's dream-like unreality is distorting every news report filed on the preparations for the onslaught on Falluja. We don't know, and won't know, anything about what happens in the next few days except for what the US military authorities choose to let us know. It's long since been too dangerous for journalists to move around unless they are embedded with the US forces. There is almost no contact left with civilians still in Falluja, the only information is from those who have left.
This is how the fantasy runs: a city the size of Brighton is now only ever referred to as a "militants' stronghold" or "insurgents' redoubt". The city is being "softened up" with precision attacks from the air. Pacifying Falluja has become the key to stabilising the country ahead of the January elections. The "final assault" is imminent, in which the foreigners who have infiltrated the almost deserted Iraqi city with their extremist Islam will be "cleared", "rooted out" or "crushed". Or, as one marine put it: "We will win the hearts and minds of Falluja by ridding the city of insurgents. We're doing that by patrolling the streets and killing the enemy."
These are the questionable assumptions and make-believe which are now all that the embedded journalists with the US forces know to report. Every night, the tone gets a little more breathless and excited as the propaganda operation to gear the troops up for battle coopts the reporters into its collective psychology.
Advertiser links
Playstation Games and Consoles on eBay
Visit eBay Electronics for Playstation games and consoles....
ebay.com
VGFanatic.com Buys Video Games
Get cash or credit fast for Xbox, Playstation 2, PS1,...
vgfanatic.com
Play Stations at Shopping.com
Find, compare and buy products in categories ranging from...
shopping.com
There's a repulsive asymmetry of war here: not the much remarked upon asymmetry of the few thousand insurgents holed up in Falluja vastly outnumbered by the US, but the asymmetry of information. In an age of instant communication, we will have to wait months, if not years, to hear of what happens inside Falluja in the next few days. The media representation of this war will be from a distance: shots of the city skyline illuminated by the flashes of bomb blasts, the dull crump of explosions. What will be left to our imagination is the terror of children crouching behind mud walls; the agony of those crushed under falling masonry; the frantic efforts to save lives in makeshift operating theatres with no electricity and few supplies. We will be the ones left to fill in the blanks, drawing on the reporting of past wars inflicted on cities such as Sarajevo and Grozny.
The silence from Falluja marks a new and agonising departure in the shape of 21st-century war. The horrifying shift in the last century was how, increasingly, war was waged against civilians: their proportion of the death toll rose from 50% to 90%. It prompted the development of a form of war-reporting, exemplified by Bosnia, which was not about the technology and hardware, but about human suffering, and which fuelled public outrage. No longer. The reporting of Falluja has lapsed back into the military machismo of an earlier age. This war against the defenceless will go unreported.
The reality is that a city can never be adequately described as a "militants' stronghold". It's a label designed to stiffen the heart of a soldier, but it is blinding us, the democracies that have inflicted this war, to the consequences of our actions. Falluja is still home to thousands of civilians. The numbers who have fled the prospective assault vary, but there could be 100,000 or more still in their homes. Typically, as in any war, those who don't get out of the way are a mixture of the most vulnerable - the elderly, the poor, the sick; the unlucky, who left it too late to get away; and the insanely brave, such as medical staff.
Nor does it seem possible that reporters still use the terms "softening up" or "precision" bombing. They achieve neither softening nor precision, as Falluja well knew long before George W Bush arrived in the White House. In the first Gulf war, an RAF laser-guided bomb intended for the city's bridge went astray and landed in a crowded market, killing up to 150. Last year, the killing of 15 civilians shortly after the US arrived in the city ensured that Falluja became a case study in how to win a war but lose the occupation. A catalogue of catastrophic blunders has transformed a relatively calm city with a strongly pro-US mayor into a battleground.
One last piece of fantasy is that there is unlikely to be anything "final" about this assault. Already military analysts acknowledge that a US victory in Falluja could have little effect on the spreading incidence of violence across Iraq. What the insurgents have already shown is that they are highly decentralised, and yet the quick copying of terrorist techniques indicates some degree of cooperation. Hopes of a peace seem remote; the future looks set for a chronic, intermittent civil war. By the time the bulldozers have ploughed their way through the centre of Falluja, attention could have shifted to another "final assault" on another "militant stronghold", as another city of homes, shops and children's playgrounds morphs into a battleground.
The recent comment of one Falluja resident is strikingly poignant: "Why," she asked wearily, "don't they go and fight in a desert away from houses and people?" Why indeed? Twentieth-century warfare ensured a remarkable historical inversion. Once the city had been the place of safety to retreat to in a time of war, the place of civilisation against the barbarian wilderness; but the invention of aerial bombardment turned the city into a target, a place of terror.
What is so disturbing is that much of the violence meted out to cities in the past 60-odd years has rarely had a strategic purpose - for example, the infamous bombing of Dresden. Nor is it effective in undermining morale or motivation; while the violence destroys physical and economic capital, it usually generates social capital - for example, the Blitz spirit or the solidarity of New Yorkers in the wake of 9/11 - and in Chechnya served only to establish a precarious peace in a destroyed Grozny and fuel a desperate, violent resistance.
Assaults on cities serve symbolic purposes: they are set showpieces to demonstrate resolve and inculcate fear. To that end, large numbers of casualties are required: they are not an accidental byproduct but the aim. That was the thinking behind 9/11, and Falluja risks becoming a horrible mirror-image of that atrocity. Only by the shores of that dusty lake in Dreamland would it be possible to believe that the ruination of this city will do anything to enhance the legitimacy of the US occupation and of the Iraqi government it appointed.
Sunday, November 07, 2004
Blinkered Bush Set to Blunder Again - by by Tom Engelhardt and Dilip Hiro
Blinkered Bush Set to Blunder Again - by by Tom Engelhardt and Dilip Hiro
Blinkered Bush Set to Blunder Again
by Tom Engelhardt and Dilip Hiro
Tom Dispatch
"'We had to stop some operations until the [U.S.] elections were over,' said a senior Iraqi Defense Ministry official who requested anonymity because he's not an authorized spokesman. 'The Iraqi government requested support from the American side in the past, but the Americans were reluctant to launch military operations because they were worried about American public opinion. Now, their hands are free.'" (Jonathan S. Landay and Hannah Allam, Bush expected to move quickly on Iraq, Knight Ridder)
"[Iraq is] a huge strategic disaster, and it will only get worse…. The idea of creating a constitutional state in a short amount of time is a joke. It will take 10 to 15 years, and that is if we want to kill 10 percent of the population." (Lt. Gen. William Odom, Director of the National Security Agency, 1985-88)
So let the madness begin.
In his first post-election press conference, our president said, "You asked, do I feel free. Let me put it to you this way: I earned capital in the campaign, political capital, and now I intend to spend it. It is my style … and I'm going to spend it for what I told the people I'd spend it on, which is – you've heard the agenda: Social Security and tax reform, moving this economy forward, education, fighting and winning the war on terror."
So brace yourself, because we are evidently on the eve of the spending of more than a little of that "capital" in Fallujah. As I write, perhaps 10,000 American troops are at the edges of that recalcitrant city in the heartland of Sunni Iraq, supported by small numbers of recently trained, untrusted Iraqi troops who are meant, in that classic American phrase, to put an "Iraqi face" on the American battle to come. No news reports on these new Iraqi troops seem complete anymore without a quote from a skeptical American like "'These people,' says [Marine Sgt.] Scarfe, 'will let us walk right to our death.'" And almost all reports out of Iraq indicate that these troops like the Iraqi police are thoroughly infiltrated by the insurgents. ("'The infiltration is all over, from the top to the bottom, from decision making to the lower levels,' says [a] senior Iraqi official.") In fact, just this weekend reports have surfaced that a Kurdish officer in the Iraqi security forces, briefed on the American plans for taking Fallujah, has deserted, evidently with his briefing notes but without his uniform.
On the American side, our troops have been used as pawns in a game of political chess that certainly will leave them more exposed in any battle for Fallujah than might otherwise have been the case. Our ultimate threat, of course, is that those 10,000 soldiers backed by air power and artillery will make an example of Fallujah, producing an American version of the Roman solution to Carthage. It would serve as a fierce example of what might lie in store for any noncompliant Sunni or Shi'ite city. As the intelligence outfit Stratfor recently put it in a report, "The Politics of Storming Al Fallujah": "[T]he fate of Al Fallujah will likely serve as an example to tribal leaders throughout the country who have remained undecided about their relationships with coalition forces and the IIG [Iraq Interim Government]." In other words, if you can't "liberate" them, crush them.
With the power of that threat in mind, our offensive against Fallujah has been one of the slowest developing and most publicly announced events of recent times. This, in turn, means we have left the Fallujan insurgents all the time in the world to plan for the defense of the city or to fade away as the fighting begins. (Some Americans are already suggesting that casualties in the coming battle will reach Vietnam-era levels.) The insurgents, in turn, have been offering their own set of threats, ranging from waves of car bombs to missiles "tipped with deadly chemicals including cyanide."
Who knows what part of all this is bluff and bluster. What we do know is that, while we wait for the battle for Fallujah to begin, it's actually begun. Hala Jaber, a reporter of Lebanese background working for the British Times (which bills him as "the only Western newspaper reporter inside Fallujah"), reports that on his first night in the city, the U.S. Air Force attacked in waves from just after midnight to just after 5 a.m. "I began to count out loud," he writes, "as the bombs tumbled to the ground with increasingly monotonous regularity. There were 38 in the first half-hour alone." The perimeter of the town, he adds, is "already largely in ruins. The crumbling remains of houses and shell-pocked walls reminded me of my home town Beirut in the 1980s at the height of Lebanon's civil war."
In the meantime, as veteran reporter Dilip Hiro explains below, the insurgents were conducting their own "battle of Fallujah" via concerted attacks this weekend in Samarra (only recently retaken by American troops), Baghdad, Ramadi, and around Fallujah itself. Their point, brutally brought home via car bomb, is that it may be far easier to take than hold the Fallujahs of Iraq; that to invest and seize Fallujah is not the same thing as throttling the insurgency. In addition over the last months, the guerrillas have more generally clamped down on supply and troop transport by road and, as in Vietnam, helicopters have already become the preferred means of travel – and also of battle – for Americans. ("The ominous thumping sound of American helicopters roaring over Baghdad's rooftops is becoming as emblematic of this war as it was of Vietnam," writes Jim Krane of the Associated Press.)
Iyad Allawi's interim government, despite its state-of-emergency declaration this weekend, has been incapable of extending its control over any significant parts of the country. As Rod Nordland, Babak Dehghanpisheh, and Michael Hirsh of Newsweek report, "Even [a] Bush administration official who evinced confidence about the new Fallujah offensive admitted that the new Iraq under the interim government is 'not jelling. How can [ordinary Iraqis] support a government that doesn't really exist in many ways?'"
And here's a sign of the times: Lindsey Hilsum of the British Observer reports that some American commanders, not exactly exuding optimism about the future of an occupied Fallujah, "have been studying a book entitled Russia's Chechnya Wars 1994-2000: Lessons from Urban Combat. In 1995 the Russians pounded [the Chechnyan capital] Grozny until the neighborhoods harboring Chechen fighters were reduced to rubble but, nine years on, rebels are still blowing up Russian soldiers with booby-trap bombs."
At the moment, most checks and balances have been wiped away, not only in the United States but globally. The Bush administration will now do more or less as it pleases. Within days, as former British Foreign Minister Robin Cook wrote, administration officials are likely to "celebrate their election victory by putting Fallujah to the torch."
But, as Dilip Hiro indicates, the one-legged American strategy that places military power above all else is likely to prove no less a disaster now than it has for the last year in Iraq. Fallujah may be flattened while the Iraqi insurgency only spreads. And what then? In games like this, you can find yourself spending your "political capital" fast indeed. After all, this is now really George's war.
Oh, and in the one-world category, Haber of the Times reports that when the Fallujans he's bunking with grow bored of rerunning and critiquing scenes from resistance snuff videos the way you might "a controversial moment in a football match," they play video games while the bombardment continues outside – just like, and probably from the same global selection of games as, the young Marines camped outside their city. It's a small world and welcome to it. We're all going to be here for a while. Tom
No Carrots, All Stick
Blinkered Bush Set to Blunder Again in Iraq – and Iran
by Dilip Hiro
With Vice President Dick Cheney describing the presidential election result as "a broad, nationwide victory," secured on the platform of an unapologetically hardline foreign policy, the world should expect more of the same from President George W. Bush and his administration in the "war on terror" he declared on Sept. 12, 2001.
Specifically, this means Bush, Cheney, and their coterie of neoconservative ideologues will continue to visualize the ill-defined war on terrorism in purely military terms, and deploy the Pentagon as their primary instrument to win it. What that undoubtedly translates into is: an immediate assault on Fallujah in Iraq to destroy a bastion of insurgents resisting the occupation of their country, and ratcheting up pressure on Iran under the rubric of "countering Tehran's nuclear arms ambitions."
This will take place in a context in which anti-American feeling, already rife in the Muslim world, is rising yet again in the wake of a recent report from Johns Hopkins University's Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, Md. It concluded that some 100,000 Iraqi civilians had died between March 2003 (when the Bush administration with its British allies invaded Iraq) and September 2004; that the largest number of these deaths were caused by the unleashed air power of the invading and then occupying armies; and that women and children had suffered most.
In other words, the invaders may have managed to kill up to a third as many Iraqis in a year-and-a-half as President Saddam Hussein did in his 24-year dictatorial rule. This comparison led the Riyadh-based, pro-government Saudi Gazette to ask rhetorically, "If this is a war on terror, then who are the terrorists and who are the terrorized?"
The net result of Washington's escalating confrontation with Muslim countries and peoples under various guises will only be to widen further the gulf that already exists between the United States and Muslims in general, paving the way for a much-dreaded "clash of civilizations" that never need have happened.
Attacking the Fly on the Horse
The Bush administration is clearly intent on attacking Fallujah despite warnings from Ghazi al-Yawar, interim president of Iraq, Kofi Annan, secretary-general of the United Nations, Sheikh Muhammad Bashar al Faidhi of the Association of Muslim Scholars, which represents 3,000 mosques – and a string of bombs that killed at least 34 in Samarra on Saturday, a northern city recently "retaken" from the insurgents and now plagued by fighting between the local police and the American-trained Iraqi National Guard.
"I completely disagree with people who see a need to decide [Fallujah] through military action," Interim President Yawar said. "The coalition's handling of this crisis is wrong. It is like someone firing bullets at his horse's head because a fly landed on it; the horse died, and the fly went away."
In his letter to the American, British, and Iraqi governments on Oct. 31, Kofi Annan insisted that the escalation in violence that the taking of Fallujah represented would be "very disruptive for Iraq's political transition" and would also put civilian lives at risk. He added that he wanted the UN to help prepare for elections in Iraq in January, but feared that a further rise in violence could disrupt the process. "I have in mind not only the risk of increased insurgent violence, but also reports of major military offensives being planned by the multinational force in key localities such as Fallujah," he wrote.
Sheikh al-Faidhi, on the other hand, was not so diplomatic. "If the U.S. invades Fallujah or any other city in Iraq, all the clerics in Iraq will call for a boycott of the election," he stated. Even if the phrase "all the clerics" were to be qualified with "Sunni Arab," that would still mean one-fifth of the Iraqi population concentrated in the country's crucial areas.
A majority of the residents of Baghdad, which accounts for one quarter of the national population of 25 million, are Sunni. So too are the inhabitants of Mosul, the second largest city in Iraq, not to mention the resistance cities of Fallujah and Ramadi.
It is worth recalling what happened last April when the Pentagon mounted an offensive against Fallujah in retaliation for the murder of four Americans working for a Pentagon security contractor. A four-week long running battle with the Iraqi insurgents ensued in which the application of overwhelming force by the U.S. Marines led to nearly 600 Iraqi deaths, mostly civilian, and 65 American military fatalities. And yet during that period the Pentagon kept reducing its demands in stages until rebel demands that only Iraqis should police Fallujah and that the Marines should withdraw to their bases were essentially accepted.
In the glow of his electoral victory, George Bush is unlikely to grasp the significance of this statement of Annan's in his letter: "The threat or actual use of force not only risks deepening the sense of alienation of certain communities, but would also reinforce perceptions among the Iraqi population of a continued military occupation."
