Flyby News
"News Fit to Transmit in the Post Cassini Flyby Era"
SOS Lake Wobegon * Diebold Hole * Bush Payoff
30 August 2004
How did the Party of Lincoln and Liberty transmogrify
into the party of Newt Gingrich's evil spawn and their
Etch-A-Sketch president, a dull and rigid man, whose
philosophy is a jumble of badly sutured body parts trying to walk?
-- Garrison Keillor1) We're Not in Lake Wobegon Anymore
2) ‘Diebold GEMS central tabulator contains a stunning security hole'- - Machines might be the Real Swing Voters this November
3) Still Unreported: The Pay-off in Bush Air Guard Fix- - US fires accused soldiers to avoid abuse trials
- - 80 percent of US-led Iraqi security forces desert
4) Depleted uranium: Dirty bombs, dirty missiles, dirty bullets
5) Homeland Security whistleblower removed for exposing terrorist threats
6) "Fahrenheit 9/11" film for ‘America to survive'
‘The hottest place in Hell
is reserved for those who
in time of crisis remain neutral'
– DanteEditor's Notes:The above quote by Dante was used in eloquence by Garrison Keillor in item 1, "We're Not in Lake Wobegon Anymore". The well-known host and writer of "A Prairie Home Companion" aired on NPR radio, will hopefully appeal to USA citizens to come to terms with reality. Please join Garrison and others and take action. Let your fingers do the walking into the homes of our swing state neighbors. Please help people unite and make this a one-term selected-President.
Click following URL for one national campaign!
www.moveonpac.org/pledgeIn item 2 Bev Harris explains why we cannot afford a close election. In her article, ‘Diebold GEMS central tabulator contains a stunning security hole', Bev Harris writes --
The central tabulator is far more vulnerable than the touch screen terminals. Think about it: If you were going to tamper with an election, would you rather tamper with 4,500 individual voting machines, or with just one machine, the central tabulator which receives votes from all the machines? Of course, the central tabulator is the most desirable target..It is the overt nature of fascism that some use as an excuse not to vote - but can we supersede the brainwashing and explain why voting is our best choice to reclaim democracy, to make each vote count!
Item 3 features another great article by Greg Palast - "This week, former Lt. Governor Ben Barnes of Texas 'fessed up to pulling the strings to keep Little George out of the jungle. "I got a young man named George W. Bush into the Texas Air Guard - and I'm ashamed."' Following article are other article links received by News Insider: ‘US fires accused soldiers to avoid abuse trials' and ‘80 percent of US-led Iraqi security forces desert.'
Item 4 is a well researched article on the catastrophe happening now by Depleted Uranium, which is mixed in the dust, sand, air, water, food, in Iraq as radioactive elements from exploded in military shells.
Item 5 is an investigative article by
Tom Flocco about the apparent repercussions for Homeland Security whistleblower Mary Schneider.
In item 6, John Berger writes: "Fahrenheit 9/11 has touched millions of viewers across the world. But could it actually change the course of civilisation?" This article came via Michael Moore who may deserve to be honored by the Nobel Peace Prize for reasons described in this article. To help ‘Farenheit 9/11' make its magic, when out in DVD and VHS, we need everyone working together to make sure this film is available to anyone in a swing State. We need to arouse, especially, the nonvoter to help us make stealing the election in 2004 a non-issue. Let's make that a self-fulfilling prophecy!
Or the Armageddon world domination plan may get into a full swing!!
"I think George Bush is going to win in a walk.
I really believe I'm hearing from the Lord
it's going to be like a blowout election in 2004.
The Lord has just blessed him....
It doesn't make any difference what he does, good or bad."
