Coming
in October
From AK Press
Today's
Stories
September 8, 2003
Uri Avnery
Betrayal
at Camp David
Recent
Stories
September 6 / 7, 2003
Neve Gordon
Strategic
Abuse: Outsourcing Human Rights Violations
Gary Leupp
Shiites
Humiliate Bush
Saul Landau
Fidel
and The Prince
Denis Halliday
Of Sanctions and Bombings: the UN Failed the People of Iraq
John Feffer
Hexangonal Headache: N. Korea Talks Were a Disaster
Ron Jacobs
The Stage of History
M. Shahid Alam
Pakistan "Recognizes" Israel
Laura Carlson
The Militarization of the Americas
Elaine Cassel
The Forgotten Prisoners of Guantanamo
James T. Phillips
The Mumbo-Jumbo War
Bill Glahn
RIAA Watch: Slumlords of the Internet
Walter A. Davis
Living in Death's Dream Kingdom
Adam Engel
Midnight's Inner Children
Poets' Basement
Stein, Guthrie and Albert
Book of the Weekend
It Became Necessary to Destroy the Planet in Order to Save It
by Khalil Bendib
September 5, 2003
Brian Cloughley
Bush's
Stacked Deck: Why Doesn't the Commander-in-Chief Visit the Wounded?
Col. Dan Smith
Iraq
as Black Hole
Phyllis Bennis
A Return
to the UN?
Dr. Susan Block
Exxxtreme Ashcroft
Dave Lindorff
Courage and the Democrats
Abe Bonowitz
Reflections on the "Matyrdom" of Paul Hill
Robert Fisk
We Were
Warned About This Chaos
Website of the Day
New York Comic Book Museum
September 4, 2003
Stan Goff
The Bush
Folly: Between Iraq and a Hard Place
John Ross
Mexico's
Hopes for Democracy Hit Dead-End
Harvey Wasserman
Bush to New Yorkers: Drop Dead
Adam Federman
McCain's
Grim Vision: Waging a War That's Already Been Lost
Aluf Benn
Sharon Saved from Threat of Peace
W. John Green
Colombia's Dirty War
Joanne Mariner
Truth,
Justice and Reconciliation in Latin America
Website of the Day
Califoracle
September 3, 2003
Virginia Tilley
Hyperpower
in a Sinkhole
Davey D
A Hip
Hop Perspective on the Cali Recall
Emrah Göker
Conscripting Turkey: Imperial Mercenaries Wanted
John Stanton
The US is a Power, But Not Super
Brian Cloughley
The
Pentagon's Bungled PsyOps Plan
Dan Bacher
Another Big Salmon Kill
Elaine Cassel
Prosecutors Weep' Ninth Circuit Overturns 127 Death Sentences
Uri Avnery
First
of All This Wall Must Fall
Website of the Day
Art Attack!
September 2, 2003
Robert Fisk
Bush's
Occupational Fantasies Lead Iraq Toward Civil War
Kurt Nimmo
Rouind Up the Usual Suspects: the Iman Ali Mosque Bombing
Robert Jensen / Rahul Mahajan
Iraqi Liberation, Bush Style
Elaine Cassel
Innocent But Guilty: When Prosecutors are Dead Wrong
Jason Leopold
Ghosts
in the Machines: the Business of Counting Votes
Dave Lindorff
Dems in 2004: Perfect Storm or Same Old Doldrums?
Paul de Rooij
Predictable
Propaganda: Four Monts of US Occupation
Website of the Day
Laughing Squid
August 30 / Sept. 1,
2003
Alexander Cockburn
Handmaiden
in Babylon: Annan, Vieiera de Mello and the Decline and Fall
of the UN
Saul Landau
Schwarzenegger
and Cuban Migration
Standard Schaefer
Who
Benefited from the Tech Bubble: an Interview with Michael Hudson
Gary Leupp
Mel Gibson's Christ on Trial
William S. Lind
Send the Neocons to Baghdad
Augustin Velloso
Aznar: Spain's Super Lackey
Jorge Mariscal
The Smearing of Cruz Bustamante
John Ross
A NAFTA for Energy? The US Looks to Suck Up Mexico's Power
Mickey Z.
