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Saturday, November 27, 2010

Will WikiLeaks unravel the American 'secret government'?

By Jijo Jacob | November 26, 2010 8:17 AM EST

The U.S. Department of State is working overtime sending messages to ally capitals warning the impending release of classified documents by WikiLeaks could harm relations in what is seen as a pre-emptive move of unprecedented scale to neutralize the impact of the unveiling of embarrassing and compromising details about the inner workings of the government apparatus.

Assange a hero

Reuters/ensign.senate.gov
Wikileaks founder Julian Assange speaks during a news conference about the internet release of secret documents about the Iraq War, in London October 23, 2010 and (inset) Senator John Ensign (R-Nevada)

After making shattering revelations about the U.S. policy -- and its practice -- in Iraq and Afghanistan, WikiLeaks seems to be targeting this time the core of the U.S. government machinery, especially the subterranean diplomatic channels it employs while cutting deals and enforcing compliance in world capitals.

This knowledge has set off a diplomatic counter-offensive of never-before-seen proportion. The U.S. embassies in allied capitals have been forewarned of the release of documents which could potentially destabilize friendly relations.

The State Department, in an advance fire-fighting mode, has said the consequences of the WikiLeaks bombshell to American interests could be severe as the whistleblower website could reveal instances of allies breaking ranks secretly to pursue policies harmful to each other and squarely contradicting publicly stated stances.

"Without getting into specifics, typical cables describe summaries of meetings, analysis of events in other countries and records of confidential conversations with officials of other governments and with members of civil society. ... They are classified for a very good reason. They contain sensitive information and reveal sources of information that impact our national interests and those of other countries," State Department spokesman P.J.Crowley said.

Researchers have often pointed out the stark contrast between nation states' declared policies -- and the means to achieve them -- and what actually transpires on the ground. The inner workings, the dark secrets and shady deals never see the light of day until they may be declassified years later, severely undermining democratic values of truth and transparency.

Now WikiLeaks is out to run a knife through a mountain of classified documents revealing how the proverbial 'secret government' works its way through cluttered diplomatic channels. And that certainly could be embarrassing to lots of people in many capitals, more so in Washington.

The Pentagon has already warned the U.S. Senate and House Armed Services Committees that the leaks will "touch on an enormous range of very sensitive foreign policy issues." "We anticipate that the release could negatively impact U.S. foreign relations," Assistant Secretary for Legislative Affairs Elizabeth King said in an e-mail to the defense committees.

WHAT COULD BE INSIDE LEAKED DOCUMENTS?

Media speculate that the soon-to-be-leaked cables could contain sensitive talks between government functionaries, diplomats, military top brass and politicians which may show top government players in unflattering light.

According to Sky News foreign affairs editor Tim Marshall, even heads of government will be the target in the leaked documents. "We think that three leaders might be in the firing line, because we know the Americans have criticized (Afghan president) Hamid Karzai, President Asif Ali Zardari of Pakistan and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin of Russia."

President Barack Obama's administration will particularly feel the heat as many of the documents to be published relate to the time since he took office. Experts say there could even be cables related to the government's maneuverings to get allies accept Guantanamo detainees as Obama was pressing ahead with the deadline to close the infamous detention camp.

Israel's Haartez daily quoted an unnamed senior Israeli official who said the WikiLeaks material includes diplomatic cables sent to Washington from American embassies throughout the world.

According to London-based daily al-Hayat, the documents could show that Turkey helped al-Qaeda's operations in Iraq while the U.S. colluded with Turkish rebel group PKK, which has been waging a decades-old fight against Ankara. This despite Turkey being a key NATO ally of the U.S. and Washington's classification of the PKK as a terrorist organization!

The alacrity of the U.S. State Department response and the hurried diplomatic maneuverings point that there could be meatier revelations in store.

World's leading newspapers like Britain's Guardian, The New York Times, and Germany's Der Spiegel are ticked off as working with WikiLeaks to publish reports in tandem with the whistleblower's release of secret documents, sometimes as early as on Friday. Several other major newspapers, including The Washington Post, have said they will not work with WikiLeaks.

EARLIER LEAKS

One of the earliest leaks made by WikiLeaks, which was founded by Julian Assange in 2006, was in 2008 when it revealed that Vice-Presidential candidate Sarah Palin used personal emails for official business while she was Governor of Alaska. "Doing so could have helped her avoid having her communications subjected to state laws on the disclosure of public records," according to reports.

It was followed by the release of a video footage showing 15 people, including two Reuters cameramen, being mowed down a US Army Apache helicopter in Iraq. Apparently the military personnel mistook camera equipment for weapons and targeted the journalists.

The Afghanistan war logs published in July this year disclosed that the U.S. was operating a secret assassination squad and that Pakistrani intelligence service was helping the Taliban fighters, besides throwing light on alleged crimes committed by the coalition troops in Afghanistan.

In the last month, the organization, which has become the rallying point of humanitarian whistleblowers, published almost 400,000 classified US military documents which showed the troops tortured Iraqis and that the authorities ignored warnings of the military's wrongdoings. They also showed thousands of civilians died during the invasion and occupation.

NATIONAL SECURITY STATE AND 'DEEP POLITICS'

That the imperatives of running a 'national security state', which was envisioned in 1947, led successive governments and secret agencies like the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to carry out hundreds of covert operations across the globe is quite a banal piece of information. Documents declassified dozens of years after the events have shown daring, ruthless and diplomatically unjustifiable actions undertaken by the government and secret agencies in the past.

Therefore it's not puzzling that the State Department is harried over the impending revelations about more recent undercover maneuvers of the government and its agencies in various parts of the world. That could seriously undermine the success of future operations and destroy the trust of allies, though a vast majority of people, including Americans, welcome the WikiLeaks route of forcing transparency in international dealing of governments.

"The apparatus of the National Security State, largely established in the National Security Act of 1947, laid the foundations for the extension of American hegemony around the globe. In short, the Act laid the foundations for the apparatus of the American Empire. The National Security Act created the National Security Council (NSC) and position of National Security Adviser, as well as the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JSC) as the Pentagon high command of military leaders, and of course, the CIA," writes Andrew Gavin Marshall in an article in the website of the Centre for Research on Globalization, a Montreal-based independent research and media organization.

He says that the National Security State has been involved in the overthrow of regimes in various parts of the world, including in Iran in 1953 and governments in Latin America, besides undertaking countless operations to dethrone and eliminate Cuba's Fidel Castro.

Marshal, however, points out that from early on, Presidents like Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy had warned against the secret government and its operations.

He says in 1961 President Eisenhower warned America and indeed the world about the growing influence of the National Security State in what he referred to as the "military-industrial complex." "We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together," Eisenhower said in his farewell address on January 17, 1961. Those who support the WikiLeaks agenda would indeed vouch for Eisenhower's prophetic words 50 years after they were uttered.

Marshall points to the term 'deep politics' surrounding governments, popularized by former Canadian diplomat, author and academic Peter Dale Scott, in this context. He says Scott defined 'deep politics' as "looking beneath public formulations of policy issues to the bureaucratic, economic, and ultimately covert and criminal activities which underlie them." 'Deep politics' is the functions and actions of the 'secret government', according to Scott.

A laying bare of high-voltage communications and secret deals between governments, which are often executed beneath the diplomatic radar, is going to greatly hurt any administration.

But there are hardly any sympathizer for the establishment. Ian Townsend-Gault, director of the Centre for Asian Legal Studies Faculty of Law at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, says he has "no sympathy for those who decry the leaking of documents because they show "our boys" in a bad light. If people in uniform have behaved less than well, and manifestly contrary to their own human instincts, then society must ponder the reasons why they are where they are, and the collective responsibility it bears for this."

Writing in International Zeitschrift, Townsend-Gault says people should rather take lessons from history. "While conflict-weariness is understandable, and indeed continues through the engagement in Afghanistan, there is a risk of some of the important lessons arising from the debacle being lost. More than this: these lessons are not new, not one of them. They have been learnt painfully before, and then apparently forgotten."

HOW DOES WIKILEAKS GET SECRET DOCUMENTS?

WikiLeaks' strategy is to get and post on the Internet secret documents flying out of the wraps of governments and businesses. In getting hold of damaging details about the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, the organization has been apparently assisted by a rogue U.S. Army private who downloaded secret cables in their thousands and handed them over to Assange's fledgling organization.

Army intelligence analyst Bradley Manning, who was arrested last spring, had described the cables as documenting years of secret foreign policy and "almost-criminal political back dealings." "Hillary Clinton and several thousand diplomats around the world are going to have a heart attack when they wake up one morning, and find an entire repository of classified foreign policy is available, in searchable format, to the public," he had boasted in an online chat with a former hacker and associate.

Some experts have tried to explain how Manning was able to gain access to the secret cables in their thousands. It has been pointed out that the U.S. military had recently introduced an information-sharing initiative called Net-Centric Diplomacy which allowed insiders to gain access to classified information.

Under the new initiative, a subset of State Department documents are published through a Secret Internet Protocol Router Network, or SIPRNet, which is supposed to be Pentagon's Secret-level global network. The information available on this network is accessible to authorized American military service personnel.

Manning, who is believed to have downloaded a cache of documents and passed them on to WikiLeaks, gloated before he was nabbed: "Everywhere there's a U.S. post, there's a diplomatic scandal that will be revealed," he wrote. "It's open diplomacy. World-wide anarchy in CSV format. It's Climategate with a global scope, and breathtaking depth. It's beautiful, and horrifying."

