Yes, the clock is running out…But it is important to finish this fight whatever the consequences, whatever the cost, and to understand what has happened…
Here is more damning evidence of the theft of a second consecutive US Presidential Election, the shameless complicity of the US regimestream news media, the craven capitulation of the Democratic Party leadership” & a glimpse into the deepening disaster that is the Bush Abomination’s national insecurity policy…
Please review them and share them with others…
Please support www.moveon.org, www.blackboxvoting.org, www.buzzflash.com, www.truthout.org and www.democrats.com. Please do not support the Democratic Party – until they join the resistance, and are willing to risk it all.
Please let Rep. Conyers and Rev. Jackson know how grateful you are for their courageous and, sadly, lonely leadership.
William Rivers Pitt: Democratic Representative John Conyers, Jr. of Michigan, ranking Minority member of the House Judiciary Committee, will hold a hearing on Wednesday 08 December 2004 to investigate allegations of vote fraud and irregularities in Ohio during the 2004 Presidential election. The hearing is slated to begin at 10:00 a.m. EST in the Rayburn House Office Building in Washington DC.
Democratic Representatives Melvin Watt and Robert Scott will also be centrally involved with the hearing. Rev. Jesse Jackson will be in attendance, along with Ralph Neas (President, People for the American Way), Jon Greenbaum (Director, Voting Rights Project, Lawyers Committee For Civil Rights Under Law), Ellie Smeal (Executive Director, The Feminist Majority), Bob Fitrakis ( The Free Press), Cliff Arnebeck (Arnebeck Associates), John Bonifaz (General Counsel, National Voting Institute), Steve Rosenfeld (Producer, Air America Radio), and Shawnta Walcott (Communications Director, Zogby International). Ohio Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell has been invited to attend.
The term ‘hearing’ is technically not accurate in this matter, as Conyers and his fellow Representatives will be holding this forum without the blessing of the Republican Majority leader of the Judiciary Committee. Staffers from the Minority office at the Judiciary Committee describe the event as a ‘Members Briefing.’ That having been said, this event will be a hearing by every meaningful definition of the word. Expert testimony will be offered, and a good deal of data on potential fraud previously unreported to the public will be discussed and examined at length.
Robert Parry, www.consortiumnews.com: George W. Bush’s political allies appear to be slow-rolling a requested recount in Ohio, leaving so little time that even if widespread voting fraud is discovered, the finding will come too late to derail Bush’s second term.
Though balloting occurred on Nov. 2, more than a month ago, Ohio’s Republican Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell still hasn’t certified an official vote, a move now expected on Monday, Dec. 6. Since Blackwell also has battled requests from third-party candidates for an expedited recount, a review of Ohio’s vote now won’t begin until Dec. 13, at the earliest, according to Blackwell’s office. [See Boston Globe, Dec. 1, 2004]
But the Dec. 13 date is the same day the electors of the Electoral College meet to formally select the President of the United States. So even if the recount uncovers enough fraud to reveal John Kerry as the rightful winner in Ohio, it would be too late to change that outcome.
Meanwhile, as Ohio’s official foot-dragging has gone on, Bush’s election-night lead has continued to shrink with the counting of overseas and provisional ballots. The Associated Press reported on Dec. 3 that its vote tally of Ohio’s 88 counties showed Kerry narrowing Bush’s lead to 119,000 votes from about 136,000 votes, leaving Bush with a 2 percent lead.
But Kerry also might stand to gain a substantial number of votes from a recount that would examine ballots thrown out by antiquated punch-card voting machines. They are used mostly in poor areas, especially African-American neighborhoods that are Democratic strongholds. Other voters, believing that Ohio’s electronic systems were susceptible to vote rigging, have sought audits to check for tampering…
Placing national unity as a priority over democracy, the U.S. news media stepped in after Election 2000 to sweep away any lingering doubts about Bush’s legitimacy. The unity message was that the United States needed to put the contentious election in the past, even though Bush was the first popular-vote loser in more than a century to move into the White House.
This protection of Bush’s fragile legitimacy gained even greater momentum after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks. The “united-we-stand” sentiment put the New York Times and other leading news organizations in a particular quandary in November 2001 when they completed an unofficial recount of Florida’s votes.
The recount discovered that if all legally cast votes had been counted, Al Gore would have won Florida regardless of what standard of “chad” was used. In other words, Gore was the rightfully elected President of the United States, not Bush.
To avert the predictable conservative outrage over the recount findings, the major national news outlets simply buried the “Gore-won” lead. Instead, they topped their stories with a bogus analysis that a recount would have left Bush as the rightful winner.
The analysis assumed, falsely, that so-called “overvotes,” where voters checked a candidate and wrote in the name, would not have been included in the recount. But the news organizations were erroneous in this assumption because the judge handling the Florida recount had ordered those votes tallied and almost certainly would have added them to the state’s total, since they were clearly legal under Florida law. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “So Bush Did Steal the White House.”]
Now, with Team Bush running out the clock in Ohio, one has to wonder what contortions the mainstream news media would put itself through if a belated recount – after Bush’s election is formalized – shows that Kerry should have won Ohio and thus the White House.
Ray McGovern, www.truthout.org: With the mainstream media co-opted, and four-year older but familiar national security faces in place for the president's second term, it is a safe bet we are in for the same inept, misguided policies - only more so. Sadly, Secretary of State Colin Powell's relatively moderate views had little visible impact on policy decisions. Still, when he is gone the president's circle of advisers will have an even shorter diameter. And it is highly unlikely that Powell's designated successor, Dr. Condoleezza Rice, will be any more astute than in the past in seeking counsel from experienced statesmen like her former patron, Gen. Scowcroft.
Foreign leaders are aghast...and have been for years. In August 2002, British senior Labor backbencher Gerald Kaufman, a former shadow foreign secretary, warned that the "hawks" in the U.S. administration were giving the president poor advice:
"Bush, himself the most intellectually backward American president in my lifetime, is surrounded by advisers whose bellicosity is exceeded only by their political, military and diplomatic illiteracy. Pity the man who relies on Rumsfeld, Cheney and Rice for counsel."
On the afternoon of February 5, 2003, after Secretary of State Colin Powell made his embarrassingly memorable speech at the UN, my colleagues and I of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) drafted and sent a short memorandum to the president, which concluded with this observation:
"After watching Secretary Powell today, we are convinced that you would be well served if you widened the discussion beyond... the circle of those advisers clearly bent on a war for which we see no compelling reason and from which we believe the unintended consequences are likely to be catastrophic."
Instead, the circle has been squeezed still tighter - as with wagons. And those widely known in Washington as "the crazies" when they were middle-level officials and the president's father was in the White House are now even more firmly ensconced. They remain in charge of things like war - the very same folks who brought us the "cakewalk" that became war in Iraq.
Hold onto your hats!
www.mediamatters.org: In an editorial on December 2 titled "Red Double-Crossed Again," The Wall Street Journal grossly distorted the content of an International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) report on the treatment of detainees at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. Later that day on FOX News' The O'Reilly Factor, Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld admitted he had "not had a chance to read" the ICRC report, but he apparently relied on the Journal as he echoed the editorial's distortions in an interview with host Bill O'Reilly.
A November 30 New York Times article first revealed the content of a confidential ICRC report, given to the Bush administration in July, that was critical of the treatment of so-called "unlawful enemy combatants" held at Guantanamo. While the Journal editorial did not mention the Times article directly, the Times was the first to report on the ICRC's July memo, and the editorial adopted some language from the Times article, distorting its meaning in the process.
The Journal editorial claimed without support that since the portions of the report were apparently leaked to the news media, the ICRC has "has thrown confidentiality aside," violating its longstanding tradition of "strict confidentiality agreements with cooperating governments." In fact, the Times did not disclose how it obtained the information; the article noted only that the ICRC report was "distributed to lawyers at the White House, Pentagon and State Department and to the commander of the detention facility at Guantánamo," any of whom could have been the source of the leak. The Journal insisted that "it matters little that the original leaker in this case might have been in the U.S. government," falsely claiming that "[o]fficials at ICRC headquarters were only too happy to confirm the document's authenticity." In fact, the ICRC merely released a statement asserting that "problems regarding conditions and treatment at Guantánamo Bay have not yet been adequately addressed." Rather than serving as "confirm[ation of] the document's authenticity," the statement could well have been a response to the Bush administration's repeatedly invoking ICRC visits to Guantánamo as proof that abuses have not occurred there.
www.fair.org: In March 2000, FAIR and international news organizations revealed that CNN had allowed military propaganda specialists from an Army PSYOPS unit to work as interns in the news division of its Atlanta headquarters.
As FAIR reported at the time (3/27/00), some PSYOPS officers were eager to find ways to use media power to their advantage. One officer explained at a PSYOPS conference that the military needed to find ways to "gain control" over commercial news satellites to help bring down an "informational cone of silence" over regions where special operations were taking place.
And a 1996 unofficial strategy paper written by an Army officer and published by the U.S. Naval War College ("Military Operations in the CNN World: Using the Media as a Force Multiplier") urged military commanders to find ways to "leverage the vast resources of the fourth estate" for the purposes of "communicating the [mission's] objective and endstate, boosting friendly morale, executing more effective psychological operations, playing a major role in deception of the enemy, and enhancing intelligence collection."
Of course, the full extent of these programs is not yet known. But the fact that the U.S. government is intentionally lying to journalists, and by extension to the public, should be big news. Unfortunately, the L.A. Times report is generating little mainstream media attention. CNN's Aaron Brown reported the story (12/1/04), admitting that "none of us are particularly comfortable when we're talking about things, about ourselves if you will."
