The culture of war goes quietly about its business. Last week, Congress fed it another $162 billion, perhaps with some nostalgia: This was the final war-funding request of the Bush administration, the lame-duck, despised status of which making absolutely no difference in the dispatch with which the money was delivered.

Yes, there was some protest - 155 nay votes on the funding amendment, to 268 yea - and we can take a little wan heart in this trend, but the protest strikes me as largely symbolic. I fear that while the anti-war-funding contingent in Congress may want to be on record as morally correct, it understands that the war is inevitable and cannot be opposed in some structural and career-endangering way.

This was evinced a few weeks ago by the cryptic words of House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey (D-Wis.), who, as reported on CQ.com, said that he "opposes giving any more funding for the war but felt he had a professional obligation to produce a bill that can pass."

The important message I have for this constituency, which I took away with renewed clarity and fervor from the conference I attended last weekend - "Building a Culture of Peace in the Heartland" - is that knowing what we're against is not enough, and at best will generate the occasional symbolic "nay" vote on some inevitable piece of war legislation.

This was the Midwest regional gathering of an organization called the Peace Alliance, which was established four years ago to promote and lobby for what is currently known as HR 808, the House legislation that would establish a Cabinet-level Department of Peace and Nonviolence; it was first introduced by Dennis Kucinich in 2001 and currently has about 60 co-sponsors.

I whole-heartedly support this legislation, which among much else would establish a peace academy and coordinate and fund the best of the violence-prevention and restorative-justice/healing programs that are proliferating around the country, because it would bring a level of peace consciousness to our government that is currently absent. The legislation, I believe, would also help these disparate groups understand that each is part of a larger whole - a dawning global culture of peace.

Peace Alliance co-founder Marianne Williamson, who addressed the conference, illustrated the difference between being "against" (anti-war) and "for" (pro-peace) by talking about the two most significant documents of the nation's founding. "The Declaration of Independence," she noted, "states, 'we are not that' - a monarchy, where power is concentrated in the hands of a few. The Constitution states, 'We are this.' You need both," she said. "One is not enough."

Furthermore, unlike the Declaration of Independence, which denotes a single historic stance, the Constitution has been evolving for 200 years, adjusting to the contours of current events but more importantly expanding its protective reach as the nation has grown in awareness.

A culture of peace may one day simply be called a culture of common sense, but right now it's a radical leap in consciousness beyond the fear that continually fuels the culture of war and violence - the culture of us vs. them - which has exacted from the human race, over the last seven millennia or so, an ever-increasing share of its material and spiritual treasure and has set us on what Williamson called a "line of probability" that will culminate one day in environmental or nuclear catastrophe.

"It is the 11th hour, but it's not 11:59 quite yet," Williamson said. "There is still time."

Such was the urgency of this conference - an urgency, you might say, of joy and creativity. This is "deep democracy," she said. "Deep humanitarianism. Every time you teach a child to read you are a peace activist. The opposite of war is creation."

HR 808, and the subsequent numbers by which it will be known as it is reintroduced in congressional session after congressional session for years if not decades to come, is a small but crucial component of this paradigm shift in human consciousness.

I'm positive that one day we'll figure it out: Every dollar spent on human betterment and nonviolent conflict resolution yields returns that are almost incalculable. Every billion poured into the chasm of war is lost forever.

- - ------------------------------------------

Robert Koehler, an award-winning, Chicago-based journalist, is an editor at Tribune Media Services and nationally syndicated writer. You can respond to this column at bkoehler@tribune.com or visit his Web site at commonwonders.com.

© 2008 Tribune Media Services, Inc.

Funny how we can't seem to hear the truth until it's uttered by a professional liar.

Thus Scott McClellan, who was George Bush's press secretary for three years, beginning shortly after we invaded Iraq — the very Scott McClellan who personified lock-step obedience to the cause — has acquired sudden street cred as Someone To Listen To, as he tells us what we already know. Our society may not convene truth commissions, but it does publish tell-all books by ex-aides of the powerful, which feed us pieces of truth in the form of scandal.