WikiLeaks too has been firing up popular imagination by suggesting that the impending leaks will have serious consequences on the world.

David Talbott, former Editor-in-Chief of Salon, wrote in his book 'Brothers: The Hidden History of the Kennedy Years' that John F. Kennedy threatened to "shatter the CIA into a thousand pieces, and scatter it to the winds." Kennedy could not do it; but ironically the CIA was his undoing, many Americans still believe.



PRISON for Anti-Death Squad Torture protestors

David Omondi and Father Louis Vitale Sentenced to Six Months in Federal Prison -- Incarcerated in Georgia Jail

Four human rights activists were in court on Tuesday, November 23 after being arrested and charged with federal trespassing at Ft. Benning, Georgia on November 20 and 21. During their arraignment before U.S. Magistrate Judge Stephen Hyles, Nancy Smith and Christopher Spicer pled not guilty. Their trial is set for January 5. Franciscan priest Fr. Louis Vitale, OFM and David Omondi of the Los Angeles Catholic Worker Community pled no contest and put the SOA on trial through their statements in court. Fr. Louis and David were sentenced to the maximum 6 months in jail. While nonviolent resisters are being sent to prison, those responsible for the use of torture manuals at the SOA have never even been charged for their crimes. Father Louis and David are presently in a Georgia county jail.

Write to the prisoners:
Because they may be transferred at any time, cards and letters to David may be sent to his community for forwarding: David Omondi, c/o The Los Angeles Catholic Worker, 632 N. Brittania St., Los Angeles, CA 90033. Louis' mail may be sent to the Nuclear Resister for forwarding at P.O. Box 43383, Tucson, AZ 85733.

Click here to read the letter that vigil speaker Father Alberto Franco wrote to all the prisoners of conscience from the November vigil and please feel free to ad your own message to the prisoners in the comment section below the letter text!

On Saturday, November 20, twenty-two others were arrested on city and state charges, including unlawful assembly, failure to disperse, and parading without a permit. Two were charged but not taken into custody. Some were blockading the highway leading into Fort Benning with a sign that read, "Stop: This is the End of the Road for the SOA". Many of those arrested were not intending to risk arrest but were swept up as they walked back to their cars after they left the permitted protest following the vigil on Saturday. These included journalists and a Columbus, Georgia resident who came out of a barber shop to take a photo of the protest. The SOA Watch Legal Collective is collecting testimony and photos of the indiscriminate arrests that took place on Saturday afternoon. Stay tuned!

On Sunday, November 21, Columbus Recorder's Court Judge Michael Cielinski found 21 of the 24 who were arrested by the city guilty on all charges. Two were convicted in a state court the next day. All were released from jail by Monday, with fines and bonds as high as $4,152.50. The SOA Watch community stepped up in a big way, supporters maxed out their credit cards at ATMs to ensure that no one had to stay another day in the Muscogee County Jail. Those who were arrested still have to answer state charges, and expect to be arraigned in January.

For more information about the Ft. Benning protest, visit www.SOAW.org

Thursday, November 25, 2010

G W BUSH - war Crimes evidence

Bush White House Pre-Iraq War Documents Published by PaperlessArchives.com

Los Angeles, CA, November 24, 2010 --(PR.com)-- BACM Research's PaperlessArchives.com has announced the release of a collection primary source documents dealing with American and British domestic events leading up to the March 20, 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Subsequent to the release of President George W. Bush's memoir, "Decision Points," PaperlessArchives.com has published 442 pages of key documents related to the political and public relations moves leading up to the 2003 Iraq War. The Iraq War Prelude papers have been added to the already 17,361 pages of President George W. Bush and Bush Administration papers published by PaperlessArchives.com.

The Iraq War Prelude collection features documents highlighting the development of the Bush Administration and British government's case for going to war against Iraq. The documents date from January 2001 to July 2004, with most documents from the year 2002. Some of the documents were not released through the Freedom of Information Act until September 2008.

The Iraq War Prelude collection includes documents from the President George W. Bush Administration, United States State Department, Department of Defense, Central Intelligence Agency, British Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the British Prime Minister.s Office.

Topics covered include Iraqi regime change policy, political strategy, press guidance, Iraq Liberation Act, aluminum tubes, weapons of mass destruction, September 11th attacks, gaining support of allies, Free Iraqi Forces and the aftermath of regime change. Includes correspondences from and/or to Colin Powell, Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleezza Rice, Douglas Feith, and British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw.

The entire 17,803 George W. Bush Administration Papers & Reports collection can be obtained at http://www.paperlessarchives.com/gwb.html.

The Iraq War Prelude collection can be downloaded separately for free at http://www.paperlessarchives.com/free_titles.html.

About BACM Research - PaperlessArchives.com
BACM Research/PaperlessArchives.com publishes documentary historical research collections. Materials cover Presidencies, Historical Figures, Historical Events, Celebrities, Organized Crime, Politics, Military Operations, Famous Crimes, Intelligence Gathering, Espionage, Civil Rights, World War I, World War II, Korean War, Vietnam War, and more.

Source material from Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), National Security Agency (NSA), Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), Secret Service, National Security Council, Department of Defense, Joint Chiefs of Staff, Department of Justice, National Archive Records and Administration, and Presidential Libraries.

http://www.paperlessarchives.com

Contact:
Jerry Spencer
Marketing Director
BACM Research . www.PaperlessArchives.com
264 So La Cienega Blvd #1142
Beverly Hills, CA 90211
(310) 289-2320
E-mail: press@paperlessarchives.com

+++ ILLEGAL DRONE WAR +++

unlawful assassinations

Behind drones in Yemen, a struggle to control covert ops
Gareth Porter

14 November 2010
The drone war that has been anticipated in Yemen for the last few months has been delayed by the failure of US Special Operations Forces (SOF) to generate usable intelligence on Al Qaeda there.

That failure has given the CIA a new argument for wresting control of the drone war in Yemen from the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), which now controls the drone assets in the country. But some key administration officials are resisting a CIA takeover of the war in Yemen, as reported by the Washington Post.

The struggle between the CIA.s operations directorate and SOF officials over management of a drone war in Yemen has been a driving force in pushing the war against Al Qaeda and affiliated organisations into many more countries . along with President Barack Obama.s eagerness to show that he is doing more than his predecessor on terrorism. Both the CIA covert operations directorate and SOF brass regard the outcome in Yemen as the key to the larger struggle over control of a series of covert wars that the Obama administration approved in principle last year.

The CIA directorate and the two major figures in the Iraq- Afghanistan wars, Gen. David Petraeus and Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, lobbied Obama in 2009 to expand covert operations against Al Qaeda to a dozen countries in the Middle East, the Horn of Africa and Central Asia. In spring 2009, McChrystal, then director of operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, persuaded the White House to give US combatant commanders wider latitude to carry out covert military operations against Al Qaeda or other organisations deemed to be terrorists, according to a May 25 report by Marc Ambinder of The Atlantic. Based on the Obama decision, on September 30, 2009, Petraeus issued an order creating a Joint Unconventional Warfare Task Force to plan and execute covert intelligence gathering in support of later covert military operations throughout the CENTCOM area.

The Petraeus order was followed within weeks by an influx of surveillance equipment and as many as 100 SOF trainers, as well as additional CIA personnel in Yemen, according to the Washington Post report.

With the support of McChrystal and Petraeus, who was then still CENTCOM chief, JSOC was given control of the covert operation in Yemen.

But JSOC stumbled badly and failed to generate usable intelligence on Al Qaeda targets.

On December 17, less than three months after the Petraeus order, a cruise missile was launched against what was supposed to have been an Al Qaeda training camp in Abyan province in south Yemen.

But the strike, which was supposed to have been attributed to Yemen.s tiny air force, was based on faulty intelligence. The Yemeni parliament found that it had killed 41 members of two families, including 17 women and 23 children. It was known almost immediately to have been a US strike. By all accounts, it was major political gift to AQAP, which has its sights set on toppling the government of President Ali Abdullah Saleh.

Al Qaeda has also been able to justify targeting the United States as revenge for the Dec 17 attack. That may have been a reference to the two parcels from Yemen to an address in Chicago intercepted Oct 29, one of which was discovered to have .explosive material.. After that strike, the CIA went on the offensive to get the administration to take control of the drones away from the SOF. A series of articles in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and the Associated Press in mid- to late August cited unnamed officials referring to the possibility of CIA drone operations in Yemen.

Col. Pat Lang, a former Defense Intelligence Officer for the Middle East with operational experience in Yemen, told IPS the CIA had benefited from JSOC stumbling. .The agency has taken advantage of every criticism of the performance of the SOF as an argument to regain control over cover operations,. said Lang. The report suggests that key officials now realise that neither JSOC nor the CIA is going to be able to obtain actionable intelligence on Al Qaeda under present circumstances.

Former DIA intelligence officer Lang agrees. He believes the Yemeni Intelligence Service, which is a .very effective secret police force. with .considerable penetration capability., is not fully sharing the intelligence it has on Al Qaeda with US officials.

For the time being, it appears the drone war in Yemen is abeyance. But powerful bureaucratic forces will be continuing to make the case that they can justify the beginning of drone strikes there.

AQAP leaders are hoping to see the US use more military force in Yemen, according to Johnsen. .They would like nothing better than for the US to invade Yemen,. Johnsen told IPS. .The more they can show active US intervention, the better it is for them..

Gareth Porter is an investigative historian and journalist specialising in US national security policy

Saturday, November 20, 2010

Terrorist training Camp - RUSSIAN TV arrested


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THIS WEEKEND!!  EVERY YEAR 20 november!