War is a Racket: The Wisdom of Gen. Smedley Butler
Elaine Cassel
Ashcroft's Traveling Patriot Show Isn't Winning Many Converts
Stan Cox
Pirates of the Caribbean: the WTO Comes to Cancun
Tom and Judy Turnipseed
Take Back Your Time Day
Adam Engel
The Red Badge of Knowledge: a Review of TDY
Adam Engel
An Eye on Intelligence: an Interview with Douglas Valentine
Susan Davis
Northfork,
an Accidental Review
Nicholas Rowe
Dance
and the Occupation
Mark Zepezauer
Operation
Candor
Poets' Basement
Albert, Guthrie and Hamod
Website of the Weekend
Downhill
Battle
August 29, 2003
Lenni Brenner
God
and the Democratic Wing of the Democratic Party
Brian Cloughley
When in Doubt, Lie Your Head Off
Alice Slater
Bush Nuclear Policy is a Recipe for National Insecurity
David Krieger
What Victory?
Marjorie Cohn
The Thin Blue Line: How the US Occupation of Iraq Imperils International
Law
Richard Glen Boire
Saying Yes to Drugs!
Bister, Estrin and Jacobs
Howard Dean, the Progressive Anti-War Candidate? Some Vermonters
Give Their Views
Website of the Day
DirtyBush
August 28, 2003
Gilad Atzmon
The
Most Common Mistakes of Israelis
David Vest
Moore's
Monument: Cement Shoes for the Constitution
David Lindorff
Shooting Ali in the Back: Why the Pacification is Doomed
Chris Floyd
Cheap Thrills: Bush Lies to Push His War
Wayne Madsen
Restoring the Good, Old Term "Bum"
Elaine Cassel
Not Clueless in Chicago
Stan Goff
Nukes in the Dark
Tariq Ali
Occupied
Iraq Will Never Know Peace
Arnold Schwarzenegger
Behold, My Package
Website of the Day
Palestinian
Artists
August 27, 2003
Bruce Jackson
Little
Deaths: Hiding the Body Count in Iraq
John Feffer
Nuances and North Korea: Six Countries in Search of a Solution
Dave Riley
an Interview with Tariq Ali on the Iraq War
Lacey Phillabaum
Bush's Holy War in the Forests
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Website of the Day
The Dean Deception
August 26, 2003
Robert Fisk
Smearing the Dead
David Lindorff
The
Great Oil Gouge: Burning Up that Tax Rebate
Sarmad S. Ali
Baghdad is Deadlier Than Ever: the View of an Iraqi Coroner
Christopher Brauchli
Bush Administration Equates Medical Pot Smokers with Segregationists
Juliana Fredman
Collective Punishment on the West Bank: Dialysis, Checkpoints
and a Palestinian Madonna
Larry Siems
Ghosts of Regime Changes Past in Guatemala
Elaine Cassel
Onward, Ashcroft Soldiers!
Saul Landau
Bush:
a Modern Ahab or a Toy Action Figure?
Congratulations
to CounterPuncher Gilad Atzmon! BBC Names EXILE Top Jazz CD
August 25, 2003
Kurt Nimmo
Israeli Outlaws in America
David Bacon
In Iraq, Labor Protest is a Crime
Thomas P. Healy
The Govs Come to Indy: Corps Welcome; Citizens Locked Out
Norman Madarasz
In an Elephant's Whirl: the US/Canada Relationship After the
Iraq Invasion
Salvador Peralta
The Politics of Focus Groups
Jack McCarthy
Who Killed Jancita Eagle Deer?
Uri Avnery
A Drug
for the Addict
August 23/24, 2003
Forrest Hylton
Rumsfeld
Does Bogota
Robert Fisk
The Cemetery at Basra
Veteran Intelligence Professionals for
Sanity
Insults to Intelligence
Andrew C. Long
Exile on Bliss Street: The Terrorist Threat and the English Professor
Jeremy Bigwood
The Toxic War on Drugs: Monsanto Weedkiller Linked to Powerful
Fungus
Jeffrey St. Clair
Forest
or Against Us: the Bush Doctor Calls on Oregon
Cynthia McKinney
Bring the Troops Home, Now!
David Krieger
So Many Deaths, So Few Answers: Approaching the Second Anniversary
of 9/11
Julie Hilden
A Constitutional Right to be a Human Shield
Dave Lindorff
Marketplace
Medicine
Standard Schaefer
Unholy Trinity: Falwell's Anti-Abortion Attack on Health and
Free Speech
Catherine Dong
Kucinich and FirstEnergy
José Tirado
History Hurts: Why Let the Dems Repeat It?