McClellan has given the country a bit more (unwanted, embarrassing) self-awareness than it had a week ago, prior to the release and subsequent media splash of "What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception." His book raises a lot of questions, but only one that matters: Now what?

In this fleeting moment, while McClellan's gift of unavoidable awareness still shimmers in the consciousness of popular culture, I want to urge that we peer into the future at the same time that we squirm with uneasiness about the recent past.

Thanks to the truth window that McClellan opened, we now know, for instance, that: "The press corps was under enormous pressure from corporate executives, frankly, to make sure that this was a war presented in a way that was consistent with the patriotic fever in the nation and the president's high approval ratings," according to Jessica Yellin, who was an MSNBC reporter in 2003.

And: There was word from above to "really squash any dissent," according to Katie Couric, a co-host of NBC's "Today" when the war began, who said, "I think it's one of the most embarrassing chapters in American journalism."

And just in case we've forgotten, Jeff Cohen, who was then senior producer of Phil Donahue's primetime show on MSNBC, reminds us that the show, the network's most-watched program, was canceled three weeks before the war started. "Trust me: Too much skepticism over war claims was a punishable offense," he wrote recently for TruthOut. "I and all other Donahue producers were repeatedly ordered by top management to book panels that favored the pro-invasion side. I watched a fellow producer get chewed out for booking a 50-50 show."

And so a C-student's fantasy war was given a free pass through the media, which formed itself with interlocking groupthink into the world's most formidable PR agency — and the already broken nation of Iraq was bombed into civil war. A million dead. Four million displaced. Three trillion dollars wasted.

Now what?

Keith Olbermann, who interviewed McClellan last week, asked the question we all should be asking: "Scott, are they doing that now about Iran?"

"I certainly hope that that is not the case," McClellan said. "But . . . I don't know."

It could happen again. War with Iran is not off the table. It could happen before the year is out, before the next president takes office. We now know, as the guilty secrets about the Iraq war trickle out, that the corporate media has a systemic flaw, a cowardly predilection for what was once called yellow journalism but should probably simply be called another form of war profiteering.

McClellan's book could have more than just titillation value if we let it, if we demand more than patriotism-themed infotainment from our news purveyors. In the perfect storm of "media-crity" that followed 9/11, the major news organizations abetted a crime against humanity.

The war on terror is in fact far more than a small president's pipedream of historic greatness. In that it is unwinnable — with a premise no less preposterous than the eradication of evil — it is meant to be a permanent war. This is the present situation and the present danger.

Now what? Let the media begin redeeming themselves by telling the truth about it — by rediscovering their intelligence and courage

- - -

Robert Koehler, an award-winning, Chicago-based journalist, is an editor at Tribune Media Services and nationally syndicated writer. You can respond to this column at bkoehler@tribune.com or visit his Web site at commonwonders.com.

© 2008 Tribune Media Services, Inc.

The political sentiments now storming America in the form of support for Barack Obama are a mighty wind indeed. For those trying to say this is all just hot air, it's time to point out that so is a windstorm. And storms have a function, in nature and in us. They blow away everything not built on a firm foundation, and make room for a lot of new growth.

I'm a boomer, so I know this feeling. We have been here before. We knew what Bob Dylan meant when he sang, "Something's going on here, but you don't know what it is....Do you, Mr. Jones?" And something is going on again. What we're experiencing here is a new conversation– something qualitatively different than the promises of effective problem-solving that pass for an excitement factor in his opponent's campaign.

A great national leader does not speak just to circumstances; he arouses a nation's soul. The idea that Obama could not only arouse our soul but also handle our circumstances (has he not handled a pretty formidable circumstance already, giving her such a run for her money?) seems far more probable to me than that Hillary could not only handle our circumstances but also arouse our soul.