Brown also made another, even more revealing comment:
"There is an important and explicit bargain between the press and the Pentagon in a time of war. We don't do anything to endanger the troops or operations. They don't lie to us. Each is essential in a free society and each is made more complicated by the information age, but it seems that sometimes in an effort to mislead the enemy the military has come close, very close, to crossing the line and misleading you."
Of course, in this case the military did not come "very close" to misleading the public; they did mislead the public. And while Brown may have confidence that such a "bargain" exists between the press and the military, it would appear that the Pentagon does not agree. If journalists were more willing to accept the old adage that "all governments lie," we might all be better served.
Norman Solomon, www.yubanet.com: Absent from daily news coverage is remorse.
So, the major media outlets of the United States are entering this winter in a resolute state of "disremorse" -- about 180 degrees from any sense of national apology or expressed regret. In the aftermath of a 51 percent victory for the Rove-Cheney-Bush regime on Election Day, the breast-beating and halo-preening exercises have intensified. And while a cast of characters -- Ashcroft, Powell, Ridge, etc. -- heads toward the exits, virtually interchangeable players step into their roles.
With all the comings and goings, remorse is still light-years away as top officials speak and news media report. No need to mention people who don't have a home; no need to focus on the children and adults with paltry health care, or on the overall human impacts of so much scarcity in the midst of great wealth. These profound concerns really matter in people's lives. Yet it's as though the reigning politicians and media have found ways to take our minds off our minds.
The nerve-blocking anesthetics of mass media impede the flow of feeling in unauthorized directions. Cause and effect are disconnected, so that it seems unavoidable and natural for children to live in poverty across town or for U.S. troops to be killing and dying in Iraq. Right now, it's a struggle to disrupt the numbing media chatter about miscalculations and mistakes -- to insist on acknowledgment of moral culpability. America's winter of disremorse is not about nature, it's about a lack of nurture for what remains frozen: our capacity to innovate and cooperate sufficiently to stop the "leaders" who destroy life in our names.
Geoff Dougherty, Chicago Tribune: A Tribune analysis of voter records suggests that more than 5,000 dead people remained on the rolls on Election Day in New Mexico. The presidential election there was decided by 6,000 votes.
And New Mexico is not alone. The Tribune's review of voter data there and in five other key states--Florida, Iowa, Ohio, Michigan and Minnesota--found widespread flaws in the integrity of voter rolls.
More than 181,000 dead people were listed on the rolls in the six swing states, despite efforts to clean up the country's voting system after the 2000 election.
Thousands more voters were registered to vote in two places, which could have allowed them to cast more than one ballot.
Further, more than 90,000 voters in Ohio cast ballots without a valid presidential choice. Either they decided not to choose a candidate, the machine failed to register their choice, or they mistakenly voted for more than one candidate.
And the FBI is investigating allegations that Republicans in Florida mounted a large-scale campaign to tamper with ballots.
Jesse Jackson, Chicago Sun Times: In the Ukraine, citizens are in the streets protesting what they charge is a fixed election. U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell expresses this nation's concern about apparent voting irregularities. The media give the dispute around-the-clock coverage. But in the United States, massive and systemic voter irregularities go unreported and unnoticed.
Ohio is this election year's Florida. The vote in Ohio decided the presidential race, but it was marred by intolerable, and often partisan, irregularities and discrepancies. U.S. citizens have as much reason as those in Kiev to be concerned that the fix was in. Consider:
In Ohio, a court just ruled there can't be a recount yet, because the vote is not yet counted. It's three weeks after the election, and Ohio still hasn't counted the votes and certified the election. Some 93,000 overvotes and undervotes are not counted; 155,000 provisional ballots are only now being counted. Absentee ballots cast in the two days prior to the election haven't been counted.
Ohio determines the election, but the state has not yet counted the vote. That outrage is made intolerable by the fact that the secretary of state in charge of this operation, Ken Blackwell, holds - like Katherine Harris of Florida's fiasco in 2000 - a dual role: secretary of state with control over voting procedures and co-chair of George Bush's Ohio campaign. Blackwell should recuse himself so that a thorough investigation, count and recount of Ohio's vote can be made.
Blackwell reversed rules on provisional ballots in place in the spring primaries. These allowed voters to cast provisional ballots anywhere in their county, even if they were in the wrong precinct, reflecting the chief rationale for provisional ballots: to ensure that those who went to the wrong place by mistake could have their votes counted. The result of this decision - why does this not surprise? - was to disqualify disproportionately ballots cast in heavily Democratic Cuyahoga County.
Blackwell also permitted the use of electronic machines that provided no paper record. The maker of many of these machines, the head of Diebold Co., promised to deliver Ohio for Bush. In one precinct in Franklin County, an electric voting system gave Bush 3,893 extra votes out of a total of 638 votes cast…
This country needs no more Floridas and Ohios. This shouldn't be a partisan issue. We call for a constitutional amendment to guarantee the right to vote for all U.S. citizens and to empower Congress to establish federal standards and nonpartisan administration of elections. Harris and Blackwell are insults to the people they represent, and stains upon the president whose election they sought to ensure. Democracy should not be for export only.
Harvey Wasserman, Bob Fitrakis, Columbia Free Press: The GOP's other ace was John Kerry, whose vote for the Iraq war left him open to Rove's flip flop attacks. On Iraq, the economy, the ecology and more, Bush has been merely a flop.
Kerry's tainted Iraq votes polluted his war record and his standing as an alternative to endless war. Yet with stellar debate performances and a decent final month, Kerry may have actually carried the national vote - if there were a fair count.
But with ballots still being bitterly contested in Ohio, Florida and elsewhere, Kerry conceded too soon. His plea for "national healing" raised gales of laughter at Fox and Rove's White House.
Kerry seemed to be walking away from the tens of millions of good-hearted Democrats and democrats who pinned their hopes on him to end the Bush nightmare.
It was a terrible moment for grassroots organizers who mobilized thousands of inner city and other voters for Kerry, only to see them turned away at the polls or their ballots shredded with every Rovian dirty trick imaginable. In a horrific display of contempt for the democratic process and for people of color, similar things were done in Florida and, to varying degrees, in every other swing state.
In the past weeks, it's become abundantly clear that a fair vote count in Ohio would have given Kerry the presidency. Having pledged to "make every vote count," Kerry had a solemn obligation to guarantee just that…
By fighting tooth and nail against a fair recount, Ken Blackwell is leading the GOP machine in admitting it has something to hide. It is supremely illogical to scorn "conspiracy theorists" who question the November 2 vote count while desperately stonewalling an open accounting.
We are not backing down. What's at stake here is not just a single presidential election, but the right of all Americans to vote and to have those votes counted in all future elections…
The grassroots will not surrender to the Party of Hate, Terror and Shredded Ballots. As in Ukraine, the whole world is starting to watch.
This election is not over.
Greg Miller, Los Angeles Times: CIA officers in Iraq were ordered to stay away from a U.S. military interrogation facility last year because agency officials questioned the way detainees were being interrogated, according to a December 2003 report on a secret special operations unit.
The report warning of possible abuses of Iraqi detainees in U.S. custody was sent to commanders in Iraq a month before the now infamous photographs of the Abu Ghraib prison emerged early this year, the Pentagon said Wednesday in confirming some of the findings.
The report by retired Army Col. Stuart A. Herrington - who visited Iraq in 2003 to assess U.S. intelligence gathering operations against Iraqi insurgents - warned that U.S. special operations troops and CIA operatives might be abusing Iraqi prisoners.
Herrington's report went up the chain of command to Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the top U.S. commander in Iraq at the time, who ordered that the possible abuses be investigated, Pentagon officials said.
George Bennett, Palm Beach Post: A group conducting a "fraud audit" of the 2004 election sued Palm Beach County Elections Supervisor Theresa LePore on Tuesday, accusing her of stonewalling requests for public records related to the Nov. 2 voting.
A dozen other Florida counties could face similar lawsuits, said Bev Harris, executive director of Black Box Voting Inc.
The Seattle-area activist is in Orlando this week attending a conference of Florida elections chiefs. Harris became a celebrity among electronic-voting critics last year when she publicized the existence of an unsecured Web site that contained proprietary source code and other internal documents for Diebold touch-screen voting machines.
Black Box Voting wants to examine internal audit logs and other records from voting machines and tabulating machines in each of Florida's 67 counties. The group also wants copies of correspondence and e-mails between elections offices and voting equipment vendors between Oct. 12 and Nov. 3.
James Ridgeway, The Village Voice: Among the unanswered questions of 9-11 is the part played by the FBI in handling the various tips and information pouring through its translation section at the Washington, D.C., field office. It is in this division that certified language specialists with top secret security clearances handle the most sensitive information, from wiretaps to face-to-face interview translations between an investigating agent and a suspect. The translators often have inordinate power. Because of their expertise (or rather, the limited number of languages spoken by their bosses), translators often make the decisions on which cases to fully translate and which not to bother with. Errors can creep in: Translators may misunderstand a dialect and thus lose the meaning or context of information. On occasion, some translators' grasp of English is so poor that they cannot convey nuances of the speakers.
This division is already under fire from the Justice Department's inspector general and whistle-blowers, most notably Sibel Edmonds, who was fired from her job as a Farsi translator when she protested the way the work was being handled. Since Edmonds began speaking out, others have come forward…
Edmonds, whose previous letters to the two senators were marked "classified" by John Ashcroft's Justice Department, purportedly in the interests of national security, is readying a federal court appeal to the gag order. She complained to her superiors that translators were unable to handle the languages in which they had been certified. For example, in one case, a man did not have proficiency in basic English, but was hired under pressure from family members who also had worked for the FBI. This man, according to Edmonds, not only was "placed in sole charge of translating for some of the most important/sensitive intelligence investigations, he was also sent to Guantánamo Bay to translate information collected from the detainees."
