Now I don’t claim to be an expert on seismic activity, but there has been a series of events which led up to the 9.0 earthquake off the coast of Indonesia which can not be ignored. This all could be an enormous coincidence, but one must look at the information and choose for themselves whether there is anything to it.

On November 28th, one month ago, Reuters reported that during a 3 day span 169 whales and dolphins beached themselves
in Tasmania, an island of the southern coast of mainland Australia and in New Zealand. The cause for these beachings is not known, but Bob Brown, a senator in the Australian parliament, said “sound bombing” or seismic tests of ocean floors to test for oil and gas had been carried out near the sites of the Tasmanian beachings recently.

According to Jim Cummings of the Acoustic Ecology Institute, Seismic surveys utilizing airguns have been taking place in mineral-rich areas of the world’s oceans since 1968. Among the areas that have experienced the most intense survey activity are the North Sea, the Beaufort Sea (off Alaska’s North Slope), and the Gulf of Mexico; areas around Australia and South America are also current hot-spots of activity.

The impulses created by the release of air from arrays of up to 24 airguns create low frequency sound waves powerful enough to penetrate up to 40km below the seafloor. The “source level” of these sound waves is generally over 200dB (and often 230dB or more), roughly comparable to a sound of at least 140-170dB in air.

According to the Australian Conservation Foundation, these 200dB – 230dB shots from the airguns are fired every few seconds, from 10 meters below the surface, 24 hours a day, weather permitting.

These types of tests are known to affect whales and dolphins, whose acute hearing and use of sonar is very sensitive.

On December 24th there was a magnitude 8.1 earthquake more than 500 miles southeast of Tasmania near New Zealand, with a subsequent aftershock 6.1 a little later in the morning that same day.

On December 26th, the magnitude 9.0 earthquake struck at the intersection of the Australian tectonic plate and the India tectonic plate. This is the devastating tragedy that we have all heard about. The death toll of this horrific event nears 100,000 souls and is still rising!

On December 27th, 20 whales beached themselves 110 miles west of Hobart on the southern island state of Tasmania.

What is interesting about this is that the same place where the whale beachings have been taking place over the last 30 days is the same general area where the 8.1 Australian earthquake took place, and this is the same area where they are doing these seismic tests. Then 2 days after the Australian tectonic plate shifted, the 9.0 earthquake shook the coast of Indonesia.

A great deal of interest and seismic testing has been taking place in this area, as the government of Australia has given great tax breaks to encourage the oil exploration.

the folly of man is SO terribly funny..
problem is:
i just dont know when its OK to laugh out loud anymore.

lol:)

TV Networks Officially Refuse to Release Exit Poll Raw Data; Mainstream media finally displays true colors
by Gary Beckwith

For those watching the growing body of evidence concerning election fraud in our past presidential election, one question has remained: Why don’t we hear about this on the evening news?

As of yet it’s been hard to explain why the controversies in Ukraine make the headlines, but when similar problems are discovered at home, you have to scour the Internet to find the information.

It certainly isn’t for lack of events on which to report. Members of The House Judiciary Committee have been meeting regularly reviewing evidence of systematic voter suppression and voting machine tampering. A coalition of lawyers have filed a lawsuit against the Bush campaign citing deliberate manipulation of votes. Sworn testimony and signed affidavits have implicated companies, individuals, and a Florida congressman.

This developing story could eventually turn out to be more explosive than Watergate. But it’s rarely mentioned on the major networks, and when it is, there’s almost always a chiding remark about the “conspiracy nuts” and obscure “internet bloggers” who are behind it all.

The truth is, it’s not just conspiracy nuts, or bloggers, or even just Democratic supporters of Kerry. It’s a growing number of people who want to know what really happened on Novermber 2nd. It’s teachers, doctors, lawyers, all kinds of people who care about their Democracy just as much as the people in Ukraine do. And a recent survey showed that even without the media coverage, 20% of Americans believe the election was stolen.

For these people it’s been a difficult task to spread the word, and to tell the uninformed about the election problems. That’s because for many, if it’s not on the evening news, it isn’t happening. And as soon as you start telling someone about it, their first question is always, “Why aren’t I hearing about this on the news?”.

That’s a question we’d all like to see answered.