Jefferson. Lincoln. Roosevelt. Kennedy. Damn right, their words mattered. Try googling "great speeches" and see what comes up. Great words and great speeches have changed the world because they have changed the way we see the world.

Washington-think is so old-fashioned, so treat-the-symptom-and-pretend-you-healed-the-disease, protect-the-status-quo type of stuff that millions gave up on it a long time ago as an agent of true social improvement. But while few of us are looking to the American government to save the world, we'd prefer that it not destroy it either. Obama was right when he said that we have to do more than just end the war in Iraq; we need to end the mindset that produced it.

At the end of World War II, in the last speech he ever wrote yet died before having a chance to deliver, President Franklin Roosevelt said, "We must do more than end war. We must end the beginnings of all war." The source of the debacle in Iraq was not an event; it was a mindset. The source of our environmental problems was not an event; it was a mindset. The source of every problem is the mindset that preceded it. And only someone who can speak to the source of a problem can eradicate its roots.

The ability to inspire new thinking is a more important ability in a leader today, than simply being a "problem-solver." We're always trying to solve something.... solve health care...solve the economy... solve social security, and so forth. Yet according to Carl Jung, our most important problems cannot be solved; they must be outgrown. Just figuring out who has a better plan with which to treat the symptoms of a problem is not the one who ultimately solves it. What we need is someone with a better state of mind, who will lead us to a better state of ours.

Being swept up in Obama's inspirational ability is not naive; thinking inspirational ability doesn't count for much, is in fact naive. For in the ability to inspire lies the ability to command the most powerful forces of all. No plan, no piece of legislation, no Washington strategy or political maneuvering would alone be enough to change the probability vector of America's future. For that, we would need a mighty wind. And a mighty wind now blows.

----- Marianne Williamson

I didn't start out with him.

I thought people were projecting wildly onto him, making positive assumptions that he hadn't earned and filling in empty spaces in his resume with mere hopes of substance. But the longer campaign season has worked for me; having watched the candidates move through time, I've seen who's grown and who hasn't. I've ended up – at least for now – with Obama.

I'm perplexed by the question often presented by his opponents, "Yeah, but how is he really going to change things?" To me, he already has. He has awakened the sleeping giant of American democracy, and that is the greatest antidote to every problem we face.

Of course, there's the notion that someone else might know what to do from Day One, given how much experience she's already had in Washington. But one of the things I like about Obama is that he hasn't had more experience in Washington. I think he's had just enough to know what he's doing, but not so much that his consciousness has been completely permeated by the rules of that game. When I think of the American government, I'm reminded of a line oft said in Alcoholics Anonymous, "Your best thinking got you here." I don't support Obama because of his position on specific issues; I support him because of his worldview.

To quote Einstein: "We will not solve the problems of the world from the level of thinking we were at when we created them." Obama is a dreamer, and I say Good for him. Only Bobby Kennedy's mythic idealist – who "dreams of what hasn't been and asks 'why not?'" -- will have the power to lead with a new state of consciousness. And nothing short of a new state of consciousness will create a new state of the world.

Obama is a risk -- as is any new President, actually -- because we don't really know where he would lead us. But his main opponent, in my mind, is a greater risk -- because we do. She has clarity and brilliance about a world that is, but he has visions and intimations of a world that could be. He's the natural heir to Bobby Kennedy's mantle of a pioneer who seeks a newer world. There's a wagon train behind him, and I'm on it.

Because I am a dreamer too.

If I've heard it once, I've heard it a hundred times. So let me explain why I'm not voting with my vagina…

As a feminist, I believe nurturing and nourishing a world trying to be born is the most effective way to heal the malevolent effects of a world that needs to pass away.

That is why I support Obama.

As a feminist, I believe inclusion is more powerful and life producing than is exclusion.

That is why I support Obama.

As a feminist, I believe tending and mending is a more effective way to deal with the world's stress points than is fighting or fleeing.

That is why I support Obama.

As a feminist, I believe having a vision for what I want the world to become is more important than simply solving the problems that have arisen in the world that is.