Thousands Converge at the gates of Fort Benning for 20th Anniversary of November Vigil to Close the SOA
26 PEOPLE ARRESTED AND HELD IN THE COUNTY JAIL ON MULTIPLE CHARGES

Nonviolent Civil Disobedience Action Followed by Indiscriminate Arrests and Targeting of Journalists. Among those arrested by Columbus Police were three Journalists, including TV News Crew from RT America and Unrelated Bystanders.

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==== THE GUARDIAN ===

The school of Latin America's dictators

Since so many alumni are notorious human rights abusers, the US military should close its deadly School of Americas

When the elected president of Honduras, Manuel Zelaya, was dragged from his bed and flown out of the country in his pyjamas last year, it was no surprise to find that this classic coup was led by a graduate of the School of Americas, the notorious army training school in Fort Benning, Georgia. But General Vasquez was simply following a well-trodden path for autocrats in Honduras – after all, two of the country's most hated past dictators, Juan Melgar Castro and Policarpo Paz Garcia, had also attended the school.

More than 60,000 Latin American soldiers have been trained at the School of the Americas – among them, the some of the region's most notorious human rights abusers, such as Salvadoran death-squad leader Roberto D'Aubuisson. In all, 11 dictators have attended its courses: men such as Argentine junta leader, Leopoldo Galtieri, infamously responsible for the "disappeared" and Guatemala's Efraín Ríos Montt, whose scorched earth campaign against indigenous villages, was classified as "genocide" by a UN-sponsored commission.

Founded in the Panama Canal Zone in 1948, it was originally named the Army Caribbean School. It was renamed the School of Americas in 1963, and a new curriculum was introduced, offering courses in counter-insurgency, military intelligence and psychological warfare. The school was moved to Fort Benning in 1984 and, in 2001, in an attempt to improve its image, its name was changed again to the Western Hemisphere Institute for Cooperation (WHINSEC).

Training manuals (pdf) used at the School of the Americas were declassified in 1996. They advocated the use of "fear, payment of bounties for enemy dead, beatings, false, imprisonment, executions and use of truth serum", according to a Pentagon memorandum (pdf). The manuals also included detailed interrogation techniques and used the term "neutralisation", which the department of defence admits is a euphemism for illegal execution.

Those manuals have now been withdrawn from use and the anodynely-named WHINSEC offers courses in human rights, ethics, democracy and peace-keeping. But there is very little take up of these "soft" courses, according to institution's own statistics released to Congress in 2000, and by far the most popular courses remain: commando tactics, military intelligence, psychological operations and combat training.

Despite its revamped image and promise of transparency, WHINSEC has been remarkably secretive. It refused to publish the names of its military trainees and has turned down numerous freedom of information requests by campaigners. Only after a congressional vote last year, did it begin to release names and country origins of graduates.

This weekend (19-21 November), thousands of people will congregate at the gates of Fort Benning to call for the school's closure. The protest is called by School of Americas Watch, a group founded by Father Roy Bourgeois, which has catalogued the abuses of School of Americas graduates for 20 years. Protests will also take place in 14 Latin American countries, including Chile, Honduras and Guatemala.

A vigil will take place in Colombia, which has sent more officers to US training schools than any other Latin American country and, today, has the worst human rights record in the region. In the last two years, the country has been rocked by the news that the army has been killing innocent civilians, then dressing the victims in guerrilla uniforms. Prosecutors are investigating more than 1,700 alleged extrajudicial killings by the security forces. Who is responsible for the grisly "false positive" murders? Well, one of the first generals sacked for involvement was Paulino Coronado Gámez, a graduate of the School of Americas.

The term "neutralisation" may have been taken out of the school's manuals, but its students still appears to be carrying out what they learned on the ground. Reason enough to close down this school for good.

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Thousands Converge at the gates of Fort Benning for 20th Anniversary of November Vigil to Close the SOA
26 PEOPLE ARRESTED AND HELD IN THE COUNTY JAIL ON MULTIPLE CHARGES

Nonviolent Civil Disobedience Action Followed by Indiscriminate Arrests and Targeting of Journalists. Among those arrested by Columbus Police were three Journalists, including TV News Crew from RT America and Unrelated Bystanders.

Thousands of human rights activists, torture survivors, veterans, faith-based communities, union workers, students, musicians and others from across the Americas are gathered today at the gates of the U.S. military base Fort Benning to call for the closure of the School of the Americas (renamed Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation).

Following the SOA Watch rally, human rights activists brought their nonviolent witness to close the SOA into the street leading onto the military base. The activists briefly shut down the road with a large sign that said, "Stop: This is the End of the Road for the SOA."  Their action is part of a longstanding tradition of creative civil disobedience to call attention to the atrocities committed by graduates of the School of the Americas. 10-12 people were arrested, and others charged, including the 90-year old Jesuit priest Bill Brennan, and ordained Catholic priest Janice Sevre-Duszynska.

Two human rights activists crossed onto Fort Benning through the highway entrance. They have been charged with federal trespass and face up to six months in federal prison and a fine up to $5,000.

When the rally participants tried to leave the vigil area, the police blocked off all exit points. After a few minutes, the police allowed people to leave on the sidewalk, only to follow them, indiscriminately arresting people who had neither committed any crimes nor engaged in civil disobedience. Among those arrested was the RT America TV crew, who was filming the police misconduct and bystanders. All arrestees are currently being held in the Muscogee County Jail for up to a $5,500 bond.

SOA Watch is a nonviolent grassroots organization that works for the closing the
School of the Americas and a change in U.S. foreign policy  -  www.SOAW.org




Posted: Nov 19, 2010 10:51 AM Updated: Nov 20, 2010 10:44 AM

Press Release

FORT BENNING, GA – The access control point on Fort Benning Road will be closed from 6 p.m. Nov. 19 to 5 a.m. Nov. 22.

Motorists are strongly encouraged to avoid Benning Blvd. between Victory Drive and Fort Benning's "Stone Gate" the weekend of Nov. 21.

Entry to the installation is strictly controlled at access control points.

All vehicles attempting to enter the installation at any access control point will be stopped and may be searched.  Drivers and adult passengers in the vehicle will be asked to present identification.

Drivers of vehicles without military stickers must stop at the visitors' center on I-185 to get a temporary access pass.

Source: Fort Benning Office of Public Affairs


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Protesting to bring thousands to Columbus

SSOA WATCH PREVIEW

Protesting to bring thousands to Columbus

By Curtis McCloud

COLUMBUS, GA (WTVM) -For four years Tam Ngyen has come to Columbus to stand with thousands of protesters at the gates of Fort Benning, this year won't be any different.

"Tomorrow's protest is a vigil, it's to commemorate all those that have died at the hand of graduates of the School of Americas specifically those who have died in Latin American countries," Ngyen said.

Ngyen is working with Puppetista's to create dramatic images for tomorrow big event. It's an annual effort put on by the School of America's Watch group. Protesters come together at the gates of Fort Benning to shut down the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation formally the School of Americas on post.

The vigil and protest has been going on for twenty years. It started after graduates of the then School of Americas killed 14 year old Celina Ramos, her mother Elba, and six Jesuit priests in El Salvador

Protestors claim those same tactics are being taught at the school today, groups from north and Central America have united to call for closing of the institution all together.

"We have thousands of people from all over the country, who are coming together to speak out against injustice, speak out against violence, and speak out against the school of the Americas," Hendrick Voss said.

SOA Watch director of Communications Hendrick Voss tells us that people come every year to be heard and simply want the school to be closed.

"It's a big coalition of groups, that is standing up for human rights, that is standing up for justice in the Americas," Voss said.

"We don't move on because, there is a memory that needs to be remember and that's the memory of all those that have died," Ngyen said.

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Victims of Operation Condor

Former Ft. Benning commanders promoted
PRESS RELEASE

Story Created: Nov 18, 2010 at 4:46 PM CST

FORT BENNING, Ga. – Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates has announced that the President nominated Maj. Gen. Michael Ferriter for appointment to the rank of lieutenant general and assignment as the deputy commander for Advising and Training, United States Forces-Iraq, OPERATION NEW DAWN, Iraq.

Ferriter most recent assignment was as the commanding general of the Maneuver Center of Excellence at Fort Benning. He relinquished command of Fort Benning on Nov. 4, 2010.

Gates also announced that the president has nominated Lt. Gen. Michael D. Barbero for reappointment to the rank of lieutenant general and assignment as director, Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization, Arlington, Va.

Barbero is currently serving as Deputy Commander for Advising and Training, United States Forces-Iraq, OPERATION NEW DAWN, Iraq.

Barbero served as the commanding general of Fort Benning from November 2008 to June 2009.

(SOURCE: Ft. Benning Public Affairs)




Monday, November 15, 2010

40 million US americans on FOOD STAMPS

Usage and Hypocrisy Soar

The War Over Food Stamps

By DAVID MACARAY

Although people tend to associate the Food Stamp Program (FSP) with Lyndon Johnson’s “Great Society,” or lump it with the domestic initiatives of Richard Nixon (whom Noam Chomsky referred to as “our last liberal president”), the program actually goes back more than 70 years. It was launched on May 16, 1939.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture recently made news by reporting that 40 million Americans utilized food stamps during the month of August, a 17-percent increase over the same period in the previous year. Approximately one in eight adults and one in four children regularly use food stamps, and the program is growing at 20,000 people per day.

Also, the FSP has changed its name, apparently having outgrown the pejorative term “food stamps.” It’s now called SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program).