Until now, we’ve only been able to speculate. Perhaps the media is just tired of a long drawn out election season. Perhaps reporters don’t want to “stick their neck out” until more evidence is uncovered. Perhaps the reporters just haven’t seen the evidence that already exists. And one possibility of many is that the mainstream media has been purposely withholding this story from the American people. Emails have floated around, purportedly written by reporters, saying that they’ve been instructed not to write about the problems with the election or they’ll lose their job.

It’s hard to believe that the media would cover up something like this, considering that many reporters probably voted for Kerry and would want the people to know if the election was stolen. But there’s already enough of a story that it should be getting attention - the Congressional hearings, lawsuits filed, and sworn testimony are newsworthy of themselves, regardless of their outcomes. The lack of coverage of already existing events forces us to wonder why.

Attempts to get an explanation from the media have been met with cold and evasive responses. Local media outlets say it’s not their duty to report the national news. National media people say there’s not enough evidence yet, and they’re waiting to see how it pans out before they give it the spotlight. This begs the question: Do we wait until the Superbowl is over to report on it? Did they wait until the OJ trial was over to report on it?

But as the story develops, no one has been able to explain why the media is avoiding it like the plague.

Until today.

Yesterday Representative John Conyers called their bluff. He’s the one leading the investigation in the House of Representatives Judiciary Committee. After weeks of investigation he’s become more and more interested in seeing the raw data of the exit polls. Exit polls were a red flag in Ukraine, and many statistical experts have used the exit polls from our election to demonstrate a high likelihood that there was some funny business on November 2nd.

Like most people trying to get to the bottom of the matter, Mr. Conyers first came to the realization that the exit poll data has mysteriously not been released yet. We only have the preliminary exit poll data, which showed Kerry winning Ohio by several points. But about half way through election day, the networks started “mixing in” the “real” numbers with the exit poll data, and from that point on, the raw exit poll data has been locked up.

So, Conyers wrote to Warren Mitofsky, who owns the exit poll data, asking for the complete raw data, without the “real” numbers mixed in. Mitofsky balked, saying that the TV Networks actually own it and he was not able to release it without their permission. Conyers then took his inquiry to the leaders of ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, and Fox.

And they promptly laid an egg. Through a spokesperson who spoke on behalf of all the media companies together, they said they are still analyzing the data and don’t want to release it until they’re done.

The egg they laid is frustrating for those who want to know the truth and want to see the raw exit poll numbers. But it does answer one question for us once and for all. It finally shows us that the media is not avoiding the election controversy because they’re tired of the election, or they want more evidence. They are purposefully preventing the information from getting out and they are hiding the information they have.

Any objective investigator, or any concerned citizen for that matter, simply cannot accept their answer to Conyers. The media has had over 6 weeks to “analyze” the exit polls and releasing the numbers would not prevent them from continuing their analysis in any way.

The data is just that - raw data. By itself it is not obscured by “analysis.” The networks can evaluate and analyze it all they want, but they should also give others a chance to look at the same numbers and draw their own conclusions. There is absolutely no precedent or moral ground for withholding this information from the American public. The bottom line is that raw data does not need to be analyzed. Conyers and the American people are not asking for the analysis. We’re asking for the data.

We’re not talking about proprietary trade secrets, or a “secret source” that they’re trying to protect. We’re talking about information about us, the American people who voted on Election Day. It’s like having your doctor refuse to let you see your own medical records.

The media is supposed to report the facts, whatever they are, not withhold them. When the media stops reporting and starts withholding, it ceases to be the media.

While it’s frustrating that we still can’t see the exit polls, let’s thank the media for at least resolving one thing for us today. Now we know why we don’t see stories about the election on the evening news. Their refusal to release the exit polls shows us categorically that there is a concerted effort on behalf of the major media outlets to consciously prevent the information from getting out. It’s not simple oversight, and it’s not because they don’t think it’s newsworthy. Now we know. They are withholding information from us.

Now that that’s been resolved, we can move on to the next question: What are they hiding, and why?

or maybe i should ask: “when do we get a LEADER?”

saudi arabian anti-royal activist
was so effective fucking with the saudi royal family
using fax machines
that they froze his assets!
by
declaring him a terrorist.

sounds like
the
good ‘ole
U.S.A.

being ,first and foremost, a patriotic American..
our “savior” must be beside himself today..

