Flyby News
"News Fit to Transmit in the Post Cassini Flyby Era"
VotingSludge * TerrorReigns * VolcanoGlacierErupts
04 November 2004
"..But we all are moral cowards when it comes to Iraq.
Our collective inability to summon the requisite shame and rage
when confronted by an estimate of 100,000 dead Iraqi civilians
in the prosecution of an illegal and unjust war not only condemns us,
but adds credibility to those who oppose us.."
– Scott Ritter1) Voting without auditing. (Are we insane?)
2) The War on Iraq Has Made Moral Cowards of Us All- - Bush Victory Bad News for Fallujah
3) Volcano Erupts in Isolated Iceland Area
Editor's Notes:Reflecting on our campaigns from a half-empty perspective, we failed to stop the Cassini Earth flyby. We didn't succeed to get Al Gore elected for US President, we failed to stop George Bush from terminating the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. Inspired by Dennis Kucinich, i.e. his participation in a law suit against the Bush administration to end the ABM, and introduction for legislation for a US Department of Peace, and ban on space-based weapons, FN endorsed Dennis a year before his announcement to run for US President. Our latest campaign was unsuccessful in ousting George W. from office. On one level this is very discouraging, but we helped expose the Cassini Earth (plutonium) flyby, we were discovered by Bart Jordan, we joined with millions of others who care about democracy and human decency. The turn of the US toward fascism under the banner of democracy is very irritating. But the deceit, and the existence of truth, give hope for a possible outcome favorable for human dignity and integrity. Having George Bush lead my country is simply embarrassing and a horrendous incident for humankind.
As shown in this issue, Global Warming Climate Change and the Greed-driven Oil Wars are well on their way. It is not time to give in to our fears. FN will continue sharing resources, inspired by Bev Harris, Scott Ritter, Greg Palast, Michael Moore, Bart Jordan, and countless others working for integrity and human dignity during the time we have left on Earth.
POST ELECTION
M U S I C ~ P O E T R Y
FLYBY NEWS BENEFIT
Saturday, November 6, 2004 - 7 ~ 10:00 pm
at
THE BLACK SHEEP DELI
{South Main Street, Amherst, MA}
featuring:
Tom Neilson
Annie Hassett & Friends
Julia Burrough - Karen Copeland
Diana Allen - - - Jonathan Mark
plus surprise guests - music jam - bring instruments
{Suggested donation $5 - $20}
Can't make the gig, and want to support FN?
You can contribute funds to:
Flyby News - P.O. Box 1999 - Wendell Depot, MA 01380
Thanks for reading, and sharing resources for
life's survival in the 21st Century.
1) Voting without auditing. (Are we insane?)SEATTLE, WASHINGTON Nov 3 2004 --
Did the voting machines trump exit polls? There's a way to find out.
Black Box Voting (.ORG) is conducting the largest Freedom of Information action in history. At 8:30 p.m. Election Night, Black Box Voting blanketed the U.S. with the first in a series of public records requests, to obtain internal computer logs and other documents from 3,000 individual counties and townships. Networks called the election before anyone bothered to perform even the most rudimentary audit.
America: We have permission to say No to this. It is our right.
We call on every candidate not to concede. Don't play along. It is your right.
Among the first requests sent to counties (with all kinds of voting systems -- optical scan, touch-screen, and punch card) is a formal records request for internal audit logs, polling place results slips, modem transmission logs, and computer trouble slips.
Such a request filed in King County, Washington on Sept. 15, following the primary election six weeks ago, uncovered an internal audit log containing a three-hour deletion on election night; "trouble slips" revealing suspicious modem activity; and profound problems with security, including accidental disclosure of critically sensitive remote access information to poll workers, office personnel, and even, in a shocking blunder, to Black Box Voting activists.
Black Box Voting is a nonpartisan, nonprofit consumer protection group for elections.
Responses from public officials will be posted in the forum, is organized by state and county, so that any news organization or citizens group has access to the information. Black Box Voting will assist in analysis, by providing expertise in evaluating the records. Watch for the records online; Black Box Voting will be posting the results as they come in. And by the way, these are not free. The more donations we get, the more FOIAs we are empowered to do. Time's a'wasting.
We look forward to seeing you participate in this process. Join us in evaluating the previously undisclosed inside information about how our voting system works.
Play a part in reclaiming transparency. It's the only way.
BlackBoxVoting.org
2) The War on Iraq Has Made Moral Cowards of Us All- - Bush Victory Bad News for Fallujah
The War on Iraq Has Made Moral Cowards of Us All
By Scott Ritter
The Guardian U.K.