Long used to blocking unwelcome reality, the president and his advisors are no more likely to take note of what is happening on the ground in Samarra, a city the U.S. military reconquered from the insurgents – for the third time – in early October, and handed over to the interim Iraqi government. Interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi now holds Samarra up as a model for the fate of other rebellious cities still to be retaken, and yet it is an omen of what a military approach to the Iraqi situation is likely to yield.
Forced underground but not out of town, insurgents in Samarra, a predominantly Sunni settlement, are now so well organized that on Nov. 6 they were able to set off four car-bomb explosives within minutes of one another. On the government's side, fighting has already broken out between the interim government's National Guard, whose troops have been recruited from Baghdad and predominantly Shi'ite areas of southern Iraq, and the local police, a Sunni force, which is heavily infiltrated by the insurgents or their associates.
Since their arrival in the city, the National Guardsmen have been breaking into home without warrants, arresting people arbitrarily, and firing into the air at random. As for the local police, they extract bribes from the Samarrans and cooperate with criminal gangs. "We are now caught between an arbitrary authority [the National Guard] and a corrupt authority [the police]," was the way Hisham Nouri al-Samarrai, a tribal leader on the local council, summed up the situation.
An attack on Fallujah, say most analysts, will act as a catalyst, uniting disparate resistance groups throughout Iraq. It is also expected to increase resentment among Iraqis and swell insurgent ranks. It's worth remembering that the siege of Fallujah in April was the tipping point when insurgents – hitherto seen by most Sunni Arabs as imbued with Islamic fundamentalism – gained popularity. Fellow Sunnis, witnessing the carnage the Americans had caused in the besieged city, shed their fear of religious fanaticism and embraced the resistance fighters and their cause. It also gained the Sunni insurgents sympathy in a section of the Shi'ite community that put nationalism above sectarian affiliations. This time radical Shia cleric Hojatalislam Moqtada al-Sadr has already expressed solidarity with the insurgents in Fallujah with whom he shares the aim of establishing an Islamic republic in Iraq.
Following tactics they had already developed in Samarra in late September, most Iraqi and foreign insurgents have already left Fallujah for other destinations in the Sunni heartland. Those who have stayed behind will undoubtedly fight to the death, and the resulting heart-rending carnage – shown on numerous Arab satellite channels – is sure to intensify anti-American feelings not only among Iraqis but also among the inhabitants of the surrounding Sunni-majority countries of Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria, and Turkey.
Finally, a pacified and half-razed Fallujah, handed over to the Allawi's interim government, will most likely only replicate the recent history of Samarra.
No Carrots, All Stick
In speeches last week in Europe, Iyad Allawi singled out Iran among Iraq's neighbors for being uncooperative. This was not accidental. He was echoing his master's voice, that of the man who installed him as the interim executive prime minister – George W. Bush. Nor is it accidental that the Bush administration has refused point blank to endorse the package that the European Union trio – France, Germany, and the United Kingdom – has offered Iran as a way to begin to settle the nuclear issue, even though the offer was backed by the European Union summit in Brussels on Friday.
"A full and sustained suspension of all [uranium] enrichment and reprocessing activities, on a voluntary basis, would open the door for talks on long-term cooperation offering mutual benefits," said the EU communiqué. It further pledged resumption of suspended negotiations on a Trade and Cooperation Agreement between Iran and the EU.
Earlier, when shown the EU trio package, John Bolton, the neoconservative American undersecretary for arms control and international security at the State Department, said, "I don't do carrots."
In contrast, Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamanei, delivering his weekly sermon on Friday in Tehran, repeated his opposition to "the production, stockpiling and use of nuclear weapons," which, he asserted, are forbidden under Islam. "They [the Americans and Israelis] accuse us of pursuing nuclear weapons program," he added. "I am telling them as I have said before that we are not even thinking about nuclear weapons."
Yet Washington is pressing its allies to start drafting a UN Security Council resolution of condemnation as a preamble to imposing sanctions against Iran. There can be little doubt that, even before it's second term begins, a re-energized Bush administration is thinking once more of assembling "a coalition of the willing" – this time to wield against Iran, which is still firmly ensconced in its "Axis of Evil" along with North Korea. "They [the Americans] wanted an international coalition against Iraq," mused Jaswant Singh, former foreign minister of India, whose country refused to join the Iraqi version of the coalition. "But they ended up getting virtually an international alliance against America."
Unfortunately for the world at large, there is no sign yet that the Bush administration's disastrously flat learning curve has risen even by a fraction of an inch. The disjunction between the perceptions of policy-makers in Washington and Muslims abroad is so total that our planet is certain to become ever less safe as the new four-year term of the Bush White House unfolds.
Dilip Hiro's latest book is Secrets and Lies: Operation "Iraqi Freedom" and After, a sequel to Iraq: In the Eye of the Storm (Nation Books, New York). He is based in London, writes regularly for the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Observer, the Guardian, and The Nation magazine, and is a frequent commentator on NBC, CNN, BBC, and Sky TV.
Blinkered Bush Set to Blunder Again
by Tom Engelhardt and Dilip Hiro
Tom Dispatch
"'We had to stop some operations until the [U.S.] elections were over,' said a senior Iraqi Defense Ministry official who requested anonymity because he's not an authorized spokesman. 'The Iraqi government requested support from the American side in the past, but the Americans were reluctant to launch military operations because they were worried about American public opinion. Now, their hands are free.'" (Jonathan S. Landay and Hannah Allam, Bush expected to move quickly on Iraq, Knight Ridder)
"[Iraq is] a huge strategic disaster, and it will only get worse…. The idea of creating a constitutional state in a short amount of time is a joke. It will take 10 to 15 years, and that is if we want to kill 10 percent of the population." (Lt. Gen. William Odom, Director of the National Security Agency, 1985-88)
So let the madness begin.
In his first post-election press conference, our president said, "You asked, do I feel free. Let me put it to you this way: I earned capital in the campaign, political capital, and now I intend to spend it. It is my style … and I'm going to spend it for what I told the people I'd spend it on, which is – you've heard the agenda: Social Security and tax reform, moving this economy forward, education, fighting and winning the war on terror."
So brace yourself, because we are evidently on the eve of the spending of more than a little of that "capital" in Fallujah. As I write, perhaps 10,000 American troops are at the edges of that recalcitrant city in the heartland of Sunni Iraq, supported by small numbers of recently trained, untrusted Iraqi troops who are meant, in that classic American phrase, to put an "Iraqi face" on the American battle to come. No news reports on these new Iraqi troops seem complete anymore without a quote from a skeptical American like "'These people,' says [Marine Sgt.] Scarfe, 'will let us walk right to our death.'" And almost all reports out of Iraq indicate that these troops like the Iraqi police are thoroughly infiltrated by the insurgents. ("'The infiltration is all over, from the top to the bottom, from decision making to the lower levels,' says [a] senior Iraqi official.") In fact, just this weekend reports have surfaced that a Kurdish officer in the Iraqi security forces, briefed on the American plans for taking Fallujah, has deserted, evidently with his briefing notes but without his uniform.
On the American side, our troops have been used as pawns in a game of political chess that certainly will leave them more exposed in any battle for Fallujah than might otherwise have been the case. Our ultimate threat, of course, is that those 10,000 soldiers backed by air power and artillery will make an example of Fallujah, producing an American version of the Roman solution to Carthage. It would serve as a fierce example of what might lie in store for any noncompliant Sunni or Shi'ite city. As the intelligence outfit Stratfor recently put it in a report, "The Politics of Storming Al Fallujah": "[T]he fate of Al Fallujah will likely serve as an example to tribal leaders throughout the country who have remained undecided about their relationships with coalition forces and the IIG [Iraq Interim Government]." In other words, if you can't "liberate" them, crush them.
With the power of that threat in mind, our offensive against Fallujah has been one of the slowest developing and most publicly announced events of recent times. This, in turn, means we have left the Fallujan insurgents all the time in the world to plan for the defense of the city or to fade away as the fighting begins. (Some Americans are already suggesting that casualties in the coming battle will reach Vietnam-era levels.) The insurgents, in turn, have been offering their own set of threats, ranging from waves of car bombs to missiles "tipped with deadly chemicals including cyanide."
Who knows what part of all this is bluff and bluster. What we do know is that, while we wait for the battle for Fallujah to begin, it's actually begun. Hala Jaber, a reporter of Lebanese background working for the British Times (which bills him as "the only Western newspaper reporter inside Fallujah"), reports that on his first night in the city, the U.S. Air Force attacked in waves from just after midnight to just after 5 a.m. "I began to count out loud," he writes, "as the bombs tumbled to the ground with increasingly monotonous regularity. There were 38 in the first half-hour alone." The perimeter of the town, he adds, is "already largely in ruins. The crumbling remains of houses and shell-pocked walls reminded me of my home town Beirut in the 1980s at the height of Lebanon's civil war."
In the meantime, as veteran reporter Dilip Hiro explains below, the insurgents were conducting their own "battle of Fallujah" via concerted attacks this weekend in Samarra (only recently retaken by American troops), Baghdad, Ramadi, and around Fallujah itself. Their point, brutally brought home via car bomb, is that it may be far easier to take than hold the Fallujahs of Iraq; that to invest and seize Fallujah is not the same thing as throttling the insurgency. In addition over the last months, the guerrillas have more generally clamped down on supply and troop transport by road and, as in Vietnam, helicopters have already become the preferred means of travel – and also of battle – for Americans. ("The ominous thumping sound of American helicopters roaring over Baghdad's rooftops is becoming as emblematic of this war as it was of Vietnam," writes Jim Krane of the Associated Press.)
Iyad Allawi's interim government, despite its state-of-emergency declaration this weekend, has been incapable of extending its control over any significant parts of the country. As Rod Nordland, Babak Dehghanpisheh, and Michael Hirsh of Newsweek report, "Even [a] Bush administration official who evinced confidence about the new Fallujah offensive admitted that the new Iraq under the interim government is 'not jelling. How can [ordinary Iraqis] support a government that doesn't really exist in many ways?'"
And here's a sign of the times: Lindsey Hilsum of the British Observer reports that some American commanders, not exactly exuding optimism about the future of an occupied Fallujah, "have been studying a book entitled Russia's Chechnya Wars 1994-2000: Lessons from Urban Combat. In 1995 the Russians pounded [the Chechnyan capital] Grozny until the neighborhoods harboring Chechen fighters were reduced to rubble but, nine years on, rebels are still blowing up Russian soldiers with booby-trap bombs."
At the moment, most checks and balances have been wiped away, not only in the United States but globally. The Bush administration will now do more or less as it pleases. Within days, as former British Foreign Minister Robin Cook wrote, administration officials are likely to "celebrate their election victory by putting Fallujah to the torch."
But, as Dilip Hiro indicates, the one-legged American strategy that places military power above all else is likely to prove no less a disaster now than it has for the last year in Iraq. Fallujah may be flattened while the Iraqi insurgency only spreads. And what then? In games like this, you can find yourself spending your "political capital" fast indeed. After all, this is now really George's war.
Oh, and in the one-world category, Haber of the Times reports that when the Fallujans he's bunking with grow bored of rerunning and critiquing scenes from resistance snuff videos the way you might "a controversial moment in a football match," they play video games while the bombardment continues outside – just like, and probably from the same global selection of games as, the young Marines camped outside their city. It's a small world and welcome to it. We're all going to be here for a while. Tom
No Carrots, All Stick
Blinkered Bush Set to Blunder Again in Iraq – and Iran
by Dilip Hiro
With Vice President Dick Cheney describing the presidential election result as "a broad, nationwide victory," secured on the platform of an unapologetically hardline foreign policy, the world should expect more of the same from President George W. Bush and his administration in the "war on terror" he declared on Sept. 12, 2001.
Specifically, this means Bush, Cheney, and their coterie of neoconservative ideologues will continue to visualize the ill-defined war on terrorism in purely military terms, and deploy the Pentagon as their primary instrument to win it. What that undoubtedly translates into is: an immediate assault on Fallujah in Iraq to destroy a bastion of insurgents resisting the occupation of their country, and ratcheting up pressure on Iran under the rubric of "countering Tehran's nuclear arms ambitions."
This will take place in a context in which anti-American feeling, already rife in the Muslim world, is rising yet again in the wake of a recent report from Johns Hopkins University's Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, Md. It concluded that some 100,000 Iraqi civilians had died between March 2003 (when the Bush administration with its British allies invaded Iraq) and September 2004; that the largest number of these deaths were caused by the unleashed air power of the invading and then occupying armies; and that women and children had suffered most.
In other words, the invaders may have managed to kill up to a third as many Iraqis in a year-and-a-half as President Saddam Hussein did in his 24-year dictatorial rule. This comparison led the Riyadh-based, pro-government Saudi Gazette to ask rhetorically, "If this is a war on terror, then who are the terrorists and who are the terrorized?"
The net result of Washington's escalating confrontation with Muslim countries and peoples under various guises will only be to widen further the gulf that already exists between the United States and Muslims in general, paving the way for a much-dreaded "clash of civilizations" that never need have happened.
Attacking the Fly on the Horse
The Bush administration is clearly intent on attacking Fallujah despite warnings from Ghazi al-Yawar, interim president of Iraq, Kofi Annan, secretary-general of the United Nations, Sheikh Muhammad Bashar al Faidhi of the Association of Muslim Scholars, which represents 3,000 mosques – and a string of bombs that killed at least 34 in Samarra on Saturday, a northern city recently "retaken" from the insurgents and now plagued by fighting between the local police and the American-trained Iraqi National Guard.
"I completely disagree with people who see a need to decide [Fallujah] through military action," Interim President Yawar said. "The coalition's handling of this crisis is wrong. It is like someone firing bullets at his horse's head because a fly landed on it; the horse died, and the fly went away."
In his letter to the American, British, and Iraqi governments on Oct. 31, Kofi Annan insisted that the escalation in violence that the taking of Fallujah represented would be "very disruptive for Iraq's political transition" and would also put civilian lives at risk. He added that he wanted the UN to help prepare for elections in Iraq in January, but feared that a further rise in violence could disrupt the process. "I have in mind not only the risk of increased insurgent violence, but also reports of major military offensives being planned by the multinational force in key localities such as Fallujah," he wrote.
Sheikh al-Faidhi, on the other hand, was not so diplomatic. "If the U.S. invades Fallujah or any other city in Iraq, all the clerics in Iraq will call for a boycott of the election," he stated. Even if the phrase "all the clerics" were to be qualified with "Sunni Arab," that would still mean one-fifth of the Iraqi population concentrated in the country's crucial areas.
A majority of the residents of Baghdad, which accounts for one quarter of the national population of 25 million, are Sunni. So too are the inhabitants of Mosul, the second largest city in Iraq, not to mention the resistance cities of Fallujah and Ramadi.
It is worth recalling what happened last April when the Pentagon mounted an offensive against Fallujah in retaliation for the murder of four Americans working for a Pentagon security contractor. A four-week long running battle with the Iraqi insurgents ensued in which the application of overwhelming force by the U.S. Marines led to nearly 600 Iraqi deaths, mostly civilian, and 65 American military fatalities. And yet during that period the Pentagon kept reducing its demands in stages until rebel demands that only Iraqis should police Fallujah and that the Marines should withdraw to their bases were essentially accepted.
In the glow of his electoral victory, George Bush is unlikely to grasp the significance of this statement of Annan's in his letter: "The threat or actual use of force not only risks deepening the sense of alienation of certain communities, but would also reinforce perceptions among the Iraqi population of a continued military occupation."
Long used to blocking unwelcome reality, the president and his advisors are no more likely to take note of what is happening on the ground in Samarra, a city the U.S. military reconquered from the insurgents – for the third time – in early October, and handed over to the interim Iraqi government. Interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi now holds Samarra up as a model for the fate of other rebellious cities still to be retaken, and yet it is an omen of what a military approach to the Iraqi situation is likely to yield.
Forced underground but not out of town, insurgents in Samarra, a predominantly Sunni settlement, are now so well organized that on Nov. 6 they were able to set off four car-bomb explosives within minutes of one another. On the government's side, fighting has already broken out between the interim government's National Guard, whose troops have been recruited from Baghdad and predominantly Shi'ite areas of southern Iraq, and the local police, a Sunni force, which is heavily infiltrated by the insurgents or their associates.
Since their arrival in the city, the National Guardsmen have been breaking into home without warrants, arresting people arbitrarily, and firing into the air at random. As for the local police, they extract bribes from the Samarrans and cooperate with criminal gangs. "We are now caught between an arbitrary authority [the National Guard] and a corrupt authority [the police]," was the way Hisham Nouri al-Samarrai, a tribal leader on the local council, summed up the situation.