WHY?..you may ask..
the controversy over partial birth abortion?
the commercialization of xmas?
NO and NO
Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez has inked a deal
giving China new and extended access to Venezuelas oil reserves
further eroding the “American Dream” of petroleum hegemony in the 21st century.
this news following Novembers meetings between Russias Vladimir Putin and Chavez
discussing?
yup..you guessed it..
the merger of those countries two giant oil industries.
can you hear the music?
(listen)
“bye..bye..
miss american pie
drove the Bronco
down to Arco
but the pumps were all dry
the good ‘ole boys were either drunk or all high
except in Mosul…
where they all just die..
all over Iraq
there.. they all just die.”

sorry Jim!

(p.s. Santa..all i want for Christmas is my tank filled please!)

A hero of authentic journalism 1945-2004

Gary Webb, the Pulitzer prize-winning reporter who broke the story of the CIA’s involvement in the importation of cocaine into the U.S., died Friday, reportedly from a self-inflicted gunshot to the head.

It was a tragic end to a brilliant, and tragic, career.

Webb was something of a living legend. The quiet, generous reporter was the first to document what many had been alleging for years – that the CIA aided the smuggling of large quantities of cocaine into the U.S. in an effort to illegally fund the Nicaraguan Contras. The shipments, Webb discovered, helped fuel the crack epidemic that ravaged America’s inner-cities in the mid-80s.

Webb, it seems, was not spared from damage, himself…

In August 1996, the San Jose Mercury News published Webb’s 20,000 word, three-part series entitled
Dark Alliance. It was also published on the paper’s web site – a groundbreaking moment in online journalism. With slick graphics, and links to scores of original documents and phone intercepts, the articles detailed the nexus between a California coke kingpin, CIA officials and assets and the Nicaraguan Contra army, whose funding had been cut off by an act of Congress in the mid-80s. Webb found evidence that the CIA had direct contact with the smugglers, knew the proceeds were going to fund the murderous Contras, and tried to cover it up when other law enforcement agencies began investigating. The most troubling aspect to the story was that the central player was no ordinary drug lord. He was the man many credit for popularizing crack, the highly addictive, smoke-able form of cocaine.

For many African-Americans, the story smacked of a grand conspiracy to destroy the black community. There were rallies in Watts and Compton, and heated discussions on black media across the country. Members of the Congressional Black Caucus called for a federal investigation. On November 15, 1996, CIA director John Deutch appeared at Locke High School in South Central Los Angeles to personally answer the allegations. When a former LAPD detective named Michael Ruppert confronted him with what he said was evidence that the CIA was moving coke into L.A., the crowd went crazy. It was a PR disaster. Deutch appeared frazzled and, frankly, like he was hiding something.

But it was Webb who found himself on the ropes. Ironically, the CIA did little to publicly counter his allegations. Instead, the media did its dirty work for them, most notably the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post.

Jeff Cohen, of Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), writes:

Webb’s series focused heavily on Oscar Danilo Blandon, a cocaine importer and federal informant, who once testified in federal court that “whatever we were running in L.A., the profit was going to the Contra revolution.” Blandon further testified that Colonel Enrique Bermudez, a CIA asset who led the Contra army against Nicaragua’s leftwing Sandinista government, knew the funds were from drug running. (Bermudez was a colonel during the Somoza dictatorship in Nicaragua.)

Webb reported that U.S. law enforcement agents complained that the CIA had squelched drug probes of Blandon and his partner Norwin Meneses in the name of “national security.” Blandon’s drugs flowed into L.A. and elsewhere thanks to the legendary “Freeway” Ricky Donnell Ross, a supplier of crack to the Crips and Bloods gangs.

The [Washingtion] Post devoted much ink to exposing what Webb readily acknowledged—that while he could document Contra links to cocaine importing, he was not able to identify specific CIA officials who knew of the drug flow. The ferocity of the attack on Webb led the Post’s ombudsman to note that the three national newspapers “showed more passion for sniffing out the flaws” in the Webb series than for probing the important issue Webb had raised: U.S. government relations with drug smuggling.

The L.A. Times’ anti-Webb package was curious for its handling of Freeway Ricky Ross, the dealer Webb had authoritatively linked to Contra-funder Blandon. Two years before Webb’s revelations, the Times had reported: “If there was a criminal mastermind behind crack’s decade-long reign, if there was one outlaw capitalist most responsible for flooding Los Angeles’ streets with mass-marketed cocaine, his name was Freeway Rick.” In a profile of Ross headlined “Deposed King of Crack,” the Times went on and on about “South-Central’s first millionaire crack lord” and how Ross’ “coast to coast conglomerate was selling more than $550,000 rocks a day, a staggering turnover that put the drug within reach of anyone with a few dollars.”

