US Criticizes Ukraine for Election Fraud: LOL

Yesterday (11/22) the US threatened to review its relationship with Ukraine and to take punitive steps if the Ukrainian government fails to investigate allegations of fraud and abuse in its presidential election.

More than 100,000 Ukrainians took to the streets to protest the election. They believe it was stolen by backers of PM Viktor Yanukovich, the Moscow-backed candidate who defeated his liberal rival Viktor Yushchenko.

"The United States is deeply concerned over the elections in Ukraine," State Department spokesman Adam Ereli told reporters. "We call on the Ukrainian authorities to curb additional abuse and fraud, to uphold its international commitments to democracy and human rights and to act to ensure an outcome that reflects the will of the Ukrainian people.

"Should, in the final analysis, this election prove to be fundamentally flawed and tarnished, we would certainly need to review our relations with the Ukraine and consider further steps against individuals who had engaged in fraud," he added.

Excuse me! Should we be threatening anyone about fraudulent elections? It seems we're not in the best of positions to be taking a holier-than-thou stance here.

A US official who did not want to be named (no surprise there) said Washington could cut back on economic aid to Ukraine, reduce military assistance, freeze the assets of people who engaged in fraud or ban them from receiving US visas.

I find it almost laughable that the US government is willing to rise up in holy indignation about this while our own election still hangs in limbo in many places and appears to have been anything but above board. Its legitimacy is definitely in question in the minds of thousands of Americans.

But then, we do not hold ourselves to the same high standard as we demand of everyone else on the planet. And this will not change as long as George Bush sits in the White House.

[Click on blog title to read the article that inspired this blog post.]

The Fat Lady Is Singing

The 108th Congress is winding down, just having passed a massive spending bill that virtually no one has read and no one knows much about. Did any of you see the size of the bill, copies of which sat unread on the desks of senators while they had their chance to speak? The stack of paper on each desk looked like it was about 14 inches tall. Supposedly every bill is read three times in the course of deliberations before a vote. But this bill could never have been read. It is the "fattest legislative hog" ever seen. Despite record deficits, lawmakers are much more concerned with feathering the nests of their favorite projects back in their home states.

We'll be swimming up a river of red ink for quite some time.

Click on the blog title above to read 20 of the most egregious earmarks in the bill, including:

• $25,000 for curriculum development for the study of mariachi music (NV)
• $45,000 for A+ for Abstinence program (PA)
• $225,000 for the National Wild Turkey Federation (SC)
• $250,000 for Asparagus Technology and Production (WA)

If this were a Saturday Night Live skit, we could laugh, but there is nothing even remotely humorous about this. Our Congressional members should be hanging their collective heads. Are they? Not as far as I can see. They are just chomping at the bit to get out of town for Turkey Day. Disgraceful.

Oh, I forgot to tell you. There was also a $2 million provision for the re-purchase of the presidential yacht Sequoia. Beyond the pale.

Harry, Save Your Breath

I like to fret over the meaningless rhetoric which incessantly flows from the mouths of the Republicans. However, the Democrats are just as good at it at times. Take, for example, the newly-elevated Senate Minority Leader Nevada Senator Harry Reid. In his party's weekly address to the nation, Reid implored the parties not to let partisanship and politics get in the way of helping Americans with health care, education and jobs.

Please, stop, Harry! I can't take it right now.

"Americans are counting on us- Republicans and Democrats- to keep our promise on Social Security." I don't know about you, but I could never have gotten these words out. Does Senator Reid think for a minute there is any shred of hope that there will be even a scintilla of bipartisanship or any other form of cooperation in the next Bush term? Can he be so naive? Why is he speaking these nonsensical phrases? They are only a fantasy.

[Click on the blog title to read an article about Reid's speech 11/20/04.]

Smart Aleck Christianity Scalia Style

I think one must beware when, in order to justify one's beliefs, one resorts to ridicule of anyone who might have another opinion or belief. U. S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, who in effect appointed George Bush in 2000, has a habit of traveling about the country giving self-righteous speeches about his Christian fundamentalist approach to his life and his work. He delights in mocking those whom he sarcastically calls the sophisticated and the wise, usually drawing laughter from his like-minded audiences.

"We are fools for Christ's sake," says Scalia. "We must pray for the courage to suffer the contempt of the sophisticated world."

Long-suffering, these poor fundamentalists. They are so ridiculed and persecuted. Of course, they wouldn't think of treating the rest of us in a derisive way. Or would they? Since the so-called election, which has yet to be completed, the winners, including these religious people, have been in a state of ecstacy, thinking that they now have made their mark and are in charge of the country from now on. And they believe with all their heart that God ordained this. They are publically thanking God for delivering the election to their kind.

Justice Scalia is proud to wear his Christian badge of courage and to suffer the labels some may give him. In the second Bush administration, this group of our population will perhaps enjoy a period of pleasant comraderie, knowing that they somehow are all alike and share the same beliefs. They feel a new sense of empowerment bestowed upon them by the likes of Scalia, Bob Jones, Pat Robertson, Falwell, and, of course, the President himself, who is now expected to show his gratitude to these people for their blind faith in voting for him.

One of my family members once explained to me that anyone who does not believe (no object to the verb) is deceived. This put me in the latter category, since I don't believe in the way she defines belief. I have never quite gotten over this act of disregard on her part. There was no way I could be on the inside. I would have to prescribe to her requirement of belief. Otherwise, to the outer realm I go! It is the theme of the Bush administration as well:

My way or the highway...

What is so alarming about this attitude of arrogance and intolerance is that men and women in high places in our government are using this approach as they govern our country. We are not a Christian nation, but if we were, we would still differ from one another, depending on our denomination. Our country, however, was founded on the principle of religious freedom and the separation of church and state. Blood was shed for these principles. Millions of immigrants have come here seeking such freedoms. Now we face a 4-year trial of Bush politics. May God and Goddess save us from the President and his followers who have the answers for all of us and will not listen to anyone.

[Click on the blog title to read the Chiago Tribune article by Angela Rozas (11/22/2004).]

Media Distortions Versus the Real News

Independent journalist Dahr Jamail is in Iraq at enormous personal risk to help get the real news for those of us who question the sterilized, outright distorted stories we get from our mainstream media outlets. In my opinion, we can just disregard much of what comes out of the NYT, CNN, NBC, ABC, CBS and yes, even NPR, I am sorry to say. They are all infected at this point. We must have another independent source with which to compare to get some semblance of balance and truth.

For example, listen to this Free Press broadcast (link below) and hear an eye witness account of the repulsive attack on Abu Hanifa mosque in Baghdad last Friday just at the time when 1500 unarmed people were praying there. U. S. soldiers made an unprovoked raid on the mosque, killing at least 4 people and wounding at least 9 others, then not allowing Iraqi medical personnel to enter the mosque to assist the wounded. At least 50 American soldiers led the attack, assisted by at least 50 Iraqi National Guard. Our soldiers used atrocious terrorist tactics. According to Jamail's interpreter, who was inside the mosque during this horrendous ordeal, the area had been relatively quiet for about 3 weeks. It was the U. S. military who stirred up trouble here.

What option does this leave for the native Iraqi people?

We hear from mainstream corporate media that the Iraqi soldiers are carrying out these raids, only assisted by the U. S. as necessary. This is NOT TRUE! It is exactly the opposite. Americans are being told untruths and utter distortions. In most cases, the reports we hear and read are written by people who are in some cases a thousand miles away from where the attacks are occurring. They simply don't have accurate details. These journalists make these atrocities seem like signs of progress.

Who believes that democracy is beginning to emerge in Iraq? Who believes George Bush's optimistic updates? Does anyone?

Here is the link to hear a terrifying audio tape of part of the mosque attack, followed by an interview on Free Press Radio with Dahr Jamail. It's well worth your time.

http://209.81.10.18/data/20041119-Fri1700.mp3

Here is Dahr Jamail's dispatch today, Sunday, November 21:

More blood, More chaos

In Ramadi today 6 civilians were killed in clashes between the resistance and military. The military sealed the city, closing all the roads while announcing over loudspeakers for residents in the city to hand over “terrorists.”

A man, woman and child died when the public bus they were riding in approached a US checkpoint there when they were riddled with bullets from anxious soldiers. A military spokesman said the bus was shot because it didn’t stop when they asked it to.

The city remains sealed by US forces as fierce clashes sporadically erupt across the area while the military decides how to handle yet another resistance controlled. As the mass graves in Fallujah continue to be filled with countless corpses, sporadic fighting flashes throughout areas of the destroyed battleground. “The Americans want every city in Iraq to be like Fallujah,” said Abdulla Rahnan, a 40 year-old man on the street where I was taking tea not far from my hotel,

“They want to kill us all-they are freeing us of our lives!”