That is why I support Obama.

As a feminist, I'm more concerned with creating a world my great, great grandchildren can live in than in trying to make things better for me right now.

That is why I support Obama.

As a feminist, I am convinced that building authentic relationships is a more effective, creative way to build peace than just strategizing to destroy enemies and manipulating alliances.

That is why I support Obama.

As a feminist, I relate more to the honest sharing of a wife who sometimes misses a note, to the too-scripted sharing of a woman who never does.

That is why I support Obama.

As a feminist, I look forward to voting for the first woman President; but when I do, I want her to be one whose positions and policies reflect a feminine worldview.

That is why I support Obama.

As a feminist, I get that masculine armor is not our strength, our ability to love is our greatest power, and our urge to repair is our greatest calling.

That is why I support Obama, pray for him unceasingly, try to strengthen his chances…. and will support whoever wins.

----- Marianne Williamson

The Network of Spiritual Progressives has a wonderful plan for ending the war in Iraq.
Check out www.tikkun.org/iraqpeace

Best,

Marianne

Friday 08 December 2006

Agency sells $40,000 worth of furniture and equipment for $350.

Washington, DC - In defiance of Congressional requests to immediately halt closures of library collections, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is purging records from its library websites, making them unavailable to both agency scientists and outside researchers, according to documents released today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). At the same time, EPA is taking steps to prevent the re-opening of its shuttered libraries, including the hurried auctioning off of expensive bookcases, cabinets, microfiche readers and other equipment for less than a penny on the dollar.

In a letter dated November 30, 2006, four incoming House Democratic committee chairs demanded that EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson assure them "that the destruction or disposition of all library holdings immediately ceased upon the Agency's receipt of this letter and that all records of library holdings and dispersed materials are being maintained." On the very next day, December 1st, EPA de-linked thousands of documents from the website for the Office of Prevention, Pollution and Toxic Substances (OPPTS) Library, in EPA's Washington D.C. Headquarters.

"EPA's leadership appears to have gone feral, defying all appeals to reason or consultation," stated PEER Executive Director Jeff Ruch, noting that Congress has yet to review, let alone approve, the library closures. "The new Congress convening in January will finally have a chance to decide whether EPA will continue to pillage its library network."

Meanwhile, in what appears to be an effort to limit Congressional options, EPA is taking steps to prevent the re-opening of the several libraries that it has already completely shuttered. In its Chicago office, which formerly hosted one of the largest regional libraries, EPA ordered that all furniture and furnishings (down to the staplers and pencil sharpeners) be sold immediately. Despite an acquisition cost of $40,000 for the furniture and equipment, a woman bought the entire lot for $350. The buyer also estimates that she will re-sell the merchandise for $80,000.

"One big irony is that EPA claimed the reason it needed to close libraries was to save money but in the process they are spending and wasting money like drunken sailors," Ruch added, noting EPA refuses to say how much it plans to spend digitizing the mountains of documents that it has removed from library shelves. "While the Pentagon had its $600 toilet seat and $434 hammer, EPA has its 29 cent book case and file cabinets for a nickel."

In spite of its pleas of poverty, EPA is spending millions on a public relations campaign to improve the image of its research program, as well as a $2.7 million program (more than its estimated savings from library closures ) to digitize all employee personnel files, in a program called "eOPF."

"No one believes that EPA is closing libraries and crating up irreplaceable collections for fiscal reasons," Ruch concluded. "Instead, the real agenda appears to be controlling access by its own specialists and outside researchers to key technical information."

They beat Lucy Burn, chained her hands to the cell bars above her head and left her hanging for the night, bleeding and gasping for air. They hurled Dora Lewis into a dark cell, smashed her head against an iron bed and knocked her out cold. Her cellmate, Alice Cosu, thought Lewis was dead and suffered a heart attack. Additional affidavits describe the guards grabbing, dragging, beating, choking, slamming, pinching, twisting and kicking the women.