But two months after Webb’s series linked Ricky Ross to Contra cocaine, the L.A. Times told a totally different story, now seeking to minimize Ross’s role in the crack epidemic: Ross was just one of many “interchangeable characters”—“dwarfed” by other dealers. The reporter who’d written the 1994 Ross profile was the one called on to write the front-page 1996 critique of Webb; media critic Norman Solomon noted that it “reads like a show-trial recantation.”

[Not all big-time journalists turned on Webb, Charles Bowden’s Esquire magazine profile of Webb entitled, The Pariah, found ample evidence to back up Dark Alliance’s most controversial assertions.]

For Webb, the most confounding part of the whole affair was that he ended up being accused of making allegations he never made – specifically that the CIA-crack connection was part of a larger, genocidal plot to kill off black people. Webb never made that claim – though he noted in his book, Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion, the inherent racism in a covert policy that reaped so much destruction on such a vulnerable segment of society.

He wrote, “Dark Alliance does not propound a conspiracy theory; there is nothing theoretical about history. In this case, it is undeniable that a wildly successful conspiracy to import cocaine existed for many years, and that innumerable American citizens—most of them poor and black—paid an enormous price as a result. This book was written for them, so that they may know upon what altars their communities were sacrificed.”

The fact is by 1996 it was common knowledge in the so-called alternative media that there were connections between the Contras, the Agency and drugs. In 1988, a Senate subcommittee investigation headed by Sen. John Kerry concluded the links were there. Oliver North’s own diary noted, “$14 million to buy arms for the Contras came from drugs.” [See North documents here]

Nevertheless, Webb’s editors at the Mercury News hung him out to dry, without ever providing any evidence that any of his reporting was wrong. He was reassigned, then forced out. Webb went on to work as an investigator for the state of California, penning a report on racial profiling by state police. More recently, he landed a reporting job at a Sacramento newspaper.

He will be missed.

insufficient equipment and shortages- in general
–have outbound troops balking at rumsfeld visit

more here

“some one got them a damageplan…a damageplan for real”

In stunning revelations set to rock the vote from Tallahassee to Capitol Hill
– and perhaps even a bit further up Pennsylvania Avenue
— a Florida computer programmer has now made remarkable claims in a detailed sworn affidavit, signed this morning
The programmer claims that he designed and built a “vote rigging” software program
at the behest of then Florida Congressman, now U.S. Congressman, Republican Tom Feeney of Florida’s 24th Congressional District.
Clint Curtis, 46, claims that he built the software for Feeney in 2000 while working at a sofware design and engineering company in Oviedo, Florida (Feeney’s home district).

Curtis, in his affidavit, says that as technical advisor and programmer at Yang Enterprises , Inc. (YEI) he was present at company meetings where Feeney was present “on at least a dozen occasions”.

Feeney, who had run in 1994 as Jeb Bush’s running-mate in his initial unsuccessful bid for Florida Governor, was serving as both corporate counsel and registered lobbyist for YEI during the period that Curtis worked at the company. Feeney was also concurrently serving as a Florida state congressman while performing those services for YEI. Feeney would eventually become Speaker of the Florida House before being elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 2002. He is now a member of the U.S. House Judiciary Committee.
At an October 2000 meeting with Feeney, according to the affidavit and BRAD BLOG interviews with Curtis over the past three days, Feeney inquired whether the company could build a “vote fraud software prototype”.

At least three YEI employees are said to have been present at that meeting; Curtis, company owner, Mrs. Li Woan Yang, and her executive secretary, Mike Cohen. Two other YEI employees may have come in and out at different points of the meeting according to Curtis.

Curtis says that Feeney “was very specific in the design and specifications required for this program.”

“He detailed, in his own words, that; (a) the program needed to be touch-screen capable (b) the user should be able to trigger the program without any additional equipment (c) the programming to accomplish this needed to stay hidden even if the source code was inspected.”

Though there was no problem with the first two requirements, Curtis explained to the Congressman that it would be “virtually impossible to hide such code written to change the voting results if anyone is able to review the uncompiled source code”

Nonetheless, he was asked at the meeting by Mrs. Yang to build the prototype anyway.