His friend, remaining nameless, added, “Everyone here hates them because they are making mass graves faster than even Saddam!”

I never tell people I interview I am from America.

I tell them I am Canadian of Lebanese descent-which is close enough since I am from Alaska. With this information, I am always greeted warmly, invited to meals and to spend the night wherever I go. Arab culture continues to impress me as the most beautiful, warm, civilized culture of any I’ve experienced in all of my travels. But as Abu Talat told me the other day when I asked him what he though about going to Ramadi or Fallujah, “Sure Dahr, we can go-but not until you get a steel neck!” He laughs his deep laugh, and I fake a laugh with him while peering out my car window.

After conducting other interviews during the day, Salam and I are in my room working on a radio dispatch. As we begin recording, his cell phone and my room phone ring simultaneously. He gets news of another friend who has been shot by soldiers, while I am told by Abu Talat that al-Adhamiya is under a 6pm curfew as the military begins house to house searches. His frustrated voice tells me his wife and boys are afraid as he speaks above helicopters thumping the air over his home.

Over in Sadr City, the military are now sealing off neighborhoods doing home searches as well-this after having agreed to a deal with Sadr’s Mehdi Army the fighters turned in many of their weapons and agreed to a truce. Last night a small boy was shot there because he was out after curfew.Lieutenant-General Lance Smith, deputy US commander of the region of the Middle East that includes Iraq, announced that his command might be asking for 3-5,000 more troops for Iraq. This goal will most likely be attained by delaying the already scheduled departure of soldiers already here, and was announced at about the same time that the commander for the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force in Fallujah, Lieutenant-General John Sattler said that he believed the assault on Fallujah had “broken the back of the insurgency.”

Refugees from Fallujah have yet to be allowed to return to their city. One of my friends here works on the election commission for Iraq-he stopped by tonight laughing at the new date which has been set for the election of January 30th. “They have this new date for their rigged elections,” he rolls his eyes, “And nobody in Iraq believes their propaganda. Elections? Here? I don’t know anyone who will vote. Perhaps the entire country can vote absentee for reason of car bomb!” He and I were interviewed on a radio program this evening-while I was listening to commercials waiting to come back on, I laugh to myself as one of the advertisements is for folks to trade in their old Hummer for a new one with low financing! This against the backdrop of the show, where my friend and I had shared stories with the host and callers of death in the streets, Iraqi outrage over the failed occupation and other love stories from Iraq.

Meanwhile, more oil facilities are sabotaged in the north, the “Green Zone” takes more mortars, and the usual gunfire is audible over the generators running out my window.

You can visit http://dahrjamailiraq.com/email_list/ to subscribe or unsubscribe to the email list.

Ohio: Did Bush Really Win? It Still Looks Iffy

A widespread and concerted effort on the part of Republican Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell was apparently undertaken to deny primarily African-American and young voters the right to cast their ballots within a reasonable time. This was done by a multi-faceted plan: inadequate numbers of functioning voting machines, creating extremely long waits, driving tens of thousands- tens of thousands- of likely Democratic voters away from the polls and very likely affecting the outcome of the Ohio vote count, which in turn decided the national election.

Is this not tragic news? The man we most wanted to lead us for the next four years lost the election by means of the intentional activities of one man. Kerry would have won the election. Mr. Katherine, I mean Kenneth, Blackwell wrote an op-ed piece for Rev. Sun Myung Moon's Washington Times, stating: "Every eligible voter who wanted to vote had the opportunity to vote. There was no widespread fraud, and there was no disenfranchisement. A half-million more Ohioans voted than ever before with fewer errors than four years ago, a sure sign of success by any measure, " Blackwell wrote. There you have it. And how many of us are now convinced by Blackwell's self-serving pronouncements? And don't forget: Blackwell also served as co-chair of the Ohio Bush-Cheney re-election campaign, a clear conflict of interest that renders the resolution of this situation all the more difficult.

[Read two articles in "The Free Press" by clicking on the blog title.]

Pick Yourself Up, Dust Yourself Off, Start All Over Again

In the make-believe world of Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire in a black and white film called "Swing Time," a song became famous- "Pick Yourself Up." The film came out in 1936, quite a few years before I was born. But the words of the song came to my mind as I read an article in the Boston Globe today. You may think I have a strange mind, which would probably be true, but the words of the song were there nonetheless. It's as if there are two worlds. The real world where people are being killed every day and where violence and rage increase versus the Bush world of make-believe where these deaths are for a good purpose and will lead to peace.


In an Associated Press article today, Sam Hananel tells of a fabulous rehab center opening next year at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. Now amputees will be able to return to the battlefield in greater numbers than ever before. Soldiers will now be able to learn how to operate tanks and trucks, inspite of their disabilities. It used to be that a mere wandering eye would disqualify one for the military. Now even missing limbs will not stop the most determined soldiers. I am not finding any humor in this- just the cruelest of ironies.

Our wounded soldiers often feel guilt about not being back with their buddies. They feel responsible for each other. It is poignant when a soldier who has just sustained the loss of a limb (or more) dreams of the day when he or she can return to battle. This "band of brothers" is something those of us who have never known combat will never fully understand. A young man or woman who strives to learn how to continue doing his or her job in combat is to be supported and applauded. Not too many have actually returned to their units, but at least they are given hope for the future. It's the least we can do as a nation. From what I hear, however, our military is sorely lacking in funds and services for our wounded, both in body and in mind, but that is a subject for another blog post.

Can we just stop for a moment? Could we put $10 million dollars, the cost of this new Military Amputee Training Center, into peaceful projects? In some churches, the congregation puts a stipulation on themselves. For every dollar spent on themselves, they insist that a dollar be spent on outreach- helping others outside their own parish. This seems to me to be a good rule of thumb for our government. For every dollar spent on the military, money well spent let's argue, let's appropriate a dollar for education, the environment, healthcare, prescription drugs for those who need it.

The U. S. budget for 2004 appropriated:

• $343 billion dollars for the Pentagon (NOT including Iraq and Afghan wars!)
• $39 billion for children's health
• $31 billion for K-2 education
• $6 billion for Head Start
• $2 billion for reduced reliance on oil
• $1 billion for world hunger

While we certainly honor those who sacrifice their own safety to defend us, we have an equal responsibility to them to send them to war only as a last resort and to provide the equipment needed for their safety in combat, neither of which is happening under the Bush administration. I am willing to say that this is not just Bush's fault. But somehow, he has been allowed to get us into this terrible mess. The Congress must also bear an enormous responsibility for our present dilemma. The news reports now talk about Iran. What will happen next?

[Click on the blog title to read Sam Hananel's article in full as it appeared in the Boston Globe.]

[To read the complete lyrics of "Pick yourself up," click here: http://www.reelclassics.com/Teams/Fred&Ginger/lyrics/pickselfup-lyrics.htm.

Walter Cronkite Spouts Off: We Should Probably Listen

When I say Walter Cronkite is spouting off, you have to realize that spouting off for him is really just speaking out forcefully in a dignified manner, of course. We pay attention to Walter Cronkite almost as if he were Deputy God. At least in my generation, Cronkite, the 88-year-old legendary TV anchor, was the most trusted man in America, perhaps even in the world. We always listened to the 6 o'clock CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite. When he spoke, you felt you could believe what he said without question.

This week Cronkite spoke at a charity appearance on Fisher Island in south Florida. He blasted the Bush administration, saying that it has spent itself into ruin while embroiling the country in a war that will eventually make public revulsion to the war in Vietnam look "like peanuts."

Cronkite has accused Republican political operative (I hate that word) Karl Rove of orchestrating the release of a new OBL tape last month to help elect Bush. Now if Walter Cronkite goes on record claiming such a thing, we have to assume that he has a very good reason for doing so. As THE consummate journalist of integrity, he would not just say such a thing for the fun of it.

Thursday Cronkite went further in lambasting the president, accusing his administration of destroying the nation's infrastructure and wrecking its education system, thus jeopardizing democracy itself. Are these just words on a page or in a speech? This is Walter Cronkite. He says that, in order to defend itself, a democracy must have an excellent education system. He says ours is in a shambles right now.

However, the biggest problem, the most immediate, is Iraq, warned Mr. Cronkite.

He says the war is tearing us apart. But the administration's deficit spending is a close second, pointing out that our great-grandchildren and possibly beyond that will be paying for our debt. Let's see-- my grandchildren are now age 12-newborn. My great-grandchildren will presumably be born starting in 2016 or thereabouts. My great-grandchildren will be born sometime after 2040. My great-great-grandchildren will arrive somewhere around 2065. I can see what Cronkite is saying.

