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AUSTIN, Texas -- Anyone see any reason to think Haiti will be better off without Jean-Bertrand Aristide? Just another little gift from the Bush foreign policy team, straight out of the whacko-right playbook.
Jesse Helms always did think Aristide was another Fidel, not being able to distinguish between a Catholic and a communist. We know the main armed opposition group is a bunch of thugs and that they have been joined by old Duvalierists, including members of the Tonton Macoutes, the infamous torturers.
The Bush administration wanted this to happen -- it held up $500 million worth of humanitarian aid from the United States, World Bank, Inter-American Development Bank and International Monetary Fund. Without U.S. or multilateral help, the country spiraled downward.
So here we are, reduced to hoping for the best again.
Jesse Helms always did think Aristide was another Fidel, not being able to distinguish between a Catholic and a communist. We know the main armed opposition group is a bunch of thugs and that they have been joined by old Duvalierists, including members of the Tonton Macoutes, the infamous torturers.
The Bush administration wanted this to happen -- it held up $500 million worth of humanitarian aid from the United States, World Bank, Inter-American Development Bank and International Monetary Fund. Without U.S. or multilateral help, the country spiraled downward.
So here we are, reduced to hoping for the best again.
At a time when the Republican White House stands in full breech of Jefferson's guarantee of religious freedom (implemented by the now defunct separation of church and state), Mel Gibson's portrayal of "The Passion of Christ" is a reminder of millennial issues in the world of western Christendom. By and large, these issues were successfully dealt with two centuries ago by America's "founding fathers."
We must keep in mind that American Democracy actually has two remarkably different sets of "founding fathers." There were the Revolutionary liberals who rallied around Paine's "Common Sense" and Jefferson's Declaration of human rights (as America's ideological base). Opposed were the religious conservatives (made up largely of pro-British Tories) who had very little interest in any of this new ideology, being more interested in efforts to circumvent a revolution.
We must keep in mind that American Democracy actually has two remarkably different sets of "founding fathers." There were the Revolutionary liberals who rallied around Paine's "Common Sense" and Jefferson's Declaration of human rights (as America's ideological base). Opposed were the religious conservatives (made up largely of pro-British Tories) who had very little interest in any of this new ideology, being more interested in efforts to circumvent a revolution.
We caught Bob Fitrakis' 2/25/04 article, "Diebold, Electronic Voting and the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy", thru Truthout.org
THANK YOU, THANK YOU and did we say . THANK YOU! Please continue to shine a light on the dangers of paperless voting machines. My husband and I are very concerned and scared about the integrity of our voting system. We have never missed walking into our polling place to vote in an election since we were each old enough to vote. However, if paperless voting machines are put into use, we will not trust the process and our answer is Absentee Ballot. Over 500 American soldiers have died in Iraq for Democracy and the assurance of a Fair Election. Shouldn't we Americans also be assured a Fair Election?
THANK YOU, THANK YOU and did we say . THANK YOU! Please continue to shine a light on the dangers of paperless voting machines. My husband and I are very concerned and scared about the integrity of our voting system. We have never missed walking into our polling place to vote in an election since we were each old enough to vote. However, if paperless voting machines are put into use, we will not trust the process and our answer is Absentee Ballot. Over 500 American soldiers have died in Iraq for Democracy and the assurance of a Fair Election. Shouldn't we Americans also be assured a Fair Election?
Dear Bob Fitrakis:
I read your interesting article on Diebold and electronic voting in the
2/24 Columbus Free Press
There's another, more reliable, and cheaper way of doing electronic
voting, and it could use existing machines; no need to purchase new ones
from Diebold.
There are more than 270,000 ATMs in the U.S.; it would not be difficult
to write voting programs for them, and to issue ATM 'voting' cards to
registered voters.
A voting system using ATMs would be a LOT less expensive than the $5 to
$8 billion projected for using new voting equipment throughout the US,
and be more secure than all existing and many proposed voting systems.
Such a system could be a very interesting source of revenue for an ATM
manufacturer like NCR.
ATMs have very accurate methods for dealing with depositor's (and the
bank's) money; this same accuracy could be adapted to vote counting.
Banks already have a secure and fraud-resistant system for sending ATM
data to central computers.
I am trying to locate former crew members of the heavy cruiser USS DES MOINES. Our annual reunion is held in rural MERCER, PA each August. This year it is on the 6th through the 8th. They can contact me at (321) 632-6347 or via email at: tmmax@hotmail.com. Thank You!