For weeks, the women's only water came from an open pail. Their food--all of it colorless slop--was infested with worms. When one of the leaders, Alice Paul, embarked on a hunger strike, they tied her to a chair, forced a tube down her throat and poured liquid into her until she vomited. She was tortured like this for weeks until word was smuggled out to the press.

So, refresh my memory. Some women won't vote this year because--why, exactly? We have carpool duties? We have to get to work? Our vote doesn't matter? It's raining?

Last week, I went to a sparsely attended screening of HBO's new movie "Iron Jawed Angels" It is a graphic depiction of the battle these women waged so that I could pull the curtain at the polling booth and have my say.

I am ashamed to say I needed the reminder.

All these years later, voter registration is still my passion. But the actual act of voting had become less personal for me, more rote. Frankly, voting often felt more like an obligation than a privilege. Sometimes it was inconvenient.

My friend Wendy, who is my age and studied women's history, saw the HBO movie, too. When she stopped by my desk to talk about it, she looked angry. She was--with herself. "One thought kept coming back to me as I watched that movie," she said. "What would those women think of the way I use--or don't use--my right to vote? All of us take it for granted now, not just younger women, but those of us who did seek to learn." The right to vote, she said, had become valuable to her "all over again."

HBO will run the movie periodically before releasing it on video and DVD. I wish all history, social studies and government teachers would include the movie in their curriculum. I want it shown on Bunko night, too, and anywhere else women gather. I realize this isn't our usual idea of socializing, but we are not voting in the numbers that we should be, and I think a little shock therapy is in order.

It is jarring to watch Woodrow Wilson and his cronies try to persuade a psychiatrist to declare Alice Paul insane so that she could be permanently institutionalized. And it is inspiring to watch the doctor refuse.

Alice Paul was strong, he said, and brave. That didn't make her crazy. The doctor admonished the men: "Courage in women is often mistaken for insanity."

Please pass this on to all the women you know. We need to get out and vote and use this right that was fought so hard for by these very courageous women

Chris Wattie
National Post

Friday, May 19, 2006

Human rights groups are raising alarms over a new law passed by the Iranian parliament that would require the country's Jews and Christians to wear coloured badges to identify them and other religious minorities as non-Muslims.

"This is reminiscent of the Holocaust," said Rabbi Marvin Hier, the dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles. "Iran is moving closer and closer to the ideology of the Nazis."

Iranian expatriates living in Canada yesterday confirmed reports that the Iranian parliament, called the Islamic Majlis, passed a law this week setting a dress code for all Iranians, requiring them to wear almost identical "standard Islamic garments."

The law, which must still be approved by Iran's "Supreme Guide" Ali Khamenehi before being put into effect, also establishes special insignia to be worn by non-Muslims.

"There's no reason to believe they won't pass this," said Rabbi Hier. "It will certainly pass unless there's some sort of international outcry over this."

Bernie Farber, the chief executive of the Canadian Jewish Congress, said he was "stunned" by the measure. "We thought this had gone the way of the dodo bird, but clearly in Iran everything old and bad is new again," he said. "It's state-sponsored religious discrimination."

Ali Behroozian, an Iranian exile living in Toronto, said the law could come into force as early as next year.

It would make religious minorities immediately identifiable and allow Muslims to avoid contact with non-Muslims.

Mr. Behroozian said it will make life even more difficult for Iran's small pockets of Jewish, Christian and other religious minorities -- the country is overwhelmingly Shi'ite Muslim. "They have all been persecuted for a while, but these new dress rules are going to make things worse for them," he said.

The new law was drafted two years ago, but was stuck in the Iranian parliament until recently when it was revived at the behest of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

A spokesman for the Iranian Embassy in Ottawa refused to comment on the measures. "This is nothing to do with anything here," said a press secretary who identified himself as Mr. Gharmani.

"We are not here to answer such questions."

The Simon Wiesenthal Centre has written to Kofi Annan, the Secretary-General of the United Nations, protesting the Iranian law and calling on the international community to bring pressure on Iran to drop the measure.