Ron Jacobs
Springsteen's America
Gavin Keeney
The Infernal Machine
Adam Engel
A Fan's Notations
William Mandel
Five Great Indie Films
Walt Brasch
An American Frog Fable
Poets' Basement
Reiss, Kearney, Guthrie, Albert and Alam
Website of the Weekend
The Hutton Inquiry
August 22, 2003
Carole Harper
Post-Sandinista
Nicaragua
John Chuckman
George Will: the Marquis of Mendacity
Richard Thieme
Operation Paperclip Revisited
Chris Floyd
Dubya Indemnity: Bush Barons Beyond the Reach of Law?
Issam Nashashibi
Palestinians
and the Right of Return: a Rigged Survey
Mary Walworth
Other People's Kids
Ron Jacobs
The
Darkening Tunnel
Website of the Day
Current Energy
August 21, 2003
Robert Fisk
The US
Needs to Blame Anyone But Locals for UN Bombing
Virginia Tilley
The Quisling Policies of the UN in Iraq: Toward a Permanent War?
Rep. Henry Waxman
Bush Owes the Public Some Serious Answers on Iraq
Ben Terrall
War Crimes and Punishment in Indonesia: Rapes, Murders and Slaps
on the Wrists
Elaine Cassel
Brother John Ashcroft's Traveling Patriot Salvation Show
Christopher Brauchli
Getting Gouged by Banks
Marjorie Cohn
Sergio Vieira de Mello: Victim of Terrorism or US Policy in Iraq?
Vicente Navarro
Media
Double Standards: The Case of Mr. Aznar, Friend of Bush
Website of the Day
The Intelligence Squad
Hot Stories
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
William Blum
Myth
and Denial in the War on Terrorism
Standard Schaefer
Experimental Casinos: DARPA and the War Economy
Uzma
Aslam Khan
The Unbearably Grim Aftermath of War:
What America Says Does Not Go
Paul de Rooij
Arrogant
Propaganda
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click Here
for More Stories.
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September
8, 2003
The
Voting-Machine Industrial Complex
Demonstration
Democracy
By BOB FITRAKIS
During the Cold War, the CIA, in the words of
long-time agent Ralph McGehee, practiced the art of "deadly
deceits." Throughout the Third World, the secret spy agency
engaged in covert operations, blatant acts of economic destabilization
and wanton acts of mass violence.
In the 1970s, Idaho Senator Frank Church's
investigatory committee established that the CIA also engaged
in so-called "benign" operations including rigging
elections. The agency used the term "demonstration elections"--elections
that are superficially democratic but the results manipulated
by the CIA.
The Company did everything from stuffing
ballot boxes, creating political parties, merging smaller political
parties into large coalitions as in Uno in Nicaragua, paying
death squads to intimidate voters and the occasional use of computer
fraud. In the mid-80s, the Reagan and Bush administration used
a computer to help their "man in Panama" and CIA asset
Manuel Noriega gain electoral support; they backed dictator Ferdinand
Marcos when he brought in the pre-programmed election tapes in
the middle of an election to turn his sure defeat into a fixed
victory. The people of the Philippines didn't accept the computer
results as credible, but Reagan and Bush argued it was necessary
to preserve our "traditional" relationship with the
brutal dictator. Remember, his political opponent, Senator Aquino
was shot to death after disembarking from an airplane to run
against Marcos.
Now that we have the son of the former
CIA director as President, we should recognize that the more
reprehensible tactics of the CIA have been brought home with
the Bush dynasty. What George Bush's energy friends from Texas,
including Enron, did to the California economy through the massive
"mega-watt" laundering of energy should be viewed as
just another economic destabilization of an enemy regime.
In the Houston area, two Republican U.S.
representatives were declared winners in the last election until
it was discovered that the results were caused by a "faulty"
and Republican-friendly microchip. When the proper chip was installed
in the computerized voting machine the correct results were revealed:
two Democratic victories.
The 2000 Florida election included all
of the signs of a Third World CIA demonstration election. Bizarrely
constructed butterfly ballots, obscure third parties receiving
unexplained and unfathomable votes and heavily Jewish areas voting
unexpectedly for right-wing nationalistic anti-Semitic candidates
like Pat Buchanan. Remember that the exit polls predicted that
Gore would win. Only when the psych-ops operation at Fox News
changed that call did some people begin to believe in the myth
of the Bush victory.
What began as covert operations in the
Third World are now overt practices by the Bush administration
in the United States.
