'Fight Smart' Update - 31
October 2004 Bin Laden and The
Voting Machines
".....
you can easily edit the election, with or without Microsoft Access installed on the GEMS
computer. As computer security expert Hugh Thompson demonstrated at the August 18, 2004
California Secretary of State meeting, you simply open any text editor, like
‘Notepad,’ and type a six-line Visual Basic Script, "A group of technical, legal and
political experts has begun a campaign to expose the use of unsafe electronic voting
systems in Europe. Jason Kitcat, a programmer who helped to start the campaign, is
concerned that voters' trust will be eroded as problems emerge with insecure voting
systems, as has been happening in the United States. With most e-voting companies refusing
to make their software available for public testing, and no current system offering a
printed record of votes cast, it will now be easier than ever to hack into an election, Mr
Kitcat told The Times. 'You could have fraud on a scale never seen before, and it will be
completely undetectable,' he said. 'What worries me is that by rushing in we 'll actually
turn more young people off voting. Instead of thinking that their vote doesn't count, they
will now be worrying that no one's going to be counting their vote.' Critics of electronic
voting cite early problems in the US, where President Bush last year pledged $3.9 billion
(£2.3 billion) to modernise the ballot. Bev Harris, author of a book investigating
electronic-voting companies, has catalogued what she alleges are electoral irregularities
involving touch-screen and other computerised voting systems..... Last November, for
instance, 6,300 votes changed overnight after an election in Alabama, handing the state's
governorship to a Republican. At the same time three winning Republican candidates in
elections in Texas all polled exactly 18,181 votes..... Diebold Election Systems, a US
company whose software has been used in Greater Manchester e-voting pilots, has faced
particularly close scrutiny. This year its programming code - which it refuses to disclose
- was found on an unprotected website and passed to computer scientists at Johns Hopkins
University. The scientists' analysis, published in July, found significant security flaws
and said that a teenager could circumvent the system using equipment that can be bought
for £70 over the internet. Voters could cast unlimited votes without being detected by
mechanisms within the voting terminal, they reported, and votes could be overwritten in
the system's logs. Poll workers could give passwords to their friends and alter the terms
of an election." "Two of the corporations that provide
nearly all of the voting machines in the United States—ES&S and Diebold—are
controlled by Republicans with strong ties to the Bush administration. One company is also
linked to a far-right fundamentalist Christian movement. Diebold and ES&S are heavily
interconnected. Brothers Todd and Bob Urosevich founded American Information Services
(AIS), which became ES&S when AIS merged with Business Records Corporation (BRC). Todd
works at ES&S as vice president, while Bob is now president of Diebold. ES&S
claims that it counted 56 percent of U.S. votes in the last four presidential
elections..... BRC was started with money from Texas billionaire Nelson Bunker Hunt. Both
Ahmanson and Hunt are large contributors to the Chalcedon Foundation, a think tank for the
Christian Reconstruction movement, which advocates literal application of Old-Testament
law. The company hired by the Republican governor of Maryland to analyze Diebold’s
computer voting systems, defense contractor SAIC, also has close Republican ties.... SAIC
board members Admiral Bill Owens (former military aide to Dick Cheney), and ex-CIA chief
Robert Gates, who was implicated in the Iran-Contra scandal of the 1980s, also serve on
the board of VoteHere, a growing elections software company. SAIC itself is producing
electronic voting systems in partnership with Diversified Dynamics. SAIC has been
investigated for fraud and security lapses in its electronic systems, but has received
contracts for work in Iraq." "It is clear officials of the United
States government have been negligent, reckless, and incompetent in the execution of their
oaths. There is no denying they have also been corrupt. The manner in which they have been
able to carry out their objectives, and get away with it has parallels with the mafia. Who
would ever have thought that we would have seen organized crime emanating on such a grand
scale from the White House. Instead of going to jail however, the Bush administration is
