OT 08-19
Open thread ...
Please comment.
Posted by b on May 20, 2008 at 5:15 UTC | Permalink
« previous pageJudge orders Pima County to release electronic election databases to Democratic Party
This is press about a lawsuit to force release of raw voter data. The vote seems to have been rigged in this county (Tucson) for a long time, and now it must be more transparent.
Pima County failed to prove its contention that the release of all electronic election databases to the Pima County Democratic Party would jeopardize the integrity of future elections and must release those computer records from past and future elections, a Superior Court judge has ruled in an historic case. .....
"All existing electronic databases must be disclosed," the judge ruled.
It is the first time a judge has ordered any governmental entity to turn over all records from electronic elections and ballot tabulating systems past, present, and future to political party officials for scrutiny for signs of tampering.
"Everyone is going to be looking at this ruling and realize that electronic records are public records," said Vince Rabago, chairman of the Pima County Democratic Party.
Looks like a crack in the Diebold wall. Maybe a pattern for other communities and states?
Posted by: Jake | May 25 2008 7:05 utc | 102
Dan (87):
Your bulb is brighter than mine, but I think you missed the point of my posting the link. Your link was the 6-page Law, while my link contained the far more comprehensive 20-page diatribe posing as a neutral report and captioned: "Contemporary Global Anti-Semitism:A Report Provided to the United States Congress".
I am surprised that, while I flew into a 'rage' (I agree with your comment), everyone else on this Board seems to take the report lightly. It is (imho) the most racist and totalitarian piece of legislation in modern U.S. history, and since it is law it means that people can be punished/imprisoned/fined for criticizing AIPAC, Israel, etc.,.
Posted by: Parviz | May 25 2008 7:08 utc | 103
Parviz,
From my reading, and I assume others here have come to the same conclusion, this law and the instructions given to the State Department are to establish an office to collect evidence of anti-semitic (and I read mostly anti-zionist) speeches and behavior thru-out the world and prepare a one-time report as evidenced below in an extract from the law.
SEC. 4. REPORTS. Not later than November 15, 2004, the Secretary of State shall submit to the Committee on Foreign Relations of the Senate and the Committee on International Relations of the House of Representatives a one-time report on acts of anti-Semitism around the world, including a description of—
(1) acts of physical violence against, or harassment of, Jewish people, and acts of violence against, or vandalism of, Jewish community institutions, such as schools, synagogues, or cemeteries, that occurred in each country;
(2) the responses of the governments of those countries to such actions;
(3) the actions taken by such governments to enact and enforce laws relating to the protection of the right to religious freedom of Jewish people;
(4) the efforts by such governments to promote anti-bias and tolerance education; and
(5) instances of propaganda in government and nongovernment media that attempt to justify or promote racial hatred or incite acts of violence against Jewish people.
nowhere do I see anything about punishment.
Posted by: dan of steele | May 25 2008 8:07 utc | 104
We can hope Jake, we can hope.
my bet is that by the time the democrats get those records they will have been all cleaned up.
Posted by: dan of steele | May 25 2008 8:10 utc | 105
Dan, the U.S. Government used a U.N. Resolution requiring Iraq to comply with nuclear disarmament as an excuse to invade Iraq.
Similarly, any law passed by Congress 'defining' anti-semitism in the most ridiculous terms will be used to punish offenders by virtue of those definitions.
What begins as a seemingly innocuous collection of memoranda and vague resolutions, as occurred with Iraq, ends up as a 'casus belli' or, in this case, as a prosecutable offence. Be warned.
Posted by: Parviz | May 25 2008 9:59 utc | 106
Parviz,
I see your point.
Have you noticed how much attention has not been paid to Iran in the last few weeks. Dunno if it is because Myanmar and the Chinese earthquake are taking up all the space or if there has indeed been a deal between the US and Iran. the candidates are all mute on this and rightwing hate radio hasn't made any comments in a long time.
what do you see and hear from the Iranian side?