To qualify for SNAP, your gross (pre-tax) family income must fall at or below 130-percent of the current federal poverty level, which, in 2009, was $2,389 for a family of four, and $1,174 for a single person, and you can’t exceed $2,000 in “valuable assets” (not counting your house and, usually, one vehicle).

While media coverage of the increase has focused mainly on the “human interest” angle of the recessionâ€"home repossessions, families being uprooted, no jobs, no prospectsâ€"there’s another component to this story, one that involves conflicting ideologies, intellectual integrity and the critical role the federal government.

Among the states recording the largest increases in SNAP benefits were those “red states” whose political leaders not only regularly and vociferously denounce the federal governmentâ€"government spending, government intervention, government everythingâ€"but who, in fact, have made solid careers out of doing so.

Yet you don’t see these red state folks stand on their hind legs and praise the government for establishing a program that literally puts food on the table. Instead, these conservative/libertarian pols continue to lash out against the feds, continue to demonize them, convinced that such mindless propaganda is going to resonate with the voters.

Consider: Texas and Florida each had more than a 25-percent increase in food stamp usage, Wyoming (a “rugged individualist” state if there ever was one) saw a 40-percent increase, and the Idaho Statesman glumly reported that Idaho had a 43-percent bump, the largest increase in the country, and more than twice the national average.

In the 1990s, Newt Gingrich made a name for himselfâ€"became the voice of the Republican Party, had his face plastered on the cover of Time magazineâ€"by railing against the federal government’s paternalism, “pork,” and creeping socialism. It was later revealed that his congressional district had received an inordinate amount of federal funds (its per capita ratio was the second or third highest in the country).

Not to pounce on an obvious target, but Sarah Palin regularly criticizes organized labor, accusing unions of having damaged our economy with its greed and corruption. Yet her husband Todd was for many years a rank-and-file member of the Steelworkers union, supporting his family with the decent wages and good benefits that only a union contract can provide.

Additionally, Palin continues to draw rousing cheers from audiences around the country by defiantly insisting that the federal government stay out of our lives. This from a resident of Alaska, the state with the highest per capita federal assistance in the nationâ€"a state that, some economists have noted, likely couldn’t survive without federal welfare.

In its depiction of Hell, Dante’s Inferno (1321) has each descending level represent a progressively more heinous or repugnant sin. There are nine levels of Hell in the Infernoâ€"with the ninth and deepest being the one that holds the worst people of all, history’s most notorious traitors and betrayers: Brutus, Cassius, Judas Escariot.

And while it makes sense that the seventh level is inhabited by vile murderers, it’s the eighth level that makes us smile; it’s the eighth level that makes us want to stand up and salute this brilliant Italian poet from 700 years ago.

The eighth level of Hell is reserved for hypocrites and liars. That’s correct….the hypocrites and liars are relegated to a depth even lower than the murderers. One wonders how Dante would rate Mama Grizzly and her secessionist-minded First Dude.

David Macaray, a Los Angeles playwright, is the author of “It’s Never Been Easy: Essays on Modern Labor”. He served 9 terms as president of AWPPW Local 672.


==== GODARD CRAP Article ====
by Bernard-Henri Lévy
French philosopher and writer


Is Jean-Luc Godard Anti-Semitic?

Introduction

Thus the question of Godard's anti-semitism has come up again, on the occasion of an "Honorary Award," this Saturday, November 13th in Los Angeles, for the entirety of his work.

To begin with, I should say that I do not like this climate of Inquisition that pervades the intellectual and artistic world, both in Europe and in the United States. And I would have preferred not to be compelled to enter, at all, into a battle that seems to concern, as is often the case, the disqualification of works based upon the small-minded expressions, even the alleged outrages, of their author. But since the debate has been launched, since it is apparently making the front page of major American dailies and since we live in a world where soon it may be impossible to pronounce the name of the director of "A Bout de soufflé" ["Breathless"] without adding this question which is, obviously, a dreadful one: "Is Godard anti-semitic?", I have decided to present my account of the matter here.

Not that this account has, in and of itself, any particular authority. But it is characterized by two things I implore those who, starting tomorrow, will protest against the attribution of this award and against the honor thus accorded the controversial filmmaker to consider. It is the testimony of a man of whom the least one can say is that he has never compromised, not with public opinion but with the crime of anti-semitism; that he has never, no never, found excuses or attenuating circumstances for it, and that he has never hesitated, moreover, to recognize its face behind all of its masks and assumed names. And it is, most of all, the account of a writer that the happenstance of life has led to encounter Jean-Luc Godard four times in the last 25 years. In every instance, the occasion was a film project that dealt, precisely, with this question of ways, modern or not, of being Jewish. And the man in question, myself, quite naturally possesses both a singular experience and, inevitably, original elements of reflection concerning the very object of the present quarrel.

A year ago, when Antoine de Baecque's biography came out, I brought up episodes little known to Godard's biographers, in particular to de Baecque. I did so in a detailed text that was published in Le Point, and then here, in the Huffington Post, on April 8th, 2010, and which was initially inspired by a phrase Godard's other biographer, the American Joseph Brody, attributed to me which I sensed was becoming Exhibit #1 in the indictment of what would become the "Godard trial". Had I ever really said that Jean-Luc Godard was "an antisemite trying to cure himself?" If so, on what occasion? In what context? And what does one do when a little phrase you uttered, a word, perhaps just dinner table pleasantries or a joke, turns out to support the most serious accusation there could be? One offers his true feelings. One presents his innermost conviction, carefully weighing his words. That is, thus, what I did in this text, the conclusion of which was that Godard's rapport with the Jewish fact was, certainly, complex, contradictory, and ambiguous; that his support in the early 70s of the most extremist Palestinian points of view was obviously a problem; and that there are, in such private conversations recounted by the writer and film maker Alain Fleischer since then, some disturbing elements. But to use that to peremptorily declare that "Godard is anti-semitic" is not only to take the risk of calling a life's work before a tribunal where, I repeat, it has no place but also, concerning the point that is a problem, the name to give Godard's politics -- or not -- in short, concerning the corpus delicti, it amounts to jumping to conclusions, playing with words one should only use with the greatest of scruple and, in the final analysis, straying completely off the path.

There remained the documents. There remained the "packet of notes and documents" I said, in the text of April 8th, I had "kept over the years", attesting to these moments of my life and of Jean-Luc Godard's (and, where some were concerned, that of Claude Lanzmann as well) that were also the foundation of my analysis and of what I had to say. I limited myself, then, to indicating their existence but did not feel that actually making them public served any purpose. And I did so without much regret because, each of the four times, it was a question of films abandoned that I was not sure (and, moreover, am still not sure) it would have been worthwhile to drag out of the limbo where we had decided, among one another, to let them stay.

Today, I see things differently. Before the developing importance of this affair, before the accumulation of hearsay, opinions, or quotes taken out of context and consequently turned crazy with which men and women I often know and respect make do, before -- why not say so too? -- the invitation I sense, here and there (recently again, from de Baecque, in Rue 89), to stop using half-words and, in order to "definitively exonerate Godard" (or not), to publish the letters, notes, and preparatory documents of these film projects, thus producing the evidence of a case that, up until now, I have said too little or not enough about, I take on the responsibility, yes, after all, of offering all.

Here they are then, these snippets, drafts, these words. Here are these useless, dusty, forgotten letters that were no longer for me and, I imagine, for Godard, any more than the sad memory of endeavors we undertook with enthusiasm but that turned out to be still-born -- and that will, here, for an instant, come to life again and contribute, I hope, to an effort at clarification that must be put off no longer. Each one can form his own open from there on. It is up to everyone to judge, but as I did myself -- with the evidence henceforth at hand, and with probity. Read.

This post is the first in a series. The next installment will be published on 11/14.

COMMENTS

Anti-zionism is not an anti-semitism. An anti-zionist is against the political idea of occupying 1948 Palestine.

Even Noam Chomsky and Norman Finkelstein have been accused of being "anti-Semite". The use and abuse of the term to defend the theft and occupation of Palestine has degraded the term so much that it's use is hilarious in most cases.

Don't waste your breath on Levy. He sees antisemitism in anyone who does not bow to and salute Israel. He does not seem to realize that he cries wolf so much that even before he opens his mouth we can predict that an accusation antisemitism will come out of it


One must look carefully at those calling Goddard an "anti-Semite."

Anyone who has any sympathy for the Palestinians will be accused of antisemitism by zealous Zionists who DO have the sympathy from most of the western world because of the atrocities of the WWII holocaust. The logic being, how can a people who were so oppressed and persecuted turn around and do the same thing to another group of people?
Even Jews, living in Israel, who have organized peace movements have been accused of hatred toward themselves. Any public display with an emphasis on human rights abuses against Palestinians by the Israeli Military is seen as an act of treason. Israeli civilian casualties are mentioned, even though the Israeli Military has killed 5-times more Palestinian civilians than the Palestinian Military has killed Israeli civilians, the Palestinians are accused of "killing our children."
Pointing this out to anyone with Israeli sympathy will earn you the moniker "anti-Semite."

Of course Jean-Luc Godard is not anti-semitic. Just because someone wants justice for the Palestinians and claims the Palestinian people's inalienable right to return to their homes and lands in 1948 Palestine, doesn't make him anti-semite. On the contrary, many zionist attack word is to call anti-semite to anyone supporting a free Palestine. But of course the concept is wrong and it only serves propaganda and disinformation purposes

Monday, November 08, 2010

Gladio Turkey = 911 USA inside job


This article is a bit long, and it fails to CONGRATULATE the turks for GETTING RID of the secret terror state.
Of course the EUROPEAN UNION demands this as an entry condition.
And besides, civilised nations need to stop terrorising their population.
USA is ruled by fear, and the injustice is abhorrent there.

still, its very much worth reading ..