going to the polls..... The irony is that the future of the world rests in the hands of
just handfuls of voters, in a small number of states". 31 October 2004 Which is going to be the bigger influence on the outcome of the US elections? Osama Bin Laden or electronic voting machines made by Diebold? Below is an excerpt from an interesting and detailed article on the potential for US election fraud on Tuesday using electronic voting machines. Many of the machines in question (which will reportedly count large chunks of the vote in 37 states following a multi-billion dollar investment in a new voting system under the 'Help America Vote Act' signed by President Bush in October 2002), are supplied by a company that has allegedly put over $1 million into the Republican Party. Although this story may seem astonishing, the New York Times ran a related piece in September highlighting security concerns with these machines (http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/16/technology/circuits/16howw.html ). Ominously the NYT concluded that "Critics say they can only hope that the problems will not be severe enough to require recounts, since paper ballots will not exist". In other words the US elections, even if run without deliberate tampering, are not going to be transparent. It will be a 'faith-based' system. Yet, how much faith should be put into an electronic electoral system encouraged by a government that lied all the way to Baghdad and has since been caught considering covert interference in the forthcoming elections in Iraq, according to TIME magazine (see bottom)? Let's be blunt about this - or rather, let's quote the headline of an earlier NYT
editorial in January on the same subject. The title clearly spells out what the stakes
are: "How to hack an election" In a third piece the NYT concluded "Diebold has a great deal to do to
make its work transparent and its company trustworthy if it wants to remain in the
elections business" It remains in the elections business. Tuesday's elections. If an attempt to tamper with electronic votes in key swing states were to be made on Tuesday then an 'intelligent' fraud would, of course, be to fix the numbers in such a way that the result was sufficiently close to look plausible. The media punditry would probably still be too diverted discussing the impact of the sudden arrival of Bin Laden on the election scene to notice in any case. And how well prepared are the Democrats to ferret out any computerised malpractice? On the face of these reports it won't usually be visible. Meanwhile in another Presidential election currently vulnerable to fraudulent intervention "the United States [has] threatened to take action against Ukrainian officials who tampered with results" according to the London Times 30 October. Joseph Stalin is said to have once observed that "It is enough that the people know there was an election. The people who cast the votes decide nothing. The people who count the votes decide everything." For large numbers of Americans on Tuesday much of that privilege falls to tamper-suitable machines provided by Republican Party donor, Diebold. Despite their prevalence, however, the fraudulent use of such machines (or even simple malfunction) in only a few key states would be sufficient to decide the election in a close race. Of course, there should be no reason for concern about fraud in a country whose current ruling party and its backers are closely associated with such barometers of integrity as Watergate, Iran-Contra, Enron, Florida 2000 and the manipulation of the forthcoming elections in Iraq. After all how many such people know how to use complex computer programmes such as 'Notepad'? No. Those who have faith in the US faith-based voting system can sleep easily at night, because faith is what's currently driving the whole machinery of state, according to the top man himself. As the London Times reported yesterday "When a Bush supporter was accused of sounding like a Muslim fundamentalist she replied: 'Yes and what’s wrong with that?' The religious Right has found a strange comfort in mimicking the certainties of its Muslim adversaries. Mr Bush’s jihadism is overt: 'It is not Americans who want to free the peoples of the world, it is Jesus Christ who wants to free them.'” Alleluia, praise Die Bold! NATURAL LAW PARTY WESSEX
"....much of what we
just witnessed [in the US 2000 Presidential election] not only matches historical examples
from the CIA's past history of election rigging and outright overthrows, but can be found
in a respected coup 'manual' authored by a one-time advisor to President Reagan...