Posted by: dan of steele | May 25 2008 10:26 utc | 107
Dan, there seems to be something happening because I've noticed the same thing you have. However, my logic doesn't allow me to feel any optimism, because a peace deal between the U.S. and Iran would legitimize America's hardline policy and virtually guarantee the election victory of 'hardline' McCain, which Iran doesn't want. It would also discredit the hardline Iranian President for having pursued an aggressive policy when a softer approach would have prevented 3 rounds of U.N. sanctions that have increased the economic hardship of ordinary Iranians.
No, from my bunker in Tehran I believe precisely the opposite, namely, that the Bush Administration wants to maintain its scaremongering tactics and continue playing up the non-existent 'Iranian threat' to force the U.S. public to settle for 'experience' in November, while Iran wants to maintain the status quo in order to sit down and negotiate with a more malleable Obama Administration. Remember that Iran twice made major concessions to the U.S.A. and got nothing in return except gratuitous insults and blame for every disaster on this planet except the Chinese earthquakes. So Spiritual Leader Khamenei concluded long ago that the current U.S. Administration "cannot be trusted", a sentiment with which I'm sure most of you will agree ;-)
The proverbial spanner in the works could be a U.S. bombardment designed a) to please Israel and b) to prevent any rapprochement in 2009 that would destroy whatever remains of Bush's legacy and benefit the Democrats for decades.
Posted by: Parviz | May 25 2008 13:59 utc | 109
Parviz #109:
while Iran wants to maintain the status quo in order to sit down and negotiate with a more malleable Obama Administration. Remember that Iran twice made major concessions to the U.S.A. and got nothing in return except gratuitous insults and blame for every disaster on this planet except the Chinese earthquakes. So Spiritual Leader Khamenei concluded long ago that the current U.S. Administration "cannot be trusted", a sentiment with which I'm sure most of you will agree ;-)
I've been assuming Iranian leadership at least realized that U.S. elections are now entirely professional wrestling, with a much more expensive and more easily hackable vote counting system than American Idol uses for its larger turnouts, and were just too polite to mention same at Columbia et. al. Maybe not.
In Tehran, in London, in Berlin, in Commonsense Idaho: if you were part of a committee that bought a tallying machine from a company that makes atms - which print- and cash registers - whose whole point is to print- and said company now wants to be paid big small government bucks for accurate sacred duty totals and subtotals but says the printer for this super-accurate voting machine messes up so much that one day's use is likely to jam it several times, flustering untrained election workers, and so they'd just rather not sell it and make unclean money on this piece of junk, unlike the much cheaper and somehow reliable (must be the miracle of the market) printers on their other machines, would you figure the other committee members were bribed or hipnotized?
Diebold internal e-mails re not selling printers "road warriors, on this great margin item, your quota is 0" - plus other fishy stink stuff, were disclosed by MIT hackers summer of '74, great timing for Kerry to use on the stump and in "debates" if he wanted fellow Bonesman Bush to comment on whether such machines and their parent companies made middle class sense or not.
Kerry mentioned the machines just once, that March in Florida, when he and big bucks lawyers were poised to fight, fight, fight, contributions willing.
Last summer Dan Rather had interviews with staff of Sequoia from before the 2000 fake election. Workers went to supervisors re layout of the butterfly ballot, saying many elderly and other citizens would vote for Buchanan meaning to vote for Gore, were told not to worry about it.
Other workers told supervisors that ballot papers were bad, would not punch through satisfactorily. They too were told not to worry, and Chads everywhere endured bad jokes once again.
And lo and behold the Help America Vote Act was passed with great funding and Sequoia, Diebold and smaller fry
began to sell their divinely margined touch screen machines, but had mercy and wouldn't sell the printers - "no sir, just wouldn't do, I couldn't sleep if I sold you that evil thing." And the committees said, "yes, yes, waste of money, confuses election workers. It's not like we were judging the World Series or the Superbowl or even candlepin bowling, people use their brains about those things." And the lizards saw that it was good, or would be if good and evil existed rather than just power, mines, interest and blood.
As linked to here at the times by others, the NH and PA Democratic primaries both had important precincts counted by Diebold. In NH where Obama did best was in the rural precincts, hand counted. Where Clinton showed people must have lied to the pollsters was among the urbane, whose ballots were picked up by 2 guys in a van and counted by Diebold optical scanner machines.