Take for example the August 14 letter
from Walden O'Dell, Chief Executive of Diebold, Inc., pledging
that he is "committed to helping Ohio deliver its votes
to the President next year." Diebold is one of three finalists
currently seeking $100 million contract with the state of Ohio
to provide computerized voting machines for the 2004 elections.
Diebold has worked on its computers with Battelle, a well-established
collaborator with the U.S. military and CIA. Computer scientists
from John Hopkins indicated that it would be relatively easy
to hack into and manipulate the computer voting results in these
machines.
The Seattle Times ran a feature story
on Diebold in their August 21 edition. Bev Harris, a Seattle-area
public relations company owner, recently uncovered "some
4000 files that included user manuals, source code and an executable
files for voting machines made by Diebold, a corporation based
in North Canton, Ohio."
Jason Leopold recently wrote a revealing
article on this issue that you can read here.
A detailed anaylsis of the flaws in Diebold's electronic voting
machines can be found at www.scoop.co.nz.
So, what do we have here other than the
obvious denial by mainstream America? We've got a CIA family,
their corporate supporters working with CIA contractors at Battelle
in order to bring flawed electronic voting to the U.S. with no
paper trails and questionable exit polls. Recall that Battelle
was also the contractor for Voter News Service (VNS) and failed
to produce exit polls for the 2002 Congressional election.
Factor in the reality that, out of 435
Congressional districts in the U.S., only 39, or 9%, are actually
competitive (when major party candidates won with less than 55%
of the vote). Under our political system, also, the vast majority
of Congressional seats are gerrymandered as "safe"
or noncompetitive districts by the party that controls the state
government. Eleven Texas Democrats are hiding out in New Mexico
in hopes of thwarting another round of Republican district-rigging
in their state. So little democracy is actually left.
Over the years, well-known and respected
political theorists and leaders have warned of the rise of authoritarianism.
In the 50s, U.S. President Eisenhower warned of the "military-industrial
complex." C. Wright Mills detailed the "power elite"--the
convergence of the top levels of the military, corporations and
governmental leaders during the Cold War. In the 60s, Herbert
Marcuse, who worked for the Office of Strategic Services (OSS)
in WWII, pointed out that Americans' inability to think critically
was making us a "one-dimensional" society with an authoritarian
culture. In the 70s, political scientists like William Domhoff
and Thomas Dye began to document empirically the undemocratic
and elitist nature of the U.S. political system. In the 80s,
Bertrand Gross warned of the rise of "friendly fascism."
In the 90s, William Grieder documented that the U.S. had the
best democracy money can buy and asked the question, "Who
will tell the people?"
But the most damning and lasting testimony
that foretold the rise of America's new authoritarian demonstration
democracy are still the massive volumes produced by the Church
Committee. Back in the late 70s, the Agency's shadowy hands were
all over the Idaho ABC Committee (Anybody but Church). Bush's
election coup of 2000, our first obvious CIA-style demonstration
election, gave the Bush clan and their friends in the CIA the
opportunity to field test whether or not you can blatantly steal
an election in the U.S. just like Panama or the Philippines.
The 9-11 attacks provided Bush, Jr. with the authority to push
U.S. society massively to the right and pursue militarism and
imperialism. It also allowed Bush to test market neo-Nazi-style
mass propaganda to the American public.
The voting machines are simply the final
nail in the people's coffin. The comatose electorate rests silently
as the hammer of authoritarianism falls.
Bob Fitrakis
is a professor at Columbus State Community College and an editor
of the Free Press.
Weekend
Edition Features for Sept. 1 / 7, 2003
Neve Gordon
Strategic
Abuse: Outsourcing Human Rights Violations
Gary Leupp
Shiites
Humiliate Bush
Saul Landau
Fidel
and The Prince
Denis Halliday
Of Sanctions and Bombings: the UN Failed the People of Iraq
John Feffer
Hexangonal Headache: N. Korea Talks Were a Disaster
Ron Jacobs
The Stage of History
M. Shahid Alam
Pakistan "Recognizes" Israel
Laura Carlson
The Militarization of the Americas
Elaine Cassel
The Forgotten Prisoners of Guantanamo
James T. Phillips
The Mumbo-Jumbo War
Bill Glahn
RIAA Watch: Slumlords of the Internet
Walter A. Davis
Living in Death's Dream Kingdom
Adam Engel
Midnight's Inner Children
Poets' Basement
Stein, Guthrie and Albert
Book of the Weekend
It Became Necessary to Destroy the Planet in Order to Save It
by Khalil Bendib
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