Fifty years ago, amidst the post-World War II “victory culture” affluence, Michael Harrington’s book, The Other America came forth. The book was inspired by Harrington’s 1958 “on the road” trip across America, he encountered our country’s “invisible poor”: those caged by discrimination in the urban ghettos, the white poor of rural Appalachia, the migrant farm workers who lived in shanties without running water, and the remaining Southern sharecroppers, black and white.

A review of While We Still Have Time: The Perils Of Electronic Voting Machines And Democracy's Solution: Publicly Observed, Secure Hand-Counted Paper Ballots (HCPB) Elections, by Sheila Parks, Ed.D.

In While We Still Have Time: The Perils Of Electronic Voting Machines And Democracy's Solution: Publicly Observed, Secure Hand-Counted Paper Ballots (HCPB) Elections, Dr. Sheila Parks makes a very compelling (but scary) argument, backed up with lots of convincing evidence, showing that ALL electronic voting machines are susceptible to fraud and demonstrating that many have in fact been tampered with in recent elections.

This book is an absolute MUST READ for all citizens who are concerned that ALL votes are counted as cast. Dr. Parks shows that it is impossible to prove that electronic voting machines used in elections have NOT been tampered with. Her book is a chilling reminder that all ordinary citizens must continue to be actively involved in the political process if we want to avoid the demise of our democracy. The most precious right we have as citizens is the right to vote and have each vote be counted as intended.

BANGKOK, Thailand -- A Burmese drug lord and five gang members pleaded guilty in China to murdering 13 innocent Chinese sailors on the Mekong River, and loading nearly one million illegal amphetamine pills onto their two cargo ships during a murky smuggling scam.

The Chinese sailors had been blindfolded, tied up and shot onboard their vessels on Oct. 5, 2011, sparking demands by China for a full investigation and better security.

In response, Thailand, Burma and Laos are now for the first time allowing Chinese "border police" gunboats to lead their four-nation patrols on that narrow stretch of the Mekong River -- beyond China's territory -- in the heart of Southeast Asia.

Smiling and placing his hands together as if respectfully praying, notorious drug lord Nor Kham (also known as Naw Kham) begged the court and the 13 victims' families for leniency on Friday (Sept. 21) while facing a possible death sentence.

He then pled guilty to murder, drug trafficking, kidnapping, and hijacking two ships.

Hours earlier, all five of his gang members also pled guilty to the same charges.

Remarks at protest at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission on the International Day of Peace, 2012
Our government likes to lie to us about nuclear weapons. This poor impoverished nation halfway around the world is about to nuke us. No, that one is. The result, of course, is mass murder. But there's another result potentially even worse. We begin to think there's something wrong with being terrified of nuclear weapons and nuclear energy. There isn't. This stuff should scare the hell out of us. And the arrogant lunacy of imagining that even an honest and accountable authority, much less our government, could set up a commission to regulate the winds of hell and deadly substances with a half-life as long as the age of the Earth must give us serious pause.

What are we thinking? How are we thinking? Are we thinking?

One Pentagon report documents 563 nuclear mistakes, malfunctions, and false alarms over the years so far -- near misses, near apocalypses.

Somewhere between predatory self-interest and insanity lies the drone.

The war on terror, the testing ground for drone technology, may be no more than the threshold of a brand new, barely imagined form of human hell: hell that buzzes like a wasp. How long before the technology comes home to our own neighborhoods?

An exhaustive new study released this week — “Living Under Drones: Death, Injury and Trauma to Civilians From U.S. Drone Practices in Pakistan,” a collaborative research effort by the New York University and Stanford schools of law — rebuts pretty much every argument drone proponents, including the Obama administration and Republican challenger Mitt Romney, have made for their continued and extensive use. They kill lots of civilians and very few “high-level targets,” stir continuous animosity against the United States and thus guarantee steady recruitment by “violent non-state armed groups.” They don’t keep us safe. They prolong the war.

Several Tanker trucks full of political ink have been spilled on Mitt Romney's tenure as a vulture capitalist at Bain Capital. A more important story, however, is the fact that Bain alumni, now raising big money as Romney bundlers are also in the electronic voting machine business. This appears to be a repeat of the the infamous former CEO of Diebold Wally O’Dell, who raised money for Bush while his company supplied voting machines and election management software in the 2004 election.

In all 234 counties of Texas, the entire states of Hawaii and Oklahoma, half of Washington and Colorado, and certain counties in swing state Ohio, votes will be cast on eSlate and ePollbook machines made by Hart Intercivic. Hart Intercivic machines have famously failed in Tarrant County (Ft. Worth), adding 10,000 non-existent votes. The EVEREST study, commissioned by the Ohio secretary of state in 2007, found serious security flaws with Hart Intercivic products.
Nine Republican governors have the power to put Mitt Romney in the White House, even if Barack Obama wins the popular vote.

With their secretaries of state, they control the electronic vote count in nine key swing states: Florida, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Iowa, Arizona, and New Mexico. Wisconsin elections are under the control of the state's Government Accountability Board, appointed by the governor.

In tandem with the GOP's massive nation-wide disenfranchisement campaign, they could---in the dead of election night---flip their states' electronic votes to Romney and give him a victory in the Electoral College.

On this International Day of Peace I am sitting in Kabul, Afghanistan with a handful of youth that want nothing but peaceful coexistence in their lives. This in some respects is like a dream because their entire lives have been surrounded by war, death, corruption, and struggle. Peace has been in short supply. For three years the Afghan Peace Volunteers have worked to develop friendships across ethnic lines in Kabul and various provinces throughout Afghanistan. The work has been difficult, trust is hard to come by in this war torn land, but they are adamant that non-violence is the only way forward. I have sat with similar groups in the West Bank, Gaza, Lebanon, Iraq, America and Israel. Rarely are their voices heard over the drums of war.

Established in 1981, by the United Nations General Assembly, the International Day of Peace was to coincide with its opening session. The first Peace Day was observed on September 21st, 1982. In 1982 the Soviet Union was increasing its troop presence in Afghanistan and facing fierce fighting throughout the provinces.

The Voters First campaign scored another victory against Issue 2 opponents’ ongoing effort to mislead and confuse voters. Today the Ohio Elections Commission found probable cause that the Ohio Republican Party was purposely lying voters about state Issue 2 in a recent campaign mail piece.

The Ohio Elections Commission unanimously found probable cause and the Commission will conduct a full hearing on October 4th.

Issue 2 supporters accused reform opponents of continuing their ongoing campaign to intentionally misrepresent Issue 2 to voters with false statements. The Elections Commission found probable cause to hold a hearing on the first statement, “Some of the members will be chosen in secret.” The Ohio Republican Party has also agreed to discontinue their use of the second false statement, “They’ll have a blank check to spend our money.”

The Saturday headline in the Wall Street Journal was: “Anti-U.S. Mobs on Rampage.” The next day, a NATO airstrike killed eight women collecting firewood in the mountains of eastern Afghanistan, an event that garnered virtually zero mainstream U.S. headlines.

Somewhere in the gap between these two phenomena — the overheated news about our violent, irrational enemies in the Middle East and the silence surrounding our war and occupation of the region — lies American politics, values, the presidential race, the national identity. Beyond that gap lies the truth about who we are, and only when we have access to it does the future turn into creative possibility and peace become possible.

The conventional wisdom we’re fed in the mainstream media takes into account only the fear — the hysteria — implicit in the Wall Street Journal headline. The story, by Jay Solomon and Carol E. Lee, goes on to tell us:

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