If you were running for President, wouldn't you mention concerns about the November vote counts? Or would that hurt contributions from the lower people, the hopers?
Class warfare, like all sensibly managed warfare, can make a lot of money.
And Tehran may well get blamed for earthquakes, just not yet.
As in my #31, remember Defense Secretary Cohen's statement 4/28/97 "Others are engaging even in an eco-type of terrorism whereby they can alter the climate, set off earthquakes, volcanoes remotely through the use of electromagnetic waves."
Comments on any aspects very welcome, especially refutations of core statements.
video: werner herzog eats his shoe
(also, while morris' latest scores as a miss, protege jason kohn definitely hits the target w/ manda bala)
Posted by: b real | May 25 2008 22:32 utc | 111
interesting article in nairobi's daily nation sunday about a situation that took place nearly two decades ago. the title's more than a bit deceptive though -- Top secrets: Gaddafi plotted to bomb Kenya -- since the main story is about how the cia got their kenyan intel guru to trick president moi into allowing the u.s. to stash some of their libyan spys there after it became too hot for them to remain in tripoli.
Early one morning in February 1991, [legendary Kenyan spy chief James] Kanyotu found himself with a difficult assignment. His friends in the CIA had called with an urgent and unusual request.They had with them 600 Libyan dissidents they wanted sequestered in Kenya before they could be flown to a safe haven out of the reach of mercurial Libyan leader, Col Muammar Gaddafi.
The dissidents had been spirited out of Libya in a daring secret move and first flown to the then Zaire, now Democratic Republic of Congo.
But the CIA was not confident that Zaire was a safe haven.
The country’s dictator, Marshal Mobutu Sese Seko was a US ally and had himself come to power in the 1960s as a CIA protégé.
But the Americans considered him unstable, unreliable and unpredictable.
His avarice and love of money was legendary, and it would not be beyond him to cut a deal with Col Gaddafi and turn over the dissidents in exchange for handsome sums wired to his numerous Swiss bank accounts.
The Americans wanted their charges out of Congo speedily, and Kenya seemed like the best choice.
But there was one problem. President Moi at that time had no time for the US.
Kenya was in the throes of the multi-party campaign and the US had come out strongly in favour of the push for democratisation.
i'm not familiar w/ the backstory on that, but the u.s. ambassador at the time, smith hempstone, was evidently on moi's shit list, openly advocating for a u.s.-favored opposition candidate & pushing hard for multiparty elections later that year. the wikipedia entry on hempstone states that his memoir alledges that moid "attempted to kill him twice" b/c of his work. at the same time, i see that the british were none-too-pleased either w/ the u.s. push for multiparty elections, as it "figured it best to deal with the devil it knew."
continuing w/ the story,
So the CIA turned to Mr Kanyotu to soften President Moi for them. It was a difficult assignment on two grounds. First of course was Mr Moi’s growing anger with the United States.Then there was the security risk for Kenya in crossing Mr Gaddafi, who might find a soft target on which to hit back at the US.
...
The Libyan leader by then was on the American list of unfriendly regimes.He was fiercely anti-American, and was accused of financing Middle Eastern terrorist groups that were increasingly aiming at targets in the West.
The Libyans at the time were also moving aggressively to position themselves in sub-saharan Africa, unlike many other North African countries, which viewed themselves primarily as members of the Arab world.
That was where Mr Kanyottu found the chink in President Moi’s armour.
Libyan interests in the region had in the past few years been viewed suspiciously by Kenya, which was alarmed by the countries seeming support for dissident movements.
From the early 1980, the Libyan embassy on Loita Street had become a popular calling place for radial student activists from nearby University of Nairobi.
Usually it was to pick up freebies in the form of Mr Gaddafi’s writings, including his famous Green Book, and other literature and posters on Libyan and on the Palestinian cause.
Mr Kanyotu’s agents kept a close watch around the embassy, paying particular attention to student leaders whom they thought might be tempted into going beyond mere infatuation with Gaddafi and enlisting into something sinister.