In the scheme of things, and considering the extreme damage that Bush has done and now seems hellbent to continue with renewed vigor, hoping to achieve recovery from such complete decimation of our country in 50 years seems overly optimistic.

Perhaps many of our children's generation would scoff at an old white-haired man, warning us of a very dark future. But I'm old enough now to realize that many old people are wise. We should listen to them.

Women's Voices Will Be Heard in Congress

Senator Fritz Hollings, Democrat from South Carolina, will retire shortly after 38 years in Congress. The 82-year-old Hollings gave his parting speech from the floor of the Senate. I was amused, I suppose, by the following portion of his remarks:


The Senate has changed, he said, for the better as far as its members go.
"Five drunks or six drunks when I came here. There's nobody drunk in the United States Senate. We don't have time to be drunk."
Hollings noted other changes in the Senate during his tenure.
"We had one woman. She was outstanding, but she was outstandingly quiet. That was Margaret Chase Smith from Maine, a wonderful lady.
"... Now we've got 15 or 17, and you can't shut 'em up," he teased.

My admiration goes out to all our sisters in Congress whose voices are being heard loud and clear.

This Is How A Loser Wins in Ohio

Bob Fitrakis writes in "The Free Press," "And so the sorting and discarding of Kerry votes begins."

Have you ever heard of starting a game and then changing the rules in the middle of the game? Well, I've heard of doing that when you are eight years old, but I don't recommend it for a presidential election. Here is what happened in Cuyahoga County, Ohio, last week:

A new rule for counting provisional ballots in Cuyahoga County, Ohio, was implemented onTuesday, November, 9, at about 2:30 p.m. This new rule mandates that provisional ballots in yellow packets must be "Rejected" if there is no "date of birth" on the packet. The original "Provisional Verification Procedure" stated that "Date of birth" is not mandatory and should not reject a provisional ballot. Requirements included the voter's name, address and a signature that matched the signature in the county's database.

Election observer Victoria Lovegreen reported that nearly 80 yellow-jacketed provisional ballots were rejected due to lack of DOB in just an hour and 45 minutes after the "new" rule was created. How many ballots will end up in the "Reject" bin before it's all over?

There will be a recount in Ohio. Both the Green party candidate and the Libertarian candidate have requested it and have paid the required fee before the deadline. However, does anyone doubt that Katherine Blackwell, Kenneth Blackwell, that is, will do whatever it takes to foil any serious attempt to get an accurate count? The Republican party simply will not lose Ohio, no matter what.

[Click on the blog title to read the press release from Truthout.]

Sex Ed Silliness in Texas

The new birth control method in Texas: get sufficient rest.

Ellen Goodman writes in the WaPo that the Texas Board of Education has given its approval for new textbooks which will contain a few changes. The description of marriage between "two people" will now say marriage between "a man and a woman." Marriage will now be defined as "a lifelong union between a husband and a wife." Goodman finds the "lifelong" part a little questionable for Texas since the Lone Star State has one of the highest divorce rates in the nation.

The real heart of the textbook controversy is whether or not Texas students should learn about contraception. Answer: NO! Texas has officially gone to abstinence-only textbooks. These books teach students how to avoid STDs in many ways-- including "getting plenty of rest" -- but not by using condoms. The danger is that, since Texas is the second-largest book buyer in the country, perhaps the whole country will end up with these textbooks.

George Bush can thank his lucky stars that this didn't happen while he was a teenager. But then he probably wouldn't have cared. I don't see him as a particularly responsible young man. Who knows how many little Bush babies may or may not have been conceived back then? There is rumor of at least one abortion.

We also know that abortions have gone up nationwide since Bush has been in office. His message doesn't seem to be getting out. And Texas has the highest teenage birthrate in the country.

Goodman concludes:

In politics we see only the most polarized debate, in which we're told that we have to chose between A for abstinence and C for contraception. In this class, Texas gets an incomplete.

[Click on the blog title to read Ms. Goodman's article in full.]

Why Are We Asking Our Soldiers to Die in Fallujah?

A post from my favorite blog today:

FUBAR'd beyond FUBAR in Iraq (Pardon the term, but that's what it is!)

by kos
Sun Nov 14th, 2004 at 21:46:15 PST

I've meditated on this one all day:

Jackie Spinner, the Washington Post embed with the Marines in Fallujah, said in an online chat from the battleground (the mind boggles) on Thursday: "No one I've talked to believes that solving the Fallujah problem will end the violence in Iraq. But, as one Marine officer told me, not solving the Fallujah problem will not end it either." Okay. No one believes the Falluja invasion will accomplish anything.

So why did we just sacrifice 56 people the last six days, the vast majority (38) in Falluja? Why have we suffered over 400 seriously wounded, including amputees and spinal and brain injuries?

War :: Link & Discuss (324 comments)

You Couldn't Make This Stuff Up

It appears likely that Bush's National Security Advisor, and we do use the term lightly, will be named as the new Secretary of State. Yes, Condolezza Rice will run the State Department. Can it get any scarier? Of course, it can.

Ohio Votes To Be Recounted

The money for the required fee, $113,600, has been raised in time to meet the filing deadline. Now money will be needed for the next phase of the recount effort which will be recruiting, training and mobilizing volunteers to monitor the actual recount.

A demand for a recount in Ohio can only be filed by a presidential candidate who was on the ballot. In this case, both Green Party candidate David Cobb and Libertarian candidate Michael Badnarik will be demanding a recount.

We wish them all good luck as they do this important work. Would that we could trust the Ohio Secretary of State to cooperate in an appropriate manner. Sadly that would be completely out of character for Mr. Blackwell.

Dogs Eating Bodies in the Streets of Fallujah

Here is today's e-mail from Dahr Jamail. Does this really sound like all is going well in Fallujah? Do we really believe that the people in Fallujah are pleased with our "help?"

** Dahr Jamail's Iraq Dispatches **

November 15, 2004

Dogs Eating Bodies in the Streets of Fallujah

It never fails to get my adrenaline flowing when my hotel rumbles from a car bomb detonating in central Baghdad. Last night around 7pm the explosion occurred at a hotel compound which houses foreign contractors over near Firdos Square. Shortly there after the “Green Zone” took a sustained mortar attack which went on long enough for them to hit the blaring sirens which warn the inhabitants to take cover, long after the mortar rounds had stopped falling.

Iraq’s borders with Syria and Jordan remain closed, according to US-appointed prime minister Allawi since declaring Iraq in a state of “national emergency.” Due to Baghdad International Airport being closed for the same reason, a friend managed to drive across the “closed” border of Jordan a few days ago because he’d grown weary of waiting for the airport to reopen. Prior to leaving Amman he checked with the car hire kiosks who told him they had been running cars to and from Iraq non-stop, despite the “closed” borders.

At the Jordanian border there were, according to my friend, at least 100 cars waiting to cross the border into Iraq. An Iraqi “guard” in civilian clothing told them, while laughing, “The border is closed, but I will open it for you, despite what Allawi says.” At the customs clearance building, although they were driving in a GMC with 10 large suitcases lashed to the top of it, a quick bribe of $3 to the official allowed them to be waved through without a single door of their truck being opened. There were no US soldiers, nor any Iraqi National Guard. His passport was stamped without even being looked at, and he left within minutes. All of the other cars and trucks traveling into Iraq near him made it across the border as well. Again, as he said, “There were easily over 100.”

There is so much fighting and chaos around Iraq now that it is simply impossible to report everything, so I’ll just cover a few highlights.

• Four oil wells in northern Iraq have been destroyed by the resistance, adding to the heinous fuel shortage that has wracked the country for weeks now.

• Petrol lines in Baghdad continue to stretch for miles in places, making people angry and frustrated. Driving around the city is more and more difficult, as the petrol lines squeeze 2 and 3 lane roads down to a single lane, snarling traffic and raising tempers.

• There are sporadic attacks continuing throughout the capital city day and night, as the Iraqi resistance continue to fight against the occupiers of their country.

• Armed men continue to roam freely about the streets of Mosul and Ramadi in defiance of the US military, Iraqi National Guard (ING) and Iraqi Police (IP). A US convoy was attacked north of Ramadi and a Humvee was exploded; no word yet from the military on casualties.

• In Baquba, about 40 miles northeast of Baghdad, another police station was attacked, 5 police vehicles torched along with several Iraqi National Guard trucks and the US base in the city was mortared. My friend in the area told me on the phone, “There were so many bullets Mr. Daher, I hid in my shop and God protected me, but it is crazy here. I want to come to Baghdad to see you, but there is no petrol in Baquba.”