– Pat Robertson
[AP/Fox News, January 2, 2004]
1) We're Not in Lake Wobegon AnymoreBy Garrison Keillor
In These Times
Thursday 26 August 2004
How did the Party of Lincoln and Liberty transmogrify
into the party of Newt Gingrich's evil spawn and their
Etch-A-Sketch president, a dull and rigid man, whose
philosophy is a jumble of badly sutured body parts trying to walk?Something has gone seriously haywire with the Republican Party. Once, it was the party of pragmatic Main Street businessmen in steel-rimmed spectacles who decried profligacy and waste, were devoted to their communities and supported the sort of prosperity that raises all ships. They were good-hearted people who vanquished the gnarlier elements of their party, the paranoid Roosevelt-haters, the flat Earthers and Prohibitionists, the antipapist antiforeigner element. The genial Eisenhower was their man, a genuine American hero of D-Day, who made it OK for reasonable people to vote Republican. He brought the Korean War to a stalemate, produced the Interstate Highway System, declined to rescue the French colonial army in Vietnam, and gave us a period of peace and prosperity, in which (oddly) American arts and letters flourished and higher education burgeoned - and there was a degree of plain decency in the country. Fifties Republicans were giants compared to today's. Richard Nixon was the last Republican leader to feel a Christian obligation toward the poor.
In the years between Nixon and Newt Gingrich, the party migrated southward down the Twisting Trail of Rhetoric and sneered at the idea of public service and became the Scourge of Liberalism, the Great Crusade Against the Sixties, the Death Star of Government, a gang of pirates that diverted and fascinated the media by their sheer chutzpah, such as the misty-eyed flag-waving of Ronald Reagan who, while George McGovern flew bombers in World War II, took a pass and made training films in Long Beach. The Nixon moderate vanished like the passenger pigeon, purged by a legion of angry white men who rose to power on pure punk politics. 'Bipartisanship is another term of date rape,' says Grover Norquist, the Sid Vicious of the GOP. 'I don't want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.' The boy has Oedipal problems and government is his daddy.
The party of Lincoln and Liberty was transmogrified into the party of hairy-backed swamp developers and corporate shills, faith-based economists, fundamentalist bullies with Bibles, Christians of convenience, freelance racists, misanthropic frat boys, shrieking midgets of AM radio, tax cheats, nihilists in golf pants, brownshirts in pinstripes, sweatshop tycoons, hacks, fakirs, aggressive dorks, Lamborghini libertarians, people who believe Neil Armstrong's moonwalk was filmed in Roswell, New Mexico, little honkers out to diminish the rest of us, Newt's evil spawn and their Etch-A-Sketch president, a dull and rigid man suspicious of the free flow of information and of secular institutions, whose philosophy is a jumble of badly sutured body parts trying to walk. Republicans: The No.1 reason the rest of the world thinks we're deaf, dumb and dangerous.
Rich ironies abound! Lies pop up like toadstools in the forest! Wild swine crowd round the public trough! Outrageous gerrymandering! Pocket lining on a massive scale! Paid lobbyists sit in committee rooms and write legislation to alleviate the suffering of billionaires!
Hypocrisies shine like cat turds in the moonlight! O Mark Twain, where art thou at this hour? Arise and behold the Gilded Age reincarnated gaudier than ever, upholding great wealth as the sure sign of Divine Grace.
Here in 2004, George W. Bush is running for reelection on a platform of tragedy - the single greatest failure of national defense in our history, the attacks of 9/11 in which 19 men with box cutters put this nation into a tailspin, a failure the details of which the White House fought to keep secret even as it ran the country into hock up to the hubcaps, thanks to generous tax cuts for the well-fixed, hoping to lead us into a box canyon of debt that will render government impotent, even as we engage in a war against a small country that was undertaken for the president's personal satisfaction but sold to the American public on the basis of brazen misinformation, a war whose purpose is to distract us from an enormous transfer of wealth taking place in this country, flowing upward, and the deception is working beautifully.
The concentration of wealth and power in the hands of the few is the death knell of democracy. No republic in the history of humanity has survived this. The election of 2004 will say something about what happens to ours. The omens are not good.
Our beloved land has been fogged with fear - fear, the greatest political strategy ever. An ominous silence, distant sirens, a drumbeat of whispered warnings and alarms to keep the public uneasy and silence the opposition. And in a time of vague fear, you can appoint bullet-brained judges, strip the bark off the Constitution, eviscerate federal regulatory agencies, bring public education to a standstill, stupefy the press, lavish gorgeous tax breaks on the rich.