Libya at the time already had a strong presence in neighbouring Uganda, which under President Yoweri Museveni had become the favoured transit point for Kenyan dissidents fleeing the country for exile in Europe.
By early 1991, Kenya had already severed diplomatic relations with Tripoli after accusing the northern African country of sponsoring anti-Moi elements.
Some student leaders at the University of Nairobi had also been arrested and charged with espionage for allegedly spying for Libya.
Even without the Libyan link, President Moi at time viewed President Museveni as a dangerous radical all too keen to spread his ideology across the region.
Kenya and Uganda had engaged in a brief shooting war across the common border only a few years previously, and still regarded each other with deep suspicion.
With all the information at his fingertips, Mr Kanyotu was able to convince President Moi that the real threat lay not in US support for the multi-party campaign in Kenya, but in Libyan support for dissidents who might want to forment a revolution via neighbouring Uganda.
Mr Kanyotu thought, Moi — even for ego purposes only — would relish the moment to show both Col Gaddafi and Mr Museveni who was boss in the region. Mr Moi gave his nod, and working under the strictest security, Mr Kanyotu’s men and the CIA hurriedly constructed a camp to hold the Libyans at a remote point off the Thika-Garissa highway. Within a week, a makeshift barracks was in place complete with a borehole and a fully-equipped dispensary.
To throw off-scent any nosy characters, signposts were erected purporting that American peace-corps were coming to help sink boreholes in the remote reaches of Mwingi District.
makes one wonder even more about all those borehole's the CJTF-HOA troops are reportedly working on in uganda & elsewhere in the region. while the hidden projects nowadays may not be quite the same as that of this particular episode, apparently it's still a popular excuse in their playbook.
As Nairobi slept, two US Air Force jets taxied at the far end of the apron. Unmarked buses from the Kenya Army were in place to transport the delicate human cargo.Before dawn, the Libyan exiles were sound asleep in their new, but temporary, Kenyan home.
Mr Gaddafi, probably through Ugandan and Soviet intelligence sources in Nairobi, soon came to learn about the presence of Libyans dissidents in Kenya.
He was furious, and immediately set about planning how to retaliate.
A Libyan commando force assembled near the Entebbe Airport in Uganda, ready to strike once the exact location of the secret camp holding Libyan dissidents in Kenya was established.
Gaddafi’s first option was lightning air strike to bomb the camp and kill as many of the residents as possible.
The other was to bring in a commando squad by land, raid the place and capture some of the dissidents.
To keep him off-scent, Mr Kanyotu and the CIA put up several decoys that kept the Libyan intelligence operatives on a wild goose chase.
Meanwhile, the Americans found a permanent refuge for the dissidents, and before the Libyan forces could strike they were secretly flown out of Kenya under cover of darkness.
no idea how accurate this boastful tale is & it's certainly not critical of the underlying storyline, but interesting nonetheless.
Posted by: b real | May 26 2008 4:06 utc | 112
tack this on to #36 above
while sunday's associated press ran a story quoting puntland's energy and minerals minister informing readers that
Where the oil exploration is taking place is, "not a disputed area. It is a safe place,"
puntland's own garowe online reported Canada's Africa Oil Corp. equipment under attack in Somalia
GAROWE, Somalia May 25 (Garowe Online) - Exploration equipment reportedly contracted by a Canada-based oil company undocked at the port of Bossaso Sunday, but emerging reports tell Garowe Online that disgruntled militia have already launched their first strike.The equipment included construction trucks of the old variety, along with trucks transporting water and petroleum to a location east of Bossaso where Africa Oil Corp. has set up an operations camp in the self-governing Puntland province of northeastern Somalia.
...
On Sunday night, three of the trucks that were unloaded from a container ship docked at the port of Bossaso underwent mechanical problems and became stuck inside Bossaso, witnesses reported.The trucks reportedly stopped working somewhere between Hotel Panorama and the Golis telecommunications company headquarters.
At around 11:30pm local time, unidentified militiamen attacked the location where there were reports of an exchange of gunfire.