"The world should not ignore this," said Rabbi Hier. "The world ignored Hitler for many years -- he was dismissed as a demagogue, they said he'd never come to power -- and we were all wrong."

Mr. Farber said Canada and other nations should take action to isolate Mr. Ahmadinejad in light of the new law, which he called "chilling," and his previous string of anti-Semitic statements.

"There are some very frightening parallels here," he said. "It's time to start considering how we're going to deal with this person."

Mr. Ahmadinejad has repeatedly described the Holocaust as a myth and earlier this year announced Iran would host a conference to re-examine the history of the Nazis' "Final Solution."

He has caused international outrage by publicly calling for Israel to be "wiped off the map."

Iran does not yet have nuclear weapons, but Tehran believed by Western nations to be developing its own nuclear military capability, in defiance of international protocols and peace treaties. The United States, France and Israel accuse Iran of using a civilian nuclear program to secretly build a weapon. Iran denies this, saying its program is confined to generating electricity.

National survey by Zogby International reveals "striking support" for rehabilitation both in and after prison

From every age, gender, economic, political, cultural and ethnic group and every geographic area, Americans overwhelmingly support the rehabilitation of non-violent criminals both before and after they leave prison, a new poll by Zogby International shows.

Three out of four Americans expressed either fear or concern about the 700,000 prisoners who are leaving U.S. prisons each year, and the fact that 60% of them are likely to commit crimes that send them back to prison, Zogby International's national survey showed. The poll explored what people think ought to be done about the situation.

Likely voters appear to recognize that our current correctional system does not help the problem of crime, the survey indicates. By strong majorities, Americans said they feel that a lack of life skills, the experience of being in prison, and the many obstacles faced upon reentry are major factors in the crimes that prisoners commit following their release.

By an overwhelming majority (82%), people feel that the lack of job training and job opportunities were significant barriers to those released prisoners who wanted to avoid committing subsequent crimes. Similar large majorities saw the lack of housing, medical and mental health services, drug treatment, family support and mentoring as additional barriers and thought that all of these services should be available to returning prisoners. Most of the respondents felt that these reentry services needed to be introduced to prisoners long before they are released.

When asked about pending legislation that would make federal funds available to communities for these services in support of successful reentry (The Second Chance Act), 78% were in support -- and 40% of those strongly supported such assistance.

Dr. Barry Krisberg, the President of the National Council on Crime and Delinquency, said "these survey results tell us that Americans have looked at the 30-year experiment on getting tough with offenders and decided that it is no longer working. We have built up an unprecedented prison population of over 2 million inmates, but most of these offenders are returning home each year with few skills or support to keep them from going back to lives of crime"

The survey was conducted Feb. 15-18, 2006, and included 1,039 respondents. The poll carries a margin of error of +/- 3.1 percentage points.

Please click the link below to view the full news release:
http://www.zogby.com/news/ReadNews.dbm?ID=1101

March 16th, 2006

We have a President who likes to break things. He has broken the federal budget, running up $3 trillion in new debt. He has broken the Geneva Conventions, giving the green light to torture. He has repeatedly broken promises - and broken faith - with the American people. And now, worst of all, he has broken the law.

In brazen violation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), he ordered the National Security Agency to conduct warrantless wiretaps of American citizens. And, despite getting caught red-handed, he refuses to stop.

So it is time for Congress to stand up and say enough! That's why, this week, Senator Russ Feingold proposed a resolution to censure George W. Bush for breaking the FISA law. And that's why I fully support this resolution of censure.

Nothing is more important to me than the security of our country. Of course, we need to be listening to the terrorists' conversations. And sometimes there is not time to get a warrant. That's why the FISA law allows the President, when necessary, to wiretap first, and obtain a warrant afterward. But that's not acceptable to this above-the-law President. He rejects the idea that he should have to obtain a warrant before or after wiretapping.