Meanwhile, other cases are turning up. One of them involves efforts by a longtime FBI counterintelligence agent to alert his superiors to special treatment accorded translators. John M. Cole, an FBI counterintelligence program officer with 18 years of experience, wrote Director Robert Mueller, in a letter dated March 17, 2003, "I have prepared several risk assessments concerning applicants for language specialists positions. In the majority of these risk assessments I found numerous areas where the backgrounds of these individuals had not been thoroughly investigated. In one case, I discovered that the applicant's father was a former military attaché who had been assigned to a foreign embassy in Washington, D.C. Despite my findings, these individuals were hired, given unescorted access and Top Secret security clearances." The applicant's father was a military attaché at the Pakistani embassy. According to Cole, it is well-known in Washington that all the Pakistani military attachés are in fact Pakistani intelligence officers.
Amy Goodman interviews Jesse Jackson, DemocracyNow!:
AMY GOODMAN: Reverend Jackson, Democracy Now! just went to Spain and Italy and on one of the main TV stations called RAI in Rome, the interviewer asked about the election and I said, “Well, really we don't really know who won.” And his eyebrows raised very high and he said, “Excuse me. Kerry conceded. Haven't you heard?” Now what about this, Reverend Jackson? What about Kerry immediately conceding?
JESSE JACKSON: The early concession betrayed the trust of the voters. We have a moral obligation and a legal obligation to see that every vote counts and whether Kerry gets the most votes or not, we must break a precedent of fraudulent elections. For the Secretary of the State, in fact, can be the co-chair of a campaign and run the process -- that's like a team owner of a baseball team being the umpire at game seven of the World Series. You can't be a team owner and be a referee at the same time. You can't have Katherine Harris and Ken Blackwell as chairs of the campaign and in charge of the process. It taints the credibility of the process at the very beginning.
AMY GOODMAN: What about the $51 million that John Kerry has? The largest amount of money a presidential candidate has had after an election. He's not in the red, he's in the black. The biggest amount of money any presidential candidate has had in history, well over half what George Bush has. He could use that money for a recount. Instead -- the poor Green Party is raising the money.
JESSE JACKSON: You could take a couple million dollars of that money and hire Cliff Arnebeck’s law firm and partners and the Common Cause lawyers who are credible and bright and able lawyers. You could you take a couple million dollars and put a renewed light on Ohio. That can determine not only the outcome of this election but the future of democratic elections. We have to go beyond this matter. We really need, which we do not have, we need the Constitutional right to vote for President federally protected. We do not have the Constitutional right to vote for President. We only have the state's right to vote. We asked 50 state separate and unequal elections within those states, Ohio for example, 88 counties, each running their own scheme. We must now go to another level. Not only should we count these votes, we need an amendment to the Constitution. We need -- all Americans need the Constitutional, individual right, federally protected right to vote for the President.
AMY GOODMAN: Reverend Jackson, have you talked to John Kerry about this?
JESSE JACKSON: I did talk with him about the election and he first thanked us for our continued effort, but will not take a public position, nor offer any resources at this time, substantial resources to help make it happen. So we are doing it on our will.
AMY GOODMAN: So what's he doing with his $51 million?
JESSE JACKSON: I do not know. It make think so much that when the reason [inaudible] those that are fighting: the Greens, the Libertarians, and those who have found common ground. Dr. King got the Nobel Peace Prize and Lyndon Johnson gave King a White House reception. He said, “I thank you very much for the reception, but all Americans need the right to vote.” Johnson said, “Dr. King, I like you very much. You know I do, I like you. I regard you highly. But I can't render the right to vote unilaterally, I just can’t. I wish could, but I can't. The bad news is that Congress can, but won't. So you can't have the right to vote.” So the President talked, so we went to Selma, the common people rose up. And there again, the common people must rise up and demand that their vote count. So to me, this campaign in Ohio is not so much about Kerry as it is about Fannie Lou Hamer. It’s about Medgar Evers. It’s about Schwerner, Goodman, and Chaney. It’s about the people's will to democracy. If people can fight [inaudible] for democracy in the Ukraine, we can do that here.
Erik Stetson, Associated Press: A federal grand jury on Wednesday indicted James Tobin, President Bush's former New England campaign chairman, on four counts related to the Republican jamming of get-out-the-vote phone lines on Election Day 2002.
State Democrats, who have filed a lawsuit over the jamming, had accused Tobin in October of involvement in the conspiracy.
Hans Blix, Toronto Star: The results of a review of the functioning of the U.N., conducted by a panel appointed by the Secretary-General Kofi Annan, will soon be on the table. That there is a need to discuss an array of questions is not in doubt — but the fact that the most powerful member of the organization shows disdain for it is not exactly conducive to a positive intergovernmental debate.
We learned before the invasion of Iraq that in the view of the U.S. administration, the security council had the choice of voting with the U.S. for armed action — or being irrelevant. A majority on the council did not allow itself to be pushed into supporting the action, and the invasion took place. Many saw this as a loss of prestige for the council and as a crisis for the U.N.. In one way it was, and is. Institutions such as the security council are like instruments to be played.
If members choose not to play or are completely out of tune, no marching music results. It is only when the construction of the instruments is found deficient or outmoded that repair is meaningful.
The refusal last year of a majority of the security council to follow the tune that the U.S. wished the council to play can also be seen as the saving of the council's authority and respectability. How would the world look at the council today if it had endorsed an armed action to eradicate weapons of mass destruction — that did not exist and whose evidence was often concocted, even forged?
Today most countries and most people consider the action launched in Iraq a grave error or worse, and much of American public opinion — perhaps even a majority — shares this view. Yet the new U.S. administration seems to take victory in the presidential election not only as support for strong positions and actions against terrorist threats (probably a justified interpretation), but also as support for its decision to launch the war on Iraq and for its disdainful attitude to the U.N..
It is as if the U.N. had insulted the U.S. The Republican convention that renominated George Bush erupted in applause when the vice-president said that Mr. Bush would "never seek a permission slip to defend the American people". Fine, except that Iraq was not a threat, not a growing threat, and probably not even a distant threat.
We also see an intense and large-scale campaign of vilification, depicting the U.N. as "corrupt" because the oil-for-food programme — instituted and supervised by the security council and its most powerful members, including the U.S. — enabled Iraq, the buyers of Iraqi oil and the sellers of products to Iraq, to siphon off money and pass it on illegally to Saddam Hussein's regime.
The security council remains potentially a vital institution. The Iraq war has demonstrated the handicap that followed from not acting with its authorization…
For greater legitimacy, the security council needs to represent a large part of the world's population, hence a need for the presence in the council of the most populous countries in all continents. One argument, not infrequently advanced, I find totally objectionable: that those states that pay the greatest contributions to the U.N. budget should merit a seat. The seats should not be for sale.
Save the US Constitution! Save the Environment! Restore the Sanctity of the Vote! Break the Corporatist Stranglehold on the US Mainstream News Media! Repudiate the 9/11 Cover-Up & the Iraq War Lies! Restore the Republic!
Full texts and URLS follow.
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/120404W.shtml
Editor’s Note | Any who wish to see this hearing receive wide attention should contact their Senators and Representatives and ask that they attend. Furthermore, any who wish to see this hearing receive wide attention should contact the television network C-SPAN and ask them to broadcast the event in its entirety. C-SPAN accepts suggestions for events to be broadcast at events@c-span.org. The network can also be contacted via telephone at (202) 737-3220. - wrp
Also see below:
Letter from House Committee on the Judiciary to Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell •
Conyers to Hold Hearings on Ohio Vote Fraud
By William Rivers Pitt
t r u t h o u t | Report
Friday 03 December 2004
Democratic Representative John Conyers, Jr. of Michigan, ranking Minority member of the House Judiciary Committee, will hold a hearing on Wednesday 08 December 2004 to investigate allegations of vote fraud and irregularities in Ohio during the 2004 Presidential election. The hearing is slated to begin at 10:00 a.m. EST in the Rayburn House Office Building in Washington DC.
Democratic Representatives Melvin Watt and Robert Scott will also be centrally involved with the hearing. Rev. Jesse Jackson will be in attendance, along with Ralph Neas (President, People for the American Way), Jon Greenbaum (Director, Voting Rights Project, Lawyers Committee For Civil Rights Under Law), Ellie Smeal (Executive Director, The Feminist Majority), Bob Fitrakis ( The Free Press), Cliff Arnebeck (Arnebeck Associates), John Bonifaz (General Counsel, National Voting Institute), Steve Rosenfeld (Producer, Air America Radio), and Shawnta Walcott (Communications Director, Zogby International). Ohio Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell has been invited to attend.
The term ‘hearing’ is technically not accurate in this matter, as Conyers and his fellow Representatives will be holding this forum without the blessing of the Republican Majority leader of the Judiciary Committee. Staffers from the Minority office at the Judiciary Committee describe the event as a ‘Members Briefing.’ That having been said, this event will be a hearing by every meaningful definition of the word. Expert testimony will be offered, and a good deal of data on potential fraud previously unreported to the public will be discussed and examined at length.
The hearing came together thanks to a confluence of events, and through the work of like-minded individuals who are deeply concerned about the allegations of vote fraud in the Ohio Presidential election. Tim Carpenter and Kevin Spidel, along with other members of Progressive Democrats of America, went to Washington DC to speak with the Democratic members of the Judiciary Committee about the need for an investigation into these allegations. They found Rep. Conyers, his fellow Judiciary Democrats, and their staffers already working on assembling such an investigation.