When Will U.S. Leaders Confess To The American People That America Carries Out False-Flag Attacks As Part of Its Foreign Policy?

Nov 8, 2010
In September of this year, a retired Turkish general named


sabri_yirmibesoglu.jpg

 Sabri Yirmibeshoglu admitted on Turkish television that the Turkish government carried out false-flag attacks on the island of Cyprus in the 1960s in order to instill feelings of hatred and revenge in Turkish Cypriots against the Cyprus government. The false-flag operations successfully destabilized the island, and helped Turkey's military objectives.

Yirmibeshoglu's admission was significant, as he was the former Secretary-General of the National Security Council (MGK), and the chief of Turkey's Special Warfare Department. For more details read Elias Hazou's report, which was filed on September 24, 2010 for the Cyprus Mail:

Created in 1953 as part of the Turkish secret service, the Special Warfare Department is believed by commentators in Turkey to be the executive branch of the so-called 'deep state.'"In order to increase the resistance of the people, you carry out sabotage against certain values, in order to create the impression that it is the enemy who did it. In Cyprus, we had torched a mosque," Yirmibesoglu said in an interview while describing methods used in unconventional warfare. (Turkey carried out false-flag attacks in Cyprus in 1960s, says Turkish General, Elias Hazou, Cyrpus Mail; Sept. 24, 2010).

Yirmibeshoglu was named by Ahmet Özal as one of the suspects involved in the assassination attempt of his father, Turgut Özal, in 1988. Özal later died in in 1993 due to a heart attack, but his family asserts that he was killed as a result of a poison injection by the same individuals within the Turkish deep-state who failed to kill him in 1988. Özal served as Turkey's Prime Minister from 1983 to 1989, and as President from 1989 to 1993.

An article published in Istanbul's Today's Zaman on September 30, 2010 called "Özal's death should also be investigated, says Ahmet Özal," has the details on this intriguing drama which shares many comparisons with the assassinations of American leaders in the 1960s, specifically John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. An excerpt from the article:

Özal said his father was killed because he had resolved to find a peaceful and democratic solution to the Kurdish question. He said deep state elements, which were said to be Ergenekon by some and JİTEM by others, worked hard to destroy peace in Turkey in 1993, a year filled with politically motivated assassinations and suspicious deaths of important public, military and political figures.He claimed that the car that took his father to the hospital took an unnecessary detour and wasted half an hour. He also said he was not taken in an ambulance but in a car because the doctor and the ambulance of the Çankaya presidential palace were suspiciously unavailable that day. "These things have to be investigated," he said.
Korkut Özal, the brother of the former President, echoes his nephew's allegations in an upcoming book, writing; "If this incident [Özal's death] is investigated, it will be a scandal similar to Watergate, which led to the resignation of US President [Richard] Nixon," as reported on Today's Zaman on October 21, 2010.
If you've read this far you're probably wondering what my title has to do with a confession by a top former Turkish general that Turkey's government executed false-flag operations to promote its military interests in Cyprus, and allegations that Turkey's former President was assassinated by key members of the Turkish establishment in 1993. Well, there's a connection. Turkey is not unique. Can the American establishment assassinate peace-minded leaders? Yes. It. Can. And, Yes. It. Has. Can the American establishment carry out false-flag attacks abroad, and at home? Yes. It. Can. And, Yes. It. Has.
In fact, America's secret state orchestrated false-flag events and executed bombing campaigns inside Turkey, and other nations during the Cold War and blamed them on communists and leftist leaders in order to produce a sense of fear and helplessness in their populations. Daniele Ganser's deep research into this scandalous activity, which was done by a network of stay-behind armies organized by NATO, led him to write a book called "NATO's Secret Armies: Operation GLADIO and Terrorism in Western Europe." To know more, read some of Ganser's findings at this link.
NATO's secret terrorists were of great help to the U.S. establishment. Prior to the military coup d'état in Turkey on September 12, 1980, the CIA and NATO in cooperation with the Turkish military funded and trained secret groups to carry out false-flag attacks and terrorism with the purpose to undermine civil society, and create the condition in which a military takeover would be feasible. It's known as the strategy of tension, and it is considered standard operation procedure by military/deep-state insiders in America, Turkey, Israel, England, and other countries in the world that are dominated by anti-democratic interests. Since the end of World War Two, Western democratic governments have fallen prey to the powerful individuals who operate secretly against the public interests inside the deep-state apparatus of each nation.
According to professor Peter Dale Scott, the attack on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001 was part of a long series of "deep events" in America. Scott:

wtc7wtc6.JPG.jpg


However to call 9/11 a coup d'état exaggerates the difference between the current weakened condition of the public state, and the prior state of affairs that has been building for years, indeed for decades, towards just such a dénouement. For half a century the constitution and laws of the open or public state have been first evaded, then eroded, then increasingly challenged and subverted, by the forces of the deep state. I wish to suggest that this erosion has been achieved in part through a series of important deep events in post-war American history – events aspects of which (it is clear from the outset) will be ignored or suppressed in the mainstream media.Recent history has seen a number of such events, such as the assassination of John F. Kennedy, that are so inexplicable by the public notions of American politics that most Americans tend not even to think of them. Instead most accept the official surface explanations for them, even if they suspect these are not true. Or if others say they believe that "Oswald acted alone," they may do so in the same comforting but irrational state of mind that believes God will reward the righteous and punish the wicked.
The nature of the deep-state is such that not everybody in the government knows what is going on behind the scenes. Military officials and public representatives who are part of the deep-state are unlikely to confess to the press and the public about their involvement and knowledge, as they would be admitting to committing high treason, and great crimes. Their confession would be followed by their hanging, basically.
Some government officials, like Sen. Patrick Leahy, and Rep. Dennis Kucinich, have called for a truth and reconciliation commission to fully investigate the government's secret torture programs, illegal surveillance, and the questions surrounding the Sept.11 events. Aside from a few crickets, nobody in the media has made any noise about the suggestion to set up some type of truth commission in the United States.
Instead of the truth about 9/11 and the deep-state getting filtered through mainstream sources, or the alternative media, it is grassroots organizations like the International Center for 9/11 Studies and anti-establishment media outlets like the Alex Jones show and Coast to Coast AM that are exposing the war criminals and informing the public about the dark corruption.
Obviously, the current order of things cannot last. A reckoning is awaiting the world. The criminal and fraudulent global war on terrorism can only end once the governments of America, Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan, Israel, Palestine, and other governments in the Middle East and around the world get together and come up with a fair and just solution to fix the mayhem that was unleashed by the deep-state terrorists who dominate Washington through state secrecy laws, and control over the media.
Let's pray that there are brave and wise military and government leaders in the United States who have a handle on the historical situation, and who see the grave consequences of attacking Iran, which would trigger a large-scale war in the Middle East, and result in the deaths of innumerable people. Let's pray that they do the right thing, and help restore a strong, free, and truthful America. In September of this year, a retired Turkish general named Sabri Yirmibeshoglu admitted on Turkish television that the Turkish government carried out false-flag attacks on the island of Cyprus in the 1960s in order to instill feelings of hatred and revenge in Turkish Cypriots against the Cyprus government. The false-flag operations successfully destabilized the island, and helped Turkey's military objectives.
Yirmibeshoglu's admission was significant, as he was the former Secretary-General of the National Security Council (MGK), and the chief of Turkey's Special Warfare Department. For more details read Elias Hazou's report, which was filed on September 24, 2010 for the Cyprus Mail:
Created in 1953 as part of the Turkish secret service, the Special Warfare Department is believed by commentators in Turkey to be the executive branch of the so-called 'deep state.'"In order to increase the resistance of the people, you carry out sabotage against certain values, in order to create the impression that it is the enemy who did it. In Cyprus, we had torched a mosque," Yirmibe?o?lu said in an interview while describing methods used in unconventional warfare. (Turkey carried out false-flag attacks in Cyprus in 1960s, says Turkish General, Elias Hazou, Cyrpus Mail; Sept. 24, 2010).
Yirmibeshoglu was named by Ahmet Özal as one of the suspects involved in the assassination attempt of his father, Turgut Özal, in 1988. Özal later died in in 1993 due to a heart attack, but his family asserts that he was killed as a result of a poison injection by the same individuals within the Turkish deep-state who failed to kill him in 1988. Özal served as Turkey's Prime Minister from 1983 to 1989, and as President from 1989 to 1993. Istanbul's Today's Zaman on September 30, 2010 called "Özal's death should also be investigated, says Ahmet Özal," has the details on this intriguing drama which shares many comparisons with the assassinations of American leaders in the 1960s, specifically John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. An excerpt from the article:
An article published in
Özal said his father was killed because he had resolved to find a peaceful and democratic solution to the Kurdish question. He said deep state elements, which were said to be Ergenekon by some and JİTEM by others, worked hard to destroy peace in Turkey in 1993, a year filled with politically motivated assassinations and suspicious deaths of important public, military and political figures.He claimed that the car that took his father to the hospital took an unnecessary detour and wasted half an hour. He also said he was not taken in an ambulance but in a car because the doctor and the ambulance of the Çankaya presidential palace were suspiciously unavailable that day. "These things have to be investigated," he said.
Korkut Özal, the brother of the former President, echoes his nephew's allegations in an upcoming book, writing; "If this incident [Özal's death] is investigated, it will be a scandal similar to Watergate, which led to the resignation of US President [Richard] Nixon," as reported on Today's Zaman on October 21, 2010.
If you've read this far you're probably wondering what my title has to do with a confession by a top former Turkish general that Turkey's government executed false-flag operations to promote its military interests in Cyprus, and allegations that Turkey's former President was assassinated by key members of the Turkish establishment in 1993. Well, there's a connection. Turkey is not unique. Can the American establishment assassinate peace-minded leaders? Yes. It. Can. And, Yes. It. Has. Can the American establishment carry out false-flag attacks abroad, and at home? Yes. It. Can. And, Yes. It. Has.
In fact, America's secret state orchestrated false-flag events and executed bombing campaigns inside Turkey, and other nations during the Cold War and blamed them on communists and leftist leaders in order to produce a sense of fear and helplessness in their populations. Daniele Ganser's deep research into this scandalous activity, which was done by a network of stay-behind armies organized by NATO, led him to write a book called "NATO's Secret Armies: Operation GLADIO and Terrorism in Western Europe." To know more, read some of Ganser's findings at this link.
NATO's secret terrorists were of great help to the U.S. establishment. Prior to the military coup d'état in Turkey on September 12, 1980, the CIA and NATO in cooperation with the Turkish military funded and trained secret groups to carry out false-flag attacks and terrorism with the purpose to undermine civil society, and create the condition in which a military takeover would be feasible. It's known as the strategy of tension, and it is considered standard operation procedure by military/deep-state insiders in America, Turkey, Israel, England, and other countries in the world that are dominated by anti-democratic interests. Since the end of World War Two, Western democratic governments have fallen prey to the powerful individuals who operate secretly against the public interests inside the deep-state apparatus of each nation.
According to professor Peter Dale Scott, the attack on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001 was part of a long series of "deep events" in America. Scott:
However to call 9/11 a coup d'état exaggerates the difference between the current weakened condition of the public state, and the prior state of affairs that has been building for years, indeed for decades, towards just such a dénouement. For half a century the constitution and laws of the open or public state have been first evaded, then eroded, then increasingly challenged and subverted, by the forces of the deep state. I wish to suggest that this erosion has been achieved in part through a series of important deep events in post-war American history – events aspects of which (it is clear from the outset) will be ignored or suppressed in the mainstream media.Recent history has seen a number of such events, such as the assassination of John F. Kennedy, that are so inexplicable by the public notions of American politics that most Americans tend not even to think of them. Instead most accept the official surface explanations for them, even if they suspect these are not true. Or if others say they believe that "Oswald acted alone," they may do so in the same comforting but irrational state of mind that believes God will reward the righteous and punish the wicked.
The nature of the deep-state is such that not everybody in the government knows what is going on behind the scenes. Military officials and public representatives who are part of the deep-state are unlikely to confess to the press and the public about their involvement and knowledge, as they would be admitting to committing high treason, and great crimes. Their confession would be followed by their hanging, basically.Kucinich, have called for a truth and reconciliation commission to fully investigate the government's secret torture programs, illegal surveillance, and the questions surrounding the Sept.11 events. Aside from a few crickets, nobody in the media has made any noise about the suggestion to set up some type of truth commission in the United States.the International Center for 9/11 Studies and anti-establishment media outlets like the Alex Jones show and Coast to Coast AM that are exposing the war criminals and informing the public about the dark corruption.