• The horrendous humanitarian disaster of Fallujah drags on as the US military continues to refuse the entry of an Iraqi Red Crescent (IRC) convoy of relief supplies. The Red Crescent has appealed to the UN to intervene, but no such luck, nor does the military relent.

• IP’s, who are under U.S. control, have looted Fallujah General Hospital.

• The military stopped the Red Crescent at the gates of the city and are not allowing them in. They allowed some bodies to be buried, but others are being eaten by dogs and cats in the streets, as reported by refugees just out of the city, as well as residents still trapped there.

• The military said it saw no need for the IRC to deliver aid to people inside Fallujah because it did not think any civilians were still inside the city. Contradicting this claim, along with virtually every aid work, refugee, and resident of Fallujah was US Marine Col. Mike Shupp who said, “There is no need to bring [Red Crescent] supplies in because we have supplies of our own for the people.” IRC spokeswoman Firdu al-Ubadi added, “We know of at least 157 families inside Fallujah who need our help.”

• The media repression by the military around Fallujah continues to run thick, as a journalist for the al-Arabia network who attempted to get inside Fallujah was detained by the military. Meanwhile, al-Jazeera continues to run announcements over their satellite station, apologizing to its viewers for not having better coverage in Iraq due to their office being closed indefinitely several months ago by the US-backed interim government.

Nevertheless they continue to get the word out. They report today that Asma Khamis al-Muhannadi, a doctor who witnessed the US and Iraqi National Guard raid the general hospital said, “We were tied up and beaten despite being unarmed and having only our medical instruments.” She said the hospital was targeted by bombs and rockets during the initial siege of Fallujah, and troops dragged patients from their beds and pushed them against the wall.

Al-Muhannadi went on to say that all of them were put under intense inspection and, “Two female doctors were forced to totally undress.”

She continued on, “I was with a woman in labor,” she said, “The umbilical cord had not yet been cut. At that time, a US soldier shouted at one of the (Iraqi) national guards to arrest me and tie my hands while I was helping the mother to deliver. I will never forget this incident in my life.”

Like I said, these are just some highlights.


To subscribe to Dahr Jamail's email Iraq Dispatches, visit http://dahrjamailiraq.com.

The Other Faces of U.S. "Success" in Fallujah

While George Bush blithely pronounces during his weekend radio address that everything in Fallujah is going very well, Dahr Jamail paints a very different picture. Read on.

** Dahr Jamail's Iraq Dispatches **

The Other Face of U.S. 'Success' in Fallujah

Everyone saw it coming, only the U.S. forces did not: humanitarian disaster in Fallujah, and stronger resistance against U.S. and allied occupying forces all around Iraq.

BAGHDAD, Nov 15 (IPS) Everyone saw it coming, only the U.S. forces did not: humanitarian disaster in Fallujah, and stronger resistance against U.S. and allied occupying forces all around Iraq.

The real face of the 'success' of the U.S. military assault in Fallujah is now beginning to present itself. Thousands of families remain trapped inside Fallujah with no food, clean water or medical assistance.

No one can say how many of the 1,200 'rebels' U.S. forces claim to have killed inside Fallujah are civilians, or whether the death toll is higher. The Iraqi Red Crescent Society, which is supported by the Red Cross and the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) has called the situation in Fallujah a "big disaster".

The Iraqi Red Crescent has several teams of relief workers and doctors, and truckloads of food waiting for the authorisation from the U.S.-backed interim government and the U.S. military, but they have not been allowed in. The International Committee for the Red Cross (ICRC) has expressed grave concern for the civilians left in the city. "All those taking part in the combat have a responsibility to spare civilians and give access to the wounded," ICRC spokesman Rana Sidani said in a statement.

U.S. forces have said they will now carry out 'humanitarian' tasks on their own. It could be too late, going by the people's voices that are now emerging. Muna Salim who managed to flee the city with her sister after the rest of their family was killed by U.S. bombs, said Fallujah had turned from a battlefield to a ghost town in recent days. "Most families stayed inside their houses all the time," she said after reaching Baghdad. "We were always very hungry because we didn't want to eat our food or drink all of the water. We never knew if we would be able to get more, so we tried to be careful." She could not bring herself to talk of the killings. "The Americans didn't care about us," said a young refugee who gave his name only as Ahmed. He arrived in Baghdad with most of his family three days back. "All the medical people left the city and the only people in the city are Fallujans or from Ramadi or other cities who came to try to help us." People in Fallujah had been left helpless, he said. "Anyone who left their house would either be shot by American snipers or recruited by the Mujahideen," he said. "So we stayed inside most of the time and prayed. The more the bombs exploded the more we prayed and cried." Ahmed says he did not expect to survive. "Every night we said goodbye to one another because we expected to die," he said. "You could see areas where all the houses were flattened, there was just nothing left. We could get water at times, but there was no electricity ever."
U.S. forces had bombed families in their homes, he said. "Even those of us who do not fight, we are suffering so much because of the U.S. bombs and tanks. Can't they see this is turning so many people against them?"

Iraqi resistance has taken control of many cities across Iraq following the U.S. siege of Fallujah. Despite U.S. military claims of being in control of Mosul in the north, al-Jazeera reported that the U.S. military, Iraqi police and National Guardsmen have disappeared from the streets and armed men wearing masks are wandering freely around.

A freelance journalist in the city told al-Jazeera on telephone from the city: "The situation is very bad, there is no security, only armed resistance groups on the streets, and it seems there is no government in Mosul." The U.S. military says it has taken back control of Mosul police stations and other areas. Iraqi rebels are now also in control of large areas of Ramadi, Samarra, Haditha, Baquba, Hiyt, Qaim, Latifiyah,Taji and Khaldiyah. Fighting has been reported also in the Shia holy city Kerbala.

The uprising has spread across the capital as well. The districts al-Dora, al-Amiriyah, Abu Ghraib, al-Adhamiya and Khan Dhari are now largely controlled by resistance fighters.U.S. military vehicles have been damaged and destroyed near the city Hiyt. Fighting has spread to the normally peaceful town Hilla, just south of Baghdad."The security situation there has gone from bad to worse," Ali Abdulla, a 35-year-old carpenter from Hilla said. "You can hear the fighting all around the city now, and the resistance is fighting against the Polish very fiercely." Abdulla said this was the first time there had been fighting between Polish troops and resistance fighters.

Scheuer Warns of Terror Threat

Sunday night, November 14th, on "60 Minutes," Michael Scheuer, formally "Anonymous" and author of "Imperial Hubris," will talk to Steve Kroft in his first television interview without disguise. Scheuer knows more about OBL than anyone in the West. He has tracked OBL since the mid-80's. He says of al Quaeda:

Their intention is to end the war as soon as they can, and to ratchet up the pain for the Americans until we get out of their region.

And now bin Laden has religious approval to use a nuclear device against Americans, Scheuer claims. Bin Laden has obtained a long treatise from a Saudi sheik which found that OBL "was perfectly within his rights to use them [nuclear weapons]. Muslims argue that the United States is responsible for millions of dead Muslims around the world, so reciprocity would mean you could kill millions of Americans."

Scheuer says that the threat posed by bin Laden is underestimated. "I think our leaders over the last decade have done the American people a disservice...continuing to characterize OBL as a thug, as a gangster....Until we respect him we are going to die in numbers that are probably unnecessary....He's a very, very talented man and a very worthy opponent."

In my personal opinion (Carol Manuel), I think George Bush is "misunderestimating" the threat posed by OBL and has done so with an inappropriate smugness which is going to cause unimaginable suffering, not only for the people of Iraq (which, of course, has already occurred and will continue) , but, of course, for Americans. While claiming we are winning the war on terrorism and the war in Iraq is going well, he is putting us in extreme danger.

The blind faith and unearned loyalty which many Americans bestow on George Bush will prove to be misplaced. Bush deserves no such loyalty.

[Click on the blog title to read the CBS News article.]

Kerry Won Ohio: Votes American Style

Investigative reporter Greg Palast, author of "The Best Democracy Money Can Buy," and the person who uncovered the 2000 election debacle in Florida, is remaining resolute.

Most voters in Ohio chose Kerry.

The ballots of thousands of Ohio voters will not be counted. These ballots that add up to a majority for John Kerry in Ohio- and in New Mexico as well- are "locked up in two Republican hidey-holes: 'spoiled' ballots and 'provisional' ballots."

