Greed and gall: asking Iraq to pay for its occupation

The minority of Americans who support the war largely do so out of a sense of responsibility to Iraqis.  They favor reconstruction and restoration as well as ongoing occupation.  And most of the majority who favor ending the war support the financing of reconstruction, which – after all – costs less than war.  Reconstruction seems to be something we generally agree on.

Of course, very little reconstruction has been done or appears likely to be done, and recent reports are that the Bush Administration doesn't want any more money for it – having spent most of the money already allocated for reconstruction on other things.

So, I was disgusted to see a website called www.nationalreferendum.org promoting rebuilding New Orleans with payments from Iraqis.  We invaded their country, killed 100,000 people, left the place a wreck, and neglected our own cities – so they should pay us?

It gets worse.

What’s all the fuss about Diebold in Florida and California?

What in the World is Interpreted Code and What’s Wrong With It Anyway?

Earlier this month Leon County, Florida Supervisor of Elections Ion Sancho, invited computer experts to demonstrate the existence of a security flaw in Diebold optical scanners described in a report published on July 4, 2005.  The test was repeated in December in order to refute specific denials by Diebold. In statements to two different election officials Diebold claimed it was not possible to alter the outcome of an election in such a way that the perpetrator would not need passwords and the tampering would not be noticed during normal canvassing procedures.  Sancho set up the test environment on December 13, 2005 to prove these claims false.  The outside experts had no access to the optical scanner and the complete canvassing procedure was followed for 8 test ballots.  The result was that while the 8 paper ballots had a vote tally of 2 Yes and 6 No, all of the official reports - from the optical scanner on through to the publication of county results - showed an outcome of 7 Yes and 1 No.

Recipe for hacking ES&S and Sequoia, Hursti-style

Hold on to your lugnuts, ES&S and Sequoia may risk Hursti-style hack

Dec. 13, 2005: Harri Hursti performs devastating hack in Leon County Florida with Diebold optical scan system, proving he could control votes by manipulating a credit-card-sized memory card..

Jan. 3, 2006: Information received pointing to similar vulnerabilities in the ES&S and Sequoia "Optech" optical scan machines.

In an exclusive interview by BBV investigator Jim March with Dr. Douglas Jones, University of Iowa associate professor and a former voting machine examiner for the state of Iowa, it was learned that one of the most widely-used voting machines over the last 15 years may suffer from design flaws broadly similar to Diebold's version 1.94 and 1.96 optical scan system.

The first problem is that memory chip contents can be modified with easy to obtain reprogramming devices, in ways that could enable Hursti-style hacking.

The second problem is that Sequoia and ES&S have been able to force their way into intimate access to the mechanics of democracy. The electronic ballot

A new year’s message from Ramsey Clark

Dear friends,

The year 2005 brought new hardships but also new hope to the people of the world. Hope because the Bush administration has shown itself before the world to be lawless, cruel and brutal but also inept and incompetent. In Iraq the Pentagon has shown it is incapable of repressing a growing resistance from the Iraqi people. Meanwhile the government has been caught running torture camps inside Iraq and outsourcing torture around the world.

The people of the U.S. have decided the war is unjust and not worth the price in Iraqi lives or the sacrifice of our youth. Young people are refusing to enlist in the military in sufficient numbers to carry on the illegal occupation and continuing assault on the Iraqi people. In New Orleans the government did nothing for a week while the city drowned. Now more than four months later tens of thousands remain homeless. More and more of the population is outraged by the crimes emanating from the White House and are enlisting in the campaign to stop those crimes.

Primal smirk

I ache with fresh hope and foreboding at this time of year. The time is ripe for an overarching vision of a world without war - a tough, smart vision that can claim headlines and hold its own with the spin machines of government. Without it, we're doomed to . . . war with Iran?

"Of course, Bush has publicly stated for months that he would not take the possibility of a military strike (against Iran) off the table. What's new here, however, is that Washington appears to be dispatching high-level officials to prepare its allies for a possible attack rather than merely implying the possibility as it has repeatedly done during the past year."