Obviously, the current order of things cannot last. A reckoning is awaiting the world. The criminal and fraudulent global war on terrorism can only end once the governments of America, Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan, Israel, Palestine, and other governments in the Middle East and around the world get together and come up with a fair and just solution to fix the mayhem that was unleashed by the deep-state terrorists who dominate Washington through state secrecy laws, and control over the media.
Some government officials, like Sen. Patrick Leahy, and Rep. Dennis
Instead of the truth about 9/11 and the deep-state getting filtered through mainstream sources, or the alternative media, it is grassroots organizations like
Let's pray that there are brave and wise military and government leaders in the United States who have a handle on the historical situation, and who see the grave consequences of attacking Iran, which would trigger a large-scale war in the Middle East, and result in the deaths of innumerable people. Let's pray that they do the right thing, and help restore a strong, free, and truthful America.

Sunday, November 07, 2010

10 YEARS TODAY - vote fraud - BUSH FLORIDA

Ten years ago: A statewide recount began in Florida, which emerged as critical in deciding the winner of the 2000 presidential election. Earlier that day, Vice President Al Gore had telephoned Texas Gov. George W. Bush to concede, but called back about an hour later to retract his concession.



15.01.09-Steve-Bell-on-th-001.jpg

Diebold Memos Disclose Florida 2000 E-Voting Fraud

Article: Alastair Thompson



"DELAND, Fla., Nov. 11 - Something very strange happened on election night to Deborah Tannenbaum, a Democratic Party official in Volusia County. At 10 p.m., she called the county elections department and learned that Al Gore was leading George W. Bush 83,000 votes to 62,000. But when she checked the county's Web site for an update half an hour later, she found a startling development: Gore's count had dropped by 16,000 votes, while an obscure Socialist candidate had picked up 10,000--all because of a single precinct with only 600 voters."

- Washington Post Sunday , November 12, 2000 ; Page A22

Yes. Something very strange happened in Volusia County on election night November 2000, the night that first Gore won Florida, then Bush, and then as everybody can so well remember there was a tie.

Something strange indeed. But what exactly? In the above report (click for full version), written days after the election, hotshot Washington Post reporter Dana Milbank goes on to attribute the strange 16,022 negative vote tally from Volusia's precinct 216 to an apparently innocent cause.

"…. faulty 'memory cards' in the machines caused the 16,000-vote disappearance on election night. The glitch was soon fixed," he wrote.

But thanks to recent investigations into Black Box Voting by Washington State writer Bev Harris we now know this explanation is not correct. In fact it is not even in the ballpark.

According to recently discovered internal Diebold Election Systems memos, Global Election Systems' (which was later purchased by Diebold) own technical staff were also stumped by the events in Volusia County/

In Chapter 11 of her new book "Black Box Voting In the 21st Century"released early today in .PDF format at Blackboxvoting.com and here at Scoop Ms Harris observes.

"If you strip away the partisan rancor over the 2000 election, you are left with the undeniable fact that a presidential candidate conceded the election to his opponent based on [results from] a second card that mysteriously appears, subtracts 16,022 votes, then just as mysteriously disappears."

Working in parallel with Ms Harris Scoop has also been inquiring into the events on election night in Volusia county. Much of the material that follows is similar to that which appears in Chapter 11 of her book.

The starting point in this shocking discovery about election 2000 came in a series of internal Diebold ES technical support memos.

The following is an abbreviated version of the exchange concerning the peculiar events in Volusia county. For the purposes of research the exchange is included in full as an Appendix to this report (APPENDIX TWO). The discussion took place in early 2001 as an audit was underway in Volusia county into the events.

bush.gif

(NOTE: The names below each extract link to the full text of the emails in the appendices below.)

I need some answers! Our department is being audited by the County. I have been waiting for someone to give me an explanation as to why Precinct 216 gave Al Gore a minus 16022 when it was uploaded. Will someone please explain this so that I have the information to give the auditor instead of standing here "looking dumb".

Lana Hires – Volusia County Florida - January 17, 2001 8:07 AM

My understanding is that the card was not corrupt after (or before) upload. They fixed the problem by clearing the precinct and re-uploading the same card. So neither of these explainations washes. That's not to say I have any idea what actually happened, its just not either of those…

The problem is its going to be very hard to collect enough data to really know what happened. The card isn't corrupt so we can't post-mortem it (its not mort).

Ken Clark – Diebold ES R&D Manager – January 18, 2001 1:41 PM

- the negative numbers on media display occurred when Lana attempted to reupload a card or duplicate card. Sophia and Tab may be able to shed some light here, keeping in mind that the boogie man may me reading our mail. Do we know how this could occur?

John McLaurin - Diebold ES - 18 Jan 2001 15:44:50

The problem precinct had two memcory cards uploaded. The second one is the one I believe caused the problem. They were uploaded on the same port approx. 1 hour apart. As far as I know there should only have been one memory card uploaded. I asked you to check this out when the problem first occured but have not heard back as to whether this is true.

When the precinct was cleared and re-uploaded (only one memory card as far as I know) everything was fine. 

Given that we transfer data in ascii form not binary and given the way the data was 'invalid' the error could not have occured during transmission. Therefore the error could only occur in one of four ways: 

[4.] There is always the possiblity that the 'second memory card' or 'second upload' came from an un-authorised source.

Tab Iredale - Diebold ES - 18 Jan 2001 13:31

If this problem is to be properly answered we need to determine where the 'second' memory card is or whether it even exists. Heh. Second shooter theory. All we need now is a grassy knoll.

Ken Clark – Diebold ES R&D Manager – 18 Jan 2001 16:42:50

I will be visiting with Lana on Monday and will ascertain the particulars related to the second memory card. One concern I've had all along is "if" we are getting the full story from Lana.

I'll be back in touch and thanks for all of y'alls (that's southern for all of you) help.

John McLaurin – Diebold ES - Thu, 18 Jan 2001 16:56:06

belltoon512.gif

Unfortunately whether or not John McLaurin got to the bottom of the mystery of Volusia County is something the memos cannot tell us.

Searches of the Diebold memos database find a single followup memo from McLaurin about the Checksum Errors experienced in Volusia, but nothing on the mysterious 16,022 negative vote count.