There is a stink drifting through this election year. It isn't the Florida recount or the Supreme Court decision. No, it's 9/11 that we keep coming back to. It wasn't the 'end of innocence,' or a turning point in our history, or a cosmic occurrence, it was an event, a lapse of security. And patriotism shouldn't prevent people from asking hard questions of the man who was purportedly in charge of national security at the time.
Whenever I think of those New Yorkers hurrying along Park Place or getting off the No.1 Broadway local, hustling toward their office on the 90th floor, the morning paper under their arms, I think of that non-reader George W. Bush and how he hopes to exploit those people with a little economic uptick, maybe the capture of Osama, cruise to victory in November and proceed to get some serious nation-changing done in his second term.
This year, as in the past, Republicans will portray us Democrats as embittered academics, desiccated Unitarians, whacked-out hippies and communards, people who talk to telephone poles, the party of the Deadheads. They will wave enormous flags and wow over and over the footage of firemen in the wreckage of the World Trade Center and bodies being carried out and they will lie about their economic policies with astonishing enthusiasm.
The Union is what needs defending this year. Government of Enron and by Halliburton and for the Southern Baptists is not the same as what Lincoln spoke of. This gang of Pithecanthropus Republicanii has humbugged us to death on terrorism and tax cuts for the comfy and school prayer and flag burning and claimed the right to know what books we read and to dump their sewage upstream from the town and clear-cut the forests and gut the IRS and mark up the constitution on behalf of intolerance and promote the corporate takeover of the public airwaves and to hell with anybody who opposes them.
This is a great country, and it wasn't made so by angry people. We have a sacred duty to bequeath it to our grandchildren in better shape than however we found it. We have a long way to go and we're not getting any younger.
Dante said that the hottest place in Hell is reserved for those who in time of crisis remain neutral, so I have spoken my piece, and thank you, dear reader. It's a beautiful world, rain or shine, and there is more to life than winning.
-------
Garrison Keillor is the host and writer of A Prairie Home Companion, now in its 25th year on the air. This adapted excerpted from Keillor's new book, Homegrown Democrat (© 2004) is reprinted by arrangement with Viking, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
-------
also posted at:
www.truthout.org/docs_04/083004F.shtml
2) ‘Diebold GEMS central tabulator contains a stunning security hole'- - Machines might be the Real Swing Voters this November
Consumer Report Part 1:
Look at this -- the Diebold GEMS central tabulator contains a stunning security hole
Submitted by Bev Harris on Thu, 08/26/2004 - 11:43.
Investigations Issue: Manipulation technique found in the Diebold central tabulator -- 1,000 of these systems are in place, and they count up to two million votes at a time.
By entering a 2-digit code in a hidden location, a second set of votes is created. This set of votes can be changed, so that it no longer matches the correct votes. The voting system will then read the totals from the bogus vote set. It takes only seconds to change the votes, and to date not a single location in the U.S. has implemented security measures to fully mitigate the risks.
This program is not "stupidity" or sloppiness. It was designed and tested over a series of a dozen version adjustments.
Public officials: If you are in a county that uses GEMS 1.18.18, GEMS 1.18.19, or GEMS 1.18.23, your secretary or state may not have told you about this. You're the one who'll be blamed if your election is tampered with. Find out for yourself if you have this problem: Black Box Voting will be happy to walk you through a diagnostic procedure over the phone. E-mail Bev Harris or Andy Stephenson to set up a time to do this.
For the media: Harris and Stephenson will be in New York City on Aug. 30, 31, Sep.1, to demonstrate this built-in election tampering technique.
Members of congress and Washington correspondents: Harris and Stephenson will be in Washington D.C. on Sept. 22 to demonstrate this problem for you.
Whether you vote absentee, on touch-screens, or on paper ballot (fill in the bubble) optical scan machines, all votes are ultimately brought to the "mother ship," the central tabulator at the county which adds them all up and creates the results report.
These systems are used in over 30 states and each counts up to two million votes at once.
