A former member of U.S. military intelligence has decided to reveal what she knows about warrantless spying on Americans and about the fixing of intelligence in the leadup to the invasion of Iraq.

Adrienne Kinne describes an incident just prior to the invasion of Iraq in which a fax came into her office at Fort Gordon in Georgia that purported to provide information on the location of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.  The fax came from the Iraqi National Congress, a group opposed to Saddam Hussein and favoring an invasion.  The fax contained types of information that required that it be translated and transmitted to President Bush within 15 minutes.  But Kinne had been eavesdropping on two nongovernmental aid workers driving in Iraq who were panicked and trying to find safety before the bombs dropped.  She focused on trying to protect them, and was reprimanded for the delay in translating the fax.  She then challenged her officer in charge, Warrant Officer John Berry, on the credibility of the fax, and he told her that it was not her place or his to challenge such things.  None of the other 20 or so people in the unit questioned anything, Kinne said.

United for Peace and Justice held a workshop at the US Social Forum in Atlanta on Thursday, at which several speakers made some pretty amazing statements.

GRANITE BAY, CA -- John Edwards has become the first presidential candidate to support "open source code" for election systems. In a letter dated June 21st addressed to Alan Dechert, the Edwards campaign stated that, "To ensure security, these machines should be programmed with an open source code for complete transparency, and election results should be safeguarded by voter-verified paper records."

Currently, software used in election systems remains the proprietary property of vendors. This situation has created a continual problem when anomalous results have been reported and independent experts are denied the ability to review how the systems work. A growing body of critics oppose this privatization of the voting system.

"Open source" means that the computer instructions written by programmers are publicly available. Open source software is rapidly replacing proprietary software in other applications, including the Internet and military applications.

"We congratulate Senator Edwards for taking a leadership role in the fight to restore public oversight of the voting system," said Alan Dechert, president of Open Voting Consortium.

The first ComFest took shape when a handful of political hippies who had already formed, among other things, a free medical clinic, a food co-op, a tenants union and an alternative newspaper, pulled off a big street party at the convergence of East 16th and Waldeck Avenues in the OSU area. Saturday June 23rd, 2007 Comfest regained some of its political clout when the festival ended in a radical street march against the War in Iraq. At around 10pm a crowd assembled by the pond at the northeast corner of Goodale park. Demonstrators brandished bullhorns, bucket drums, banners, signs, and torches. The festival had been going on all day and much of the crowd had grown rowdy and boisterous after a day of Comfest beverages and music.