Although he was conspicuously absent throughout the entire campaign, it goes without
saying that GW's secret patrone was one of the best in the biz: his father, George Herbert
Walker Bush.... Most importantly in our context, GHW Bush has a documented history of
using former and active-duty CIA agents in election campaigns... the most important one
[during the 1980 Presidential election campaign] is still remembered today as 'The
October Surprise'....It was a covert operation by the Reagan-Bush campaign that secretly
forged a deal with the Iranian radicals [in Tehran] .... In exchange for holding the
[American] hostages until after the election, the Reagan-Bush team offered the Iranians
millions of dollars in arms, material, and other considerations. Sure enough, the hostages
were held until minutes after Reagan's inauguration, then 'suddenly' released.... the
Reagan-Bush team undercut President Carter's own secret efforts to free the hostages and
thereby stole the White House. It was, in fact, a coup d'etat." What was the 1980 'October Surprise' and why is it still a live issue? - click here America In Crisis
----- Original Message ----- National > Security Adviser, and the Director of the CIA > following publication of article in TIME MAGAZINE 27 September 2004 (see > actual article at bottom) on a plan for "the CIA to put an operation in > place to affect the outcome of the elections" in Iraq. > ==================================================================== > > BUSH: What's all this in TIME MAGAZINE on the Iraqi elections: "....but not > necessarily to go so far as to rig the elections". > > RICE: Well it only says "not necessarily", Mr President. > > BUSH: Yeah, but now people are gonna talk about this. Whata we gonna do? > ......... Hey - I know, let's get Dick and Jeb's new electronic voting > machines over there - we won't need them for a while after November. Jim > Baker and John Negroponte can fix it all up - should be a cinch after all > the experience with the 2000 elections and Iran-Contra. > > RICE: I'm sorry Mr President but Iraq is not Florida - they have no > electricity for most of the day even when there are no hurricanes. No, it > looks like we'll have to do it the old fashioned way. Whatdaya think Porter? > > GOSS: I cannot in any way comment on classified matters, the existence or > nonexistence of findings.... but I can tell you that we've only cancelled > the overt covert operations (i.e. the ones TIME magazine found out about), > but not the covert covert operations (i.e. the ones they didn't)...... > > BUSH: Bring 'em on! > ============================================================ > > And so it came to pass that "American Values" were introduced into > post-Saddam Iraq. > > (For more information on electronic voting machines see "How To Rig An > Election In The United States" > http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/rigvote.html > For more on John Negroponte, now US Ambassador to Iraq, and Iran-Contra > see - http://www.disinfopedia.org/wiki.phtml?title=John_Negroponte > For more on James Baker's role in the 2000 Florida recount and post-invasion > Iraq see - http://www.yuricareport.com/Iraq/PalastOnBakerNewIraqCzar.html) > > NATURAL LAW PARTY WESSEX > nlpwessex@btinternet.com > www.btinternet.com/~nlpwessex > ======================================================================== > > http://www.time.com/time/magazine/printout/0,8816,1101041004-702122,00.html > Monday, Sep. 27, 2004 > How Much U.S. Help? > The Bush Administration takes heat for a CIA plan to influence Iraq's > elections > By TIMOTHY J. BURGER; DOUGLAS WALLER > > President Bush and interim Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi insisted last > week that Iraq would go ahead with elections scheduled for January, despite > continuing violence. But U.S. officials tell TIME that the Bush team ran > into trouble with another plan involving those elections — a secret > "finding" written several months ago proposing a covert CIA operation to aid > candidates favored by Washington. A source says the idea was to help such > candidates — whose opponents might be receiving covert backing from other > countries, like Iran — but not necessarily to go so far as to rig the > elections. But lawmakers from both parties raised questions about the idea > when it was sent to Capitol Hill. In particular, House minority leader Nancy > Pelosi "came unglued" when she learned about what a source described as a > plan for "the CIA to put an operation in place to affect the outcome of the > elections." Pelosi had strong words with National Security Adviser > Condoleezza Rice in a phone call about the issue. > > Rice spokesman Sean McCormack says, "I cannot in any way comment on > classified matters, the existence or nonexistence of findings." But, > McCormack says, "there have been and continue to be concerns about efforts > by outsiders to influence the outcome of the Iraqi elections, including > money flowing from Iran. This raises concerns about whether there will be a > level playing field for the election. This situation has posed difficult > dilemmas about what action, if any, the U.S. should take in response. In the > final analysis, we have adopted a policy that we will not try to influence > the outcome of the upcoming Iraqi election by covertly helping individual > candidates for office." A senior U.S. official hinted that, under pressure > from the Hill, the Administration scaled back its original plans. "This was > a tough call. We went back and forth on it in the U.S. government. We > consulted the Hill on this question ... Our embassy in Baghdad will run a > number of overt programs to support the democratic electoral process," as > the U.S. does elsewhere in the world.
Including 'Protocolgate' - Who Hijacked The
Emergency Response Procedures On 911? - 19 September 2004
NATURAL LAW PARTY WESSEX
|