The core of what Conyers and his fellow Minority members will be discussing at this hearing can be found in the letter below, which was sent by the Minority office to Ohio Secretary of State Blackwell on 02 December. In the letter, Conyers, along with Reps. Watt, Nadler and Baldwin, outline a broad and detailed series of questions and concerns about the manner in which the Ohio election took place.
I will be traveling to Washington DC to begin t r u t h o u t coverage of this event on Tuesday night, and we will keep you posted on further developments as they arise.
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William Rivers Pitt is a New York Times and international bestseller of two books - 'War on Iraq: What Team Bush Doesn't Want You To Know' and 'The Greatest Sedition Is Silence.'
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Go to Original
One Hundred Eighth Congress
Congress of the United States
House of Representatives
Committee on the Judiciary
2138 Rayburn House Office Building
Washington DC 20515-6216
(202) 225-3951
December 2, 2004
The Honorable J. Kenneth Blackwell
Ohio Secretary of State
180 East Broad Street, 16th Floor
Columbus, OH 43215
Dear Secretary Blackwell:
We write to request your assistance with our ongoing investigation of election irregularities in the 2004 Presidential election. As you may be aware, the Government Accountability Office has agreed to undertake a systematic and comprehensive review of election irregularities throughout the nation. As a separate matter, we have requested that the House Judiciary Committee Democratic staff undertake a thorough review of each and every specific allegation of election irregularities received by our offices.
Collectively, we are concerned that these complaints constitute a troubled portrait of a one-two punch that may well have altered and suppressed votes, particularly minority and Democratic votes. First, it appears there were substantial irregularities in vote tallies. It is unclear whether these apparent errors were the result of machine malfunctions or fraud.
Second, it appears that a series of actions of government and non-government officials may have worked to frustrate minority voters. Consistent and
widespread reports indicate a lack of voting machines in urban, minority and Democratic areas, and a surplus of such machines in Republican, white and rural areas. As a result, minority voters were discouraged from voting by lines that were in excess of eight hours long. Many of these voters were also apparently victims of a campaign of deception, where flyers and calls would direct them to the wrong polling place. Once at that polling place, after waiting for hours in line, many of these voters were provided provisional ballots after learning they were at the wrong location. These ballots were not counted in many jurisdictions because of a directive issued by some election officials, such as yourself.
We are sure you agree with us that regardless of the outcome of the election, it is imperative that we examine any and all factors that may have led to voting irregularities and any failure of votes to be properly counted. Toward that end, we ask you to respond to the following allegations:
I. Counting Irregularities
A. Warren County Lockdown – On election night, Warren County locked down its administration building and barred reporters from observing the counting. When that decision was questioned, County officials claimed they were responding to a terrorist threat that ranked a “10" on a scale of 1 to 10, and that this information was received from an FBI agent. Despite repeated requests, County officials have declined to name that agent, however, and the FBI has stated that they had no information about a terror threat in Warren County. Your office has stated that it does not know of any other county that took these drastic measures.
In addition to these contradictions, Warren County officials have given conflicting accounts of when the decision was made to lock down the building. While the County Commissioner has stated that the decision to lockdown the building was made during an October 28 closed-door meeting, emailed memos – dated October 25 and 26 – indicate that preparations for the lockdown were already underway.
This lockdown must be viewed in the context of the aberrational results in Warren County. In the 2000 Presidential election, the Democratic Presidential candidate, Al Gore, stopped running television commercials and pulled resources out of Ohio weeks before the election. He won 28% of the vote in Warren County. In 2004, the Democratic Presidential candidate, John Kerry, fiercely contested Ohio and independent groups put considerable resources into getting out the Democratic vote. Moreover, unlike in 2000, independent candidate Ralph Nader was not on the Ohio ballot in 2004. Yet, the tallies reflect John Kerry receiving exactly the same percentage in Warren County as Gore received, 28%.
We hope you agree that transparent election procedures are vital to public confidence in electoral results. Moreover, such aberrant procedures only create suspicion and doubt that the counting of votes was manipulated. As part of your decision to certify the election, we hope you have investigated these concerns and found them without merit. To assist us in reaching a similar conclusion, we ask the following:
1. Have you, in fact, conducted an investigation of the lockdown? What procedures have you or would you recommend be put into place to avoid a recurrence of this situation?
2. Have you ascertained whether County officials were advised of terrorist activity by an FBI agent and, if so, the identity of that agent?
3. If County officials were not advised of terrorist activity by an FBI agent, have you inquired as to why they misrepresented this fact? If the lockdown was not as a response to a terrorist threat, why did it take place? Did any manipulation of vote tallies occur?
B. Perry County Election Counting Discrepancies – The House Judiciary Committee Democratic staff has received information indicating discrepancies in vote tabulations in Perry County. For example, the sign-in book for the Reading S precinct indicates that approximately 360 voters cast ballots in that precinct. In the same precinct, the sign-in book indicates that there were 33 absentee votes cast. In sum, this would appear to mean that fewer than 400 total votes were cast in that precinct. Yet, the precinct’s official tallies indicate that 489 votes were cast. In addition, some voters’ names have two ballot stub numbers listed next to their entries creating the appearance that voters were allowed to cast more than one ballot.
In another precinct, W Lexington G AB, 350 voters are registered according to the County’s initial tallies. Yet, 434 voters cast ballots. As the tallies indicate, this would be an impossible 124% voter turnout. The breakdown on election night was initially reported to be 174 votes for Bush, and 246 votes for Kerry. We are advised that the Perry County Board of Elections has since issued a correction claiming that, due to a computer error, some votes were counted twice. We are advised that the new tallies state that only 224 people voted, and the tally is 90 votes for Bush and 127 votes for Kerry. This would make it appear that virtually every ballot was counted twice, which seems improbable.
In Monroe Township, Precinct AAV, we are advised that 266 voters signed in to vote on election day, yet the Perry County Board of Elections is reporting that 393 votes were cast in that precinct, a difference of 133 votes.
4. Why does it appear that there are more votes than voters in the Reading S precinct of Perry County?
5. What is the explanation for the fluctuating results in the W Lexington AB precinct?
6. Why does it appear that there are more votes than voters in the Monroe Township precinct AAV?
C. Perry County Registration Peculiarities
In Perry County, there appears to be an extraordinarily high level voter registration, 91%; yet a substantial number of these voters have never voted and have no signature on file. Of the voters that are registered in Perry County an extraordinarily large number of voters are listed as having registered in 1977, a year in which there were no federal elections. Of these an exceptional number are listed as having registered on the exact same day: in total, 3,100 voters apparently registered in Perry County on November 8, 1977.
7. Please explain why there is such a high percentage of voters in this County who have never voted and do not have signatures on file. Also, please help us understand why such a high number of voters in this County are shown as having registered on the same day in 1977.
D. Unusual Results in Butler County
In Butler County, a Democratic Candidate for State Supreme Court, C. Ellen Connally received 59,532 votes. In contrast, the Kerry-Edwards ticket received only 54,185 votes, 5,000 less than the State Supreme Court candidate. Additionally, the victorious Republican candidate for State Supreme Court received approximately 40,000 less votes than the Bush-Cheney ticket. Further, Connally received 10,000 or more votes in excess of Kerry’s total number of votes in five counties, and 5,000 more votes in excess of Kerry’s total in ten others.
It must also be noted that Republican judicial candidates were reportedly “awash in cash,” with more than $1.4 million and were also supported by independent expenditures by the Ohio Chamber of Commerce.
While you may have found an explanation for these bizarre results, it appears to be wildly implausible that 5,000 voters waited in line to cast a vote for an underfunded Democratic Supreme Court candidate and then declined to cast a vote for the most well-funded Democratic Presidential campaign in history. We would appreciate an answer to the following:
8. Have you examined how an underfunded Democratic State Supreme Court candidate could receive so many more votes in Butler County than the Kerry-Edwards ticket? If so, could you provide us with the results of your examination? Is there any precedent in Ohio for a downballot candidate receiving on a percentage or absolute basis so many more votes than the Presidential candidate of the same party in this or any other presidential election? Please let us know if any other County in Ohio registered such a disparity on a percentage or absolute basis.
E. Unusual Results in Cuyahoga County
Precincts in Cleveland have reported an incredibly high number of votes for third party candidates who have historically received only a handful of votes from these urban areas. For example, precinct 4F in the 4th Ward cast 290 votes for Kerry, 21 for Bush, and 215 for Constitution Party candidate Michael Peroutka. In 2000, the same precinct cast less than 8 votes for all third party candidates combined.
This pattern is found in at least 10 precincts through throughout Cleveland in 2004, awarding hundreds of unlikely votes to the third party candidate. Notably, these precincts share more than a strong Democratic history: the use of a punch card ballot. In light of these highly unlikely results, we would like to know the following:
9. Have you investigated whether the punch card system used in Cuyahoga County led to voters accidentally voting for third party candidates instead of the Democratic candidate they intended? If so, what were the results? Has a third party candidate ever received such a high percentage of votes in these precincts.
10. Have you found similar problems in other counties? Have you found similar problems with other voting methods?
F. Spoiled Ballots
According to post election canvassing, many ballots were cast without any valid selection for president. For example, two precincts in Montgomery County had an undervote rate of over 25% each – accounting for nearly 6,000 voters who stood in line to vote, but purportedly declined to vote for president. This is in stark contrast to the 2% of undervoting county-wide. Disturbingly, predominantly Democratic precincts had 75% more undervotes than those that were predominantly Republican. It is inconceivable to us that such a large number of people supposedly did not have a preference for president in such a controversial and highly contested election.