[see following URL link to "read more" for the rest of this section]
The central tabulator is far more vulnerable than the touch screen terminals. Think about it: If you were going to tamper with an election, would you rather tamper with 4,500 individual voting machines, or with just one machine, the central tabulator which receives votes from all the machines? Of course, the central tabulator is the most desirable target.
Findings: The GEMS central tabulator program is incorrectly designed and highly vulnerable to fraud. Election results can be changed in a matter of seconds. Part of the program we examined appears to be designed with election tampering in mind. We have also learned that election officials maintain inadequate controls over access to the central tabulator. We need to beef up procedures to mitigate risks.
Much of this information, originally published on July 8, 2003, has since been corroborated by formal studies (RABA) and by Diebold's own internal memos written by its programmers.
Not a single location has yet implemented the security measures needed to mitigate the risk. Yet, it is not too late. We need to tackle this one, folks, roll up our sleeves, and implement corrective measures.
In Nov. 2003, Black Box Voting founder Bev Harris, and director Jim March, filed a Qui Tam lawsuit in California citing fraudulent claims by Diebold, seeking restitution for the taxpayer. Diebold claimed its voting system was secure. It is, in fact, highly vulnerable to and appears to be designed for fraud.
The California Attorney General was made aware of this problem nearly a year ago. Harris and Black Box Voting Associate Director Andy Stephenson visited the Washington Attorney General's office in Feb. 2004 to inform them of the problem. Yet, nothing has been done to inform election officials who are using the system, nor have appropriate security safeguards been implemented.
On April 21, 2004, Harris appeared before the California Voting Systems Panel, and presented the smoking gun document showing that Diebold had not corrected the GEMS flaws, even though it had updated and upgraded the GEMS program.
On Aug. 8, 2004, Harris demonstrated to Howard Dean how easy it is to change votes in GEMS, on CNBC TV.
On Aug. 11, 2004, Jim March formally requested that the Calfornia Voting Systems Panel watch the demonstration of the double set of books in GEMS. They were already convened, and the time for Harris was already allotted. Though the demonstration takes only 3 minutes, the panel refused to allow it and would not look. They did, however, meet privately with Diebold afterwards, without informing the public or issuing any report of what transpired.
On Aug. 18, 2004, Harris and Stephenson, together with computer security expert Dr. Hugh Thompson, and former King County Elections Supervisor Julie Anne Kempf, met with members of the California Voting Systems Panel and the California Secretary of State's office to demonstrate the double set of books. The officials declined to allow a camera crew from 60 Minutes to film or attend.
The Secretary of State's office halted the meeting, called in the general counsel for their office, and a defense attorney from the California Attorney General's office. They refused to allow Black Box Voting to videotape its own demonstration. They prohibited any audiotape and specified that no notes of the meeting could be requested in public records requests.
The undersecretary of state, Mark Kyle, left the meeting early, and one voting panel member, John Mott Smith, appeared to sleep through the presentation.
On Aug. 23, 2004, CBC TV came to California and filmed the demonstration.
On Aug 30 and 31, Harris and Stephenson will be in New York City to demonstrate the double set of books for any public official and any TV crews who wish to see it.
On Sept. 1, another event is planned in New York City, and on Sept. 21, Harris and Stephenson intend to demonstrate the problem for members and congress and the press in Washington D.C.
Diebold has known of the problem, or should have known, because it did a cease and desist on the web site when Harris originally reported the problem in 2003. On Aug. 11, 2004, Harris also offered to show the problem to Marvin Singleton, Diebold's damage control expert, and to other Diebold execs. They refused to look.
Why don't people want to look? Suppose you are formally informed that the gas tank tends to explode on the car you are telling people to use. If you KNOW about it, but do nothing, you are liable.
LET US HOLD DIEBOLD, AND OUR PUBLIC OFFICIALS, ACCOUNTABLE.
1) Let there be no one who can say "I didn't know."
2) Let there be no election jurisdiction using GEMS that fails to implement all of the proper corrective procedures, this fall, to mitigate risk.
www.blackboxvoting.org/?q=node/view/78= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = ==
- - Machines might be the Real Swing Voters this NovemberSum of a Glitch
Evidence Shows that Machines might be the Real Swing Voters this November
by Bev Harris
[Published August 25, 2004 by In These Times]
In the Alabama 2002 general election, machines made by Election Systems and Software (ES&S) flipped the governor's race. Six thousand three hundred Baldwin County electronic votes mysteriously disappeared after the polls had closed and everyone had gone home.