Most of us forget, or never knew, that, in a typical presidential election, two million ballots are simply thrown in the garbage, marked "spoiled" and not counted. This is racism alive and well in America. Why? Because in a careful county-by-county, precinct-by-precinct analysis of the Florida 2000 race, the US Civil Rights Commission discovered that 54% of the votes in the spoilage bin were cast by African-Americans. (Mind you, this information was not compiled by MoveOn.org. It was done by a federal agency.) Palast says that, sadly, Florida is typical. Some two million votes end up in the no-count pit: votes cast by African-Americans, Hispanic, Native-American, and poor white precincts.

In the 2000 Florida election, Katherine "Cruella deVille" Harris defeated Al Gore by halting the hand count of the spoiled punch cards, not by halting a "recount." And for those of us who assume that spoiled punch cards are hard to read by humans, they are not. As Palast says, "We humans know a hole when we see one." Black voters' ballots spoiled 900% more often than white voters. Ohio Republicans found these racial odds quite attractive.

Ohio was the only state to refuse to eliminate or fix these vote-eating machines, even in the face of a lawsuit by the ACLU.

As a matter of fact, like Herod, who listened with interest as the Magi told him of the birth of Jesus and slyly asked about Jesus' whereabouts so that "he might go and worship him," the Ohio Republicans rather liked what the ACLU had found, and used the group's well-informed expert testimony to devise a foolproof plan to deliver Ohio to Bush in 2004. Since the ACLU dutifully pointed out the problems with the punch card machines, voiding votes mostly in Black precincts, Ohio planned to fix the machinery sometime after George Bush's next inauguration. And the state's Attorney General Jim Petro, a Republican, decided to postpone the trial date of the ACLU case until after the election. How convenient.

Now with all these theatrics, we might assume that somehow fixing (repairing, that is!) a punch card machine is complicated and costly. It is not. It is cheap and easy. Michigan placed a card-reading machine in each polling station this year. All voters could immediately have their punch cards checked to make sure they were good and not headed for the garbage bin. If there was a problem, such as overvote or undervote, it was instantly detected. A voter would simple be issued another ballot. I observed this procedure in my precinct in Virginia Beach, VA. It was easy and took hardly any time. Most importantly, it insured that every vote was countable. (It would not, however, insure that each vote would be counted.) Ohio did NOT have these card-reading machines. Ohio Secretary of State, Republican Kenneth Blackwell, who also, coincidentally was co-chair of the Bush-Cheney reelection campaign, knew about the card-reading machines and knew that, if he had used them in Ohio, almost all the 93,000 spoiled votes, overwhelmingly Democratic, would have closed the gap on George Bush's lead of 136,000 votes.

Add to the spoiled votes the 'provisional' ballots and- voila!- the White House would have turned Democratic blue.

This will not happen. Why? Because the provisional ballots are counted in a peculiar way, or more often, not counted at all. In 2002, the provisional ballot was designed especially for voters of color to save the rights of those wrongly scrubbed from voter rolls. However, in 2004, this procedure was used to advantage by Republican-controlled swing states by insuring that thousands of ballots would not be counted- ballots that would more than likely be cast for Kerry/Edwards. How is this possible? Simple. The gatekeeper of ballots is Kenneth Blackwell. He has the power to decide which provisional ballots will be counted. He can stipulate just about any criteria, and these criteria can be as ridiculous as he wishes. Remember, this was the man who tried to disqualify some voter registration forms because they were printed on the wrong weight of paper.

More than 155,000 Ohio voters were forced to use these provisional ballots, all of which are subject to Mr. Blackwell's scrutiny. And this was not just a state issue.

No, the national Republican strategy targeted African-American precincts for mass challenges on election day.

The Republican Party systematically barred hundreds of thousands of Black voters from access to the voting booth. Greg Palast and his staff obtained three dozen Republican confidential "caging" lists, proof that they intended to block voters. In every single case, these hit lists contained addresses in Black-majority precincts.

In 1965, the Voting Rights Act made it a criminal act to profile and/or impede minority voters, even with legal pretext.

This did not stop the Republicans of 2004. E-mails were obtained showing that the lists were copied directly to the RNC's chief of research and to the director of a state campaign. In some cases, a change of address, which supposedly flagged a voter as possibly disqualified, occurred because a soldier had been sent overseas to put his or her life on the line in Bush's war.

Blackwell says he will count all "valid" provisional ballots. However, his rigid regulations are rigged to knock out enough voters to keep Bush's numbers high enough to win.

We might wonder why John Kerry conceded in less than twenty-four hours. But the truth is, to count the ballots, Kerry's lawyers first have to demand a hand reading of punch cards. This could be halted by Blackwell. Even more daunting, the Kerry team would have to litigate each and every rejected provisional ballot in court. A hundred thousand voters would have to tesify to their right to vote. Blackwell would be right there to challenge each person with a barrage of regulations which he so skillfully has put in place for just such an occasion. Given the odds and the cost to his political career, says Palast, Kerry bent, not to the will of the people, but to the power of the Ohio Republican machine.

Kenneth Blackwell brags on his own website:

Last time I checked, Katherine Harris wasn't in a soup line, she's in Congress.

Charming- and this from an African-American.

Well, that's my report for today. Is it not discouraging? Do we not hope and pray that these conniving, politically ambitious, unscrupulous people will get their well-deserved comeuppances and that we will still be alive to enjoy the moment?

[Read Greg Palast's complete article as it appeared in "In These Times."]

Prayers for Vengeance

Another dispatch from Dahr Jamail, writing from Iraq.

His friend Abu Talat is very somber. Abu tells Dahr about the difficulty and hardships he and his family are experiencing. The US military helicopters circle his neighborhood until the wee hours of the morning. He feels trapped in his own country. Abu says that everyone is praying for God to take revenge on the Americans. EVERYONE.

Another man Salam from Baghdad shows up with a wild look in his eyes, beads of sweat on his forehead. His friend was just killed, one of his best friends. His friend's family is very poor. Twenty-one of them live in a house with three bedrooms. Salam says they are good people. Salam was working as a translator for the military because he had to earn money to support his family. But he worked for TITAN, a private security company which is part of the coalition. It was a matter of starve to death or work for TITAN. One of Salam's relatives is missing, has been for six days. Today his body was brought to the family by someone who found it on the road. The man had been shot twice in the chest and twice in the head. There were visible signs of torture on the body, and four bullet shells were found in his pants pockets-the shells used to kill him.

This is life in Baghdad today. Salam says it has always been this way in Iraq, but not ever has it been like this. The relentless threat of being kidnapped or car bombed or robbed. These are common occurrences every day. The hope for peace and true sovereignty in Iraq dims a little more with each passing day.

Do you suppose the God that Abu and Salam are praying to is the same God who talks to George Bush?

[Click on the blog title to read Dahr Jamail's dispatch.]

We're Headed for a Pyrrhic Victory*

A young man by the name of Dahr Jamail has written many on-the-scene accounts of the war in Iraq. He is back in Iraq and is writing almost daily about the disasterous situation there. He says: A military victory for US forces in Fallujah seems set to lead to a huge political loss for the US-backed interim Iraqi government. Strong anti-government reactions have set in already as reports come in from Fallujah of bombed hospitals, high civilian casualties and denial of access to medical care. Several governments and international groups have warned that military action is likely to undermine elections scheduled for January.

• The Assoication of Muslim Scholars (AMS) has called on people to boycott elections. Its secretary-general openly supports Iraqi resistance to the occupation.
• The Iraqi Islamic Party, a major Sunni political party, has withdrawn from the Iraqi interim government in protest of the attack on Fallujah.
• A professor at Baghdad University has said: Even if the Americans take the city, they will only anger the rest of Iraq. He scoffs at the American-imposed martial law, saying it is not from any Iraqi government.
• The Shura Mujahidin Council in Fallujah has called on the Iraqi National Guard to withdraw from the battle for the sake of national unity. It has also persuaded resistance fighters in other cities in Iraq to assist those fighting in Fallujah.
• The fighters in Fallujah believed to be mostly Sunni have won backing from Shia leaders who fought US forces in Najaf earlier.

There are an estimated 6,000 resistance fighters in Fallujah. Killing or capturing a significant number of them will not be easy for the interim government to live with, says Jamail.

What is the US position? US Commander Colonel Michael Formica was quoted as saying, "As we tighten the noose around him [resistance], he will move to escape and fight another day. I do not want these guys to get out of here. I want them killed or captured as they flee."

The more US forces succeed in this, the heavier Iraqis say will be the price they would have to pay.

President Bush said today that the military operations in Iraq are going very well. Four more years of this president is more than I can bear.

[Click on the blog title to read Dahr Jamail's diary.]

*A victory or goal gained at too great a cost.