Which leaves us where exactly?

What we know from the memos can be summarised as follows:

- Two memory cards were uploaded from Volusia Couny's precinct 216, the second one was loaded sometime close to 2am in the morning. It automatically replaced the first card's results and reduced Gore's total by 16,022 votes and added several thousand votes to Bush plus a variety of minor candidates;
- Both memory cards loaded into the system clean and without errors, indicating (contrary to the official line) that they were not faulty;
- After the error was noticed the original card was reloaded and the mistake was rectified;
- The error was introduced in such a way that the total number of votes remained unchanged (again something that could not happen by chance.);
- According to the technical boffins, the chance of the memory card being corrupted and still passing the checksum error test are less than 60,000 to 1;
- The technical managers at Diebold Election Systems considered it a reasonable possibility that the second card was part of deliberate conspiracy to rig the election results.

In her book Bev Harris explains the issue of whether the card was a chance fault or a deliberate example of tampering"

"A memory card is like floppy disk. If you have worked with computers for any length of time you will know that a disk can go bad. When it does, which of the following is most likely? In an Excel spreadsheet that you saved on a "bad disk," might it read a column of numbers correct the first time: "1005, 2109, 3000, 450…" but the second time, replace the numbers like this: "1005, 2109, -16022, 450…" Or is it more likely that the "bad disk" will…fail to read the file at all, crash your computer, give you an error message, or make weird humming and whirring noises."

source: page 239, Chapter 11, "Black Box Voting in the 21st Century"

However officially, as we learned earlier, the explanation given publicly - and accepted without demur by the media - for the strange events in Volusia county is that there was simply a "faulty memory card".

The "faulty memory card" explanation is also included in a CBS News Network investigation into the Election 2000 debacle.

And it is here that we find a considerable amount of information about just how significant the Volusia County events were on election night.

The first thing we learn from CBS's investigation into the events of election night is that according to the Voter News Service (VNS) exit polls for Florida Al Gore should have won comfortably.

7:00 PM: The vast majority of Florida polls close. CBS News decides not to project a winner in the Florida Presidential race at poll closing, even though the best estimate, based upon exit-poll interviews from the 45 survey precincts, shows Gore leading Bush by 6.6 points. The Decision Desk decides to wait for some actual votes from sample precincts to confirm the exit-poll results.

7:40 PM: The VNS computation shows a "call" status in the Florida Presidential race. This status means that statistically Gore is leading, but the Decision Team needs to check more data.


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VNS eventually officially called the Florida race to Gore at 7.52pm, notwithstanding comments early in the vote count from George Bush that he was confident he would win both Florida and Pennsylvannia (comments which were never fully explained).

With the benefit of hindsight we think we now know that the VNS data was wrong. That is certainly what the CBS inquiry found.

In the report attached below there are a range of explanations for this given, none of them adequately explain the magnitude of the error however.

Most of the news networks followed the VNS call giving Florida to Gore. And by 8.02pm all networks had announced Gore as the winner in Florida. And it wasn't till 9pm that some doubts about this callstarted to emerge.

First up a significant error - attributed to a typing mistake - was found in the VNS data at 9.07pm. This led to closer examination of the rest of the data and the incoming returns. By around 10pm the Florida calls to Gore were all officially withdrawn. This is recorded in the CBS report as follows:

9:54 PM: The CBS News Decision Desk recommends that the call in Florida for Gore be withdrawn. CBS is in a local cutaway at 9:54 PM (the seven minutes at the end of the hour when local stations broadcast their own election results), and so CBS does not withdraw the call until 10:00 PM.

10:16 PM: VNS retracts its Florida call for Gore.

The CBS timeline then jumps forward four hours to 2am EST.

By now an apparently substantial lead of 29,000 votes has opened up in favour of George Bush.

2:09 AM: VNS adds Volusia County's erroneous numbers to its tabulated vote. With 171 out of 172 precincts in the county reporting, Gore's vote drops by more than 10,000 while Bush's rises by almost the same amount. This 20,000-vote change in one county increases Bush's VNS statewide lead to more than 51,000 votes.

What the news networks, and the Al Gore, camp do not realise at this point in the evening is that over 24,000 of votes that make up this significant lead are attributable to two Diebold Election Systems computer errors.

First there are the 16,022 votes stolen from Gore in Volusia county by the "faulty memory card". Meanwhile over in Brevard County another error - also involving Global Elections System (the predecessor of Diebold) equipment is responsible for a further 4000 votes being lopped off the Gore total.

And it is also worth noting that nobody knows whether the Brevard and Volusia county errors were the only ones in play at this time. These errors were both big ones. They were noticed and corrected on the night. How many smaller vote subtractions could have taken place on the night? Theoretically hundreds. As Dana Milbank's Washington Post report shows it was only because someone noticed the error in Volusia that it was corrected and remarkably the software itself contains no automatic system for rejecting negative vote totals being reported by precincts, events which by definition can only be nefarious and wrong.

At 2am another VNS error came into play. VNS's estimates of the outstanding votes underestimated those that remained to be counted by half, around 180,000. The two errors combined led news executives at CBS to conclude that Bush's final winning margin in Florida would be around 30,000 votes. At this stage Bush had a lead of around 50,000 votes and late reporting precincts were expected to pare this back as many of them were in Democrat leaning counties.

At 2.16am Fox and NBC called the race to Bush, unaware that the Volusia error had now been discovered. Over at Associated Press – the news service that Network News controllers do not read - the margin to Bush had by now fallen to 30,000 after correcting the Volusia error.

At 2.17am and 2.20am the remaining two major networks CBS and ABC called the race to Bush. Their decision continued to be bolstered by the VNS data stream - which even at 2.47am - was still recording a margin to Bush of close to 50,000 votes.

Remarkably it was not till 2.51am that VNS fixed the Volusia error in its data.

Meanwhile with all the networks showing the race for the White House won by Bush, the pressure is mounting on Gore to concede.

In the book, "Too Close to Call" by journalist Jeffrey Toobin, the author gives a behind-the-scenes account of how Gore reacted when the television networks concluded that Bush had taken Florida.

"Al Gore happened to be in the staff room on the seventh floor when the votes spiked up in Bush's favor. Dressed casually, the vice president was watching television while lying on the floor, with his chin propped up in his hands. As a result of the Volusia votes, Fox News called Florida—and the presidency—for Bush at 2:16 a.m. CBS and NBC followed suit a minute later and ABC came in at 2:20 a.m.," Toobin wrote in his book.

"Following the news reports, Gore was silent and absorbed the news. A moment later he told members of his campaign that he was ready to concede the election to Bush, which he did several minutes later over the telephone.

"Unwilling to take the television networks reports at face value, one of Gore's campaign staffers did a little investigating and discovered that the networks erred in stating that 50,000 votes from Volusia county were cast for Bush. Turns out that Gore was ahead by 13,000 votes in Volusia and trailing Bush by 6,000 votes overall. Something was wrong in Volusia it would be revealed later.

One of Gore's campaign advisers then checked Florida's law on recounts. The nearly dead heat between Bush and Gore in Florida and the fact that Gore was ahead in Volusia County meant a mandatory recount. It was time to rescind Gore's concession to Bush and scrutinize the ballots. Gore was traveling in a motorcade en route to deliver a concession speech to his supporters. His staff stopped him. At this point, the margin between Bush and Gore was down to 2,000 votes. A recount was all but certain."

Gore called Bush and Gore's staff surrounded the vice president to listen in on what would become a historic conversation at 2:30 a.m.

"Circumstances have changed dramatically since I first called you," Gore said to Bush, Toobin wrote. "The state of Florida is too close to call."

"Are you saying what I think you're saying?" Bush asked according to Toobin. "Let me make sure that I understand. You're calling back to retract that concession?" Gore sensed an annoyance in Bush's tone and shot back "you don't have to be snippy about it."

Toobin says Bush then told Gore that his "little brother", Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, had assured him that he won the state of Florida and for that matter the presidency of the United States.

"Let me explain something," Toobin quoted Gore as saying in his response to Bush. "Your little brother is not the ultimate authority on this."

"You do what you have to do," Bush said and hung up the phone on Gore. When Gore turned around to face his staff they exploded in cheers.

It is not till 3.10am that the CBS news controllers notice the huge difference between their numbers and those of AP which by now show the margin to Bush at under 10,000.

We also know, thanks to the CBS inquiry report, that by around 3.40am the Gore camp had decided not to concede. Gore Campaign Chairman William Daley rang CBS News President Andrew Heyward in the control room and asked him whether CBS would be reversing its call soon.

CBS's Andrew Heyward waited another 15-20 minutes after the phone call before ordering CBS to officially withdraw the call to Bush. And by 4.05am all the other networks had also withdrawn the call.

By 4.10am the reported Bush lead in the race had dropped to 1800 votes, and thereabouts it remained until the first recount - albeit the Florida Secretary of State's office website reported the race to Gore on the day after the vote.

And it is there that the narrative in this tale ends and the analysis starts.

In its internal conclusions about these events the CBS inquiry team found the two Diebold County level errors, Volusia and Brevard, were conclusive in their networks decision to call the race to Bush.

" The mistakes, both of which originated with the counties, were critical, since there were only about 3 percent of the state's precincts outstanding at this time. They incorrectly increased Bush's lead in the tabulated vote from about 27,000 to more than 51,000. Had it not been for these errors, the CBS News call for Bush at 2:17:52 AM would not have been made."


You do not get much clearer than that.