Democrat Don Siegelman's victory was handed to Republican Bob Riley, and the recount Siegelman requested was denied. Three months after the election, the vendor shrugged. "Something happened. I don't have enough intelligence to say exactly what," said Mark Kelley of ES&S.
When I began researching this story in October 2002, the media was reporting that electronic voting machines are fun and speedy, but I looked in vain for articles reporting that they are accurate. I discovered four magic words, "voting machines and glitch," which, when entered into a search engine, yielded a shocking result: A staggering pile of miscounts was accumulating. These were reported locally but had never been compiled in a single place, so reporters were missing a disturbing pattern. I published a compendium of 56 documented cases in which voting machines got it wrong.
How do voting-machine makers respond to these reports? With shrugs. They indicate that their miscounts are nothing to be concerned about. One of their favorite phrases is: "It didn't change the result."
Except, of course, when it did:.
For the complete article, see:
www.commondreams.org/views04/0825-11.htm
3) Still Unreported: The Pay-off in Bush Air Guard Fix- - US fires accused soldiers to avoid abuse trials
- - 80 percent of US-led Iraqi security forces desert
STILL UNREPORTED: THE PAY-OFF IN BUSH AIR GUARD FIX
Saturday, August 28, 2004
by Greg Palast
In 1968, former Congressman George Herbert Walker Bush of Texas, fresh from voting to send other men's sons to Vietnam, enlisted his own son in a very special affirmative action program, the 'champagne' unit of the Texas Air National Guard. There, Top Gun fighter pilot George Dubya was assigned the dangerous job of protecting Houston from Vietcong air attack.
This week, former Lt. Governor Ben Barnes of Texas 'fessed up to pulling the strings to keep Little George out of the jungle. "I got a young man named George W. Bush into the Texas Air Guard - and I'm ashamed."
For this complete article, "Still Unreported: The Pay-off in Bush Air Guard Fix" see:
gregpalast.com/detail.cfm?artid=365&row=0= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
- - US fires accused soldiers to avoid abuse trialsFour Army police officers faced criminal charges last year for kicking and punching seven Iraqi prisoners at Camp Bucca, assaults that resulted in broken bones. Instead of sending them to trial, however, commanders booted them from the service. Army Spec. Juba Martino-Poole avoided trial on a manslaughter charge for fatally shooting an Iraqi prisoner. His punishment was the same: turn in the uniform. Another specialist accused of raping a fellow soldier in Iraq last year was discharged without being prosecuted.
For the complete article published by The Denver Post [US], 22 August 2004, see:
www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1413,36%7E6439%7E2350815,00.html= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
- - 80 percent of US-led Iraqi security forces desertIraq's security forces, ordered to prepare for an offensive against the Mahdi Army in Najaf, have been plagued by a desertion rate that exceeded 80 percent. A US report warned that Iraqi Interior Ministry troops remain unprepared to fight Shi'ite or Sunni insurgents and could not be deemed reliable.
For the complete article published by MENL [US], 21 August 2004, see:
www.menewsline.com/stories/2004/august/08_22_2.html
For items 4, 5, 6, see:
DU Reaction * 9/11 Whistleblower Fired * FilmMiracle
The views expressed herein are the writers' own and not necessarily those of Flyby News.
A "Fair Use Policy" that describes Flyby News' use of copyrighted material is posted at flybynews.com.
Your feedback for story suggestions and networking Flyby News are welcomed and appreciated.
You can write to the publisher/editor Jonathan Mark via email: info@flybynews.com
Flyby News is educational and nonviolent in focus, and has supported critical campaigns
for a healthy environment, human rights, justice, peace, and nonviolence,
since the launching of NASA's Cassini space probe in 1997.=====News Fit to Transmit in the Post Cassini Flyby Era====> = = = = = = www.FlybyNews.com = = = = =