Bob Jones Advises the President: Read This

Friends, this is one of the most stomach-churning letter I have ever read. (Click on the blog title to read the letter.) Bob Jones wrote a letter to Bush on November 3rd.

Bob Jones, racist, anti-Semite, anti-Catholic, President of Bob Jones University is celebrating over the election of George Bush. Read a few of Jones' statements:

"...God has graciously granted America [...] a reprieve from the agenda of paganism."

"You owe the liberals nothing. They despise you because they despise your Christ."

"Pull out all the stops and make a difference. If you have weaklings around you who do not share your biblical values, shed yourself of them."

Not agreeing with Bush's biblical values= Weakness.
If we despise Bush, we despise Christ.
Bush doesn't owe the liberals anything. However, Bush really, really owes the so-called conservatives a lot. Do you think Bush now cares about that now that he has gotten their votes? I don't think so.

A Letter That Will Never Be Read

I found a letter written recently to George Bush. It is poignantly written to the President in an attempt to convince him to use diplomacy and non-violence to achieve peace. It will probably never be read. In the letter I read:

The war on terror will never end as long as we use tools of man made war instead of tools God gave us for spiritual warfare.

The writer, Lisa LeDonne-Stan, is a history teacher at a Christian school in Santa Rosa, California. She exhorts the President to remember the example of Jesus who taught us to forgive our enemies and pray for those who persecute us. She recalls the lives of those Christians in the Netherlands during Nazi Germany where 90% of the Jews there survived because Christians would NOT turn a blind eye. She reminds the President of Martin Luther King, Jr., who rose up to accomplish great things through non-violent activism. She admonishes our President that to be pro-life is to be pro-life for the two-year-old Sudanese girl, for the ten-year-old Iraqi boy forced to carry a gun, for the men on death row who still need to meet Jesus as their own personal saviour, for homeless women in our cities. We are pro-life for all in Jesus' name.

Blessed are the peacemakers for they will be called children of God.
Matthew 5:9

Note from me: I do not believe that America is a Christian nation. We are a nation of many faiths. We are a nation which welcomes all people. I would not support the goal of Christianizing America any more than I would support all Americans becoming vegetarian. We once had a respect for our differences. However, since George Bush claims to base his presidency on his Christian faith, we by rights should be able to see the fruits of his faith in his actions. Do we?

[Click on the title of this blog to read Lisa's letter in its entirety.]

The Republican Dictionary

Over the last several decades, Republicans have managed to create an Orwellian Code of encrypted language. The key to this strategy is to use words, which sound moderate to us but mean something completely different to their base.

Clean=Dirty
Healthy=Sick
Liberal=Bad

Katrina vanden Heuvel writes in the November 10, 2004, issue of "The Nation:"

"We need to break the code by building a Republican dictionary." She provides a small list which she hopes will be expanded by others. Definitions include bi-partisanship, clarify, fairer, faith, freedom, honesty, moral values, mandate, among others.

In another article found at http://slate.msn.com/id/2108083/, read how Bush uses a special code to communicate with the Christian Right. Phrases like "Dred Scott," "culture of life," and "wonder-working power," have double meanings which many of us may not catch. Even when we listen carefully to what Bush says, we may miss the meaning completely. This is insidious. This is our president.

Click on the blog title to read Ms. vanden Heuval's article. She provides a link where you can submit your own definitions.

The Miracle of Election Fraud

Wow! The voters in Florida really came out for Bush last Tuesday! It's nothing short of unbelievable. Bush got more votes than registered Republicans in 47 out of 67 counties in Florida.

• In 15 of the 47 counties, Bush got twice as many votes as registered Republicans.
• In 4 of the 47 counties, Bush got three times as many votes as registered Rebublicans.
• Statewide, Bush got about 20,000 more votes than registered Republicans.

• In 2000, Bush got 85% of the total number of registered Republicans.
• In 2004, the exit polls showed Bush winning only about 14% of the Democratic vote statewide- about the same as in 2000.
• The exit polls showed Bush losing Florida's independent voters to Kerry 57-41.

Surprising jumps in Bush's vote tallies across the country, especially when matched against national exit polls showing Kerry winning 51-48, are causing suspicion that the election was rigged. NO KIDDING!

Exit polls, according to the experts, are almost never wrong. They are so reliable that they are used as guides to the relative honesty of elections in Third World countries.

Some distraught voters reported trying to vote for Kerry but the touch-screen voting machines came up registering their votes for Bush. The ultimate voter nightmare!

If Bush's totals weren't artificially enhanced, they would represent one of the most remarkable electoral achievements in US history.

Even if one were to estimate that 100% of the evangelical voters turned out for Bush in 2004 and that 100% of Bush's 2000 supporters turned out again for him, this still leaves about 5 million new Bush voters unaccounted for.

Regardless of the number of questionable circumstances in regard to the vote tallies nationwide, chances are, as in 2000, this story will not attract much media attention and will not get much exposure. The only way election fraud can be overcome and stopped is through the efforts of ordinary citizens banding together in major ways to bring this to light.

[Click on the blog title to read Sam Parry's article, "Bush's 'Incredible' Vote Tallies."]

America Will Rue the Day

"No political or economic situation can justify the crime of aggression....If certain acts in violation of treaties are crimes they are crimes whether the United States does them or whether Germany does them, and we are not prepared to lay down a rule of criminal conduct against others which we would not be willing to have invoked against us."

Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson
Chief Prosecutor at the Nuremberg Tribunal (1945-46)


My friends, these are dreadful days. I just turned off the TV after hearing an "optimistic" news report that the gruesome attack on Fallujah is going "better than expected." Hurrah for us!

The United States is carrying out an illegal war of aggression against a helpless country. We have murdered at least 100,000 Iraqi civilians and now seek to increase that number, not intentionally, of course. Oh, no. As Rumsfeld would say, stuff happens. The collateral damage is regretful. Bush has refused to join the International Criminal Court for obvious reasons. He knows he is a war criminal, and who would purposely join a court where you might be the first defendant? You'd have to be crazy.

Bush has gone further in asking the Security Council at the UN to pass an immunity resolution that would exempt US personnel from the Court's jurisdiction, essentially giving us preferential treatment as we spread violence, torture, and devastation in the middle east. Not surprisingly, the UN declined. American troops are violating the Geneva Conventions every day. Under our own War Crimes Act of 1996, we are violating international law on a regular basis. Americans who commit war crimes abroad can receive life in prison or even the death penalty if the victim dies. A commander can be held liable if he knew or should have known his inferiors were committing war crimes.

The first US attack on Fallujah last April killed 900-1000 people, mostly noncombatants. It was conducted in retaliation for the deaths of four American mercenaries. Collective punishment against an occupied population for offenses committed by others also violates the Geneva Conventions.

Bush and his war leaders hope to make this latest brutal attack look like an Iraqi operation. His brilliant idea is to have Americans do most of the fighting on the way in and then have the Iraqi forces take control after the insurgents are defeated. Do you think Bush's plan will work? Will this be seen as an Iraqi military action? Of course, not.

Interim puppet Iyad Allawi, our thug in Baghdad, is working with the US government by declaring martial law in Iraq, established through what has been described as an Iraqi "Patriot Act." It means that Allawi is free to conduct extensive surveillance, impose curfews, limit freedom of movement and association, freeze bank accounts and seize assets. [Hey, wait a minute! This is similar to our Patriot Act? Are we aware of this?]

There is one catch. Iraqis don't like us. The NYT reports that Iraqi confidence in the interim government has plummeted recently. The fact remains that, although Bush will not admit it, most resistance is coming from Iraqi citizens, not foreign extremists. One Iraqi leader, Suhail al Abdali, has said Americans will pay the price with the blood of American sons who came to occupy Iraq.

Bush's aggressive war against the people of Iraq promises certain death for many more American soldiers and untold numbers of Iraqis. Nuremberg prosecutor Justice Jackson's words still ring true today. Sadly, it is the United States of America that is committing the unspeakable crimes, not the Nazis.

Hanging on a wooden cross, Jesus forgave those who crucified him. He said, "They know not what they do." Do we not know what we are doing? Will we be forgiven?

[Click on the blog title to read the article, "Aggressive War: Supreme International Crime," by Marjorie Cohn.]

Wisconsin Volunteer Wants Her Money Back

We all wanted John Kerry to be our next president. It isn't going to happen. And I am not going to blame any one thing, except, of course, the problematic electronic voting machines and the easily hackable central tabulators. However, one volunteer is upset because Kerry asked for money to help with the post-election period in case there were a problem requiring legal issues. She's wondering why Kerry caved in and gave his concession speech at noon Wednesday.