An attack on Fallujah, say most analysts, will act as a catalyst, uniting disparate resistance groups throughout Iraq. It is also expected to increase resentment among Iraqis and swell insurgent ranks. It's worth remembering that the siege of Fallujah in April was the tipping point when insurgents – hitherto seen by most Sunni Arabs as imbued with Islamic fundamentalism – gained popularity. Fellow Sunnis, witnessing the carnage the Americans had caused in the besieged city, shed their fear of religious fanaticism and embraced the resistance fighters and their cause. It also gained the Sunni insurgents sympathy in a section of the Shi'ite community that put nationalism above sectarian affiliations. This time radical Shia cleric Hojatalislam Moqtada al-Sadr has already expressed solidarity with the insurgents in Fallujah with whom he shares the aim of establishing an Islamic republic in Iraq.
Following tactics they had already developed in Samarra in late September, most Iraqi and foreign insurgents have already left Fallujah for other destinations in the Sunni heartland. Those who have stayed behind will undoubtedly fight to the death, and the resulting heart-rending carnage – shown on numerous Arab satellite channels – is sure to intensify anti-American feelings not only among Iraqis but also among the inhabitants of the surrounding Sunni-majority countries of Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria, and Turkey.
Finally, a pacified and half-razed Fallujah, handed over to the Allawi's interim government, will most likely only replicate the recent history of Samarra.
No Carrots, All Stick
In speeches last week in Europe, Iyad Allawi singled out Iran among Iraq's neighbors for being uncooperative. This was not accidental. He was echoing his master's voice, that of the man who installed him as the interim executive prime minister – George W. Bush. Nor is it accidental that the Bush administration has refused point blank to endorse the package that the European Union trio – France, Germany, and the United Kingdom – has offered Iran as a way to begin to settle the nuclear issue, even though the offer was backed by the European Union summit in Brussels on Friday.
"A full and sustained suspension of all [uranium] enrichment and reprocessing activities, on a voluntary basis, would open the door for talks on long-term cooperation offering mutual benefits," said the EU communiqué. It further pledged resumption of suspended negotiations on a Trade and Cooperation Agreement between Iran and the EU.
Earlier, when shown the EU trio package, John Bolton, the neoconservative American undersecretary for arms control and international security at the State Department, said, "I don't do carrots."
In contrast, Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamanei, delivering his weekly sermon on Friday in Tehran, repeated his opposition to "the production, stockpiling and use of nuclear weapons," which, he asserted, are forbidden under Islam. "They [the Americans and Israelis] accuse us of pursuing nuclear weapons program," he added. "I am telling them as I have said before that we are not even thinking about nuclear weapons."
Yet Washington is pressing its allies to start drafting a UN Security Council resolution of condemnation as a preamble to imposing sanctions against Iran. There can be little doubt that, even before it's second term begins, a re-energized Bush administration is thinking once more of assembling "a coalition of the willing" – this time to wield against Iran, which is still firmly ensconced in its "Axis of Evil" along with North Korea. "They [the Americans] wanted an international coalition against Iraq," mused Jaswant Singh, former foreign minister of India, whose country refused to join the Iraqi version of the coalition. "But they ended up getting virtually an international alliance against America."
Unfortunately for the world at large, there is no sign yet that the Bush administration's disastrously flat learning curve has risen even by a fraction of an inch. The disjunction between the perceptions of policy-makers in Washington and Muslims abroad is so total that our planet is certain to become ever less safe as the new four-year term of the Bush White House unfolds.
Dilip Hiro's latest book is Secrets and Lies: Operation "Iraqi Freedom" and After, a sequel to Iraq: In the Eye of the Storm (Nation Books, New York). He is based in London, writes regularly for the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Observer, the Guardian, and The Nation magazine, and is a frequent commentator on NBC, CNN, BBC, and Sky TV.
Michael Moore.com : Mike's Message : Mike's Latest News
Michael Moore.com : Mike's Message : Mike's Latest News
November 5th, 2004 6:10 pm
No Surrender
By Paul Krugman / New York Times
President Bush isn't a conservative. He's a radical - the leader of a coalition that deeply dislikes America as it is. Part of that coalition wants to tear down the legacy of Franklin Roosevelt, eviscerating Social Security and, eventually, Medicare. Another part wants to break down the barriers between church and state. And thanks to a heavy turnout by evangelical Christians, Mr. Bush has four more years to advance that radical agenda.
Democrats are now, understandably, engaged in self-examination. But while it's O.K. to think things over, those who abhor the direction Mr. Bush is taking the country must maintain their intensity; they must not succumb to defeatism.
This election did not prove the Republicans unbeatable. Mr. Bush did not win in a landslide. Without the fading but still potent aura of 9/11, when the nation was ready to rally around any leader, he wouldn't have won at all. And future events will almost surely offer opportunities for a Democratic comeback.
I don't hope for more and worse scandals and failures during Mr. Bush's second term, but I do expect them. The resurgence of Al Qaeda, the debacle in Iraq, the explosion of the budget deficit and the failure to create jobs weren't things that just happened to occur on Mr. Bush's watch. They were the consequences of bad policies made by people who let ideology trump reality.
Those people still have Mr. Bush's ear, and his election victory will only give them the confidence to make even bigger mistakes.
So what should the Democrats do?
One faction of the party is already calling for the Democrats to blur the differences between themselves and the Republicans. Or at least that's what I think Al From of the Democratic Leadership Council means when he says, "We've got to close the cultural gap." But that's a losing proposition.
Yes, Democrats need to make it clear that they support personal virtue, that they value fidelity, responsibility, honesty and faith. This shouldn't be a hard case to make: Democrats are as likely as Republicans to be faithful spouses and good parents, and Republicans are as likely as Democrats to be adulterers, gamblers or drug abusers. Massachusetts has the lowest divorce rate in the country; blue states, on average, have lower rates of out-of-wedlock births than red states.
But Democrats are not going to get the support of people whose votes are motivated, above all, by their opposition to abortion and gay rights (and, in the background, opposition to minority rights). All they will do if they try to cater to intolerance is alienate their own base.
Does this mean that the Democrats are condemned to permanent minority status? No. The religious right - not to be confused with religious Americans in general - isn't a majority, or even a dominant minority. It's just one bloc of voters, whom the Republican Party has learned to mobilize with wedge issues like this year's polarizing debate over gay marriage.
Rather than catering to voters who will never support them, the Democrats - who are doing pretty well at getting the votes of moderates and independents - need to become equally effective at mobilizing their own base.
In fact, they have made good strides, showing much more unity and intensity than anyone thought possible a year ago. But for the lingering aura of 9/11, they would have won.
What they need to do now is develop a political program aimed at maintaining and increasing the intensity. That means setting some realistic but critical goals for the next year.
Democrats shouldn't cave in to Mr. Bush when he tries to appoint highly partisan judges - even when the effort to block a bad appointment fails, it will show supporters that the party stands for something. They should gear up for a bid to retake the Senate or at least make a major dent in the Republican lead. They should keep the pressure on Mr. Bush when he makes terrible policy decisions, which he will.
It's all right to take a few weeks to think it over. (Heads up to readers: I'll be starting a long-planned break next week, to work on a economics textbook. I'll be back in January.) But Democrats mustn't give up the fight. What's at stake isn't just the fate of their party, but the fate of America as we know it.
November 5th, 2004 6:10 pm
No Surrender
By Paul Krugman / New York Times
President Bush isn't a conservative. He's a radical - the leader of a coalition that deeply dislikes America as it is. Part of that coalition wants to tear down the legacy of Franklin Roosevelt, eviscerating Social Security and, eventually, Medicare. Another part wants to break down the barriers between church and state. And thanks to a heavy turnout by evangelical Christians, Mr. Bush has four more years to advance that radical agenda.
Democrats are now, understandably, engaged in self-examination. But while it's O.K. to think things over, those who abhor the direction Mr. Bush is taking the country must maintain their intensity; they must not succumb to defeatism.
This election did not prove the Republicans unbeatable. Mr. Bush did not win in a landslide. Without the fading but still potent aura of 9/11, when the nation was ready to rally around any leader, he wouldn't have won at all. And future events will almost surely offer opportunities for a Democratic comeback.
I don't hope for more and worse scandals and failures during Mr. Bush's second term, but I do expect them. The resurgence of Al Qaeda, the debacle in Iraq, the explosion of the budget deficit and the failure to create jobs weren't things that just happened to occur on Mr. Bush's watch. They were the consequences of bad policies made by people who let ideology trump reality.
Those people still have Mr. Bush's ear, and his election victory will only give them the confidence to make even bigger mistakes.
So what should the Democrats do?
One faction of the party is already calling for the Democrats to blur the differences between themselves and the Republicans. Or at least that's what I think Al From of the Democratic Leadership Council means when he says, "We've got to close the cultural gap." But that's a losing proposition.
Yes, Democrats need to make it clear that they support personal virtue, that they value fidelity, responsibility, honesty and faith. This shouldn't be a hard case to make: Democrats are as likely as Republicans to be faithful spouses and good parents, and Republicans are as likely as Democrats to be adulterers, gamblers or drug abusers. Massachusetts has the lowest divorce rate in the country; blue states, on average, have lower rates of out-of-wedlock births than red states.
But Democrats are not going to get the support of people whose votes are motivated, above all, by their opposition to abortion and gay rights (and, in the background, opposition to minority rights). All they will do if they try to cater to intolerance is alienate their own base.
Does this mean that the Democrats are condemned to permanent minority status? No. The religious right - not to be confused with religious Americans in general - isn't a majority, or even a dominant minority. It's just one bloc of voters, whom the Republican Party has learned to mobilize with wedge issues like this year's polarizing debate over gay marriage.
Rather than catering to voters who will never support them, the Democrats - who are doing pretty well at getting the votes of moderates and independents - need to become equally effective at mobilizing their own base.
In fact, they have made good strides, showing much more unity and intensity than anyone thought possible a year ago. But for the lingering aura of 9/11, they would have won.
What they need to do now is develop a political program aimed at maintaining and increasing the intensity. That means setting some realistic but critical goals for the next year.
Democrats shouldn't cave in to Mr. Bush when he tries to appoint highly partisan judges - even when the effort to block a bad appointment fails, it will show supporters that the party stands for something. They should gear up for a bid to retake the Senate or at least make a major dent in the Republican lead. They should keep the pressure on Mr. Bush when he makes terrible policy decisions, which he will.
It's all right to take a few weeks to think it over. (Heads up to readers: I'll be starting a long-planned break next week, to work on a economics textbook. I'll be back in January.) But Democrats mustn't give up the fight. What's at stake isn't just the fate of their party, but the fate of America as we know it.
Bloglines | My Blogs
Bloglines | My Blogs
November 6th, 2004 6:53 pm
Evidence Mounts That The Vote May Have Been Hacked
by Thom Hartmann / Common Dreams
When I spoke with Jeff Fisher this morning (Saturday, November 06, 2004), the Democratic candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives from Florida's 16th District said he was waiting for the FBI to show up. Fisher has evidence, he says, not only that the Florida election was hacked, but of who hacked it and how. And not just this year, he said, but that these same people had previously hacked the Democratic primary race in 2002 so that Jeb Bush would not have to run against Janet Reno, who presented a real threat to Jeb, but instead against Bill McBride, who Jeb beat.
"It was practice for a national effort," Fisher told me.
And evidence is accumulating that the national effort happened on November 2, 2004.
The State of Florida, for example, publishes a county-by-county record of votes cast and people registered to vote by party affiliation. Net denizen Kathy Dopp compiled the official state information into a table, available at http://ustogether.org/Florida_Election.htm, and noticed something startling.
While the heavily scrutinized touch-screen voting machines seemed to produce results in which the registered Democrat/Republican ratios matched the Kerry/Bush vote, and so did the optically-scanned paper ballots in the larger counties, in Florida's smaller counties the results from the optically scanned paper ballots - fed into a central tabulator PC and thus vulnerable to hacking - seem to have been reversed.
In Baker County, for example, with 12,887 registered voters, 69.3% of them Democrats and 24.3% of them Republicans, the vote was only 2,180 for Kerry and 7,738 for Bush, the opposite of what is seen everywhere else in the country where registered Democrats largely voted for Kerry.
In Dixie County, with 4,988 registered voters, 77.5% of them Democrats and a mere 15% registered as Republicans, only 1,959 people voted for Kerry, but 4,433 voted for Bush.
The pattern repeats over and over again - but only in the smaller counties where, it was probably assumed, the small voter numbers wouldn't be much noticed. Franklin County, 77.3% registered Democrats, went 58.5% for Bush. Holmes County, 72.7% registered Democrats, went 77.25% for Bush.
Yet in the larger counties, where such anomalies would be more obvious to the news media, high percentages of registered Democrats equaled high percentages of votes for Kerry.
More visual analysis of the results can be seen at http://ustogether.org/election04/FloridaDataStats.htm, and www.rubberbug.com/temp/Florida2004chart.htm.
And, although elections officials didn't notice these anomalies, in aggregate they were enough to swing Florida from Kerry to Bush. If you simply go through the analysis of these counties and reverse the "anomalous" numbers in those counties that appear to have been hacked, suddenly the Florida election results resemble the Florida exit poll results: Kerry won, and won big.
Those exit poll results have been a problem for reporters ever since Election Day.
Election night, I'd been doing live election coverage for WDEV, one of the radio stations that carries my syndicated show, and, just after midnight, during the 12:20 a.m. Associated Press Radio News feed, I was startled to hear the reporter detail how Karen Hughes had earlier sat George W. Bush down to inform him that he'd lost the election. The exit polls were clear: Kerry was winning in a landslide. "Bush took the news stoically," noted the AP report.
But then the computers reported something different. In several pivotal states.
Conservatives see a conspiracy here: They think the exit polls were rigged.
Dick Morris, the infamous political consultant to the first Clinton campaign who became a Republican consultant and Fox News regular, wrote an article for The Hill, the publication read by every political junkie in Washington, DC, in which he made a couple of brilliant points.
"Exit Polls are almost never wrong," Morris wrote. "They eliminate the two major potential fallacies in survey research by correctly separating actual voters from those who pretend they will cast ballots but never do and by substituting actual observation for guesswork in judging the relative turnout of different parts of the state."
He added: "So, according to ABC-TVs exit polls, for example, Kerry was slated to carry Florida, Ohio, New Mexico, Colorado, Nevada, and Iowa, all of which Bush carried. The only swing state the network had going to Bush was West Virginia, which the president won by 10 points."
Yet a few hours after the exit polls were showing a clear Kerry sweep, as the computerized vote numbers began to come in from the various states the election was called for Bush.
How could this happen?
On the CNBC TV show "Topic A With Tina Brown," several months ago, Howard Dean had filled in for Tina Brown as guest host. His guest was Bev Harris, the Seattle grandmother who started www.blackboxvoting.org from her living room. Bev pointed out that regardless of how votes were tabulated (other than hand counts, only done in odd places like small towns in Vermont), the real "counting" is done by computers. Be they Diebold Opti-Scan machines, which read paper ballots filled in by pencil or ink in the voter's hand, or the scanners that read punch cards, or the machines that simply record a touch of the screen, in all cases the final tally is sent to a "central tabulator" machine.
That central tabulator computer is a Windows-based PC.
"In a voting system," Harris explained to Dean on national television, "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?"
Dean nodded in rhetorical agreement, and Harris continued. "What surprises people is that the central tabulator is just a PC, like what you and I use. It's just a regular computer."
"So," Dean said, "anybody who can hack into a PC can hack into a central tabulator?"
Harris nodded affirmation, and pointed out how Diebold uses a program called GEMS, which fills the screen of the PC and effectively turns it into the central tabulator system. "This is the official program that the County Supervisor sees," she said, pointing to a PC that was sitting between them loaded with Diebold's software.
Bev then had Dean open the GEMS program to see the results of a test election. They went to the screen titled "Election Summary Report" and waited a moment while the PC "adds up all the votes from all the various precincts," and then saw that in this faux election Howard Dean had 1000 votes, Lex Luthor had 500, and Tiger Woods had none. Dean was winning.
"Of course, you can't tamper with this software," Harris noted. Diebold wrote a pretty good program.
But, it's running on a Windows PC.
So Harris had Dean close the Diebold GEMS 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.