Considering that an estimated 93,000 ballots were spoiled across Ohio, we would like to know the following:
11. How many of those spoiled ballots were of the punch card or optical scan format and could therefore be examined in a recount?
12. Of those votes that have a paper trail, how many votes for president were undercounted, or showed no preference for president? How many were overcounted, or selected more than one candidate for president? How many other ballots had an indeterminate preference?
13. Of the total 93,000 spoiled ballots, how many were from predominantly Democratic precincts? How many were from minority-majority precincts?
14. Are you taking steps to ensure that there will be a paper trail for all votes before the 2006 elections so that spoiled ballots can be individually re-examined?
G. Franklin County Overvote – On election day, a computerized voting machine in ward 1B in the Gahanna precinct of Franklin County recorded a total of 4,258 votes for President Bush and 260 votes for Democratic challenger, John Kerry. However, there are only 800 registered voters in that Gahanna precinct, and only 638 people cast votes at the New Life Church polling site. It was since discovered that a computer glitch resulted in the recording of 3,893 extra votes for President George W. Bush.
Fortunately, this glitch was caught and the numbers were adjusted to show President Bush’s true vote count at 365 votes to Senator Kerry’s 260 votes. However, many questions remain as to whether this kind of malfunction happened in other areas of Ohio. To help us clarify this issue, we request that you answer the following:
15. How was it discovered that this computer glitch occurred?
16. What procedures were employed to alert other counties upon the discovery of the malfunction?
17. Can you be absolutely certain that this particular malfunction did not occur in other counties in Ohio during the 2004 Presidential election? How?
18. What is being done to ensure that this type of malfunction does not happen again in the future?
H. Miami County Vote Discrepancy – In Miami County, with 100% of the precincts reporting on Wednesday, November 3, 2004, President Bush had received 20,807 votes, or 65.80% of the vote, and Senator Kerry had received 10,724 votes, or 33.92% of the vote. Miami reported 31,620 voters. Inexplicably, nearly 19,000 new ballots were added after all precincts reported, boosting President Bush’s vote count to 33,039, or 65.77%, while Senator Kerry’s vote percentage stayed exactly the same to three one-hundredths of a percentage point at 33.92%.
Roger Kearney of Rhombus Technologies, Ltd., the reporting company responsible for vote results of Miami County, has stated that the problem was not with his reporting and that the additional 19,000 votes came before 100% of the precincts were in. However, this does not explain how the vote count could change for President Bush, but not for Senator Kerry, after 19,000 new votes were added to the roster. To help us better understand this anomaly, we request that you answer the following:
19. What is your explanation as to the statistical anomaly that showed virtually identical ratios after the final 20-40% of the vote came in? In your judgment, how could the vote count in this County have changed for President Bush, but not for Senator Kerry, after 19,000 new votes were added to the roster?
20. Are you aware of any pending investigations into this matter?
I. Mahoning County Machine Problems – In Mahoning County, numerous voters reported that when they attempted to vote for John Kerry, the vote showed up as a vote for George Bush. This was reported by numerous voters and continued despite numerous attempts to correct their vote.
21. Please let us know if you have conducted any investigation or inquiry of machine voting problems in the state, including the above described problems in Mahoning County, and the results of this investigation or inquiry.
II. Procedural Irregularities
A. Machine Shortages
Throughout predominately Democratic areas in Ohio on election day, there were reports of long lines caused by inadequate numbers of voting machines. Evidence introduced in public hearings indicates that 68 machines in Franklin County were never deployed for voters, despite long lines for voters at that county, with some voters waiting from two to seven hours to cast their vote. The Franklin County Board of Elections reported that 68 voting machines were never placed on election day, and Franklin County BOE Director Matt Damschroder admitted on November 19, 2004 that 77 machines malfunctioned on Election Day. It has come to our attention that a county purchasing official who was on the line with Ward Moving and Storage Company, documented only 2,741 voting machines delivered through the November 2 election day. However, Franklin County’s records reveal that they had 2,866 “machines available” on election day. This would mean that amid the two to seven hour waits in the inner city of Columbus, at least 125 machines remained unused on Election Day.
Franklin County’s machine allocation report clearly states the number of machines that were placed “By Close of Polls.” However, questions remain as to where these machines were placed and who had access to them throughout the day. Therefore, what matters is not how many voting machines were operating at the end of the day, but rather how many were there to service the people during the morning and noon rush hours.
An analysis revealed a pattern of providing fewer machines to the Democratic city of Columbus, and more machines to the primarily Republican suburbs. At seven out of eight polling places, observers counted only three voting machines per location. According to the presiding judge at one polling site located at the Columbus Model Neighborhood facility at 1393 E. Broad St., there had been five machines during the 2004 primary. Moreover, at Douglas Elementary School, there had been four machines during the spring primary. In one Ohio voting precinct serving students from Kenyon College, some voters were required to wait more than eight hours to vote. There were reportedly only two voting machines at that precinct. The House Judiciary Committee staff has received first hand information confirming these reports.
Additionally, it appears that in a number of locations, polling places were moved from large locations, such as gyms, where voters could comfortably wait inside to vote to smaller locations where voters were required to wait in the rain. We would appreciate answers to the following:
22. How much funding did Ohio receive from the federal government for voting machines?
23. What criteria were used to distribute those new machines?
24. Were counties given estimates or assurances as to how many new voting machines they would receive? How does this number compare to how many machines were actually received?
25. What procedures were in place to ensure that the voting machines were properly allocated throughout Franklin and other counties? What changes would you recommend be made to insure there is a more equitable allocation of machines in the future?
B. Invalidated Provisional Ballots
As you know, just weeks before the 2004 Presidential election, you issued a directive to county election officials saying they are allowed to count provisional ballots only from voters who go to the correct precinct for their home address. At the same time, it has been reported that fraudulent flyers were being circulated on official-looking letterhead telling voters the wrong place to vote, phone calls were placed incorrectly informing voters that their polling place had changed, “door-hangers” telling African-American voters to go to the wrong precinct, and election workers sent voters to the wrong precinct. In other areas, precinct workers refused to give any voter a provisional ballot. And in at least one precinct, election judges told voters that they may validly cast their ballot in any precinct, leading to any number of disqualified provisional ballots.
In Hamilton County, officials have carried this problematic and controversial directive to a ludicrous extreme: they are refusing to count provisional ballots cast at the correct polling place if they were cast at the wrong table in that polling place. It seems that some polling places contained multiple precincts which were located at different tables. Now, 400 such voters in Hamilton county alone will be disenfranchised as a result of your directive.
26. Have you directed Hamilton County and all other counties not to disqualify provisional ballots cast at the correct polling place simply because they were cast at the wrong precinct table?
27. While many election workers received your directive that voters may cast ballots only in their own precincts, some did not. How did you inform your workers, and the public, that their vote would not be counted if cast in the wrong precinct? How many votes were lost due to election workers telling voters they may vote at any precinct, in direct violation of your ruling?
28. Your directive was exploited by those who intentionally misled voters about their correct polling place, and multiplied the number of provisional ballots found invalid. What steps have you or other officials in Ohio taken to investigate these criminal acts? Has anyone been referred for prosecution? If so, what is the status of their cases?
29. How many provisional ballots were filed in the presidential election in Ohio? How many were ultimately found to be valid and counted? What were the various reasons that these ballots were not counted, and how many ballots fall into each of these categories? Please break down the foregoing by County if possible.
C. Directive to Reject Voter Registration Forms Not Printed on White, Uncoated Paper of Not Less Than 80 lb Text Weight
On September 7, you issued a directive to county boards of elections commanding such boards to reject voter registration forms not “printed on white, uncoated paper of not less than 80 lb. text weight.” Instead, the county boards were to follow a confusing procedure where the voter registration form would be treated as an application for a form and a new blank form would be sent to the voter. While you reversed this directive, you did not do so until September 28. In the interim, a number of counties followed this directive and rejected otherwise valid voter registration forms. There appears to be some further confusion about the revision of this order which resulted in some counties being advised of the change by the news media.
30. How did you notify county boards of elections of your initial September 7 directive?
31. How did you notify county boards of elections of your September 28 decision to revise that directive?
32. Have you conducted an investigation to determine how many registration forms were rejected as a result of your September 7 directive? If so, how many?
33. Have you conducted an investigation to determine how many voters who had their otherwise valid forms rejected as a result of your September 7 directive subsequently failed to re-register? If so, how many?
34. Have you conducted an investigation to determine how many of those voters showed up who had their otherwise valid forms rejected to vote on election day and were turned away? If so, how many?
We await your prompt reply. To the extent any questions relate to information not available to you, please pass on such questions to the appropriate election board or other official. Please respond to 2142 Rayburn House Office Building, Washington, DC 20515 by December 10. If you need more time to investigate and respond to some of these inquiries, we would welcome a partial response by that date and a complete response within a reasonable period of time thereafter. If you have any questions about this inquiry, please contact Perry Apelbaum or Ted Kalo of the House Judiciary Committee Democratic Staff at (202) 225-6504.
Sincerely,
Rep. John Conyers, Jr.
Rep. Melvin Watt
Rep. Jerrold Nadler
Rep. Tammy Baldwin
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http://www.consortiumnews.com/2004/120404.html
Slow-Rolling Democracy in Ohio
By Robert Parry
December 4, 2004
George W. Bush’s political allies appear to be slow-rolling a requested recount in Ohio, leaving so little time that even if widespread voting fraud is discovered, the finding will come too late to derail Bush’s second term.