Curtis, “a life-long Republican” at the time, claims that it was his initial belief that Feeney’s interest was in trying to stop Democrats from using “such a program to steal an election”. Curtis had assumed that Feeney, “wanted to be able to detect and prevent that if it occurred.”

Upon delivery of the software design and documentation on CD to Mrs. Yang, Curtis again explained to her that it would be impossible to hide routines created to manipulate the vote if anybody would be able to inspect the precompiled source code.

Mrs. Yang then told him, “You don’t understand, in order to get the contract we have to hide the manipulation in the source code. This program is needed to control the vote in South Florida.” [emphasis in affidavit]

Mrs. Yang then took the CD containing the software from Curtis, reportedly for later delivery to Feeney.

In other meetings with Feeny prior to the 2000 elections, it became clear to Curtis that Feeney had plans to suppress the vote in strong Democratic precincts. In the affidavit, Curtis claims that in those meetings Feeney had “bragged that he had already implemented ‘exclusion lists’ to reduce the ‘black vote’.” Feeney also mentioned that “proper placement of police patrols could further reduce the black vote by as much as 25%.”
Curtis says that he submitted his resignation to YEI effective December 2000, but stayed on until they had found someone to replace him in February of 2001. He eventually became employed by the Florida Dept. of Transportation (FDOT) after leaving YEI.

But the scandals didn’t stop there.

In May of 2001, while at FDOT, Curtis and another FDOT employee, Mavis Georgalis, discovered and then reported several allegations to the Inspector General at FDOT concerning over-billing by YEI — who had been an FDOT contractor — and software that was never delivered by the company. Allegations also included the employment of a suspected illegal alien, Mr. Hai Lin Nee, who worked as YEI’s “quality control” manager.

Both Curtis and Georgalis were reportedly harassed after filing their complaints about malfeasance at YEI and pressure mounted on the FDOT — purportedly from the powerful Feeney who was still working with YEI — to have them both fired.

In November 2001, after Curtis filed his complaints at FDOT, both he and Georgalis’ were subsequently sued by YEI “in retaliation” for their complaints against the company. The charge was “theft of intellectual property”, which Curtis has catagorized as “ridiculous” in interviews, because the “intellectual property” in question was, in fact, software that FDOT had long ago paid YEI to develop for them.

YEI was represented in the lawsuit by Congressman Feeney’s law firm.

When the two had sought help from FDOT in fighting YEI’s suit against them, they were told that FDOT couldn’t help them because FDOT had not been named in the suit.

After several rounds of court battles, Georgalis was finally successful in having FDOT added to the suit as a third co-defendant. The suit was originally filed in Seminole County, but moved to Leon County upon the addition of FDOT.

In April of 2002 — on the very same day — Curtis and Georgalis were both fired by FDOT without explanation.

The Daytona Beach News-Journal reported extensively in 2002 on the case. They reported at the time that Curtis had written to the Inspector General at FDOT to inquire why no investigation had yet been made into YEI. As well, Curtis had contacted the Florida Bar, since Feeney was a member, to inform them that “Feeney has used his position to promote the profits of Yang Enterprises, from whom he received compensation under the guise of lobbyist and attorney.”

According to The Orlando Sentinel in 2001, of 160 Florida congressmen, Feeney was the only known registered lobbyist. He would later be cleared of all ethics violations brought against him in the Florida house on these matters by the Ethics Committee which included four Republicans appointed to the committee by Feeney. Curtis was never interviewed by the Ethics Committee concerning his allegations.

After Curtis and Georgalis were fired by FDOT, each attempted to file “Whistleblower Suits” in the state of Florida. Georgalis’ suit was successful and FDOT was eventually ordered, after lengthy court battles, to reinstate her with full back-pay by the circuit court. Curtis’ suit was not successful due to having missed the filing deadline for the suit.

That suit, filed over three years ago, is still pending. The reason, explained Curtis, is that YEI has since avoided all defendants attempts to depose company employees in the case.

By May of 2002, the FDOT had finally taken up the investigation into malfeasance by YEI.

In one particularly chilling paragraph in the affidavit, Curtis explains what became of Raymond Lemme, the inspector at FDOT who was said to be pursing the allegations against YEI, Tom Feeney and the other reported matters:

“[I]n June of 2003, he told me that he had tracked the corruption ‘all the way to the top’ and that the story would break in the next few weeks and I would be satisfied with the results. A few weeks later, on July 1st, Mr. Lemme was found dead with his arm slashed in a hotel room in Valdosta, Georgia.”