The record already shows that events of election night 2000 turned on the errors in the Volusia and Brevard vote counts. Both of which occurred on Global Election Systems (now Diebold) equipment.

Of course we now know Al Gore did not concede.

But had he done so would that have altered what followed? Would there have been the hanging-chad phenomena, the lawsuits over recounts and the recriminations?

Most of what is contained in the preceding analysis is well trodden territory. Everybody knows that the TV networks screwed up big time on election night, and the issue of bias at those networks has also been well traversed.

What has not been discussed, or even conceived of till now, is that the events that occurred between around midnight and 4am might have been the result not of mistakes but of organised voting fraud.

Yet that is precisely what Talbot Iredale and Ken Clark's memos confirm is a distinct possibility, in fact, reading between the lines they suggest it is the most likely possibility.

Consider this:

How plausible is it that an error such as this - of such magnitude, with no apparent physical explanation, and in one of the few counties still receiving incoming results that late in the night – was really the simple result of a "faulty memory card"?

We also now know, again thanks to the work of Black Box Voting investigators like Washington State's Bev Harris and California's Jim March, that the Diebold vote tallying programme used in several Florida counties, GEMS, is easily hackable, both by outsiders and by insiders.

[See… Bev Harris's " Inside A U.S. Election Vote Counting Program " for details and Jim March's "DIEBOLD'S VOTE-TALLY SOFTWARE- Security Review Instructions"for a kit to demonstrate the hack on your own computer.]

We do not know what would have happened had a full state-wide recount been undertaken as the efforts to have one were blocked in the courts.

Would they have discovered other counties where unusual events like those discovered in Brevard and Volusia counties?

Is it possible that the original VNS exit polling data was closer to correct than conventional wisdom suggests?

Is it possible that less egregious vote stealing took place in counties all over Florida?

Add into the mix the blatant roll scrubbing in Florida discovered by Greg Palast and exposed in his best-selling book "The Best Democracy Money can buy" and you have a recipe of reasons to reopen a full scale inquiry into the Florida debacle.

Perhaps more importantly. With paper-less touchscreen voting systems in place in many Florida counties come November 2004, should such events occur again, there will be no record with which to conduct a recount.

And the other big mystery of course is this: if someone did try to rig the election returns in Florida in 2000, who was it?



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 story so bizarre it's got to be true," is the billing given for this Tuesday's Florida Recount Reunion that The Village Square is hosting downtown.

It's been — how could it be? — a full decade since that historically indecisive presidential election brought the world to our feet here in the Florida capital.


Quite literally, for 37 days, the foot of the Capitol and Supreme Court building on Duval Street took on the appearance of a camp site with breezy white tents shielding camera equipment and TV production gear in what was still a pre-digital era.


From all over the globe came the media, the law and the amazed who could not quite believe that an American presidential election hung in the balance for so long — and hung on such unexpected flotsam of democracy as something we came to call hanging chads, and also butterflies.


The Village Square is sponsoring the Recount Reunion, considering that we might extract some insights from what was another era after all, and arguably less politically contentious in spite of passions running high.

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The 2000 election came before early voting and more reliable voting machines. It was back when some paper ballots required holes to be punched to signify an elector's choice, and when the punch wasn't quite thorough, that vote was uncertain.


Every single vote would have to be counted — in many cases recounted — to break this spellbinding election. And it happened to be in Florida, where the voting was quite simply bollixed up in several counties, turning our state into the setting of both drama and comedy.


This year, Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert mocked our hostile midterm scrambles for office as "Indecision 2010." But it has paled by comparison to a decade ago, when the battle between Al Gore and George W. Bush was resolved in what Tallahassee Attorney Barry Richard described to Liz Joyner, executive director of The Village Square, as "a shining moment for American jurisprudence."


Richard, who was lead counsel for Bush in all 47 Florida cases, will be opening Tuesday's event with a multimedia presentation that is sure to be riveting.


His contention is that the Florida Supreme Court and the U.S. Supreme Court each acted honorably and in accordance with long-standing precedent in their decisions.


Even those of us who well remember and often participated in the waiting game on Duval Street — where the face of Supreme Court spokesman Craig Waters became familiar around the world — couldn't have predicted, however, that the divisiveness that election generated would not only linger on, but grow into the vitriolic and almost never bipartisan state of affairs that is now commonplace. Or that, as high as emotions were running, it was nevertheless a comparatively mannerly time compared with this election season's free-flowing epithets of "liar," "corruption," "fraud" and such.


At times there was even a kind of storybook quality to those days downtown. I recall how mesmerized and charmed some of our media celebrity visitors from New York, Washington and London were on that cold early December evening when Tallahassee held its Celebration of Lights. The streets were shimmering with holiday lights, alive with carolers, a Santa's workshop, children in snowsuits, costumed elves dancing and a surreal and Felliniesque aura over all. It was Americana at its most beguiling, and symbolic of the serenity and happiness that a functioning democracy ought to sometimes afford.


Panelists for the Recount Reunion will also include legendary Tallahassee attorney Dexter Douglass, who joined high-powered David Boies of upstate New York in arguing the case for Vice President Al Gore in the Florida Supreme Court. Boies, later portrayed by actor Ed Begley Jr. in the 2008 film "Recount," along with Douglass, Richard and other key players were frequently seen having lunch at Andrew's on Adams Street, where they'd talk strategy with each other and reporters and occasionally sign an autograph.


Florida Supreme Court Justice Jorge Labarga will be on hand. In 2000, he was on the bench of the 15th Circuit Court in Palm Beach County. He was the judge who ruled on the "dimpled chad" issue, refusing a new vote on the grounds that the U.S. Constitution states that an election must be held everywhere in the United States on the same day, not just in one area.



f you attend, you'll have a chance to visit with retired Supreme Court Justice Harry Lee Anstead, as well as 1st District Court of Appeal Judge Nikki Clark and 2nd Judicial Circuit Judge Terry Lewis, who presided over two key elements of Bush v. Gore




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With attorneys looking over their shoulders, the three members of Palm Beach County's election canvassing board examine unclear punch-card 'butterfly ballots' to try to decipher the voters' intents in the 2000 presidential race.




There's a climate-controlled floor in the state archives building in Tallahassee where two distinct collections are kept for posterity: the case files of convicted murderers, and the ballots for the 2000 presidential election.

"The punch cards are now so brittle that most of the holes have been punched out," said Jennifer Krell Davis of the Florida Department of State. "There's no useful application for them anymore."

But letting go of the desiccated physical remains of the most contentious election in the state's history, an election that began 10 years ago today, stretched over a monthlong recount, and decided a presidency at a crucial moment in American history, still seems, well, premature.

So these nearly 6 million ballots, collected from 66 of Florida's 67 counties - Bay County destroyed its ballots before the state could collect them - cost taxpayers about $43,000 a year to preserve, and serve as one of the most tangible reminders of an election that is gone, but far from forgotten.

"There's still a lot of bitterness," said Theresa LePore, the former Palm Beach County supervisor of elections. "I was at the airport in Atlanta waiting for a plane, and somebody just walked up to me and said, 'I hope you're happy with yourself.' Things like that still happen. I have to tip well in restaurants because everybody knows who I am."

'Butterfly ballot' challenge

LePore and Palm Beach County found themselves at the vortex of the 2000 presidential election because of a visually challenging ballot design that turned an estimated 2,800 would-be Al Gore voters into Pat Buchanan voters. The so-called "butterfly ballot" opened the door to calls for a revote, a public march in West Palm Beach led by civil rights leader Jesse Jackson, and the opening volleys of political rancor that only hardened over the next decade.

But it would be far too simple to claim that Palm Beach County's butterfly ballot was solely responsible for the 537-vote margin that gave George W. Bush the state and, by extension, the presidency.

The closeness of that election, and the subsequent official recounts and media re-examinations, revealed that tens of thousands of Floridians threw their votes away that day by overvoting - voting for more than one candidate in the 10-candidate field. There would be nearly 22,000 of these overvoters alone in Jacksonville's Duval County and 19,120 more in Palm Beach County, where 23 percent of the ballots cast in Pahokee, Belle Glade and South Bay were invalidated this way.

And even more troubling, tens of thousands of other voters had cast ballots without registering any vote at all for president. The three South Florida counties alone had nearly 28,000 of these no-vote ballots.


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Deciphering 'voter intent'

The undervotes were a product of the existing punch card technology, which required voters to use a stylus to punch a hole in a removable ballot card. If the hole wasn't cleanly punched, those little perforated flaps of cardboard, which later became known in the recount vernacular as dimpled, pregnant, hanging or dangling chads, would cover up the hole when the voting card was fed into a tabulator. The result was a no-vote.

And because Florida law holds that "voter intent" is the guiding standard in deciding whether a ballot should be counted, Democrats used the significant number of these undervotes to create the legal justification for the individual inspection of ballots by three-member election canvassing boards in Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties.

These ballot inspections became the enduring images of the 2000 presidential election, those scenes in the recount rooms, where canvassing board members, watched closely by lawyers from both parties, held individual cardboard ballots in the air, trying to decipher voter intent from a punch card that wasn't quite punched.

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It landed the magnifying glass used by Broward County canvassing board member Judge Robert Rosenberg in the Smithsonian National Museum of American History, and it served as a prologue for John Bolton, a Republican recount watcher in Palm Beach County, who went on to an appointment by President Bush as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.

Palm Beach County's Emergency Operations Center became a political carnival site, as competing protest rallies arrived daily to jockey for attention from the media organizations that set up tents in the parking lot and broadcast frequent updates from the counting operation inside



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