Though balloting occurred on Nov. 2, more than a month ago, Ohio’s Republican Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell still hasn’t certified an official vote, a move now expected on Monday, Dec. 6. Since Blackwell also has battled requests from third-party candidates for an expedited recount, a review of Ohio’s vote now won’t begin until Dec. 13, at the earliest, according to Blackwell’s office. [See Boston Globe, Dec. 1, 2004]
But the Dec. 13 date is the same day the electors of the Electoral College meet to formally select the President of the United States. So even if the recount uncovers enough fraud to reveal John Kerry as the rightful winner in Ohio, it would be too late to change that outcome.
Meanwhile, as Ohio’s official foot-dragging has gone on, Bush’s election-night lead has continued to shrink with the counting of overseas and provisional ballots. The Associated Press reported on Dec. 3 that its vote tally of Ohio’s 88 counties showed Kerry narrowing Bush’s lead to 119,000 votes from about 136,000 votes, leaving Bush with a 2 percent lead.
But Kerry also might stand to gain a substantial number of votes from a recount that would examine ballots thrown out by antiquated punch-card voting machines. They are used mostly in poor areas, especially African-American neighborhoods that are Democratic strongholds. Other voters, believing that Ohio’s electronic systems were susceptible to vote rigging, have sought audits to check for tampering.
Instead of embracing these examinations to resolve voter doubts, however, Secretary of State Blackwell and other Bush allies in Ohio have resisted the demands. Now, the clock is running out for any meaningful review. [Citizens demanding a full recount in Ohio scheduled a rally for Dec. 4 in the capital of Columbus Other protests are being organized in the days leading up to the Electoral College meetings on Dec. 13.]
Florida Echoes
In some ways, the United States is witnessing a repeat of Election 2000 where Bush first frustrated Al Gore’s demands for recounts in Florida and then had five Republicans on the U.S. Supreme Court block a recount ordered by the state Supreme Court. Finally, the five Republican justices in Washington required that a reorganized Florida recount be conducted in two hours, a clearly impossible task that handed the presidency to George W. Bush.
Placing national unity as a priority over democracy, the U.S. news media stepped in after Election 2000 to sweep away any lingering doubts about Bush’s legitimacy. The unity message was that the United States needed to put the contentious election in the past, even though Bush was the first popular-vote loser in more than a century to move into the White House.
This protection of Bush’s fragile legitimacy gained even greater momentum after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks. The “united-we-stand” sentiment put the New York Times and other leading news organizations in a particular quandary in November 2001 when they completed an unofficial recount of Florida’s votes.
The recount discovered that if all legally cast votes had been counted, Al Gore would have won Florida regardless of what standard of “chad” was used. In other words, Gore was the rightfully elected President of the United States, not Bush.
To avert the predictable conservative outrage over the recount findings, the major national news outlets simply buried the “Gore-won” lead. Instead, they topped their stories with a bogus analysis that a recount would have left Bush as the rightful winner.
The analysis assumed, falsely, that so-called “overvotes,” where voters checked a candidate and wrote in the name, would not have been included in the recount. But the news organizations were erroneous in this assumption because the judge handling the Florida recount had ordered those votes tallied and almost certainly would have added them to the state’s total, since they were clearly legal under Florida law. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “So Bush Did Steal the White House.”]
Now, with Team Bush running out the clock in Ohio, one has to wonder what contortions the mainstream news media would put itself through if a belated recount – after Bush’s election is formalized – shows that Kerry should have won Ohio and thus the White House.
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Robert Parry, who broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek, has written a new book, Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq. It can be ordered at secrecyandprivilege.com. It's also available at Amazon.com
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/120604X.shtml
All Mosquitos, No Swamp; No Elephants Either
By Ray McGovern
t r u t h o u t | Perspective
Sunday 05 December 2004
Last Thursday's conference on "Al Qaeda 2.0: Transnational Terrorism After 9/11," sponsored by the New America Foundation and the New York University Center on Law & Security, was a valuable gift to those wanting an update on informed opinion on the subject. The event proved to be as highly instructive for what was not addressed, though, as for the issues that were. The elephants known to be present remained largely unacknowledged.
The cavernous Caucus Room of the Russell Senate Office Building was full to the gunnels. Panel after panel of distinguished presenters from near and far, from right and left - including authors Peter Bergen, Michael Scheuer, Jessica Stern and Col. Pat Lang - exuded and freely shared their expertise. But there was myopia as well.
The mosquitos of terrorism were dissected and examined as carefully as biology students once did drosophila, but typing the generic DNA of terrorism proved more elusive. Worse, no attention was given to the swamp in which terrorists breed. Were it not for a few impertinent questions from the audience evoking a pungent smell, the swamps might have eluded attention altogether.
The first panel featured two experts from RAND, both of whom touched only in passing - and quite gingerly - on the need to drain the swamp. The first closed his remarks with a 30-second peroration in which he observed that less attention might be given to kill/capture metrics in favor of addressing the causes of terrorism and breaking the cycle of terrorist recruitment.
The second speaker from RAND, referring to that organization's numerous studies on influencing public opinion, closed his remarks with this: "When the message coheres with the context in which the message is transmitted, it works." Sending out the right message during the Cold War was easier, he said, because the context (the United States being the only alternative to the USSR) was very clear. On terrorism, he added, we need to ponder "the mismatch between context and message."
What About The Elephants?
Then came a rude question from the audience: Is it not striking that even in an academic-type setting like this, elephants must remain invisible? Is it not ironic, that a panel of the U.S. Defense Science Board, in an unclassified study on "Strategic Communication," completed on September 23 but kept under wraps until after the November 2 election, let the pachyderms out of the bag? Directly contradicting the president, the DSB panel gave voice to what virtually all who were sitting in that ornate Senate Caucus Room knew, but were afraid to say. It named the elephants.
"Muslims do not ‘hate our freedom,' but rather, they hate our policies. The overwhelming majority voice their objections to what they see as one-sided support in favor of Israel and against Palestinian rights, and the longstanding, even increasing support for what Muslims collectively see as tyrannies, most notably Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Pakistan, and the Gulf States. Thus, when American public diplomacy talks about bringing democracy to Islamic societies, this is seen as no more than self-serving hypocrisy."
"...Nor can the most carefully crafted messages, themes, and words persuade when the messenger lacks credibility."
U.S. Support For Israel "Immutable"
Another questioner pressed RAND's expert on mismatch-context-message, asking, "What can we do to change the context?" In answer the expert acknowledged that the United States has a "bad reputation" but insisted that this is "unavoidable" because, for example, U.S. support for Israel is "immutable." The United States is also connected to what many Muslims consider "apostate" regimes, but it is difficult to escape what binds us, because the U.S. needs their "tactical support." (Read: oil; military bases; intelligence.)
There was some wincing and squirming in the audience, but in the end it was left to aptly named Marc Sageman, a forensic psychiatrist, former CIA case officer, and author of the book Understanding Terror Networks (published earlier this year), to state the obvious on Israel and Iraq. Putting it even more bluntly that the Defense Science Board panel, he asserted:
"We are seen as a hypocritical bully in the Middle East and we have to stop!"
Now why should that be so hard to say, I asked myself. And I was reminded of a frequent, unnerving experience I had while on the lecture circuit in recent months. Almost invariably, someone in the audience would approach me after the talk and ensuing discussion, and congratulate me on my "courage" in naming Israel as a factor in discussing the war in Iraq and the struggle against terrorism.
I don't get it. Since when did it take uncommon courage to state simply, without fear or favor, the conclusions that fall out of one's analysis? Since when did it become an exceptional thing to tell it like it is?
Taking The Heat On Israel
I thought of the debate I had on Iraq with arch-neoconservative and former CIA Director James Woolsey on PBS' Charlie Rose Show on August 20, when I broke the taboo on mentioning Israel and was immediately branded "anti-Semitic" by Woolsey. Reflecting later on his accusation, it seemed almost OK since it was so blatantly ad hominem. And his attack was all the more transparent, coming from the self-described "anchor of the Presbyterian wing of JINSA" - the Jewish Institute of National Security Affairs, a strong advocate of war to eliminate all perceived enemies of Israel - like Iraq. In the ensuing days, a flood of e-mail reached me from all over the country - some of it repeating Woolsey's charge, but most of it warmly congratulating me on my "courage."
I still don't fully understand. And that was my candid answer to the question I dreaded - the one that so often came up during the Q and A sessions following my presentations: Why is it that the state of Israel has such pervasive influence over our body politic? No one denied that it does; most seemed genuinely puzzled as to why. My embarrassment at my inability to answer the question is attenuated by the solace I take in the thought that I am in good company.
Gen. Brent Scowcroft, National Security Adviser to President George H. W. Bush and now chair of his son's President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, has been known to speak out on key issues when his patience is exhausted. Remember how, for example, before the attack on Iraq, he described the evidence of ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda as "scant" when Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was calling it "bulletproof?" Well, it sounds like he has again run out of patience. Scowcroft recently told the Financial Times that George W. Bush is "mesmerized" by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. "Sharon just has him wrapped around his little finger," Scowcroft is quoted as saying.
Scowcroft and I apparently have less at risk than those working for RAND...or for the New York Times, which gives off the aroma of being similarly mesmerized and intimidated. This shows through with amazing regularity; I'll adduce but two recent examples:
Times Timing...
To its credit, the New York Times on November 24 published a story by Times reporter Thom Shanker on the findings of the Defense Science Board panel report given to Defense Secretary Rumsfeld on September 23. But why was the story two months late? And the urban legend that it was the Times that broke the story is not true, even though the Washington Post's somnolent ombudsman, Michael Getler "confirms that legend in his column this morning. (Noting that the story "didn't appear in the Post," Getler implies that it should have, because "it goes to the heart of both the war on terrorism and the war in Iraq and it raises many crucial issues that don't get probed deeply enough by news organizations, in my opinion.")