This is from the German publication Der Spiegel, at the end of 2005. Even the cynic in me is shocked by the lack of subtlety in these calculations: "During his trip to Turkey," the article goes on, "CIA chief (Porter) Goss reportedly handed over three dossiers to Turkish security officials that purportedly contained evidence that Tehran is cooperating with Islamic terror network al-Qaida. A further dossier is said to contain information about the current status of Iran's alleged nuclear weapons program."

Media new year’s resolutions for 2006

No one is in greater need of forthright new year’s resolutions than big media outlets. In a constructive spirit, therefore, here are some resolutions for them in 2006.

* Daily newspaper editors:
Just about every paper has a “Business” section, where the focus is on CEOs, company managers, profit reports and big-time investors. But a lot more readers are working people -- and a daily “Labor” section would be a welcome addition to the newsprint mix.

* Public radio executives:
As a counterpoint to the daily national program “Marketplace,” public radio can widen its news repertoire by developing a show called “Laborplace.”

* Editors of the Wall Street Journal editorial page:
Take another look at “The Wealth of Nations,” where your hero Adam Smith shared the kind of insights that you often scorn. “It was not by gold or by silver, but by labor, that all the wealth of the world was originally purchased,” he wrote. And consider what Smith observed about manufacturers and merchants, the kind of special interests your editorials routinely tout as synonymous with the public interest --

Extraordinary circumstances indeed

Remember the "nuclear option" compromise? When the group of 14 Senators reached their agreement last May, they said they'd support a filibuster only under "extraordinary circumstances," presumably if Bush nominated Attila the Hun. I'd suggest these circumstances apply not only to Samuel Alito's track record but also to his nomination's entire political context.

In threatening to end the Senate's ability to filibuster judges, Republican leaders talk much about high principle, the right of Presidents to have their nominees accepted or rejected without parliamentary obstructions. But the sole principle behind this proposed change is that of the power grab. The Republicans control the White House and Senate. They're attempting to consolidate control in every way they can, including trying to obliterate 200 years of Senate tradition on the filibuster. This threat isn't a moral stand: Republicans have filibustered nominees themselves. It's just one more in series of attacks on individuals and institutions that they've viewed as political obstacles, like Tom DeLay's mid-census gerrymandering, the leaking

They don't tell him anything

AUSTIN, Texas -- My theory is that they don't tell him anything, that's why the president keeps sounding like he doesn't know what he's talking about.

There he was at Brooke Army Medical Center over the weekend, once again getting it wrong: "I can say that if somebody from al-Qaida's calling you, we'd like to know why. In the meantime, this program is conscious of people's civil liberties, as am I. This is a limited program ... I repeat, limited. And it's limited to calls from outside the United States, to calls within the United States."

So then the White House had to go back and explain that, well, no, actually, the National Security Agency's domestic spying program is not limited to calls from outside the United States, or to calls from people known or even suspected of being with al-Qaida. Turns out thousands of Americans and resident foreigners have been or are being monitored and recorded by the NSA. It's more like information-mining, which is what, you may recall, the administration said it would not do. But now Bush has to investigate The New York Times because Bush has been breaking the law, you see?

Best reporting

http://mattbors.com

ImpeachPAC forms Citizens Impeachment Commission

ImpeachPAC today announced the formation of a Citizens Impeachment Commission to make 2006 the "Year of Impeachment."

"We are honored by the broad support for impeachment from this distinguished group of true American patriots," said Bob Fertik, President of ImpeachPAC. "Impeachment is not a 'fringe' position, as the Bush Administration would like Americans to believe. With a recent Zogby poll showing Americans support impeachment hearings by a solid majority of 53%-42%, there is far more support for impeachment than there is for the War in Iraq," Fertik said.

"Despite three rounds of Iraqi elections, 845 brave young Americans died in Iraq in 2005, only 3 fewer than the 848 lost in 2004. Also 30,000 to 100,000 innocent Iraqis have been killed in the wake of the U.S. invasion. George Bush and Dick Cheney are personally responsible for each of those deaths, because they deliberately lied to Congress and the American people to start this disastrous and never-ending war," Fertik added.

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