In the "Sum of the Candidates" row of numbers, she found that in one precinct Dean had received 800 votes and Lex Luthor had gotten 400.
"Let's just flip those," Harris said, as Dean cut and pasted the numbers from one cell into the other. "And," she added magnanimously, "let's give 100 votes to Tiger."
They closed the database, went back into the official GEMS software "the legitimate way, you're the county supervisor and you're checking on the progress of your election."
As the screen displayed the official voter tabulation, Harris said, "And you can see now that Howard Dean has only 500 votes, Lex Luthor has 900, and Tiger Woods has 100." Dean, the winner, was now the loser.
Harris sat up a bit straighter, smiled, and said, "We just edited an election, and it took us 90 seconds."
On live national television. (You can see the clip on www.votergate.tv)
Which brings us back to Morris and those pesky exit polls that had Karen Hughes telling George W. Bush that he'd lost the election in a landslide.
Morris's conspiracy theory is that the exit polls "were sabotage" to cause people in the western states to not bother voting for Bush, since the networks would call the election based on the exit polls for Kerry. But the networks didn't do that, and had never intended to. It makes far more sense that the exit polls were right - they weren't done on Diebold PCs - and that the vote itself was hacked.
And not only for the presidential candidate - Jeff Fisher thinks this hit him and pretty much every other Democratic candidate for national office in the most-hacked swing states.
So far, the only national "mainstream" media to come close to this story was Keith Olbermann on his show Friday night, November 5th, when he noted that it was curious that all the voting machine irregularities so far uncovered seem to favor Bush. In the meantime, the Washington Post and other media are now going through single-bullet-theory-like contortions to explain how the exit polls had failed.
But I agree with Fox's Dick Morris on this one, at least in large part. Wrapping up his story for The Hill, Morris wrote in his final paragraph, "This was no mere mistake. Exit polls cannot be as wrong across the board as they were on election night. I suspect foul play."
November 6th, 2004 6:53 pm
Evidence Mounts That The Vote May Have Been Hacked
by Thom Hartmann / Common Dreams
When I spoke with Jeff Fisher this morning (Saturday, November 06, 2004), the Democratic candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives from Florida's 16th District said he was waiting for the FBI to show up. Fisher has evidence, he says, not only that the Florida election was hacked, but of who hacked it and how. And not just this year, he said, but that these same people had previously hacked the Democratic primary race in 2002 so that Jeb Bush would not have to run against Janet Reno, who presented a real threat to Jeb, but instead against Bill McBride, who Jeb beat.
"It was practice for a national effort," Fisher told me.
And evidence is accumulating that the national effort happened on November 2, 2004.
The State of Florida, for example, publishes a county-by-county record of votes cast and people registered to vote by party affiliation. Net denizen Kathy Dopp compiled the official state information into a table, available at http://ustogether.org/Florida_Election.htm, and noticed something startling.
While the heavily scrutinized touch-screen voting machines seemed to produce results in which the registered Democrat/Republican ratios matched the Kerry/Bush vote, and so did the optically-scanned paper ballots in the larger counties, in Florida's smaller counties the results from the optically scanned paper ballots - fed into a central tabulator PC and thus vulnerable to hacking - seem to have been reversed.
In Baker County, for example, with 12,887 registered voters, 69.3% of them Democrats and 24.3% of them Republicans, the vote was only 2,180 for Kerry and 7,738 for Bush, the opposite of what is seen everywhere else in the country where registered Democrats largely voted for Kerry.
In Dixie County, with 4,988 registered voters, 77.5% of them Democrats and a mere 15% registered as Republicans, only 1,959 people voted for Kerry, but 4,433 voted for Bush.
The pattern repeats over and over again - but only in the smaller counties where, it was probably assumed, the small voter numbers wouldn't be much noticed. Franklin County, 77.3% registered Democrats, went 58.5% for Bush. Holmes County, 72.7% registered Democrats, went 77.25% for Bush.
Yet in the larger counties, where such anomalies would be more obvious to the news media, high percentages of registered Democrats equaled high percentages of votes for Kerry.
More visual analysis of the results can be seen at http://ustogether.org/election04/FloridaDataStats.htm, and www.rubberbug.com/temp/Florida2004chart.htm.
And, although elections officials didn't notice these anomalies, in aggregate they were enough to swing Florida from Kerry to Bush. If you simply go through the analysis of these counties and reverse the "anomalous" numbers in those counties that appear to have been hacked, suddenly the Florida election results resemble the Florida exit poll results: Kerry won, and won big.
Those exit poll results have been a problem for reporters ever since Election Day.
Election night, I'd been doing live election coverage for WDEV, one of the radio stations that carries my syndicated show, and, just after midnight, during the 12:20 a.m. Associated Press Radio News feed, I was startled to hear the reporter detail how Karen Hughes had earlier sat George W. Bush down to inform him that he'd lost the election. The exit polls were clear: Kerry was winning in a landslide. "Bush took the news stoically," noted the AP report.
But then the computers reported something different. In several pivotal states.
Conservatives see a conspiracy here: They think the exit polls were rigged.
Dick Morris, the infamous political consultant to the first Clinton campaign who became a Republican consultant and Fox News regular, wrote an article for The Hill, the publication read by every political junkie in Washington, DC, in which he made a couple of brilliant points.
"Exit Polls are almost never wrong," Morris wrote. "They eliminate the two major potential fallacies in survey research by correctly separating actual voters from those who pretend they will cast ballots but never do and by substituting actual observation for guesswork in judging the relative turnout of different parts of the state."
He added: "So, according to ABC-TVs exit polls, for example, Kerry was slated to carry Florida, Ohio, New Mexico, Colorado, Nevada, and Iowa, all of which Bush carried. The only swing state the network had going to Bush was West Virginia, which the president won by 10 points."
Yet a few hours after the exit polls were showing a clear Kerry sweep, as the computerized vote numbers began to come in from the various states the election was called for Bush.
How could this happen?
On the CNBC TV show "Topic A With Tina Brown," several months ago, Howard Dean had filled in for Tina Brown as guest host. His guest was Bev Harris, the Seattle grandmother who started www.blackboxvoting.org from her living room. Bev pointed out that regardless of how votes were tabulated (other than hand counts, only done in odd places like small towns in Vermont), the real "counting" is done by computers. Be they Diebold Opti-Scan machines, which read paper ballots filled in by pencil or ink in the voter's hand, or the scanners that read punch cards, or the machines that simply record a touch of the screen, in all cases the final tally is sent to a "central tabulator" machine.
That central tabulator computer is a Windows-based PC.
"In a voting system," Harris explained to Dean on national television, "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?"
Dean nodded in rhetorical agreement, and Harris continued. "What surprises people is that the central tabulator is just a PC, like what you and I use. It's just a regular computer."
"So," Dean said, "anybody who can hack into a PC can hack into a central tabulator?"
Harris nodded affirmation, and pointed out how Diebold uses a program called GEMS, which fills the screen of the PC and effectively turns it into the central tabulator system. "This is the official program that the County Supervisor sees," she said, pointing to a PC that was sitting between them loaded with Diebold's software.
Bev then had Dean open the GEMS program to see the results of a test election. They went to the screen titled "Election Summary Report" and waited a moment while the PC "adds up all the votes from all the various precincts," and then saw that in this faux election Howard Dean had 1000 votes, Lex Luthor had 500, and Tiger Woods had none. Dean was winning.
"Of course, you can't tamper with this software," Harris noted. Diebold wrote a pretty good program.
But, it's running on a Windows PC.
So Harris had Dean close the Diebold GEMS 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.
In the "Sum of the Candidates" row of numbers, she found that in one precinct Dean had received 800 votes and Lex Luthor had gotten 400.
"Let's just flip those," Harris said, as Dean cut and pasted the numbers from one cell into the other. "And," she added magnanimously, "let's give 100 votes to Tiger."
They closed the database, went back into the official GEMS software "the legitimate way, you're the county supervisor and you're checking on the progress of your election."
As the screen displayed the official voter tabulation, Harris said, "And you can see now that Howard Dean has only 500 votes, Lex Luthor has 900, and Tiger Woods has 100." Dean, the winner, was now the loser.
Harris sat up a bit straighter, smiled, and said, "We just edited an election, and it took us 90 seconds."
On live national television. (You can see the clip on www.votergate.tv)
Which brings us back to Morris and those pesky exit polls that had Karen Hughes telling George W. Bush that he'd lost the election in a landslide.
Morris's conspiracy theory is that the exit polls "were sabotage" to cause people in the western states to not bother voting for Bush, since the networks would call the election based on the exit polls for Kerry. But the networks didn't do that, and had never intended to. It makes far more sense that the exit polls were right - they weren't done on Diebold PCs - and that the vote itself was hacked.
And not only for the presidential candidate - Jeff Fisher thinks this hit him and pretty much every other Democratic candidate for national office in the most-hacked swing states.
So far, the only national "mainstream" media to come close to this story was Keith Olbermann on his show Friday night, November 5th, when he noted that it was curious that all the voting machine irregularities so far uncovered seem to favor Bush. In the meantime, the Washington Post and other media are now going through single-bullet-theory-like contortions to explain how the exit polls had failed.
But I agree with Fox's Dick Morris on this one, at least in large part. Wrapping up his story for The Hill, Morris wrote in his final paragraph, "This was no mere mistake. Exit polls cannot be as wrong across the board as they were on election night. I suspect foul play."
Bloglines | My Blogs
Bloglines | My Blogs
November 6th, 2004 6:53 pm
Evidence Mounts That The Vote May Have Been Hacked
by Thom Hartmann / Common Dreams
When I spoke with Jeff Fisher this morning (Saturday, November 06, 2004), the Democratic candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives from Florida's 16th District said he was waiting for the FBI to show up. Fisher has evidence, he says, not only that the Florida election was hacked, but of who hacked it and how. And not just this year, he said, but that these same people had previously hacked the Democratic primary race in 2002 so that Jeb Bush would not have to run against Janet Reno, who presented a real threat to Jeb, but instead against Bill McBride, who Jeb beat.
"It was practice for a national effort," Fisher told me.
And evidence is accumulating that the national effort happened on November 2, 2004.
The State of Florida, for example, publishes a county-by-county record of votes cast and people registered to vote by party affiliation. Net denizen Kathy Dopp compiled the official state information into a table, available at http://ustogether.org/Florida_Election.htm, and noticed something startling.
While the heavily scrutinized touch-screen voting machines seemed to produce results in which the registered Democrat/Republican ratios matched the Kerry/Bush vote, and so did the optically-scanned paper ballots in the larger counties, in Florida's smaller counties the results from the optically scanned paper ballots - fed into a central tabulator PC and thus vulnerable to hacking - seem to have been reversed.
In Baker County, for example, with 12,887 registered voters, 69.3% of them Democrats and 24.3% of them Republicans, the vote was only 2,180 for Kerry and 7,738 for Bush, the opposite of what is seen everywhere else in the country where registered Democrats largely voted for Kerry.
In Dixie County, with 4,988 registered voters, 77.5% of them Democrats and a mere 15% registered as Republicans, only 1,959 people voted for Kerry, but 4,433 voted for Bush.
The pattern repeats over and over again - but only in the smaller counties where, it was probably assumed, the small voter numbers wouldn't be much noticed. Franklin County, 77.3% registered Democrats, went 58.5% for Bush. Holmes County, 72.7% registered Democrats, went 77.25% for Bush.
Yet in the larger counties, where such anomalies would be more obvious to the news media, high percentages of registered Democrats equaled high percentages of votes for Kerry.
More visual analysis of the results can be seen at http://ustogether.org/election04/FloridaDataStats.htm, and www.rubberbug.com/temp/Florida2004chart.htm.
And, although elections officials didn't notice these anomalies, in aggregate they were enough to swing Florida from Kerry to Bush. If you simply go through the analysis of these counties and reverse the "anomalous" numbers in those counties that appear to have been hacked, suddenly the Florida election results resemble the Florida exit poll results: Kerry won, and won big.
Those exit poll results have been a problem for reporters ever since Election Day.
Election night, I'd been doing live election coverage for WDEV, one of the radio stations that carries my syndicated show, and, just after midnight, during the 12:20 a.m. Associated Press Radio News feed, I was startled to hear the reporter detail how Karen Hughes had earlier sat George W. Bush down to inform him that he'd lost the election. The exit polls were clear: Kerry was winning in a landslide. "Bush took the news stoically," noted the AP report.
But then the computers reported something different. In several pivotal states.
Conservatives see a conspiracy here: They think the exit polls were rigged.
Dick Morris, the infamous political consultant to the first Clinton campaign who became a Republican consultant and Fox News regular, wrote an article for The Hill, the publication read by every political junkie in Washington, DC, in which he made a couple of brilliant points.
"Exit Polls are almost never wrong," Morris wrote. "They eliminate the two major potential fallacies in survey research by correctly separating actual voters from those who pretend they will cast ballots but never do and by substituting actual observation for guesswork in judging the relative turnout of different parts of the state."
He added: "So, according to ABC-TVs exit polls, for example, Kerry was slated to carry Florida, Ohio, New Mexico, Colorado, Nevada, and Iowa, all of which Bush carried. The only swing state the network had going to Bush was West Virginia, which the president won by 10 points."
Yet a few hours after the exit polls were showing a clear Kerry sweep, as the computerized vote numbers began to come in from the various states the election was called for Bush.
How could this happen?
On the CNBC TV show "Topic A With Tina Brown," several months ago, Howard Dean had filled in for Tina Brown as guest host. His guest was Bev Harris, the Seattle grandmother who started www.blackboxvoting.org from her living room. Bev pointed out that regardless of how votes were tabulated (other than hand counts, only done in odd places like small towns in Vermont), the real "counting" is done by computers. Be they Diebold Opti-Scan machines, which read paper ballots filled in by pencil or ink in the voter's hand, or the scanners that read punch cards, or the machines that simply record a touch of the screen, in all cases the final tally is sent to a "central tabulator" machine.
That central tabulator computer is a Windows-based PC.
"In a voting system," Harris explained to Dean on national television, "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?"
Dean nodded in rhetorical agreement, and Harris continued. "What surprises people is that the central tabulator is just a PC, like what you and I use. It's just a regular computer."
"So," Dean said, "anybody who can hack into a PC can hack into a central tabulator?"
Harris nodded affirmation, and pointed out how Diebold uses a program called GEMS, which fills the screen of the PC and effectively turns it into the central tabulator system. "This is the official program that the County Supervisor sees," she said, pointing to a PC that was sitting between them loaded with Diebold's software.
Bev then had Dean open the GEMS program to see the results of a test election. They went to the screen titled "Election Summary Report" and waited a moment while the PC "adds up all the votes from all the various precincts," and then saw that in this faux election Howard Dean had 1000 votes, Lex Luthor had 500, and Tiger Woods had none. Dean was winning.
"Of course, you can't tamper with this software," Harris noted. Diebold wrote a pretty good program.
But, it's running on a Windows PC.
So Harris had Dean close the Diebold GEMS 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.
In the "Sum of the Candidates" row of numbers, she found that in one precinct Dean had received 800 votes and Lex Luthor had gotten 400.
"Let's just flip those," Harris said, as Dean cut and pasted the numbers from one cell into the other. "And," she added magnanimously, "let's give 100 votes to Tiger."
They closed the database, went back into the official GEMS software "the legitimate way, you're the county supervisor and you're checking on the progress of your election."
As the screen displayed the official voter tabulation, Harris said, "And you can see now that Howard Dean has only 500 votes, Lex Luthor has 900, and Tiger Woods has 100." Dean, the winner, was now the loser.
Harris sat up a bit straighter, smiled, and said, "We just edited an election, and it took us 90 seconds."
On live national television. (You can see the clip on www.votergate.tv)
Which brings us back to Morris and those pesky exit polls that had Karen Hughes telling George W. Bush that he'd lost the election in a landslide.
Morris's conspiracy theory is that the exit polls "were sabotage" to cause people in the western states to not bother voting for Bush, since the networks would call the election based on the exit polls for Kerry. But the networks didn't do that, and had never intended to. It makes far more sense that the exit polls were right - they weren't done on Diebold PCs - and that the vote itself was hacked.
And not only for the presidential candidate - Jeff Fisher thinks this hit him and pretty much every other Democratic candidate for national office in the most-hacked swing states.