Monday 01 November 2004
More than 100,000 Iraqis have died - and where is our shame and rage?
The full scale of the human cost already paid for the war on Iraq is only now becoming clear. Last week's estimate by investigators, using credible methodology, that more than 100,000 Iraqi civilians - most of them women and children - have died since the US-led invasion is a profound moral indictment of our countries. The US and British governments quickly moved to cast doubt on the Lancet medical journal findings, citing other studies. These mainly media-based reports put the number of Iraqi civilian deaths at about 15,000 - although the basis for such an endorsement is unclear, since neither the US nor the UK admits to collecting data on Iraqi civilian casualties.
Civilian deaths have always been a tragic reality of modern war. But the conflict in Iraq was supposed to be different - US and British forces were dispatched to liberate the Iraqi people, not impose their own tyranny of violence.
Reading accounts of the US-led invasion, one is struck by the constant, almost casual, reference to civilian deaths. Soldiers and marines speak of destroying hundreds, if not thousands, of vehicles that turned out to be crammed with civilians. US marines acknowledged in the aftermath of the early, bloody battle for Nassiriya that their artillery and air power had pounded civilian areas in a blind effort to suppress insurgents thought to be holed up in the city. The infamous "shock and awe" bombing of Baghdad produced hundreds of deaths, as did the 3rd Infantry Division's "Thunder Run", an armored thrust in Baghdad that slaughtered everyone in its path.
It is true that, with only a few exceptions, civilians who died as a result of ground combat were not deliberately targeted, but were caught up in the machinery of modern warfare. But when the same claim is made about civilians killed in aerial attacks (the Lancet study estimates that most of civilian deaths were the result of air attacks), the comparison quickly falls apart. Helicopter engagements apart, most aerial bombardment is deliberate and pre-planned. US and British military officials like to brag about the accuracy of the "precision" munitions used in these strikes, claiming this makes the kind of modern warfare practiced by the coalition in Iraq the most humanitarian in history.
But there is nothing humanitarian about explosives once they detonate near civilians, or about a bomb guided to the wrong target. Dozens of civilians were killed during the vain effort to eliminate Saddam Hussein with "pinpoint" air strikes, and hundreds have perished in the campaign to eliminate alleged terrorist targets in Falluja. A "smart bomb" is only as good as the data used to direct it. And the abysmal quality of the intelligence used has made the smartest of bombs just as dumb and indiscriminate as those, for example, dropped during the second world war.
The fact that most bombing missions in Iraq today are pre-planned, with targets allegedly carefully vetted, further indicts those who wage this war in the name of freedom. If these targets are so precise, then those selecting them cannot escape the fact that they are deliberately targeting innocent civilians at the same time as they seek to destroy their intended foe. Some would dismiss these civilians as "collateral damage". But we must keep in mind that the British and US governments made a deliberate decision to enter into a conflict of their choosing, not one that was thrust upon them. We invaded Iraq to free Iraqis from a dictator who, by some accounts, oversaw the killing of about 300,000 of his subjects - although no one has been able to verify more than a small fraction of the figure. If it is correct, it took Saddam decades to reach such a horrific statistic. The US and UK have, it seems, reached a third of that total in just 18 months.
Meanwhile, the latest scandal over missing nuclear-related high explosives in Iraq (traced and controlled under the UN inspections regime) only underscores the utter deceitfulness of the Bush-Blair argument for the war. Having claimed the uncertainty surrounding Iraq's WMD capability constituted a threat that could not go unchallenged in a post-9/11 world, one would have expected the two leaders to insist on a military course of action that brought under immediate coalition control any aspect of potential WMD capability, especially relating to any possible nuclear threat. That the US military did not have a dedicated force to locate and neutralize these explosives underscores the fact that both Bush and Blair knew that there was no threat from Iraq, nuclear or otherwise.
Of course, the US and Britain have a history of turning a blind eye to Iraqi suffering when it suits their political purposes. During the 1990s, hundreds of thousands are estimated by the UN to have died as a result of sanctions. Throughout that time, the US and the UK maintained the fiction that this was the fault of Saddam Hussein, who refused to give up his WMD. We now know that Saddam had disarmed and those deaths were the responsibility of the US and Britain, which refused to lift sanctions.
There are many culpable individuals and organizations history will hold to account for the war - from deceitful politicians and journalists to acquiescent military professionals and silent citizens of the world's democracies. As the evidence has piled up confirming what I and others had reported - that Iraq was already disarmed by the late 1990s - my personal vote for one of the most culpable individuals would go to Hans Blix, who headed the UN weapons inspection team in the run-up to war. He had the power if not to prevent, at least to forestall a war with Iraq. Blix knew that Iraq was disarmed, but in his mealy-mouthed testimony to the UN security council helped provide fodder for war. His failure to stand up to the lies used by Bush and Blair to sell the Iraq war must brand him a moral and intellectual coward.