Phyllis Hasbrouck is asking Kerry:

• How is it good for our nation to be subjected to four more years of Bush?
• Why did you campaign so hard about the Bush people being thieves if you weren't prepared to persevere long enough to uncover voter intimidation and fraud?
• Why didn't you send your army of lawyers to fight for every provisional ballot in Ohio?
• Did you really believe that stuff you said about "a time for healing?" The time for healing comes after you win a battle, not in the middle of it.
• Do you think the Republican Party is interested in working toward a bipartisan spirit?
• Do you actually think we will achieve unity in this country?

This volunteer feels really betrayed by the Kerry/Edwards campaign. She feels that a real leader would have organized a coordinated strategy of legal challenges, popular demonstrations in the streets and a public relations blitz to let the actual votes of the American people be counted fairly. This was a lost opportunity to help save our democracy.

She wants her $25 back.

[Click on the blog title to read Phyllis's article in full.]

A Smelly Situation: This Isn't the Least Bit Funny

The people who cast the votes decide nothing.
The people who count the votes decide everything.
-Joseph Stalin


Friends, the information coming out about the exit polls versus the actual vote tabulations is beginning to look very, very bad. If the allegations turn out to be correct, Kerry actually won in a landslide. You think I'm making this up? No, I wouldn't have questioned the election outcome if it hadn't been for Thom Hartmann and Greg Palast. They are respected, award-winning journalists who have very convincing evidence that this election was stolen.

The FBI has been called into Florida as of Saturday, November 6th. Jeff Fisher, the Democratic candidate for the U. S. House of Representatives from Florida's 16th District has evidence, he says, not only that the Florida election was hacked, but of who hacked it and how. He claims that this was also done by the same people in the Democratic primary race in 2002 so that Jeb Bush would not have to run against Janet Reno, who presented a real threat to Jeb. Fisher says such tactics proved successful in 2002 and were then used last Tuesday in the presidential election. Evidence is accumulating that he is right.

When the county-by-county record of votes cast was compared with the number of people registered to vote (by party affiliation), a woman by the name of Kathy Dopp noticed something startling. In the larger counties in Florida, the registered Democrat/Republican ratios matched the Kerry/Bush vote both in places where the touch-screen voting machines and the optically-scanned paper ballots were used. The problem was that, in Florida's smaller counties, the results from the optically scanned paper ballots- fed into a central tabulator PC and thus vulnerable to hacking- seemed to have been reversed.


Here are two examples from Hartmann's article:
Baker County 12,887 registered voters 69% Dem 24% Rep
Kerry votes 2180 Bush votes 7738

Dixie County 4988 registered voters 77.5% Dem 15% Rep
Kerry votes 1959 Bush votes 4433

Everywhere else in the country registered Democrats largely voted for Kerry. This baffling pattern was repeated over and over again, but only in smaller counties where, it may have been assumed, the small voter numbers wouldn't be as noticeable. In the larger counties, high percentages of registered Democrats equaled high percentages of votes for Kerry.

At some point in the evening on Election Day, Karen Hughes sat George W. Bush down and informed him that he'd lost the election. The exit polls were clear. Kerry was winning in a landslide. Reportedly, "Bush took the news stoically." (AP)

Then magically, the computers reported something different in several pivotal states. A few hours after the exit polls were showing a clear Kerry sweep, as the computerized vote numbers began to come in from the various states, the election was called for Bush.

How could this happen?

It all comes down to something called the central tabulator computer. Regardless of how the votes are tabulated (except for hand counts), the real "counting" is done by computers. No matter what kind of voting machines are used, the final tally in all cases is sent to a central tabulator machine. This machine is a Windows-based PC. So all the different polling places in a given county feed into the one machine so it can add up all the votes. If you decided to do something you shouldn't do to a voting machine, it would make sense to do it at this point rather than to change thousands of machines.

Bev Harris, the Seattle grandmother who started www.blackboxvoting.org from her living room, explains that anyone who can hack into a PC can hack into a central tabulator. Harris found that, while you can't tamper with the software, for example, on a Diebold machine, you can get to the Election Summary Report quite easily, and you can change the numbers in a matter of seconds.

It is Sunday night. Will this news come out in the coming week? What can be done? Could election fraud change the result at this point? Probably not. However, most two-term presidents encounter serious trouble in the second term. Will this be the start of Bush's very miserable second and last term as president? If his people did steal the election, what will be his legacy?

[Click on the blog title to read the article by Thom Hartmann, "Evidence Mounts That the Vote Was Hacked."]

The Ultimate Felony Against Democracy

Having just watched the video, "Votergate," (Go to www.votergate.tv to view this yourself.) I now understand how our votes can disappear by the hundreds and why our elections are now easily rigged with no chance of audit. Not being up on the inner workings of computers, many of us probably are not aware of what can happen when using electronic voting machines. We are much too trusting. We are assuming much too much. If only one person who has access to voting machines decides to tamper with them for political reasons, the entire outcome of an election can be reversed. The rightful winner becomes the loser. It is really easy. And no one will be the wiser. The felony happens within a matter of seconds while the thief sits at a PC and changes a few numbers. That's all it takes.

The exit polls on Tuesday afternoon showed Kerry leading in Florida and Ohio, among other states. But something didn't come out right because the number of votes from the paperless machines showed a very different outcome. Under normal circumstances, the exit polls and the machine tallies should be nearly equal. In fact, exit polls in paper-ballot states were largely accurate. But there were extreme oddities in touch-screen-run Florida.

As you read this, there is going on now what may be the largest Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) filing in history. We may eventually find out who actually won Florida.

Thom Hartmann wrote, "It's time that the USA- like most of the rest of the world- returns to paper ballots, counted by hand by civil servants (our employees) under the watchful eye of the party faithful. " Hartmann says when he lived in Germany, the voting was done this way. People filled in hand-marked ballots, which were hand-counted by people who took off a week from work. The process was watched over by volunteer representatives of the political parties. This process is totally above board and easily audited. It takes about a week or more to count the vote, but the German people know the election results the night the polls close because the news media's exit polls have never been more than a tenth of a percent off for 200 years.

If we had adopted this simple voting procedure, we could have saved billions that have instead been handed over to ES & S, Diebold, and other private companies.

If we must have machines, Hartmann implores, let's have them owned by local governments, maintained and programmed by civil servants answerable to We the People, using open-source code and disconnected from modems, that produce a voter-verified printed ballot, with all results published on a precinct-by-precinct basis.

Until this is sorted out, America will not have fair elections, the results of which can be accepted as accurate.

[Click on the blog title to read Thom Hartmann's article in full.]

Frankly, We Differ

The U. N. Secretary General Kofi Annan wrote a letter to three men just two days before the US elections. The three recipients of the letter, let's call them The Three Stooges, were George Bush, Tony Blair, and our thug in Baghdad, Ayad Allawi. The letter expressed Annan's increasing concerns about the military offensive in Fallujah which at the time was imminent. Annan feared that such an approach would jeopardize the January elections in Iraq. Reportedly Annan's comments and criticism drew anger and frustration from US, British and Iraqi officials. Allawi in effect said, "Ha! Annan thinks he has a better solution? Let him try it." The classic bully response. If he thinks he's so smart.... Allawi, is this mature response?

State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said, "Frankly, we differ." Chilling words. Bush administration officials were livid about the letter. My question is this:

If you are doing the right thing, why would you be angry or livid about receiving a well-intentioned letter from the leader at the U.N.?

The Three Stooges claim that fighting the insurgency is the only way to restore security in time for the elections. Of course, we have to realize that these men are incredibly unimaginative, needy, and power-hungry. (Sadly, they also have the power.) Killing people is their favorite method of conflict resolution. Dead people cannot talk back.

Welcome to the second term of George Bush.

[Click on the blog title to read the WaPo article, "Annan's Warning On Fallujah Dismissed."]

Wounded and Angels Coming In

A few days ago, Marines unloaded racks of body bags in anticipation of the upcoming operation on Fallujah which is imminent. How easily Bush seemed to move from his questionable election to escalating the war in Iraq, the country which was never a threat. At a field hospital, medical personnel are bracing for the onslaught of casualties. As the injured and dead arrive, the phrase "Wounded and angels coming in," is heard. Mothers and fathers back home will soon receive the dreadful news that their beloved son or daughter is dead. On an ordinary day, if we can call it ordinary, this hospital ministers to nearly 30 casualties, including Iraqi civilians and insurgents who are wounded in clashes with American forces. This number is expected to double during the offensive in Fallujah.

God be with our troops, the wounded, the angels, and those who try to save them.