So far, the only national "mainstream" media to come close to this story was Keith Olbermann on his show Friday night, November 5th, when he noted that it was curious that all the voting machine irregularities so far uncovered seem to favor Bush. In the meantime, the Washington Post and other media are now going through single-bullet-theory-like contortions to explain how the exit polls had failed.
But I agree with Fox's Dick Morris on this one, at least in large part. Wrapping up his story for The Hill, Morris wrote in his final paragraph, "This was no mere mistake. Exit polls cannot be as wrong across the board as they were on election night. I suspect foul play."
November 6th, 2004 6:53 pm
Evidence Mounts That The Vote May Have Been Hacked
by Thom Hartmann / Common Dreams
When I spoke with Jeff Fisher this morning (Saturday, November 06, 2004), the Democratic candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives from Florida's 16th District said he was waiting for the FBI to show up. Fisher has evidence, he says, not only that the Florida election was hacked, but of who hacked it and how. And not just this year, he said, but that these same people had previously hacked the Democratic primary race in 2002 so that Jeb Bush would not have to run against Janet Reno, who presented a real threat to Jeb, but instead against Bill McBride, who Jeb beat.
"It was practice for a national effort," Fisher told me.
And evidence is accumulating that the national effort happened on November 2, 2004.
The State of Florida, for example, publishes a county-by-county record of votes cast and people registered to vote by party affiliation. Net denizen Kathy Dopp compiled the official state information into a table, available at http://ustogether.org/Florida_Election.htm, and noticed something startling.
While the heavily scrutinized touch-screen voting machines seemed to produce results in which the registered Democrat/Republican ratios matched the Kerry/Bush vote, and so did the optically-scanned paper ballots in the larger counties, in Florida's smaller counties the results from the optically scanned paper ballots - fed into a central tabulator PC and thus vulnerable to hacking - seem to have been reversed.
In Baker County, for example, with 12,887 registered voters, 69.3% of them Democrats and 24.3% of them Republicans, the vote was only 2,180 for Kerry and 7,738 for Bush, the opposite of what is seen everywhere else in the country where registered Democrats largely voted for Kerry.
In Dixie County, with 4,988 registered voters, 77.5% of them Democrats and a mere 15% registered as Republicans, only 1,959 people voted for Kerry, but 4,433 voted for Bush.
The pattern repeats over and over again - but only in the smaller counties where, it was probably assumed, the small voter numbers wouldn't be much noticed. Franklin County, 77.3% registered Democrats, went 58.5% for Bush. Holmes County, 72.7% registered Democrats, went 77.25% for Bush.
Yet in the larger counties, where such anomalies would be more obvious to the news media, high percentages of registered Democrats equaled high percentages of votes for Kerry.
More visual analysis of the results can be seen at http://ustogether.org/election04/FloridaDataStats.htm, and www.rubberbug.com/temp/Florida2004chart.htm.
And, although elections officials didn't notice these anomalies, in aggregate they were enough to swing Florida from Kerry to Bush. If you simply go through the analysis of these counties and reverse the "anomalous" numbers in those counties that appear to have been hacked, suddenly the Florida election results resemble the Florida exit poll results: Kerry won, and won big.
Those exit poll results have been a problem for reporters ever since Election Day.
Election night, I'd been doing live election coverage for WDEV, one of the radio stations that carries my syndicated show, and, just after midnight, during the 12:20 a.m. Associated Press Radio News feed, I was startled to hear the reporter detail how Karen Hughes had earlier sat George W. Bush down to inform him that he'd lost the election. The exit polls were clear: Kerry was winning in a landslide. "Bush took the news stoically," noted the AP report.
But then the computers reported something different. In several pivotal states.
Conservatives see a conspiracy here: They think the exit polls were rigged.
Dick Morris, the infamous political consultant to the first Clinton campaign who became a Republican consultant and Fox News regular, wrote an article for The Hill, the publication read by every political junkie in Washington, DC, in which he made a couple of brilliant points.
"Exit Polls are almost never wrong," Morris wrote. "They eliminate the two major potential fallacies in survey research by correctly separating actual voters from those who pretend they will cast ballots but never do and by substituting actual observation for guesswork in judging the relative turnout of different parts of the state."
He added: "So, according to ABC-TVs exit polls, for example, Kerry was slated to carry Florida, Ohio, New Mexico, Colorado, Nevada, and Iowa, all of which Bush carried. The only swing state the network had going to Bush was West Virginia, which the president won by 10 points."
Yet a few hours after the exit polls were showing a clear Kerry sweep, as the computerized vote numbers began to come in from the various states the election was called for Bush.
How could this happen?
On the CNBC TV show "Topic A With Tina Brown," several months ago, Howard Dean had filled in for Tina Brown as guest host. His guest was Bev Harris, the Seattle grandmother who started www.blackboxvoting.org from her living room. Bev pointed out that regardless of how votes were tabulated (other than hand counts, only done in odd places like small towns in Vermont), the real "counting" is done by computers. Be they Diebold Opti-Scan machines, which read paper ballots filled in by pencil or ink in the voter's hand, or the scanners that read punch cards, or the machines that simply record a touch of the screen, in all cases the final tally is sent to a "central tabulator" machine.
That central tabulator computer is a Windows-based PC.
"In a voting system," Harris explained to Dean on national television, "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?"
Dean nodded in rhetorical agreement, and Harris continued. "What surprises people is that the central tabulator is just a PC, like what you and I use. It's just a regular computer."
"So," Dean said, "anybody who can hack into a PC can hack into a central tabulator?"
Harris nodded affirmation, and pointed out how Diebold uses a program called GEMS, which fills the screen of the PC and effectively turns it into the central tabulator system. "This is the official program that the County Supervisor sees," she said, pointing to a PC that was sitting between them loaded with Diebold's software.
Bev then had Dean open the GEMS program to see the results of a test election. They went to the screen titled "Election Summary Report" and waited a moment while the PC "adds up all the votes from all the various precincts," and then saw that in this faux election Howard Dean had 1000 votes, Lex Luthor had 500, and Tiger Woods had none. Dean was winning.
"Of course, you can't tamper with this software," Harris noted. Diebold wrote a pretty good program.
But, it's running on a Windows PC.
So Harris had Dean close the Diebold GEMS 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.
In the "Sum of the Candidates" row of numbers, she found that in one precinct Dean had received 800 votes and Lex Luthor had gotten 400.
"Let's just flip those," Harris said, as Dean cut and pasted the numbers from one cell into the other. "And," she added magnanimously, "let's give 100 votes to Tiger."
They closed the database, went back into the official GEMS software "the legitimate way, you're the county supervisor and you're checking on the progress of your election."
As the screen displayed the official voter tabulation, Harris said, "And you can see now that Howard Dean has only 500 votes, Lex Luthor has 900, and Tiger Woods has 100." Dean, the winner, was now the loser.
Harris sat up a bit straighter, smiled, and said, "We just edited an election, and it took us 90 seconds."
On live national television. (You can see the clip on www.votergate.tv)
Which brings us back to Morris and those pesky exit polls that had Karen Hughes telling George W. Bush that he'd lost the election in a landslide.
Morris's conspiracy theory is that the exit polls "were sabotage" to cause people in the western states to not bother voting for Bush, since the networks would call the election based on the exit polls for Kerry. But the networks didn't do that, and had never intended to. It makes far more sense that the exit polls were right - they weren't done on Diebold PCs - and that the vote itself was hacked.
And not only for the presidential candidate - Jeff Fisher thinks this hit him and pretty much every other Democratic candidate for national office in the most-hacked swing states.
So far, the only national "mainstream" media to come close to this story was Keith Olbermann on his show Friday night, November 5th, when he noted that it was curious that all the voting machine irregularities so far uncovered seem to favor Bush. In the meantime, the Washington Post and other media are now going through single-bullet-theory-like contortions to explain how the exit polls had failed.
But I agree with Fox's Dick Morris on this one, at least in large part. Wrapping up his story for The Hill, Morris wrote in his final paragraph, "This was no mere mistake. Exit polls cannot be as wrong across the board as they were on election night. I suspect foul play."
Saturday, November 06, 2004
Democratic Underground Forums - Palm Beach County Logs 88,000 More Votes Than Voters
Democratic Underground Forums - Palm Beach County Logs 88,000 More Votes Than Voters
Palm Beach County Logs 88,000 More Votes Than Voters
According to the official election results posted on the Palm Beach County election website, 542,835 ballots were cast for a presidential candidate while only 454,427 voters turned out for the election (including absentee). This leaves a discrepancy of 88,408 votes cast for the presidential candidates.
Palm Beach County's supervisor of elections is Theresa LePore who is known for the 2000 Presidential Election and the notorious "butterfly ballot" that caused confusion among seniors and other Floridians.
Other election oddities occurred throughout Florida with some counties registering a 400% increase in expected voter turnout among Republicans while Democrats supposedly experienced a -60% decline in expected support in certain counties. The 50+ counties experiencing the high percentage fluctuations in expected turnout used optical scan voting machines on November 2nd.
Vote discrepancies were also found in Gahanna, Ohio which gave an extra 4,000 votes to President Bush. The error was explained away by Franklin County administrators as a "glitch" in the electronic voting system.
Palm Beach County Logs 88,000 More Votes Than Voters
According to the official election results posted on the Palm Beach County election website, 542,835 ballots were cast for a presidential candidate while only 454,427 voters turned out for the election (including absentee). This leaves a discrepancy of 88,408 votes cast for the presidential candidates.
Palm Beach County's supervisor of elections is Theresa LePore who is known for the 2000 Presidential Election and the notorious "butterfly ballot" that caused confusion among seniors and other Floridians.
Other election oddities occurred throughout Florida with some counties registering a 400% increase in expected voter turnout among Republicans while Democrats supposedly experienced a -60% decline in expected support in certain counties. The 50+ counties experiencing the high percentage fluctuations in expected turnout used optical scan voting machines on November 2nd.
Vote discrepancies were also found in Gahanna, Ohio which gave an extra 4,000 votes to President Bush. The error was explained away by Franklin County administrators as a "glitch" in the electronic voting system.
Friday, November 05, 2004
Bloglines | My Blogs
Bloglines | My Blogs
Published on Thursday, November 4, 2004 by 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."
###
Published on Thursday, November 4, 2004 by 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."
###
Thursday, November 04, 2004
Alan Maass: Jon Stewart vs. the Pundits
Alan Maass: Jon Stewart vs. the Pundits
October 28, 2004
Jon Stewart vs. the Political Pundits
Political Satire 101
By ALAN MAASS
WE’RE SUPPOSED to live in a “beacon of democracy,” with a highly developed political system that makes us the envy of the world. So why is the host of a self-described “fake news” program responsible for many of the few-and-far-between moments of honesty in this year’s endless, mind-numbing, soul-deadening election campaign?
Jon Stewart and his fellow comedians at Comedy Central’s Daily Show are the unlikely stars of Election 2004. Their half-hour show--a satire of a nightly television news show that appears Monday through Thursday nights--has increased its ratings by 20 percent over last year as the presidential campaign has ground on toward Election Day. Stewart and nearly 20 other people who write or appear on the show are also responsible for the country’s best-selling book--America (The Book), a hilarious parody of the textbooks that grade school students continue to endure in government and history classes.
But Stewart’s notoriety reached new heights last week when he routed the puffed-up windbags on CNN’s political “debate” show, Crossfire.
Stewart went on Crossfire to promote the book, but he refused to play along when blowhard hosts Tucker Carlson and Paul Begala tried to clown around with him. Instead, he slammed Crossfire and the whole media machine for serving as a giant echo chamber for the dishonest, cynical sound bites of the powerful.
“Right now, you’re helping the politicians and the corporations,” Stewart said, as Carlson tried to shout him down. “You’re not too rough on them. You’re part of their strategies. You’re partisan--what do you call it--hacks.” Thanks to the Internet, the 15-minute segment has been watched and savored by millions.
The Crossfire appearance goes straight to the reason of why Stewart and the Daily Show are so popular. With the corporate journalism organized around flattering the politicians, instead of challenging them--no matter how outrageous the lies or how bloated the rhetoric--Stewart’s “fake news” ends up being more truthful about the reality of U.S. politics than all the Crossfires and Hardballs piled up in a great steaming heap.
John Kerry and the Democrats do get off easier--the show definitely saves its venom for the right wing, especially the strutting liars and warmongers of the Bush administration. But the Daily Show’s best moments are when it exposes the absurdities of the Washington system as a whole--and that inevitably means dishing up shots at both pro-corporate parties, since both are responsible for propping it up, even if the Republicans are more outrageously corrupt and cynical about it, especially at election time.
The same themes come across in America (The Book). Designed as a fake textbook, it comes complete with the standard semi-helpful illustrations and charts (“The Cabinet: Yes Men of Freedom”), discussion questions (“If you lived in a monarchy, would you rather be a king or a slave? Why?”) and suggested classroom activities (“Disenfranchise a Black student”).
The usual explanation of “how a bill becomes a law” is made much more realistic with the inclusion of “amendment-sneakin’ time,” in which lawmakers load on pork-barrel provisions, and “passing lobbyist muster,” where the hired hands of Corporate America “assist our representatives in any last-minute changes in language, content or intent necessary to insure their reelection funds.”
In a chapter on the media, the book abandons all pretence in a heartfelt rant. “These spineless cowards in the press have finally gone too far,” reads the first draft, before, uh, editorial revisions. “‘Was the president successful in convincing the country?’ Who gives a shit? Why not tell us if what he said was true? And the excuses. My God, the excuses! “Hey, we just give the people what they want. ‘What can we do, this administration is secretive.’ ‘But the last season of Friends really is news.’ The unmitigated gall of these weak-willed...You’re supposed to be helping us, you indecent piles of shit!”
Stewart and the Daily Show writers get in their election-year shots in a special 24-page section--plus a pullout feature that could have been produced by Socialist Worker: a boxing poster for a match pitting “Skull vs. Bones: The Thrilla in Vanilla. This time, it’s presidential.”
There are some misses when the book stoops to stupid and sometimes offensive stereotypes--something that seems to happen especially often when the subject roams beyond the borders of the U.S. And as on the Daily Show, Stewart and his fellow writers tend to be cynical about anyone associated with politics, including progressive and left-wing activists outraged by the very hypocrisy that the book points out, but committed to doing something about it.
But if your spirits are dragging under the weight of the hypocrisy and lies of this miserable election, you’ll want a copy of America (The Book) on hand for election night and after.
Today's Stories
October 28, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Kerrycrats and the War
October 28, 2004
Jon Stewart vs. the Political Pundits
Political Satire 101
By ALAN MAASS
WE’RE SUPPOSED to live in a “beacon of democracy,” with a highly developed political system that makes us the envy of the world. So why is the host of a self-described “fake news” program responsible for many of the few-and-far-between moments of honesty in this year’s endless, mind-numbing, soul-deadening election campaign?
Jon Stewart and his fellow comedians at Comedy Central’s Daily Show are the unlikely stars of Election 2004. Their half-hour show--a satire of a nightly television news show that appears Monday through Thursday nights--has increased its ratings by 20 percent over last year as the presidential campaign has ground on toward Election Day. Stewart and nearly 20 other people who write or appear on the show are also responsible for the country’s best-selling book--America (The Book), a hilarious parody of the textbooks that grade school students continue to endure in government and history classes.
But Stewart’s notoriety reached new heights last week when he routed the puffed-up windbags on CNN’s political “debate” show, Crossfire.
Stewart went on Crossfire to promote the book, but he refused to play along when blowhard hosts Tucker Carlson and Paul Begala tried to clown around with him. Instead, he slammed Crossfire and the whole media machine for serving as a giant echo chamber for the dishonest, cynical sound bites of the powerful.
“Right now, you’re helping the politicians and the corporations,” Stewart said, as Carlson tried to shout him down. “You’re not too rough on them. You’re part of their strategies. You’re partisan--what do you call it--hacks.” Thanks to the Internet, the 15-minute segment has been watched and savored by millions.
The Crossfire appearance goes straight to the reason of why Stewart and the Daily Show are so popular. With the corporate journalism organized around flattering the politicians, instead of challenging them--no matter how outrageous the lies or how bloated the rhetoric--Stewart’s “fake news” ends up being more truthful about the reality of U.S. politics than all the Crossfires and Hardballs piled up in a great steaming heap.