Emerging reports have indicated that the attackers successfully hit one of the trucks with a rocket launcher, setting the truck on fire.
Reports of any casualties were difficult to obtain, since it was late during the night and there is limited movement of citizenry.
It was also immediately unclear who the attacking militiamen were, but the strike comes on the heels of widespread reports that unhappy clans have organized militias to counter the Puntland-Africa Oil drive to dig for Somalia's unproven oil reserves.
...
Exploration in Puntland is a nationally-sensitive topic across Somalia, as discord lingers within government halls in Mogadishu and Garowe, the capital of Puntland.
...
In early 2006, Sanaag was the scene of fierce fighting between clan militia opposed to exploration and Puntland security forces. The violence forced Africa Oil's joint venture partner, Australian mining firm Range Resources, to suspend operations in Puntland.But even with President Yusuf's endorsement, serious challenges lay ahead for any meaningful exploration effort in Puntland.
Many of the region's armed clans remain opposed to the exploration project, citing legitimate concerns including Puntland leader Muse's mismanagement of public funds and his negligent attitude towards the region's powerful clans.
no mention of this in the AP story.
and, wrt the private militia that the canadians procured,
an armored vehicle traveling between Bossaso and the Africa Oil operations camp 90km east exploded yesterday, wounding five militiamen on board.Medical sources confirmed that the wounded militiamen were transported to Bossaso under a shroud of secrecy and are being treated for their injuries.
The cause of the explosion could not be independently ascertained, but some reports indicated that the vehicle hit a landmine secretly planted along the vital road.
Other reports said one of the militiamen accidentally dropped a grenade inside the vehicle.
As reported by Garowe Online last week, Africa Oil and its partners in the government of Puntland have established a private militia force to safeguard the Canadian company's operations in Somalia.
The wounded men are part of that private militia, which remains untrained and ill-prepared to deal with the daunting security challenges ahead.
Posted by: b real | May 26 2008 6:25 utc | 113
Looks like http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ekYhrca0M8o&feature=related>Another Weekend Without Makeup, has passed, in a catchy sort of way.
Posted by: anna missed | May 26 2008 6:55 utc | 114
more climate violence stuff, and Homeland Security showing us again that governments can't do anything, only market forces can do anything (evidenced by how much of FEMA's budget since inception 30 years ago has gone into bunkers for the forcers and camps for the forced):
Iowa Homeland Security administrator Dave Miller said seven people were killed Sunday by a tornado in northeast Iowa — five from Parkersburg, a town of about 1,000 some 80 miles northeast of Des Moines — and two from nearby New Hartford. At least 50 injuries were reported.
"Occasionally we have a death but we have warning system. Seven deaths. It's been a long time since we've had those kinds of injuries and deaths reported," Miller said.
The storms came after three days of violent weather across the nation.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080526/ap_on_re_us/severe_weather>Link
http://sonic.net/sentinel/gvcon6.html>
FEMA article from 1995
7 in Iowa dead, 700,000 in Sichuan imperilled:
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?sid=aG2Qc7bYPJts&pid=20601080>China Sends Troops as Quake Waters Threaten 700,000 (Update4)
here's drought in Spain. Add to long term droughts elsewhere: US south, Australia, Amazon former rainforest, others.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/europe/spains-drought-a-glimpse-of-our-future-833587.html>Barcelona:worst drought since records began
plushtown: i agree with more of your angles than i care to admit, so don't be discouraged if it seems like the fish here aren't biting.
Posted by: Lizard | May 28 2008 5:12 utc | 118
theres sexism galore in the unfolding Hilary drama but not in the way that conventional wisdom would have it. Its the overwhelming & deafening failure by the media & public alike to call Hilary to order on her ugly drama that amounts to a particularly damaging form of sexism.
Posted by: jony_b_cool | May 30 2008 22:40 utc | 121
The comments to this entry are closed.
b real 97...this will be interesting to see how the u.s. govt responds
i wish they wouldn't. it's more interesting w/out them.
thanks for your postings.
Posted by: annie | May 25 2008 6:17 utc | 101