It was not the Times on November 24, but rather Reasononline's Matt Welch, who broke the story. On November 15 Welch wrote an account of the panel's report in which he referred to its recommendations as having already been "made public." Were reporters from the mainstream press again asleep? Do they feed only on the thin gruel of approved Pentagon handouts? It is easy to understand that the Defense Department had no incentive to advertise the DSB panel's embarrassing and potentially explosive findings. (How often have we seen a Pentagon-sponsored report contradicting a sitting president on a matter of such significance - and before a crucial election?) It is not so easy to grasp why the media missed or ignored the story. Or perhaps it is.
Maybe the clue is in the timing. I gave a long interview on US intelligence matters to another Times reporter a few weeks before the election and at the conclusion of the interview I commented that I certainly hoped his story would appear before November 2. This reporter turned out to be as candid as he was embarrassed. No, he confessed, his superiors at the Times had made it clear that there was an embargo on criticism of the administration of the kind I had offered until after the election. I expressed amazement that the New York Times - once courageous publisher of the Pentagon Papers that helped bring an end to our last ill-conceived war - would allow itself to be so intimidated. He replied, with undisguised embarrassment, that this is simply the way it is today.
Again, I find myself wondering how long the Times sat on the material reported by Shanker. Did it have the story before November 2? What does it mean that the Times published Shanker's report only after a decent post-election interval? Also interesting is the date ultimately chosen to run it - the day before Thanksgiving, a very poor time to attract the attention such a story might otherwise evoke. Yet another sign of wimpish desire to pander to administration preferences?
...and Times Surgery
Of equal interest is how the Times abridged the story itself. Shanker did quote from the key paragraph beginning with "Muslims do not ‘hate our freedom'" (quoted in full above). But he or his editors deliberately cut out the next sentence about what Muslims do object to; i.e., U.S. "one-sided support in favor of Israel and against Palestinian rights," and support for tyrannical regimes. The Times did include the sentence that immediately followed the omitted one. In other words, the offending middle sentence was surgically removed from the paragraph like a malignant tumor.
Editing Bin Laden, As Well
Similarly creative editing showed through the Times' reporting on Osama Bin Laden's videotaped speech in late October. Several paragraphs of the story made it onto page one, but the Times saw to it that the key point Bin Laden made toward the beginning of his remarks was relegated to paragraphs 23 to 25 at the very bottom of page nine. Buried there, dwarfed by a large ad for Bloomingdales, was Bin Laden's revealing claim that the idea for 9/11 first germinated after "we witnessed the oppression and tyranny of the American-Israeli coalition against our people in Palestine and Lebanon."
If, as suggested earlier, one were to look for "context," precious little is provided by the Times. A "newspaper of record" might have noted that even the risk-averse 9/11 commissioners pointed out on page 147 of the Commission Report that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, mastermind and executioner of the 9/11 attacks, was motivated by "his violent disagreement with U.S. foreign policy favoring Israel." Was that not news fit to print?
Four More Years
With the mainstream media co-opted, and four-year older but familiar national security faces in place for the president's second term, it is a safe bet we are in for the same inept, misguided policies - only more so. Sadly, Secretary of State Colin Powell's relatively moderate views had little visible impact on policy decisions. Still, when he is gone the president's circle of advisers will have an even shorter diameter. And it is highly unlikely that Powell's designated successor, Dr. Condoleezza Rice, will be any more astute than in the past in seeking counsel from experienced statesmen like her former patron, Gen. Scowcroft.
Foreign leaders are aghast...and have been for years. In August 2002, British senior Labor backbencher Gerald Kaufman, a former shadow foreign secretary, warned that the "hawks" in the U.S. administration were giving the president poor advice:
"Bush, himself the most intellectually backward American president in my lifetime, is surrounded by advisers whose bellicosity is exceeded only by their political, military and diplomatic illiteracy. Pity the man who relies on Rumsfeld, Cheney and Rice for counsel."
Shrinking Circle
On the afternoon of February 5, 2003, after Secretary of State Colin Powell made his embarrassingly memorable speech at the UN, my colleagues and I of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) drafted and sent a short memorandum to the president, which concluded with this observation:
"After watching Secretary Powell today, we are convinced that you would be well served if you widened the discussion beyond... the circle of those advisers clearly bent on a war for which we see no compelling reason and from which we believe the unintended consequences are likely to be catastrophic."
Instead, the circle has been squeezed still tighter - as with wagons. And those widely known in Washington as "the crazies" when they were middle-level officials and the president's father was in the White House are now even more firmly ensconced. They remain in charge of things like war - the very same folks who brought us the "cakewalk" that became war in Iraq.
Hold onto your hats!
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Ray McGovern's duties during his 27-year career as an analyst at the CIA included daily briefings of then-Vice President Bush and the most senior national security advisers to President Ronald Reagan. McGovern is on the Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).
An earlier version of this article appeared on Tompaine.com.
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http://mediamatters.org/items/200412030010
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Wall Street Journal distorted ICRC report; Rumsfeld followed suit
In an editorial on December 2 titled "Red Double-Crossed Again," The Wall Street Journal grossly distorted the content of an International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) report on the treatment of detainees at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. Later that day on FOX News' The O'Reilly Factor, Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld admitted he had "not had a chance to read" the ICRC report, but he apparently relied on the Journal as he echoed the editorial's distortions in an interview with host Bill O'Reilly.
A November 30 New York Times article first revealed the content of a confidential ICRC report, given to the Bush administration in July, that was critical of the treatment of so-called "unlawful enemy combatants" held at Guantanamo. While the Journal editorial did not mention the Times article directly, the Times was the first to report on the ICRC's July memo, and the editorial adopted some language from the Times article, distorting its meaning in the process.
The Journal editorial claimed without support that since the portions of the report were apparently leaked to the news media, the ICRC has "has thrown confidentiality aside," violating its longstanding tradition of "strict confidentiality agreements with cooperating governments." In fact, the Times did not disclose how it obtained the information; the article noted only that the ICRC report was "distributed to lawyers at the White House, Pentagon and State Department and to the commander of the detention facility at Guantánamo," any of whom could have been the source of the leak. The Journal insisted that "it matters little that the original leaker in this case might have been in the U.S. government," falsely claiming that "[o]fficials at ICRC headquarters were only too happy to confirm the document's authenticity." In fact, the ICRC merely released a statement asserting that "problems regarding conditions and treatment at Guantánamo Bay have not yet been adequately addressed." Rather than serving as "confirm[ation of] the document's authenticity," the statement could well have been a response to the Bush administration's repeatedly invoking ICRC visits to Guantánamo as proof that abuses have not occurred there.
From the November 30 New York Times article:
Antonella Notari, a veteran Red Cross official and spokeswoman, said that the organization frequently complained to the Pentagon and other arms of the American government when government officials cite the Red Cross visits to suggest that there is no abuse at Guantánamo. Most statements from the Pentagon in response to queries about mistreatment at Guantánamo do, in fact, include mention of the visits.
The Journal editorial also misrepresented the ICRC's specific criticisms of U.S. conduct at Guantánamo in order to make the group's positions appear ludicrous. "[T]he ICRC is alleging that the psychological conditions faced by Guantánamo detainees are 'tantamount to torture.' Why? Because -- we kid you not -- prisoners are being held for indefinite periods and the uncertainty is stressful," the editorial stated.
According to the Times, the ICRC report claimed that "the American military has intentionally used psychological and sometimes physical coercion 'tantamount to torture' on prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba." Though the Times does indicate that the ICRC was also concerned about the effect of indefinite detention on the prisoners' mental health, it was the psychological and physical coercion, and not the indefinite detention, that the ICRC reportedly deemed "tantamount to torture."
The Journal editorial also falsely claimed that the ICRC is "demanding POW status for un-uniformed combatants who target civilians." In fact, the ICRC made clear in a 2003 report titled "The legal situation of 'unlawful/unprivileged combatants'" that the group acknowledges a distinction between POWs and unlawful combatants and does not demand POW status for detainees captured in Afghanistan. Rather, the ICRC asserts that while these detainees may not be POWs as defined by the Third Geneva Convention ("Geneva Convention relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War"), they still deserve more limited protections under the Fourth Geneva Convention ("Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War") and the First Additional Protocol to the Geneva Conventions.
The Journal editorial went even further in its misrepresentation of the ICRC's position on the legal rights of prisoners at Guantánamo, falsely claiming that the ICRC wants to grant them "even more privileges than legitimate POWs." The Journal claimed that since the Geneva Conventions allow POWs to "be held for the duration of the conflict so that they do not return to the battlefield," the ICRC's concern about the mental health effects of indefinite detention amounts to a demand for that detainees be released before the end of the war against Al Qaeda. In fact, the Times article indicates no such assertion by the ICRC.
Rumsfeld echoed the Journal's false interpretation of the ICRC report during his interview on The O'Reilly Factor, and O'Reilly agreed. Even though Rumsfeld's position would allow him access to the confidential ICRC report, he offered this false interpretation just after admitting that he hadn't read the ICRC report, suggesting that it came from the Journal.
From the December 2 edition of FOX News' The O'Reilly Factor:
O'REILLY: What do you think of the International Red Cross condemning the way the U.S.A. is treating prisoners in Guantánamo Bay?
RUMSFELD: I have not had a chance to read the late missive from them.
O'REILLY: They basically say we're torturing them. That's what they say.
RUMSFELD: Right. They say basically that holding people for the long-term without indicating to them is tantamount to mental torture.
O'REILLY: Right.
[...]
RUMSFELD: [T]hey've decided on their own that it is ... "tantamount to torture" to keep somebody without telling them how long they're going to stay in jail.