Tom MacFarlane
Cocoa, Florida
Tom MacFarlane
Cocoa, Florida
March 1 st , 2004 marks the 50 th anniversary of the 1954 US "Bravo" hydrogen bomb test on Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands that unexpectedly turned out to be the largest US nuclear test ever exploded. "Bravo" gouged a crater about a mile wide in the reef of Bikini Atoll. Within seconds of the blast, the fireball was nearly three miles in diameter. On Rongerik, an island 135 miles east of the blast, the illumination from "Bravo" was visible for almost one minute. Physicist Marshall Rosenbluth, located on a ship about 30 miles away, stated that the fireball "just kept rising and rising, and spreading.it looked to me like what you might imagine a diseased brain, or a brain of some mad man would look like on the surface.and the air started getting filled with this gray stuff, which I guess was somewhat radioactive coral."
Human Fallibility
Human Fallibility
Regarding Bob Fitrakis's article on the Diebold (and
other) Direct Recording Electronic (DRE) voting
machines that the US Government is trying to foist on
the American public.
It is very important to not get the wool pulled over our eyes by the term: "Paper-Trail".
The DRE machine does not normally leave any kind of evidence of what a single voter voted,...making a recount impossible.
Some think that we are able to eliminate the propensity for Vote-Fraud inherent in the DRE machine by requiring a "Paper-Trail",..ie...a print-out of th TouchScreen display.
This is a misleading deception,...for these paper-ballots are NOT used nor counted.
To make a Paper-"Trail" meaningful,....the Paper-Ballot the machine prints-out must be the Primary artifact that is actually hand-counted. The DRE's quick result MAY possible by used as NON-Official result while the OFFICIAL hand-counted Paper-ballot count is underway.
If you need any more info or explanation on thise EXTREMELY timely topic,...please contact me.
Truly,
Bob Donatelle
It is very important to not get the wool pulled over our eyes by the term: "Paper-Trail".
The DRE machine does not normally leave any kind of evidence of what a single voter voted,...making a recount impossible.
Some think that we are able to eliminate the propensity for Vote-Fraud inherent in the DRE machine by requiring a "Paper-Trail",..ie...a print-out of th TouchScreen display.
This is a misleading deception,...for these paper-ballots are NOT used nor counted.
To make a Paper-"Trail" meaningful,....the Paper-Ballot the machine prints-out must be the Primary artifact that is actually hand-counted. The DRE's quick result MAY possible by used as NON-Official result while the OFFICIAL hand-counted Paper-ballot count is underway.
If you need any more info or explanation on thise EXTREMELY timely topic,...please contact me.
Truly,
Bob Donatelle
The electronic result inside the Diebold voting machine is not sufficiently trust-worthty to be an official result.
We do NOT want a paper-"TRAIL", ...We want Paper to be the PRIMARY document that becomes the Official count.
The only solution when using a TouchScreen is that when the voter completes his vote on the TouchScreen, ...the touchscreen voted-ballot gets printed-out and is used as the primary document that gets hand-counted. This hand-counted Paper-ballot becomes the Official count. The internal computer count is NOT to be used.
We do NOT want a paper-"TRAIL", ...We want Paper to be the PRIMARY document that becomes the Official count.
The only solution when using a TouchScreen is that when the voter completes his vote on the TouchScreen, ...the touchscreen voted-ballot gets printed-out and is used as the primary document that gets hand-counted. This hand-counted Paper-ballot becomes the Official count. The internal computer count is NOT to be used.
CIA Director George Tenet testified before Congress in February 2001 that Iraq posed no immediate threat to the United States or to other countries in the Middle East.
But immediately after the terrorist attacks on 9-11, which the Bush administration has said Iraq is partially responsible for, the President and his advisers were already making a case for war against Iraq without so much as providing a shred of evidence to back up their allegations that Iraq and its former President, Saddam Hussein, helped al-Qaida hijackers plan the catastrophe.
It was then, after the 9-11 attacks, that intelligence reports from the CIA radically changed from previous months, which said Iraq posed no immediate threat to the U.S., to now show Iraq had a stockpile of chemical and biological weapons and was in hot pursuit of a nuclear bomb. The Bush administration seized upon the reports to build public support for the war and used the information to eventually justify a preemptive strike against the country last March.
But immediately after the terrorist attacks on 9-11, which the Bush administration has said Iraq is partially responsible for, the President and his advisers were already making a case for war against Iraq without so much as providing a shred of evidence to back up their allegations that Iraq and its former President, Saddam Hussein, helped al-Qaida hijackers plan the catastrophe.
It was then, after the 9-11 attacks, that intelligence reports from the CIA radically changed from previous months, which said Iraq posed no immediate threat to the U.S., to now show Iraq had a stockpile of chemical and biological weapons and was in hot pursuit of a nuclear bomb. The Bush administration seized upon the reports to build public support for the war and used the information to eventually justify a preemptive strike against the country last March.