John Kerry and the Democrats do get off easier--the show definitely saves its venom for the right wing, especially the strutting liars and warmongers of the Bush administration. But the Daily Show’s best moments are when it exposes the absurdities of the Washington system as a whole--and that inevitably means dishing up shots at both pro-corporate parties, since both are responsible for propping it up, even if the Republicans are more outrageously corrupt and cynical about it, especially at election time.
The same themes come across in America (The Book). Designed as a fake textbook, it comes complete with the standard semi-helpful illustrations and charts (“The Cabinet: Yes Men of Freedom”), discussion questions (“If you lived in a monarchy, would you rather be a king or a slave? Why?”) and suggested classroom activities (“Disenfranchise a Black student”).
The usual explanation of “how a bill becomes a law” is made much more realistic with the inclusion of “amendment-sneakin’ time,” in which lawmakers load on pork-barrel provisions, and “passing lobbyist muster,” where the hired hands of Corporate America “assist our representatives in any last-minute changes in language, content or intent necessary to insure their reelection funds.”
In a chapter on the media, the book abandons all pretence in a heartfelt rant. “These spineless cowards in the press have finally gone too far,” reads the first draft, before, uh, editorial revisions. “‘Was the president successful in convincing the country?’ Who gives a shit? Why not tell us if what he said was true? And the excuses. My God, the excuses! “Hey, we just give the people what they want. ‘What can we do, this administration is secretive.’ ‘But the last season of Friends really is news.’ The unmitigated gall of these weak-willed...You’re supposed to be helping us, you indecent piles of shit!”
Stewart and the Daily Show writers get in their election-year shots in a special 24-page section--plus a pullout feature that could have been produced by Socialist Worker: a boxing poster for a match pitting “Skull vs. Bones: The Thrilla in Vanilla. This time, it’s presidential.”
There are some misses when the book stoops to stupid and sometimes offensive stereotypes--something that seems to happen especially often when the subject roams beyond the borders of the U.S. And as on the Daily Show, Stewart and his fellow writers tend to be cynical about anyone associated with politics, including progressive and left-wing activists outraged by the very hypocrisy that the book points out, but committed to doing something about it.
But if your spirits are dragging under the weight of the hypocrisy and lies of this miserable election, you’ll want a copy of America (The Book) on hand for election night and after.
Today's Stories
October 28, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Kerrycrats and the War
Alan Maass: Jon Stewart vs. the Pundits
Alan Maass: Jon Stewart vs. the Pundits
October 28, 2004
Jon Stewart vs. the Political Pundits
Political Satire 101
By ALAN MAASS
WE’RE SUPPOSED to live in a “beacon of democracy,” with a highly developed political system that makes us the envy of the world. So why is the host of a self-described “fake news” program responsible for many of the few-and-far-between moments of honesty in this year’s endless, mind-numbing, soul-deadening election campaign?
Jon Stewart and his fellow comedians at Comedy Central’s Daily Show are the unlikely stars of Election 2004. Their half-hour show--a satire of a nightly television news show that appears Monday through Thursday nights--has increased its ratings by 20 percent over last year as the presidential campaign has ground on toward Election Day. Stewart and nearly 20 other people who write or appear on the show are also responsible for the country’s best-selling book--America (The Book), a hilarious parody of the textbooks that grade school students continue to endure in government and history classes.
But Stewart’s notoriety reached new heights last week when he routed the puffed-up windbags on CNN’s political “debate” show, Crossfire.
Stewart went on Crossfire to promote the book, but he refused to play along when blowhard hosts Tucker Carlson and Paul Begala tried to clown around with him. Instead, he slammed Crossfire and the whole media machine for serving as a giant echo chamber for the dishonest, cynical sound bites of the powerful.
“Right now, you’re helping the politicians and the corporations,” Stewart said, as Carlson tried to shout him down. “You’re not too rough on them. You’re part of their strategies. You’re partisan--what do you call it--hacks.” Thanks to the Internet, the 15-minute segment has been watched and savored by millions.
The Crossfire appearance goes straight to the reason of why Stewart and the Daily Show are so popular. With the corporate journalism organized around flattering the politicians, instead of challenging them--no matter how outrageous the lies or how bloated the rhetoric--Stewart’s “fake news” ends up being more truthful about the reality of U.S. politics than all the Crossfires and Hardballs piled up in a great steaming heap.
John Kerry and the Democrats do get off easier--the show definitely saves its venom for the right wing, especially the strutting liars and warmongers of the Bush administration. But the Daily Show’s best moments are when it exposes the absurdities of the Washington system as a whole--and that inevitably means dishing up shots at both pro-corporate parties, since both are responsible for propping it up, even if the Republicans are more outrageously corrupt and cynical about it, especially at election time.
The same themes come across in America (The Book). Designed as a fake textbook, it comes complete with the standard semi-helpful illustrations and charts (“The Cabinet: Yes Men of Freedom”), discussion questions (“If you lived in a monarchy, would you rather be a king or a slave? Why?”) and suggested classroom activities (“Disenfranchise a Black student”).
The usual explanation of “how a bill becomes a law” is made much more realistic with the inclusion of “amendment-sneakin’ time,” in which lawmakers load on pork-barrel provisions, and “passing lobbyist muster,” where the hired hands of Corporate America “assist our representatives in any last-minute changes in language, content or intent necessary to insure their reelection funds.”
In a chapter on the media, the book abandons all pretence in a heartfelt rant. “These spineless cowards in the press have finally gone too far,” reads the first draft, before, uh, editorial revisions. “‘Was the president successful in convincing the country?’ Who gives a shit? Why not tell us if what he said was true? And the excuses. My God, the excuses! “Hey, we just give the people what they want. ‘What can we do, this administration is secretive.’ ‘But the last season of Friends really is news.’ The unmitigated gall of these weak-willed...You’re supposed to be helping us, you indecent piles of shit!”
Stewart and the Daily Show writers get in their election-year shots in a special 24-page section--plus a pullout feature that could have been produced by Socialist Worker: a boxing poster for a match pitting “Skull vs. Bones: The Thrilla in Vanilla. This time, it’s presidential.”
There are some misses when the book stoops to stupid and sometimes offensive stereotypes--something that seems to happen especially often when the subject roams beyond the borders of the U.S. And as on the Daily Show, Stewart and his fellow writers tend to be cynical about anyone associated with politics, including progressive and left-wing activists outraged by the very hypocrisy that the book points out, but committed to doing something about it.
But if your spirits are dragging under the weight of the hypocrisy and lies of this miserable election, you’ll want a copy of America (The Book) on hand for election night and after.
Today's Stories
October 28, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Kerrycrats and the War
October 28, 2004
Jon Stewart vs. the Political Pundits
Political Satire 101
By ALAN MAASS
WE’RE SUPPOSED to live in a “beacon of democracy,” with a highly developed political system that makes us the envy of the world. So why is the host of a self-described “fake news” program responsible for many of the few-and-far-between moments of honesty in this year’s endless, mind-numbing, soul-deadening election campaign?
Jon Stewart and his fellow comedians at Comedy Central’s Daily Show are the unlikely stars of Election 2004. Their half-hour show--a satire of a nightly television news show that appears Monday through Thursday nights--has increased its ratings by 20 percent over last year as the presidential campaign has ground on toward Election Day. Stewart and nearly 20 other people who write or appear on the show are also responsible for the country’s best-selling book--America (The Book), a hilarious parody of the textbooks that grade school students continue to endure in government and history classes.
But Stewart’s notoriety reached new heights last week when he routed the puffed-up windbags on CNN’s political “debate” show, Crossfire.
Stewart went on Crossfire to promote the book, but he refused to play along when blowhard hosts Tucker Carlson and Paul Begala tried to clown around with him. Instead, he slammed Crossfire and the whole media machine for serving as a giant echo chamber for the dishonest, cynical sound bites of the powerful.
“Right now, you’re helping the politicians and the corporations,” Stewart said, as Carlson tried to shout him down. “You’re not too rough on them. You’re part of their strategies. You’re partisan--what do you call it--hacks.” Thanks to the Internet, the 15-minute segment has been watched and savored by millions.
The Crossfire appearance goes straight to the reason of why Stewart and the Daily Show are so popular. With the corporate journalism organized around flattering the politicians, instead of challenging them--no matter how outrageous the lies or how bloated the rhetoric--Stewart’s “fake news” ends up being more truthful about the reality of U.S. politics than all the Crossfires and Hardballs piled up in a great steaming heap.
John Kerry and the Democrats do get off easier--the show definitely saves its venom for the right wing, especially the strutting liars and warmongers of the Bush administration. But the Daily Show’s best moments are when it exposes the absurdities of the Washington system as a whole--and that inevitably means dishing up shots at both pro-corporate parties, since both are responsible for propping it up, even if the Republicans are more outrageously corrupt and cynical about it, especially at election time.
The same themes come across in America (The Book). Designed as a fake textbook, it comes complete with the standard semi-helpful illustrations and charts (“The Cabinet: Yes Men of Freedom”), discussion questions (“If you lived in a monarchy, would you rather be a king or a slave? Why?”) and suggested classroom activities (“Disenfranchise a Black student”).
The usual explanation of “how a bill becomes a law” is made much more realistic with the inclusion of “amendment-sneakin’ time,” in which lawmakers load on pork-barrel provisions, and “passing lobbyist muster,” where the hired hands of Corporate America “assist our representatives in any last-minute changes in language, content or intent necessary to insure their reelection funds.”
In a chapter on the media, the book abandons all pretence in a heartfelt rant. “These spineless cowards in the press have finally gone too far,” reads the first draft, before, uh, editorial revisions. “‘Was the president successful in convincing the country?’ Who gives a shit? Why not tell us if what he said was true? And the excuses. My God, the excuses! “Hey, we just give the people what they want. ‘What can we do, this administration is secretive.’ ‘But the last season of Friends really is news.’ The unmitigated gall of these weak-willed...You’re supposed to be helping us, you indecent piles of shit!”
Stewart and the Daily Show writers get in their election-year shots in a special 24-page section--plus a pullout feature that could have been produced by Socialist Worker: a boxing poster for a match pitting “Skull vs. Bones: The Thrilla in Vanilla. This time, it’s presidential.”
There are some misses when the book stoops to stupid and sometimes offensive stereotypes--something that seems to happen especially often when the subject roams beyond the borders of the U.S. And as on the Daily Show, Stewart and his fellow writers tend to be cynical about anyone associated with politics, including progressive and left-wing activists outraged by the very hypocrisy that the book points out, but committed to doing something about it.
But if your spirits are dragging under the weight of the hypocrisy and lies of this miserable election, you’ll want a copy of America (The Book) on hand for election night and after.
Today's Stories
October 28, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Kerrycrats and the War
Alan Maass: Jon Stewart vs. the Pundits
Alan Maass: Jon Stewart vs. the Pundits
October 28, 2004
Jon Stewart vs. the Political Pundits
Political Satire 101
By ALAN MAASS
WE’RE SUPPOSED to live in a “beacon of democracy,” with a highly developed political system that makes us the envy of the world. So why is the host of a self-described “fake news” program responsible for many of the few-and-far-between moments of honesty in this year’s endless, mind-numbing, soul-deadening election campaign?
Jon Stewart and his fellow comedians at Comedy Central’s Daily Show are the unlikely stars of Election 2004. Their half-hour show--a satire of a nightly television news show that appears Monday through Thursday nights--has increased its ratings by 20 percent over last year as the presidential campaign has ground on toward Election Day. Stewart and nearly 20 other people who write or appear on the show are also responsible for the country’s best-selling book--America (The Book), a hilarious parody of the textbooks that grade school students continue to endure in government and history classes.
But Stewart’s notoriety reached new heights last week when he routed the puffed-up windbags on CNN’s political “debate” show, Crossfire.
Stewart went on Crossfire to promote the book, but he refused to play along when blowhard hosts Tucker Carlson and Paul Begala tried to clown around with him. Instead, he slammed Crossfire and the whole media machine for serving as a giant echo chamber for the dishonest, cynical sound bites of the powerful.
“Right now, you’re helping the politicians and the corporations,” Stewart said, as Carlson tried to shout him down. “You’re not too rough on them. You’re part of their strategies. You’re partisan--what do you call it--hacks.” Thanks to the Internet, the 15-minute segment has been watched and savored by millions.
The Crossfire appearance goes straight to the reason of why Stewart and the Daily Show are so popular. With the corporate journalism organized around flattering the politicians, instead of challenging them--no matter how outrageous the lies or how bloated the rhetoric--Stewart’s “fake news” ends up being more truthful about the reality of U.S. politics than all the Crossfires and Hardballs piled up in a great steaming heap.
John Kerry and the Democrats do get off easier--the show definitely saves its venom for the right wing, especially the strutting liars and warmongers of the Bush administration. But the Daily Show’s best moments are when it exposes the absurdities of the Washington system as a whole--and that inevitably means dishing up shots at both pro-corporate parties, since both are responsible for propping it up, even if the Republicans are more outrageously corrupt and cynical about it, especially at election time.
The same themes come across in America (The Book). Designed as a fake textbook, it comes complete with the standard semi-helpful illustrations and charts (“The Cabinet: Yes Men of Freedom”), discussion questions (“If you lived in a monarchy, would you rather be a king or a slave? Why?”) and suggested classroom activities (“Disenfranchise a Black student”).
The usual explanation of “how a bill becomes a law” is made much more realistic with the inclusion of “amendment-sneakin’ time,” in which lawmakers load on pork-barrel provisions, and “passing lobbyist muster,” where the hired hands of Corporate America “assist our representatives in any last-minute changes in language, content or intent necessary to insure their reelection funds.”
In a chapter on the media, the book abandons all pretence in a heartfelt rant. “These spineless cowards in the press have finally gone too far,” reads the first draft, before, uh, editorial revisions. “‘Was the president successful in convincing the country?’ Who gives a shit? Why not tell us if what he said was true? And the excuses. My God, the excuses! “Hey, we just give the people what they want. ‘What can we do, this administration is secretive.’ ‘But the last season of Friends really is news.’ The unmitigated gall of these weak-willed...You’re supposed to be helping us, you indecent piles of shit!”
Stewart and the Daily Show writers get in their election-year shots in a special 24-page section--plus a pullout feature that could have been produced by Socialist Worker: a boxing poster for a match pitting “Skull vs. Bones: The Thrilla in Vanilla. This time, it’s presidential.”
There are some misses when the book stoops to stupid and sometimes offensive stereotypes--something that seems to happen especially often when the subject roams beyond the borders of the U.S. And as on the Daily Show, Stewart and his fellow writers tend to be cynical about anyone associated with politics, including progressive and left-wing activists outraged by the very hypocrisy that the book points out, but committed to doing something about it.
But if your spirits are dragging under the weight of the hypocrisy and lies of this miserable election, you’ll want a copy of America (The Book) on hand for election night and after.
Today's Stories
October 28, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Kerrycrats and the War
October 28, 2004
Jon Stewart vs. the Political Pundits
Political Satire 101
By ALAN MAASS
WE’RE SUPPOSED to live in a “beacon of democracy,” with a highly developed political system that makes us the envy of the world. So why is the host of a self-described “fake news” program responsible for many of the few-and-far-between moments of honesty in this year’s endless, mind-numbing, soul-deadening election campaign?
Jon Stewart and his fellow comedians at Comedy Central’s Daily Show are the unlikely stars of Election 2004. Their half-hour show--a satire of a nightly television news show that appears Monday through Thursday nights--has increased its ratings by 20 percent over last year as the presidential campaign has ground on toward Election Day. Stewart and nearly 20 other people who write or appear on the show are also responsible for the country’s best-selling book--America (The Book), a hilarious parody of the textbooks that grade school students continue to endure in government and history classes.
But Stewart’s notoriety reached new heights last week when he routed the puffed-up windbags on CNN’s political “debate” show, Crossfire.
Stewart went on Crossfire to promote the book, but he refused to play along when blowhard hosts Tucker Carlson and Paul Begala tried to clown around with him. Instead, he slammed Crossfire and the whole media machine for serving as a giant echo chamber for the dishonest, cynical sound bites of the powerful.
“Right now, you’re helping the politicians and the corporations,” Stewart said, as Carlson tried to shout him down. “You’re not too rough on them. You’re part of their strategies. You’re partisan--what do you call it--hacks.” Thanks to the Internet, the 15-minute segment has been watched and savored by millions.