But we all are moral cowards when it comes to Iraq. Our collective inability to summon the requisite shame and rage when confronted by an estimate of 100,000 dead Iraqi civilians in the prosecution of an illegal and unjust war not only condemns us, but adds credibility to those who oppose us. The fact that a criminal such as Osama bin Laden can broadcast a videotape on the eve of the US presidential election in which his message is viewed by many around the world as a sober argument in support of his cause is the harshest indictment of the failure of the US and Britain to implement sound policy in the aftermath of 9/11. The death of 3,000 civilians on that horrible day represented a tragedy of huge proportions. Our continued indifference to a war that has slaughtered so many Iraqi civilians, and will continue to kill more, is in many ways an even greater tragedy: not only in terms of scale, but also because these deaths were inflicted by our own hand in the course of an action that has no defense.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Scott Ritter was a senior UN weapons inspector in Iraq between 1991 and 1998 and is the author of "Frontier Justice: Weapons of Mass Destruction and the Bushwhacking of America".
This original article was posted:
www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1340562,00.html and also posted at
www.truthout.org/docs_04/110304F.shtml= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
- - Bush Victory Bad News for FallujahAs Republicans prepare for a second term, the world is braced for more violence
Published November 3, 2004 by The Age (Australia)
by Paul McGeough
The people of Fallujah can expect to be the first in the Middle East to whom a reaffirmed President George Bush reaches out - it will be with guns and bombs.
An unlikely win by the Democrat John Kerry would be a line in the sand, a chance to put aside the debilitating blame game over the mess that Iraq has become. Instead, the US in a second Bush term will have to soldier on, with much of the world continuing to refuse the meaningful assistance that might dig the President out of a hole he dug for himself.
A win is a win is a win. But as a referendum on Iraq and the war on terror, Bush's margin in the popular vote is narrow, particularly when compared to the levels of support he enjoyed in the days after September 11.
That will not stop Bush and the neo-conservatives claiming vindication - and probably it will fuel even more zealous efforts to shape outcomes according to their unilateralist, America-knows-best view of a terror-stressed world.
The massive explosives theft in Iraq, the bulk of which may be in the hands of insurgents and terrorists now; and of the revelation by Bush's Christian supporter Pat Robertson that the President had predicted before the Iraq invasion that he would not lose a single American life, had me thinking Kerry might fall over the line.
That went out the window when Osama bin Laden voted for the enemy he wants - President Bush - with his very deliberate and calculated intervention in the campaign. On the strength of Bush's claim of victory last night, Fallujah needs to brace itself; Tehran should tread carefully.
[Article Truncated]
For the complete article, see:
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/1103-01.htm
3) Volcano Erupts in Isolated Iceland Area(Article Posted - November 2, 2004 - 01:05:11 GMT)
REYKAJVIK, Iceland (AP) - A volcano erupted in a remote area of Iceland on Monday, setting off tremors across the area and prompting officials to warn pilots to avoid flying through gasses being emitted by the blast.
No evacuations were needed in the unpopulated area around Grimsvotn mountain in eastern Iceland, the Meteorological Office said, but visual confirmation of the damage being done was impossible because heavy winds and rains reduced visibility in the area.
The eruption was believed to have been caused by expansion of a lake underneath the Vatnajokull glacier.
"The water is under extreme pressure from the glacier. We believe it could open a part of the Grimsvotn mountain, causing the release of some magma, though this cannot be confirmed without visual identification," said Oli Thor Arnarsson at the Meteorological Office.
His office issued the warning to pilots on Monday evening.
Grimsvotn last erupted six years ago. It also erupted in 1995 and 1993, causing flooding.
The mountain lies on the Atlantic Rift, the meeting of the Euro and American continental plates. The three major volcanoes of Iceland - Hekla, Katla and Grimsvotn - lie on the same fault line. Hekla last erupted in 2000.
Copyright 2004
The Associated Press All Rights Reserved
news.lp.findlaw.com/ap_stories/i/1103/11-1-2004/20041101171501_09.html= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
Vatnajökull, Iceland: Click here to view full image (3190 kb)
earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/NewImages/images.php3?img_id=10851
Image provided by the USGS EROS Data Center Satellite Systems Branch.= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
More:
Ocean Forces Threaten Our Climatewww.firstscience.com/site/articles/gribbin.aspFN Archives - Updated:
Mounting Evidence of Global Warming
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 = = = = =