Mr. Hai Lin Nee, “the ilegal alien” who had worked at YEI and was reported by Curtis, was arrested in March of 2004 on espionage charges which included “shipping radar guidance system chips for Hellfire Anti-Tank Missiles to a company in Communist China.”

Curtis discussed in detail, during our interviews, Mr. Nee having placed “wiretapping modules” into software code created by the company. The secret “wiretapping modules”, Curtis claims, were to download information from programs built by YEI for contractors, and then either copy or send that information via Email back to YEI. Such software, Curtis claims, was created for companies such as NASA with whom YEI held substantial contracts.

According to both the Curtis affidavit and email dated November 22, 2004, YEI is currently under investigation by the FBI.

That information was sent to Curtis after he had attempted on several occassions to notify law enforcement authorities of his seemingly remarkable story of espionage, possible vote tampering and other ethical concerns.

In July of this year, in an email we’ve reviewed which purports to be from a current YEI employee whose name we are withholding, Curtis was sent the following message in regard to a book that the employee had learned Curtis was working on:

—-They know about the book. You should not have sent it to a bush supporter. They are going crazy…like they weren’t after you already.

So I get to warn you AGAIN. They will do everything thwey [sic] can to keep it from getting published. They are also going to try to take you out again. Don’t be alone. They specifically want to limit casualities to just you. As long as they can’t catch you alone they won’t touch you. You are such a loser……..

Moi—–

In what he describes as “an attempt to get this story out there”, Curtis told part of the tale on a website,
www.justaflyonthewall.com where he has changed the names of some of the specific parties involved. (e.g. “Wong” is substituted for “Yang” on the site)

Additional charges by Curtis also include that databases and information were routinely sent by Mrs. Yang to her brother in China who, Yang had told Curtis on one occasion, had previously been deported for “being a spy”.

Curtis’ affidavit is being turned over this afternoon to staffers at the U.S. House Judiciary Committee. An investigation into Curtis’ story is pending.

While Madsen’s article was independently researched and reported — and offers some very good detail in relation to Curtis, YEI, FDOT and Feeney, much of which that we can confirm — he then ties those stories to a much grander CIA/Bush family conspiracy.

While we have looked somewhat cursorily over the last several weeks into some of the larger matters which Madsen discusses, and has been reporting on for some time, we cannot confirm any of those grander details as playing any part in this particular story.

Frankly, we find the information related in Curtis’ sworn affidavit, and via our interviews with him and others directly related to his story to be rather stunning as is, and we will stand by our reporting of those matters at this time.

Given the importance of the many allegations in his story if they are true — and we have so far been unable to identify any major holes or discrepancies in his information — we thought it necessary to release the full details contained in this sworn affidavit immediately so that Curtis’ story and the explosive allegations contained therein could be more accurately assessed.

DEVELOPING…HARD…

“Never again!” says the slogan in an email I received from an activist friend. “Never again will we allow a stolen election in the USA!”

But how are we going to stop it?

The major American political parties have an answer - it’s already working for them in the Ukraine - but it’s very much a sword that can cut two ways.

Interestingly, it was first used in the US.

On December 4, 2000, in time to change the outcome of the Electoral College vote, Greg Palast published an article in Salon.com, made into a BBC television documentary shortly thereafter, that laid out solid evidence of massive electoral fraud in Florida, perpetrated against the majority-Democratic-voting African American community by Katherine Harris and Jeb Bush. Without this fraud, Gore would have easily carried the state.

Even more glaring, a consortium of news organizations found and reported on the front page of The New York Times (and other papers) on 12 September 2001, that in Florida “…a statewide recount — could have produced enough votes to tilt the election his [Gore’s] way, no matter what standard was chosen to judge voter intent.” (The Times apparently chose to bury this fact - that Gore actually won the 2000 election - in the 15th paragraph and behind a misleading headline because the nation had been attacked on 9/11 the day before.)

Not only was the election of 2000 stolen by the Bush brothers, but it was proven by the later statewide recount that - even after Jeb’s knocking thousands of African Americans off the rolls - Gore still would have won Florida had all the votes been counted.