— D.B.B. & G.W.
Posted to the web on Friday December 3, 2004 at 5:12 PM EST
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http://www.fair.org/press-releases/cnn-psyops-fallujah.html
FAIR Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting 112 W. 27th Street New York, NY 10001
MEDIA ADVISORY:
The Return of PSYOPS
Military's media manipulation demands more investigation
December 3, 2004
The Los Angeles Times revealed this week (12/1/04) that the U.S. military lied to CNN in the course of executing psychological warfare operations, or PSYOPS, in advance of the recent attack on Fallujah. This incident raises serious questions about government disinformation and journalistic credibility, but recent discussions of the government's propaganda plans have excluded some valuable context.
In an October 14 on-air interview, Marine Lt. Lyle Gilbert told CNN Pentagon reporter Jamie McIntyre that a U.S. military assault on Fallujah had begun. In fact, the offensive would not actually begin for another three weeks. The goal of the psychological operation, according to the Times, was to deceive Iraqi insurgents into revealing what they would do in the event of an actual offensive.
This operation raises obvious questions about the government's use of media to broadcast disinformation at home and abroad-- not to mention questions about journalistic gullibility and reluctance to question official claims. But the CNN story has received little pick-up so far from other news outlets-- and when it is covered, it's treated like an isolated episode, even though recent history shows that U.S. government plans to deceive journalists and the public are widespread and systematic, not aberrational.
Shortly before the launch of the "war on terror," an unnamed Pentagon war planner seemed to warn journalists everywhere when he told Washington Post reporter Howard Kurtz: "This is the most information-intensive war you can imagine... We're going to lie about things." (9/24/01)
In February 2002, the New York Times reported that the Pentagon's Office of Strategic Influence (OSI) was "developing plans to provide news items, possibly even false ones, to foreign media organizations" in an effort "to influence public sentiment and policy makers in both friendly and unfriendly countries."
The story got widespread attention, and the Pentagon announced that the office would be eliminated. But considerably less media attention was paid when Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld later said that, while the OSI had been closed, its mission would be taken up by other agencies.
As Rumsfeld put it, "I went down that next day and said 'Fine, if you want to savage this thing, fine-- I'll give you the corpse. There's the name. You can have the name, but I'm gonna keep doing every single thing that needs to be done and I have.'" (FAIR Media Advisory, 11/27/02) So the revelation that a misinformation campaign bearing a striking resemblance to the description of the OSI was actually being carried out ought not to come as a total surprise.
Earlier this year, another Los Angeles Times scoop (6/3/04) revealed that one of the most enduring images of the war-- the toppling of the statue of Saddam Hussein in a Baghdad square on April 9, 2003-- was a U.S. Army psychological warfare operation staged to look like a spontaneous Iraqi action:
"As the Iraqi regime was collapsing on April 9, 2003, Marines converged on Firdos Square in central Baghdad, site of an enormous statue of Saddam Hussein. It was a Marine colonel-- not joyous Iraqi civilians, as was widely assumed from the TV images -- who decided to topple the statue, the Army report said. And it was a quick-thinking Army psychological operations team that made it appear to be a spontaneous Iraqi undertaking."
CNN's history of voluntary cooperation with PSYOPS troops is also worth considering. In March 2000, FAIR and international news organizations revealed that CNN had allowed military propaganda specialists from an Army PSYOPS unit to work as interns in the news division of its Atlanta headquarters.
As FAIR reported at the time (3/27/00), some PSYOPS officers were eager to find ways to use media power to their advantage. One officer explained at a PSYOPS conference that the military needed to find ways to "gain control" over commercial news satellites to help bring down an "informational cone of silence" over regions where special operations were taking place.
And a 1996 unofficial strategy paper written by an Army officer and published by the U.S. Naval War College ("Military Operations in the CNN World: Using the Media as a Force Multiplier") urged military commanders to find ways to "leverage the vast resources of the fourth estate" for the purposes of "communicating the [mission's] objective and endstate, boosting friendly morale, executing more effective psychological operations, playing a major role in deception of the enemy, and enhancing intelligence collection."
Of course, the full extent of these programs is not yet known. But the fact that the U.S. government is intentionally lying to journalists, and by extension to the public, should be big news. Unfortunately, the L.A. Times report is generating little mainstream media attention. CNN's Aaron Brown reported the story (12/1/04), admitting that "none of us are particularly comfortable when we're talking about things, about ourselves if you will."
Brown also made another, even more revealing comment:
"There is an important and explicit bargain between the press and the Pentagon in a time of war. We don't do anything to endanger the troops or operations. They don't lie to us. Each is essential in a free society and each is made more complicated by the information age, but it seems that sometimes in an effort to mislead the enemy the military has come close, very close, to crossing the line and misleading you."
Of course, in this case the military did not come "very close" to misleading the public; they did mislead the public. And while Brown may have confidence that such a "bargain" exists between the press and the military, it would appear that the Pentagon does not agree. If journalists were more willing to accept the old adage that "all governments lie," we might all be better served.
http://www.yubanet.com/artman/publish/article_15852.shtml
From YubaNet.com
Columns
Media in the Winter of Our "Disremorse"
Author: Norman Solomon
Published on Dec 3, 2004, 07:09
Early in the coldest season, optimists think of the day after solstice. It's predictable: the hemisphere will start tilting toward more light and warmth. But in the politics of human societies, there's no reliable way to tell how long a bone-rattling chill will last -- or how far it might go. A government's harsher policies could provoke kinetic revulsion and progressive resurgence. Or the dominant political atmosphere might have an overall effect of strengthening and perpetuating itself.
By now, the 2004 electorate has been spliced and diced to the culinary standard of American punditry. Countless journalists have joined with other analysts to explain what it all really means. But the news media still don't tell us much about underlying aspects of mood that can't be broken out with poll numbers. Wooden questions yield data about stiff answers. Fact-based reporters may not offer much more human truth than a fact-based phone book.
Today, in the real world of the United States -- in this closely and fiercely divided country -- large numbers of people see President George W. Bush as despicable. But the tenor of daily reporting does little to incorporate such assessments into the mix of media coverage. And the conciliatory noises coming from Democrats on Capitol Hill are misleading; they don't reflect the hostility that persists at the grassroots.
Potentially volatile, the rage toward Washington's current rulers is percolating underneath the recent often-cutesy news items about upticks of interest in emigrating to Canada and fantasies of blue-state secession. The extensive foreboding in the present-day United States is often of a character and vehemence that mainstream U.S. media reporting is either unwilling or unable to evoke.
Many millions of Americans would tell a suitably inquiring journalist that they don't really regret John Kerry's loss -- that what they find horrific is the new four-year lease on the White House for an administration with an unrepentant track record of mendacity and extreme ideological zeal.
With two federal branches under the control of those zealots, the final arbiter of the third branch -- the Supreme Court -- is now under severe threat of wink-and-nod judicial fundamentalism. More than ever, in this context, journalism is a thin yet vital reed. Protection of civil liberties and abortion rights is at imminent risk. Yet the news media keep giving enormous deference to the USA's bastions of consolidated economic and electoral power.
Absent from daily news coverage is remorse.
So, the major media outlets of the United States are entering this winter in a resolute state of "disremorse" -- about 180 degrees from any sense of national apology or expressed regret. In the aftermath of a 51 percent victory for the Rove-Cheney-Bush regime on Election Day, the breast-beating and halo-preening exercises have intensified. And while a cast of characters -- Ashcroft, Powell, Ridge, etc. -- heads toward the exits, virtually interchangeable players step into their roles.
With all the comings and goings, remorse is still light-years away as top officials speak and news media report. No need to mention people who don't have a home; no need to focus on the children and adults with paltry health care, or on the overall human impacts of so much scarcity in the midst of great wealth. These profound concerns really matter in people's lives. Yet it's as though the reigning politicians and media have found ways to take our minds off our minds.
The nerve-blocking anesthetics of mass media impede the flow of feeling in unauthorized directions. Cause and effect are disconnected, so that it seems unavoidable and natural for children to live in poverty across town or for U.S. troops to be killing and dying in Iraq. Right now, it's a struggle to disrupt the numbing media chatter about miscalculations and mistakes -- to insist on acknowledgment of moral culpability. America's winter of disremorse is not about nature, it's about a lack of nurture for what remains frozen: our capacity to innovate and cooperate sufficiently to stop the "leaders" who destroy life in our names.
Norman Solomon is co-author, with Reese Erlich, of "Target Iraq: What the News Media Didn't Tell You." His columns and other writings can be found at normansolomon.com.
© Copyright 2004 by YubaNet.com
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http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-0412040222dec04,1,1925530.story?coll=chi-news-hed
Dead voters on rolls, other glitches found in 6 key states
By Geoff Dougherty, Tribune staff reporter. Tribune staff reporter Sarah Frank contributed to this report from Washington
Published December 4, 2004
Michel Pillet died in 2002, but his name lives on at the University of New Mexico. He created the school's graduate architecture program and directed it for years.
Pillet's name lives on in another way too. He's still listed as a registered voter in New Mexico, even though election officials are required to purge the names of deceased voters.
A Tribune analysis of voter records suggests that more than 5,000 dead people remained on the rolls on Election Day in New Mexico. The presidential election there was decided by 6,000 votes.
And New Mexico is not alone. The Tribune's review of voter data there and in five other key states--Florida, Iowa, Ohio, Michigan and Minnesota--found widespread flaws in the integrity of voter rolls.
More than 181,000 dead people were listed on the rolls in the six swing states, despite efforts to clean up the country's voting system after the 2000 electio
Posted by richard at December 5, 2004 05:56 PM