Get ready for more marches and demonstrations. But most of all, I pray that members of Congress are ready to go after the warmongers like never before. Yes, there will be mid-term elections in 2006, but can't we just work for peace and justice without one eye on re-election?

[Click on the title of this blog to read the WaPo article by Jackie Spinner, "Injured Troops Look for Courage, Face Fears," 11/5/04.]

Bush on Steroids

George Bush held a press conference yesterday during which he displayed arrogant, rude behavior toward the press corps. Friends, we are in for it! This man is going to be more insufferable than ever. He is convinced that he now has the complete support of the American people. There is no stopping him now. Katie bar the door.

In a press release November 3rd, the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom reminded us just what George will be up to in his second term:

• preemptive war
• rejection of international law
• contempt for negotiated resolution of conflict and international law
• deception of the US people, our representatives, and the world
• building a national security state
• rolling back civil liberties- particularly for women and minorities
• redirecting the economy to serve the very rich and the corporations they control
• and the ultimate violence of reckless disregard for natural resources, the environment, and the future of the earth on which we depend.

In other words, as was pointed out many times during the campaign, George Bush intends to continue the key policies of his first administration. Bush is now our l'enfant terrible.

[Click on the blog title to see the press release from WILPF.]

The Darkest Day of the Year

Those of us who gave our all to the Kerry/Edwards campaign were filled with hope that we really could elect Kerry and help our country head in a new direction. Optimism was in the air. Tom Engelhardt of TomDispatch.com wrote,

"I realized I was experiencing a startling surge of relief, of happiness, of well-being. Whatever it was, it coursed through my body and made me realize how deeply George Bush and his cronies had gotten under my skin."

Then the shock set in. Bush had won. Despair. Hopelessness. Sadness. Grief. Tears. Wednesday was the darkest day of the year. For me it was one of the darkest of my whole life. Engelhardt wrote of his concerns:

• the next 100,000 people who will die in the killing fields of Iraq
• the northern glaciers and the polar ice which will disappear in a globally warmed world
• the fate of the Supreme Court and those citizens who find themselves jailed on the President's whims
• the hideous and useless new weapons systems on which our money will now be squandered
• the administration's race to militarize space
• the neocons who will now eagerly promote war with Syria, Iran, North Korea, and God knows where else
• a world in which the Bush administration controls the White House, Congress, and the courts, and now even the CIA where Bush has put his own political operatives into powerful positions

Engelhardt writes about the hangover we are experiencing. Many of us are gradually coming out of the depths we felt on Wednesday, a day when I could hardly speak. The verbiage on TV or even Air America Radio was too difficult to listen to. I resented those who were pontificating about the election. Couldn't they take at least a day or two to let the feelings sink in before taking off full speed ahead to counteract what has happened?

[Click on the blog title to read Tom's article "The Election Hangover of a Lifetime."]

Spoilage and Kerry's Win

Greg Palast, well-known investigative reporter and contributing editor to Harper's magazine, investigated the manipulation of the vote for BBC Television's Newsnight. He is here to tell us something we really don't want to hear. He makes the case that John Kerry most likely won Ohio and New Mexico. If this were correct, John Kerry would now be our president-elect.

Palast gives us the compelling facts in his article on TomPaine.common sense. Click on the blog title to read the entire article.

The election in Ohio was not decided by the voters but by something called "spoilage." In the US, about 3% of the vote is voided, just thrown away, not recorded. And not all votes spoil equally. Most of those votes, according to every official report, come from African American and minority precincts. Palast reminds us that we saw this in Florida in 2000. Secretary of State Katherine Harris excluded 179,855 spoiled votes. Most of these votes lost were cast on punch cards where the hole wasn't punched through completely or was punched extra times. 54 percent of the ballots thrown in the dumpster were cast by black Americans. Florida is very typical. The majority of ballots thrown out will have been cast by black Americans and other minority citizens. (There will be nearly 2 million tossed out from Tuesday's election.)

Democrats aren't even asking Ohio to count these cards- the ones with the not-quite-punched holes (called "undervotes"). Nor are they demanding we look at the "overvotes" where voter intent may be discerned.

Before the election, Ohio's Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell said that the punch-card machines invite problems. But this week, Blackwell, a rabidly partisan Republican, has decided to stick with these machines inspite of their habit of eating Democratic votes.

Palast also discusses the voting-preventing topic of 'challenges.' This refers to the attempt to block thousands of voters of color at the polls. The GOP made plans for poll workers to ambush citizens in Ohio, Wisconsin and Florida, allowing party-designated poll watchers to target individual voters and demand they be denied a ballot. Our Supreme Court was prepared to let Republicans stand in the voting booth door. Many of these voters ended up with provisional ballots which may or may not be counted. Blackwell says there were 175,000 of these. Democrats say there were 250,000. In any case, these voters were overwhelmingly Democratic. So if you add the provisional ballots and the spoiled punch cards to the counted votes, you get a total very close to the exit polls. Since Bush won by 136,483 votes in Ohio, this means Kerry may very well have won if the votes cast had been counted.

Palast then goes to New Mexico where he says a Kerry plurality is more obvious still (if all votes were counted). The problem: spoilage and the provisional ballots. In New Mexico, hispanic voters, for example, are 5 times as likely to have their votes spoil as a white voter.

Of course, all votes will not be counted, not even this time. Why? The Democratic Party gave in to racial disenfranchisement once again. They know that counting all the spoiled and provisional ballots would require the cooperation of Ohio's Secretary of State Blackwell. It is he who would decide which uncounted ballots would get tallied. It is unlikely, according to Palast, that Blackwell would allow a full count. And it is almost a foregone conclusion that the media would punish the Democrats for making an issue of the uncounted votes.

My personal opinion: We should insist on a full accounting of all discarded ballots regardless of the consequences. However, I don't suppose Kerry wanted to have weeks and weeks of chaos.

I was a poll observer on November 2nd in Virginia Beach. Punch card voting machines were used. I did not see any spoilage. None. I only saw some voters who had to void a ballot and start over because of overvoting. So I don't quite understand how so many ballots could be ruined. There is no excuse for it. And, by the way, Palast says that the spoiled punch cards are easy to tally with the human eye in a recount.

Palast's research is so troubling. It makes it all the more difficult to accept the results of the election. You would have thought that we could have done better this time around after the debacle in Florida in 2000. But not much has been done since then to insure a better result. The only difference this time is that everybody knew what the problems were. It has come as no surprise.

In 2004, the Bush administration can carry out its conniving work in the bright light of day and suffer little or no consequences. Why are we so compliant? Are we not outraged yet?

A Tribute to a Patriot

John Kerry would have made a great president. In his concession speech yesterday he said:


In this journey, you have given me the honor and the gift of listening and learning from you. I have visited your homes, I visited your churches, I visited your community halls, I've heard your stories. I know your struggles, I know your hopes. They are part of me now. And I will never forget you and I'll never stop fighting for you.

Senator Kerry, you are a part of us now, too. Thank you for a great campaign.

We're Paying For Walmart Health Care

We interrupt this election week to bring you news from your friendly Walmart Stores. Are you aware that we are paying millions of dollars every year for health care for Walmart employees and their families? You see, Walmart pays such a pittance that employees can't afford to pay a monthly premium for their health care. So taxpayers often have to provide care instead.

Walmart is the largest employer in the US. But they just take and do not give. The big Walmart boxes (stores) have a devastating effect everywhere they are built. Small businesses disappear. Main Street America becomes a ghost town. Walmart abuses labor laws and takes advantage of their employees- the "Walmart family." My friends are baffled when I say I will not ever shop Walmart. They don't know why I wouldn't want to save money. Here is one reason why:


CORPORATE – TAXPAYERS FORCED TO PICK UP WALMART'S SLACK: The state of Georgia found "more than 10,000 children of Wal-Mart employees were in the state's health program for children at an annual cost of nearly $10 million to taxpayers." In California, taxpayers spend $32 million a year providing health care to Wal-Mart workers. And a hospital in North Carolina reports 31 percent of patients who were Wal-Mart employees were on state-funded Medicaid, while an additional 16 percent had no insurance whatsoever. The problem: Many Wal-Mart employees are unable to pay the company's exorbitant monthly premiums. Full-time employees making the $8-an-hour cashier's wage pull in about $1,200 a month, making the $264 a month Wal-Mart demands for family coverage out of reach. Also, Wal-Mart forces employees who work full time to wait six months for insurance; part-time workers must wait two years. "Because of turnover, some employees never work long enough to become eligible."

If we allow this to go on, we should not complain. The recent grassroots effort to take on Sinclair Broadcasting was very successful. There is power available to us if we get together and use it.

Okay! Now back to Election Day! Vote Kerry!