This was outrageous news, enough to bring people into the streets. And there were demonstrations - loud and angry ones. But they were round-the-clock in front of Al Gore’s VP residence in Washington DC (shouting with bullhorns “Get out of Dick Cheney’s house!”), outside (and often within) vote-counting headquarters’ in Florida, and entirely composed of Republicans.

Where were the protesting Democrats? Other than those in a few of Florida’s African American communities and the Congressional Black Caucus, they were largely invisible. If Democrats and progressives had taken to the streets in mass numbers nationwide that November and December, it’s entirely probable that the Supreme Court would have backed off and allowed a statewide recount to continue, and Al Gore would have been president for the past four years, instead of George W. Bush.

Ironically, the Democratic Party knows how to highlight election fraud and start national movements to bring down administrations that try to steal elections. A Party-affiliated group has helped do it four times in the past four years.

But not in Ohio, Florida, or anywhere else in the USA.

Instead, the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (Madeleine K. Albright, Chairman) has joined up with a similar organization affiliated with the Republican Party (the International Republican Institute - John McCain, Chairman), other NGOs, and US government agencies to support the use of exit polls and statistical analyses to challenge national elections in Ukraine, Serbia, Belarus, and the former Soviet republic of Georgia.

In three of those four nations they succeeded in not only mounting a national challenge, but in reversing the outcomes of elections.

The election reversals were accomplished by funding local groups - most made up of a core of activists and college students - who worked to topple regimes that had rigged their own re-elections.

As Ian Traynor - one of the finest investigative reporters working in the world today - notes in a 26 November 2004 article in The Guardian titled “US Campaign Behind the Turmoil in Kiev,” “the campaign is an American creation, a sophisticated and brilliantly conceived exercise in western branding and mass marketing that, in four countries in four years, has been used to try to salvage rigged elections and topple unsavory regimes.”

The campaign to unseat corrupt regimes is funded by groups affiliated with both the Democratic and Republican parties, Traynor notes, as well as the US State Department, the US Agency for International Development, and non-governmental organizations including George Soros’s Open Society Institute and the late Eleanor Roosevelt’s organization Freedom House (a group whose board of directors is now chaired by the notorious former CIA director R. James Woolsey).

Woolsey’s participation aside, Traynor’s report implies that this coalition of political, governmental, and philanthropic groups is more interested in promoting the will of the local people than in propping up regimes friendly to the US. One of the four candidates they’ve supported in the past four years was even openly anti-US (Kostunica in Serbia). The common denominator among the nations targeted is that in all four there was widespread evidence the regimes in power were planning to steal the elections.

One of the keys to making the program work is tight organization and planning before the election begins. The resistance movement is carefully branded with a single-phrase slogan such as “He’s Finished” or “High Time,” and an uncomplicated logo is designed - like the fist used in Serbia or the ticking clock used in Ukraine - that’s easily reproduced on posters and stencil-spray-painted in public places.

On Election Day, Traynor reports, the apparatus springs into action. Their main tool is a nationwide set of exit polls along with election observers supplied by credible organizations like the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE - which monitored the 2004 US elections and raised questions about non-transparent electronic voting machines). The exit poll results are released to the public before the official results, putting the regime in power in the difficult position of being reactive rather than proactive in declaring victory.

Because in each of these nations the media - radio, TV, and newspapers - are either controlled by, beholden to, or owned by supporters of the regime in power, the disparity between the exit polls and the official election result is trumpeted through non-traditional media like the internet, local activist groups, and mass rallies, until a critical mass is achieved, forcing the mainstream (regime-friendly) media to cover the story.

At the same time, nations who claim the ideal of free, fair, and transparent elections are encouraged to speak out, further inflaming the issue. This is no accident, of course - Traynor reports that the US government itself invested over $44 million in challenging the results of the Serbian election, and is estimated to have put $14 million into supporting groups challenging the recent Ukrainian election.

Thus, we have the irony of US Secretary of State Colin Powell saying of the Ukrainian election: “We have been following developments very closely and are deeply disturbed by the extensive and credible reports of fraud in the election. … We call for a full review of the conduct of the election and the tallying of election results.”