The Crossfire appearance goes straight to the reason of why Stewart and the Daily Show are so popular. With the corporate journalism organized around flattering the politicians, instead of challenging them--no matter how outrageous the lies or how bloated the rhetoric--Stewart’s “fake news” ends up being more truthful about the reality of U.S. politics than all the Crossfires and Hardballs piled up in a great steaming heap.
John Kerry and the Democrats do get off easier--the show definitely saves its venom for the right wing, especially the strutting liars and warmongers of the Bush administration. But the Daily Show’s best moments are when it exposes the absurdities of the Washington system as a whole--and that inevitably means dishing up shots at both pro-corporate parties, since both are responsible for propping it up, even if the Republicans are more outrageously corrupt and cynical about it, especially at election time.
The same themes come across in America (The Book). Designed as a fake textbook, it comes complete with the standard semi-helpful illustrations and charts (“The Cabinet: Yes Men of Freedom”), discussion questions (“If you lived in a monarchy, would you rather be a king or a slave? Why?”) and suggested classroom activities (“Disenfranchise a Black student”).
The usual explanation of “how a bill becomes a law” is made much more realistic with the inclusion of “amendment-sneakin’ time,” in which lawmakers load on pork-barrel provisions, and “passing lobbyist muster,” where the hired hands of Corporate America “assist our representatives in any last-minute changes in language, content or intent necessary to insure their reelection funds.”
In a chapter on the media, the book abandons all pretence in a heartfelt rant. “These spineless cowards in the press have finally gone too far,” reads the first draft, before, uh, editorial revisions. “‘Was the president successful in convincing the country?’ Who gives a shit? Why not tell us if what he said was true? And the excuses. My God, the excuses! “Hey, we just give the people what they want. ‘What can we do, this administration is secretive.’ ‘But the last season of Friends really is news.’ The unmitigated gall of these weak-willed...You’re supposed to be helping us, you indecent piles of shit!”
Stewart and the Daily Show writers get in their election-year shots in a special 24-page section--plus a pullout feature that could have been produced by Socialist Worker: a boxing poster for a match pitting “Skull vs. Bones: The Thrilla in Vanilla. This time, it’s presidential.”
There are some misses when the book stoops to stupid and sometimes offensive stereotypes--something that seems to happen especially often when the subject roams beyond the borders of the U.S. And as on the Daily Show, Stewart and his fellow writers tend to be cynical about anyone associated with politics, including progressive and left-wing activists outraged by the very hypocrisy that the book points out, but committed to doing something about it.
But if your spirits are dragging under the weight of the hypocrisy and lies of this miserable election, you’ll want a copy of America (The Book) on hand for election night and after.
Today's Stories
October 28, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Kerrycrats and the War
Donna J. Volatile: Ahoy Kerrycrats!
Donna J. Volatile: Ahoy Kerrycrats!
November 4, 2004
Ahoy Kerrycrats!
Welcome to Our Nightmare
By DONNA J. VOLATILE
It is now the morning after, the morning after, and Kerry supporters should be moving from mourning into anger as the ice cold splash of reality begins to settle in.
Your guy lost, plain and simple but was he really your guy to begin with?
Most of the people who got behind Kerry were people vehemently opposed to the war in Iraq and the use of pre-emptive strikes. Most of you are caring, thoughtful and intelligent people who truly wanted to make a difference. Yet, in mass you got behind a man who didn't represent your ideas and values, a man who couldn't define himself or differentiate himself from his opponent, a man who supported the invasion of Iraq and continued to do so throughout his campaign. Was Kerry really your guy?
All of you claimed you wanted regime change! Some of you really believed your guy would be capable of saving the country by implem! enting real change but many of you got behind Kerry because anybody would be better than Bush.
Hey, don't feel too bad, you were in some pretty good company! You had a wagon load of intellectuals, progressives and even some down right radicals that climbed on board the same bus. You all fed into the fear factor, not the Republican one, spewing trumped up terror alerts and threats but rather the one put forward by the Democrats: DON'T VOTE FOR NADER OR ELSE!
The Republicans cleverly played the fear factor and the terror card but the Democrats were equally duplicitous and devious in their political maneuvering. I wonder if it ever occurred to any of you just how un-democratic the democrats truly were throughout the course of this election? The Democrats didn't promote democracy, they impeded it and in the end, they decimated the third party alternative and spent billions of dollars doing it.
Regardless of whether! or not the Bush cartel stole yet another election (and there is plenty of evidence to suggest they did...), you backed the wrong horse. A chimpanzee was able to figure out a Diebold electronic voting machine faster than any of you pushing buttons for Kerry. I'm sorry, I don't wish to be mean. The truth hurts and you've got to hear it, better to hear from a friend who knows that in spite of good intentions you all behaved like naive and errant children.
So, here's the reality, slowly sinking in, as another day dawns over the evil Bush Empire: we cannot change the system from within. The Democratic party is washed up. You were failed by Kerry and by the party that foisted him upon you, against your better judgment.
There was no choice in this election! Repeat after me: There was no choice in this election, only the illusion of choice, more than that, the bill of goods you were sold was the illusion of democracy. Maintaining that illusion cost billions of dollars, like an over budgeted Hollywood epic that fails at the box office, that money would have better spent elsewhere.
Now, those of us that didn't jump on the Kerry bus were greatly relieved and yes, we gloated just a little bit but by the time John Kerry conceded, few of us had any doubts: the fix was in. Kerry caved before they had a chance to tally the remaining votes! Once again, just as in 2000, the democrats didn't put up any fight and instead called for unity. Unity?! Everybody just fall in line, get with the program, let bygones be bygones, let's all learn to get along, after one of the most emotional and divisive political campaigns in our history?!
Well, all of this may have come as a shock to many of you and some of you are probably still reeling from the aftermath but most of us: the anybody but Bush and Kerry crowd, those of us who voted our conscience, not out of fear, tried to warn you early on that this would be the probable outcome.
Okay, all that being said, where do we go from here?
THE OLIVE BRANCH AND THE SWORD
We invite all of you back into the fold but understand, we're not among those who want to reinvent the Democratic party. Those days are through. They have proved they aren't worth another minute of our time. Were inviting you into a new world, a better world. This is a place were we the people decide what we want for our country and who should lead us there. We do not accept the lack of choice that has been imposed on our society. We will create our own choices. We have the power to do that. Out with the old worn out two party system: De! mocrats and Republicans, which now clearly resembles the one party, no alternative debacle.
How to get there? This battle starts today! Dry your eyes, dust off your bottoms and pull yourselves back together! Do not mourn! Become indignant and get ready for the fight! Take back your power! There is no room for defeatism and despair. We don't have time to feel sorry for ourselves. We need to get busy organizing the third party alternative: the party of, for and by the people!
Do not offer unity to the powers that be, not to the Democrats, not to the Republicans, let us all unite under a new banner, a banner of real choice, one that offers real leadership and represents the good in us all. We are peace loving people who believe in social justice and equality for all! We can make it happen if we band together under one common flag: the flag of humanity.
Every society needs a little revolution now and then. The Revolution starts now!
Donna J. Volatile is an un-produced, radical screenwriter living in New Mexico. She can be reached at: djvolatile2@yahoo.com
November 4, 2004
Ahoy Kerrycrats!
Welcome to Our Nightmare
By DONNA J. VOLATILE
It is now the morning after, the morning after, and Kerry supporters should be moving from mourning into anger as the ice cold splash of reality begins to settle in.
Your guy lost, plain and simple but was he really your guy to begin with?
Most of the people who got behind Kerry were people vehemently opposed to the war in Iraq and the use of pre-emptive strikes. Most of you are caring, thoughtful and intelligent people who truly wanted to make a difference. Yet, in mass you got behind a man who didn't represent your ideas and values, a man who couldn't define himself or differentiate himself from his opponent, a man who supported the invasion of Iraq and continued to do so throughout his campaign. Was Kerry really your guy?
All of you claimed you wanted regime change! Some of you really believed your guy would be capable of saving the country by implem! enting real change but many of you got behind Kerry because anybody would be better than Bush.
Hey, don't feel too bad, you were in some pretty good company! You had a wagon load of intellectuals, progressives and even some down right radicals that climbed on board the same bus. You all fed into the fear factor, not the Republican one, spewing trumped up terror alerts and threats but rather the one put forward by the Democrats: DON'T VOTE FOR NADER OR ELSE!
The Republicans cleverly played the fear factor and the terror card but the Democrats were equally duplicitous and devious in their political maneuvering. I wonder if it ever occurred to any of you just how un-democratic the democrats truly were throughout the course of this election? The Democrats didn't promote democracy, they impeded it and in the end, they decimated the third party alternative and spent billions of dollars doing it.
Regardless of whether! or not the Bush cartel stole yet another election (and there is plenty of evidence to suggest they did...), you backed the wrong horse. A chimpanzee was able to figure out a Diebold electronic voting machine faster than any of you pushing buttons for Kerry. I'm sorry, I don't wish to be mean. The truth hurts and you've got to hear it, better to hear from a friend who knows that in spite of good intentions you all behaved like naive and errant children.
So, here's the reality, slowly sinking in, as another day dawns over the evil Bush Empire: we cannot change the system from within. The Democratic party is washed up. You were failed by Kerry and by the party that foisted him upon you, against your better judgment.
There was no choice in this election! Repeat after me: There was no choice in this election, only the illusion of choice, more than that, the bill of goods you were sold was the illusion of democracy. Maintaining that illusion cost billions of dollars, like an over budgeted Hollywood epic that fails at the box office, that money would have better spent elsewhere.
Now, those of us that didn't jump on the Kerry bus were greatly relieved and yes, we gloated just a little bit but by the time John Kerry conceded, few of us had any doubts: the fix was in. Kerry caved before they had a chance to tally the remaining votes! Once again, just as in 2000, the democrats didn't put up any fight and instead called for unity. Unity?! Everybody just fall in line, get with the program, let bygones be bygones, let's all learn to get along, after one of the most emotional and divisive political campaigns in our history?!
Well, all of this may have come as a shock to many of you and some of you are probably still reeling from the aftermath but most of us: the anybody but Bush and Kerry crowd, those of us who voted our conscience, not out of fear, tried to warn you early on that this would be the probable outcome.
Okay, all that being said, where do we go from here?
THE OLIVE BRANCH AND THE SWORD
We invite all of you back into the fold but understand, we're not among those who want to reinvent the Democratic party. Those days are through. They have proved they aren't worth another minute of our time. Were inviting you into a new world, a better world. This is a place were we the people decide what we want for our country and who should lead us there. We do not accept the lack of choice that has been imposed on our society. We will create our own choices. We have the power to do that. Out with the old worn out two party system: De! mocrats and Republicans, which now clearly resembles the one party, no alternative debacle.
How to get there? This battle starts today! Dry your eyes, dust off your bottoms and pull yourselves back together! Do not mourn! Become indignant and get ready for the fight! Take back your power! There is no room for defeatism and despair. We don't have time to feel sorry for ourselves. We need to get busy organizing the third party alternative: the party of, for and by the people!
Do not offer unity to the powers that be, not to the Democrats, not to the Republicans, let us all unite under a new banner, a banner of real choice, one that offers real leadership and represents the good in us all. We are peace loving people who believe in social justice and equality for all! We can make it happen if we band together under one common flag: the flag of humanity.
Every society needs a little revolution now and then. The Revolution starts now!
Donna J. Volatile is an un-produced, radical screenwriter living in New Mexico. She can be reached at: djvolatile2@yahoo.com
Donna J. Volatile: Ahoy Kerrycrats!
Donna J. Volatile: Ahoy Kerrycrats!
November 4, 2004
Ahoy Kerrycrats!
Welcome to Our Nightmare
By DONNA J. VOLATILE
It is now the morning after, the morning after, and Kerry supporters should be moving from mourning into anger as the ice cold splash of reality begins to settle in.
Your guy lost, plain and simple but was he really your guy to begin with?
Most of the people who got behind Kerry were people vehemently opposed to the war in Iraq and the use of pre-emptive strikes. Most of you are caring, thoughtful and intelligent people who truly wanted to make a difference. Yet, in mass you got behind a man who didn't represent your ideas and values, a man who couldn't define himself or differentiate himself from his opponent, a man who supported the invasion of Iraq and continued to do so throughout his campaign. Was Kerry really your guy?
All of you claimed you wanted regime change! Some of you really believed your guy would be capable of saving the country by implem! enting real change but many of you got behind Kerry because anybody would be better than Bush.
Hey, don't feel too bad, you were in some pretty good company! You had a wagon load of intellectuals, progressives and even some down right radicals that climbed on board the same bus. You all fed into the fear factor, not the Republican one, spewing trumped up terror alerts and threats but rather the one put forward by the Democrats: DON'T VOTE FOR NADER OR ELSE!
The Republicans cleverly played the fear factor and the terror card but the Democrats were equally duplicitous and devious in their political maneuvering. I wonder if it ever occurred to any of you just how un-democratic the democrats truly were throughout the course of this election? The Democrats didn't promote democracy, they impeded it and in the end, they decimated the third party alternative and spent billions of dollars doing it.
Regardless of whether! or not the Bush cartel stole yet another election (and there is plenty of evidence to suggest they did...), you backed the wrong horse. A chimpanzee was able to figure out a Diebold electronic voting machine faster than any of you pushing buttons for Kerry. I'm sorry, I don't wish to be mean. The truth hurts and you've got to hear it, better to hear from a friend who knows that in spite of good intentions you all behaved like naive and errant children.
So, here's the reality, slowly sinking in, as another day dawns over the evil Bush Empire: we cannot change the system from within. The Democratic party is washed up. You were failed by Kerry and by the party that foisted him upon you, against your better judgment.
There was no choice in this election! Repeat after me: There was no choice in this election, only the illusion of choice, more than that, the bill of goods you were sold was the illusion of democracy. Maintaining that illusion cost billions of dollars, like an over budgeted Hollywood epic that fails at the box office, that money would have better spent elsewhere.
Now, those of us that didn't jump on the Kerry bus were greatly relieved and yes, we gloated just a little bit but by the time John Kerry conceded, few of us had any doubts: the fix was in. Kerry caved before they had a chance to tally the remaining votes! Once again, just as in 2000, the democrats didn't put up any fight and instead called for unity. Unity?! Everybody just fall in line, get with the program, let bygones be bygones, let's all learn to get along, after one of the most emotional and divisive political campaigns in our history?!
Well, all of this may have come as a shock to many of you and some of you are probably still reeling from the aftermath but most of us: the anybody but Bush and Kerry crowd, those of us who voted our conscience, not out of fear, tried to warn you early on that this would be the probable outcome.
Okay, all that being said, where do we go from here?
THE OLIVE BRANCH AND THE SWORD
We invite all of you back into the fold but understand, we're not among those who want to reinvent the Democratic party. Those days are through. They have proved they aren't worth another minute of our time. Were inviting you into a new world, a better world. This is a place were we the people decide what we want for our country and who should lead us there. We do not accept the lack of choice that has been imposed on our society. We will create our own choices. We have the power to do that. Out with the old worn out two party system: De! mocrats and Republicans, which now clearly resembles the one party, no alternative debacle.
How to get there? This battle starts today! Dry your eyes, dust off your bottoms and pull yourselves back together! Do not mourn! Become indignant and get ready for the fight! Take back your power! There is no room for defeatism and despair. We don't have time to feel sorry for ourselves. We need to get busy organizing the third party alternative: the party of, for and by the people!
Do not offer unity to the powers that be, not to the Democrats, not to the Republicans, let us all unite under a new banner, a banner of real choice, one that offers real leadership and represents the good in us all. We are peace loving people who believe in social justice and equality for all! We can make it happen if we band together under one common flag: the flag of humanity.
Every society needs a little revolution now and then. The Revolution starts now!
Donna J. Volatile is an un-produced, radical screenwriter living in New Mexico. She can be reached at: djvolatile2@yahoo.com
November 4, 2004
Ahoy Kerrycrats!
Welcome to Our Nightmare
By DONNA J. VOLATILE
It is now the morning after, the morning after, and Kerry supporters should be moving from mourning into anger as the ice cold splash of reality begins to settle in.
Your guy lost, plain and simple but was he really your guy to begin with?
Most of the people who got behind Kerry were people vehemently opposed to the war in Iraq and the use of pre-emptive strikes. Most of you are caring, thoughtful and intelligent people who truly wanted to make a difference. Yet, in mass you got behind a man who didn't represent your ideas and values, a man who couldn't define himself or differentiate himself from his opponent, a man who supported the invasion of Iraq and continued to do so throughout his campaign. Was Kerry really your guy?