In many ways, such campaigns are exactly what Republicans did in 2000, when they organized an airlift of aides from Tom DeLay’s office in Washington DC to riot in the Florida offices where votes were being recounted. That Ukraine-like guerilla theater led to national media coverage and the intervention of the US Supreme Court. The theater of protest - most Americans thought the angry people banging on the vote-counting windows were Floridians and didn’t realize most had been flown in from Washington DC - became its own story and helped forge public pressure to shut down the Gore campaign’s attempt to determine the real Florida count. It was also so effective at grabbing the headlines that it eclipsed the Greg Palast’s scoop showing criminal and widespread disenfranchisement of African Americans in Florida.

Here we are again, in 2004, with another dubious election.

And, although evidence of fraud and vote rigging in the 2004 US election is mounting today, there was no widespread mobilization like the ones we encouraged in other nations or saw in Florida in 2000. Thus, it’s extremely unlikely national institutions like the mainstream media, Congress, or the Supreme Court will seriously challenge or even expose to the general public the many deficiencies of this election.

Because the Democratic party and progressive activists failed to plan a PR response to election-rigging in Florida and Ohio (among other states), such efforts (and some damning and shocking new revelations) are now being carried in “new media” like the internet by folks like Bev Harris, Greg Palast, and Bob Fitrakis, and in foreign media like New Zealand’s “The Scoop”, and the BBC.

Many Democrats and progressives believe now is the time for national advocacy groups to organize an effort similar to the one our nation has been promulgating in the former Soviet states and the Republicans used in Florida in 2000. The blueprint is laid out in Ian Traynor’s article in The Guardian at www.guardian.co.uk/ukraine/story/0,15569,1360236,00.html, and the template is both simple, straightforward, and already demonstrated to work.

The next national elections will be held in the United States in 2006, and there’s a lesson for us in the 1972 midterm elections.

Although Richard Nixon won a landslide re-election that year, carrying every state except Massachusetts, he was out of office within 18 months because the House and Senate were in Democratic hands and Senator Sam Irvin was able to proceed with an investigation of Nixon’s crimes while in office. Opposition control of Congress is about the only way to hold a president accountable: Republican control of Congress led to the impeachments of Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton. (And when a President appoints his own attorney as the nation’s head prosecutor - Attorney General - it becomes virtually impossible to prosecute the President outside of the House or Senate.)

Thus, the first key to returning America to multiparty rule and re-opening the political process will be in electing progressive Democrats (and Independents like Vermont’s Bernie Sanders) to the US House and Senate in 2006.

But first we must prepare to take on a Republican machine that has already corrupted the electoral process in the past three elections, and knows how to “pull a Ukraine” in any state at any time with single a phone call to Jim Baker or Tom DeLay. In a preemptory move, Republicans are now calling for an end to exit polls in the USA because, as RNC Chairman and former Enron lobbyist Ed Gillespie noted on November 4th, “In 2000 the exit data was wrong on Election Day, in 2002 the exit returns were wrong on Election Day, and in 2004, the exit data were wrong on Election Day - all three times, by the way, in a way that skewed against Republicans and had a dispiriting effect on Republican voters across the country.”

Each of those three “skewed” elections was an opportunity for national mobilization.

In 2000 it could have been to highlight the removal from voting rolls in Florida of tens of thousands of African American Democrats. The 2002 election could have revealed the “trade secret” software running non-paper-trail voting machines in Georgia that defied the polls and threw out Max Cleland (helping establish Republican control of the Senate in 2002). And the 2004 election could have again raised questions about voting machines, Florida purge rolls moving to other states, dirty tricks (phone calls to registered Democrats telling them their polling places had changed, etc.), and, as Fitrakis has documented, disclosed patterns of precinct and machine placements in Ohio (and other states) that caused thousands - perhaps hundreds of thousands - of Ohio Kerry voters to give up and leave 10+ hour lines because they had to go to work or pick kids up from school.

Some will suggest this is a dangerous strategy because Republicans will simply organize their own exit polls, PR machine, and national mobilization. To them, I’d point out that this is already happening.

Republicans are getting ready, and have known since 2000 how well this can work in America. Without a countervailing grass-roots but national response, we’ll continue to move toward a Stalinist type of state, with single-party rule, “purges” of the intelligence and law enforcement communities, increasing limits on civil liberties, and widespread cynicism about politics leading to increasing nonparticipation in the process. .

As generations of activists have taught us, we can’t wait around for politicians to fix a corrupted political system. It’s going to take - as the Ukrainians are now showing us - involved and active citizens to make this happen, and that requires an organizational framework to cut through the political and media fog.

And now is the time to begin.