All of you claimed you wanted regime change! Some of you really believed your guy would be capable of saving the country by implem! enting real change but many of you got behind Kerry because anybody would be better than Bush.
Hey, don't feel too bad, you were in some pretty good company! You had a wagon load of intellectuals, progressives and even some down right radicals that climbed on board the same bus. You all fed into the fear factor, not the Republican one, spewing trumped up terror alerts and threats but rather the one put forward by the Democrats: DON'T VOTE FOR NADER OR ELSE!
The Republicans cleverly played the fear factor and the terror card but the Democrats were equally duplicitous and devious in their political maneuvering. I wonder if it ever occurred to any of you just how un-democratic the democrats truly were throughout the course of this election? The Democrats didn't promote democracy, they impeded it and in the end, they decimated the third party alternative and spent billions of dollars doing it.
Regardless of whether! or not the Bush cartel stole yet another election (and there is plenty of evidence to suggest they did...), you backed the wrong horse. A chimpanzee was able to figure out a Diebold electronic voting machine faster than any of you pushing buttons for Kerry. I'm sorry, I don't wish to be mean. The truth hurts and you've got to hear it, better to hear from a friend who knows that in spite of good intentions you all behaved like naive and errant children.
So, here's the reality, slowly sinking in, as another day dawns over the evil Bush Empire: we cannot change the system from within. The Democratic party is washed up. You were failed by Kerry and by the party that foisted him upon you, against your better judgment.
There was no choice in this election! Repeat after me: There was no choice in this election, only the illusion of choice, more than that, the bill of goods you were sold was the illusion of democracy. Maintaining that illusion cost billions of dollars, like an over budgeted Hollywood epic that fails at the box office, that money would have better spent elsewhere.
Now, those of us that didn't jump on the Kerry bus were greatly relieved and yes, we gloated just a little bit but by the time John Kerry conceded, few of us had any doubts: the fix was in. Kerry caved before they had a chance to tally the remaining votes! Once again, just as in 2000, the democrats didn't put up any fight and instead called for unity. Unity?! Everybody just fall in line, get with the program, let bygones be bygones, let's all learn to get along, after one of the most emotional and divisive political campaigns in our history?!
Well, all of this may have come as a shock to many of you and some of you are probably still reeling from the aftermath but most of us: the anybody but Bush and Kerry crowd, those of us who voted our conscience, not out of fear, tried to warn you early on that this would be the probable outcome.
Okay, all that being said, where do we go from here?
THE OLIVE BRANCH AND THE SWORD
We invite all of you back into the fold but understand, we're not among those who want to reinvent the Democratic party. Those days are through. They have proved they aren't worth another minute of our time. Were inviting you into a new world, a better world. This is a place were we the people decide what we want for our country and who should lead us there. We do not accept the lack of choice that has been imposed on our society. We will create our own choices. We have the power to do that. Out with the old worn out two party system: De! mocrats and Republicans, which now clearly resembles the one party, no alternative debacle.
How to get there? This battle starts today! Dry your eyes, dust off your bottoms and pull yourselves back together! Do not mourn! Become indignant and get ready for the fight! Take back your power! There is no room for defeatism and despair. We don't have time to feel sorry for ourselves. We need to get busy organizing the third party alternative: the party of, for and by the people!
Do not offer unity to the powers that be, not to the Democrats, not to the Republicans, let us all unite under a new banner, a banner of real choice, one that offers real leadership and represents the good in us all. We are peace loving people who believe in social justice and equality for all! We can make it happen if we band together under one common flag: the flag of humanity.
Every society needs a little revolution now and then. The Revolution starts now!
Donna J. Volatile is an un-produced, radical screenwriter living in New Mexico. She can be reached at: djvolatile2@yahoo.com
CounterPunch: "America's Best Political Newsletter"
CounterPunch: "America's Best Political Newsletter": "November 4, 2004
Two Cheers for Bush's Moral Mandate!
The Bright Side of Black Tuesday
By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS
What was the presidential election about?
In their victory speeches, Vice President Cheney and President Bush claimed a 'mandate,' 'historic victory,' and that 'America has spoken.'
A mandate for what? A victory for what? How spake America?
Pundits have declared that the election was about 'moral values.' Americans in the red states voted against homosexual marriage and abortion.
Let's hope that this is correct. Otherwise, America is doomed if Bush's reelection is based on his economic and foreign policy record.
Can you imagine our peril if Bush's mandate is for unprecedented trade and budget deficits and job loss? Or for taking the country to war based on incompetence or deception?
Thankfully, the electorate did not give Bush a mandate for getting thousands of Americans killed and maimed for no other reason than the Bush administration's inability to assess the intent and capability of Iraq. Bush's reelection is not a mandate for establishing a dozen or more permanent US military bases in Iraq and expanding the war to Syria, Lebanon, and Iran.
If Bush limits his second term to homosexual marriage and abortion, we and the world will be a lot safer. Medical doctors will not stop putting the mother's life first, and homosexuals are no more in need of marriage than the large percentage of heterosexuals who have abandoned it. Homosexual marriage has never been much more than a way to assert legitimacy that most rubs opponents' noses in the proverbial.
If Americans allow Cheney, Bush and their neoconservative masters to claim a mandate for preemptive attack against misperceived enemies and for removing disliked dictators, no draft aged American and few countries without nuclear weapons are safe. If Republicans claim a mandate for moving American jobs offshore while amnestying millions of illegals, no American's job is secure. If Bush claims a mandate for unprecedented red ink, American children have no future.
By all means, please let's keep Bush's mandates limited to moral values. Let us not even criticize the Christian right-wing for preening their 'moral values' feathers while ratifying an illegal invasion that has killed somewhere between 15,000 and 100,000 innocent Iraqis, mostly women and children, and ended or ruined the lives of some 10,000 American sons, fathers, husbands and brothers.
For our own sakes, we must limit Bush's mandate to a veto of homosexual marriage and to Supreme Court appointments that might, possibly, overturn Roe v. Wade.
Repeat after me: No mandate for preemptive war. No mandate for American Empire. No mandate for isolating America from its allies. No mandate for Israeli territorial expansion in the Middle East. No mandate for endless red ink. No mandate for selling out American jobs and occupations to foreigners. No mandate for a domestic police state.
I am beginning to like the outcome of this election.
Paul Craig Roberts is John M. Olin Fellow at the Institute for Political Economy and Research Fellow at the Independent Institute. He is a former assistant secretary of the U.S. Treasury. He is the co-author of The Tyranny of Good Intentions.
"
Two Cheers for Bush's Moral Mandate!
The Bright Side of Black Tuesday
By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS
What was the presidential election about?
In their victory speeches, Vice President Cheney and President Bush claimed a 'mandate,' 'historic victory,' and that 'America has spoken.'
A mandate for what? A victory for what? How spake America?
Pundits have declared that the election was about 'moral values.' Americans in the red states voted against homosexual marriage and abortion.
Let's hope that this is correct. Otherwise, America is doomed if Bush's reelection is based on his economic and foreign policy record.
Can you imagine our peril if Bush's mandate is for unprecedented trade and budget deficits and job loss? Or for taking the country to war based on incompetence or deception?
Thankfully, the electorate did not give Bush a mandate for getting thousands of Americans killed and maimed for no other reason than the Bush administration's inability to assess the intent and capability of Iraq. Bush's reelection is not a mandate for establishing a dozen or more permanent US military bases in Iraq and expanding the war to Syria, Lebanon, and Iran.
If Bush limits his second term to homosexual marriage and abortion, we and the world will be a lot safer. Medical doctors will not stop putting the mother's life first, and homosexuals are no more in need of marriage than the large percentage of heterosexuals who have abandoned it. Homosexual marriage has never been much more than a way to assert legitimacy that most rubs opponents' noses in the proverbial.
If Americans allow Cheney, Bush and their neoconservative masters to claim a mandate for preemptive attack against misperceived enemies and for removing disliked dictators, no draft aged American and few countries without nuclear weapons are safe. If Republicans claim a mandate for moving American jobs offshore while amnestying millions of illegals, no American's job is secure. If Bush claims a mandate for unprecedented red ink, American children have no future.
By all means, please let's keep Bush's mandates limited to moral values. Let us not even criticize the Christian right-wing for preening their 'moral values' feathers while ratifying an illegal invasion that has killed somewhere between 15,000 and 100,000 innocent Iraqis, mostly women and children, and ended or ruined the lives of some 10,000 American sons, fathers, husbands and brothers.
For our own sakes, we must limit Bush's mandate to a veto of homosexual marriage and to Supreme Court appointments that might, possibly, overturn Roe v. Wade.
Repeat after me: No mandate for preemptive war. No mandate for American Empire. No mandate for isolating America from its allies. No mandate for Israeli territorial expansion in the Middle East. No mandate for endless red ink. No mandate for selling out American jobs and occupations to foreigners. No mandate for a domestic police state.
I am beginning to like the outcome of this election.
Paul Craig Roberts is John M. Olin Fellow at the Institute for Political Economy and Research Fellow at the Independent Institute. He is a former assistant secretary of the U.S. Treasury. He is the co-author of The Tyranny of Good Intentions.
"
CounterPunch: "America's Best Political Newsletter"
CounterPunch: "America's Best Political Newsletter": "November 4, 2004
Two Cheers for Bush's Moral Mandate!
The Bright Side of Black Tuesday
By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS
What was the presidential election about?
In their victory speeches, Vice President Cheney and President Bush claimed a 'mandate,' 'historic victory,' and that 'America has spoken.'
A mandate for what? A victory for what? How spake America?
Pundits have declared that the election was about 'moral values.' Americans in the red states voted against homosexual marriage and abortion.
Let's hope that this is correct. Otherwise, America is doomed if Bush's reelection is based on his economic and foreign policy record.
Can you imagine our peril if Bush's mandate is for unprecedented trade and budget deficits and job loss? Or for taking the country to war based on incompetence or deception?
Thankfully, the electorate did not give Bush a mandate for getting thousands of Americans killed and maimed for no other reason than the Bush administration's inability to assess the intent and capability of Iraq. Bush's reelection is not a mandate for establishing a dozen or more permanent US military bases in Iraq and expanding the war to Syria, Lebanon, and Iran.
If Bush limits his second term to homosexual marriage and abortion, we and the world will be a lot safer. Medical doctors will not stop putting the mother's life first, and homosexuals are no more in need of marriage than the large percentage of heterosexuals who have abandoned it. Homosexual marriage has never been much more than a way to assert legitimacy that most rubs opponents' noses in the proverbial.
If Americans allow Cheney, Bush and their neoconservative masters to claim a mandate for preemptive attack against misperceived enemies and for removing disliked dictators, no draft aged American and few countries without nuclear weapons are safe. If Republicans claim a mandate for moving American jobs offshore while amnestying millions of illegals, no American's job is secure. If Bush claims a mandate for unprecedented red ink, American children have no future.
By all means, please let's keep Bush's mandates limited to moral values. Let us not even criticize the Christian right-wing for preening their 'moral values' feathers while ratifying an illegal invasion that has killed somewhere between 15,000 and 100,000 innocent Iraqis, mostly women and children, and ended or ruined the lives of some 10,000 American sons, fathers, husbands and brothers.
For our own sakes, we must limit Bush's mandate to a veto of homosexual marriage and to Supreme Court appointments that might, possibly, overturn Roe v. Wade.
Repeat after me: No mandate for preemptive war. No mandate for American Empire. No mandate for isolating America from its allies. No mandate for Israeli territorial expansion in the Middle East. No mandate for endless red ink. No mandate for selling out American jobs and occupations to foreigners. No mandate for a domestic police state.
I am beginning to like the outcome of this election.
Paul Craig Roberts is John M. Olin Fellow at the Institute for Political Economy and Research Fellow at the Independent Institute. He is a former assistant secretary of the U.S. Treasury. He is the co-author of The Tyranny of Good Intentions.
"
Two Cheers for Bush's Moral Mandate!
The Bright Side of Black Tuesday
By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS
What was the presidential election about?
In their victory speeches, Vice President Cheney and President Bush claimed a 'mandate,' 'historic victory,' and that 'America has spoken.'
A mandate for what? A victory for what? How spake America?
Pundits have declared that the election was about 'moral values.' Americans in the red states voted against homosexual marriage and abortion.
Let's hope that this is correct. Otherwise, America is doomed if Bush's reelection is based on his economic and foreign policy record.
Can you imagine our peril if Bush's mandate is for unprecedented trade and budget deficits and job loss? Or for taking the country to war based on incompetence or deception?
Thankfully, the electorate did not give Bush a mandate for getting thousands of Americans killed and maimed for no other reason than the Bush administration's inability to assess the intent and capability of Iraq. Bush's reelection is not a mandate for establishing a dozen or more permanent US military bases in Iraq and expanding the war to Syria, Lebanon, and Iran.
If Bush limits his second term to homosexual marriage and abortion, we and the world will be a lot safer. Medical doctors will not stop putting the mother's life first, and homosexuals are no more in need of marriage than the large percentage of heterosexuals who have abandoned it. Homosexual marriage has never been much more than a way to assert legitimacy that most rubs opponents' noses in the proverbial.
If Americans allow Cheney, Bush and their neoconservative masters to claim a mandate for preemptive attack against misperceived enemies and for removing disliked dictators, no draft aged American and few countries without nuclear weapons are safe. If Republicans claim a mandate for moving American jobs offshore while amnestying millions of illegals, no American's job is secure. If Bush claims a mandate for unprecedented red ink, American children have no future.
By all means, please let's keep Bush's mandates limited to moral values. Let us not even criticize the Christian right-wing for preening their 'moral values' feathers while ratifying an illegal invasion that has killed somewhere between 15,000 and 100,000 innocent Iraqis, mostly women and children, and ended or ruined the lives of some 10,000 American sons, fathers, husbands and brothers.
For our own sakes, we must limit Bush's mandate to a veto of homosexual marriage and to Supreme Court appointments that might, possibly, overturn Roe v. Wade.
Repeat after me: No mandate for preemptive war. No mandate for American Empire. No mandate for isolating America from its allies. No mandate for Israeli territorial expansion in the Middle East. No mandate for endless red ink. No mandate for selling out American jobs and occupations to foreigners. No mandate for a domestic police state.
I am beginning to like the outcome of this election.
Paul Craig Roberts is John M. Olin Fellow at the Institute for Political Economy and Research Fellow at the Independent Institute. He is a former assistant secretary of the U.S. Treasury. He is the co-author of The Tyranny of Good Intentions.
"
GOP steals election again!!!
It seems that the election was rigged again by the Diebold computer e-vote machines.
Based on the exit polls Kerry had a clear victory in the Nov/2/04 election.
The main problems occurred in Ohio and Florida which had about 30% of the Diebold machines.
The way it seems to be done was : for every fourth vote for Kerry one voted was added to Bush or something like that. This way the election was close but in favor of Bush (51% to 48% ). This fact was also described by Greg Palant (reporter for the BBC).
Well, what can we do?????
Based on the exit polls Kerry had a clear victory in the Nov/2/04 election.
The main problems occurred in Ohio and Florida which had about 30% of the Diebold machines.
The way it seems to be done was : for every fourth vote for Kerry one voted was added to Bush or something like that. This way the election was close but in favor of Bush (51% to 48% ). This fact was also described by Greg Palant (reporter for the BBC).
Well, what can we do?????
Saturday, October 30, 2004
Kerry is going to win!!!
Kerry is going to win and the election will not even be close.
I got the feeling. The American people is not so stupid.
The reason maybe due to Bush's families ties to the Osama family, which is a
known fact (Farenheit 911).
- Bush created the largest debt in American History: half a trillion dollars.
There are much more issues like: The real president is the big corporations. They decide what the president has to say and to do. The neocons (Bush gang) receives orders from the corporations: Halliburton, Enron, GE, oil companies, The Saudis, Israel, etc.
I got the feeling. The American people is not so stupid.
- American Security
The reason maybe due to Bush's families ties to the Osama family, which is a
known fact (Farenheit 911).
- Economy
- Bush created the largest debt in American History: half a trillion dollars.
- Jobs
- Environment
- Heathcare
- Tax cut
There are much more issues like: The real president is the big corporations. They decide what the president has to say and to do. The neocons (Bush gang) receives orders from the corporations: Halliburton, Enron, GE, oil companies, The Saudis, Israel, etc.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