We have an out-of-control President whose arrogant and, now, illegal behavior is running our country into the ditch. It's time to rein him in. And a fine place to start is by passing this resolution of censure. I hope that Senator Feingold's measure will be brought to the floor. And when it is, I will proudly vote yes.

http://utahcountvotes.org/detect-errors/whatPartiesCanDo.rtf

Without timely independent audits of vote counts and with county officials often refusing to publicly release or monitor their own vote count data, what would ensure vote count accuracy?

What Political Parties & Candidates Can, No Must, Do During Elections to Repair American Democracy

http://www.verifiedvoting.org/article.php?id=5195

Tabulator Definition
The central tabulator is the central computer that tallies the votes and produces the final report for a given county or equivalent jurisdiction.

You should be at the central count facility when ballot materials begin to arrive from the polling places. If absentee ballots are processed in the same general area, you may be able to observe that process before the central tabulating processes begin. Get a comfortable seat and plan to stay until the wee hours. Interesting things happen at the end, when party observers are woozy and may be inattentive, so stay alert

Bring ID
Remember to take identification; you may be asked to show it before entering the central tabulating area.

If early voting is allowed in your area, the tabulating process will include the reporting and accumulation of vote totals of (a) early votes, (b) absentee ballots, (c) polling place votes, and finally (d) provisional ballots. Early votes and polling place votes will probably happen first, unless the absentee counting is finished by election night. Provisional ballots are checked first to make sure the voter was eligible to cast the ballot and then counted and added in as part of the final canvass of the vote totals. The canvass might not be completed for as long as 14 days.

Central Tabulation
Take notes on all your central tabulation observations and all responses to questions.

· If possible, observe the entire day of operations at the central election office. If the law in your state allows this, insist on it. Log anything out of the ordinary, and log the names of the relevant people.

· Ask questions about how absentee ballots and early voting ballots are handled.

· Find out who monitors the modem communications coming in from the precincts to the central tally computer. Is a phone line plugged into the central tabulator? If so, when? Does someone check the validity of the transmission before allowing it to be received?

· Ask if technicians have been required to take the same oath as poll workers to conduct a legal election. Monitor and log calls for assistance the election office receives from the precincts:

1. Which precinct did the call come from?

2. What is the problem?

3. Was a technician dispatched?

4. How is the technician dispatched?

5. Did the technician take replacement machines to the precinct?

6. How long did it take to resolve the problem?

· Log the names of all people operating the central tally computer. Observe what each one does by observing the screen.

· Log the names of the partisan observers.

· As poll workers bring the reports and memory cards back to election center, notice and log:

1. Do HQ Pollworkers check the seals when they receive the
envelopes containing the reports and the memory cards? What happens to the envelopes? Are they tracked?

2. Do HQ Poll worker register the number of memory cards indicated in handwriting on the envelope?

3. What happens to the Zero Total Reports and the End of Day Precinct Totals Report inside the envelopes? Are they removed, saved, logged? Are the totals tracked?

4. What happens to the memory cards after the HQ Poll worker breaks the seal? What recording does the HQ Poll Worker do? Are the cards counted (there should be one for every DRE)? By whom? How many times? What happens to the accumulator card containing the precinct totals?

5. Does the HQ poll worker check or verify the serial numbers or any other identifying information on the memory cards?

6. What happens if none of the cards in an envelope contains the accumulated totals? Is the accumulation process performed on a machine at HQ? Are all the cards from the precinct kept together?

7. Observe whether data from "accumulator" cards is uploaded to the central computer. Does someone track which precincts have been transmitted by modem and which are to be uploaded from the cards?

· Observe tabulator and room security. Take notes.

· Ask the name and employer of everyone who enters the tabulation room. Write it in your notebook. If you see vendor echnicians or "contract workers" touch the tabulator at all, make a note of the time and the name of the person. In some states this is a violation of the law.

· Ask where the modems are. (Not all counties use them.)

· Observe whether there is an infra-red wireless port on the central tabulator. If so, observe whether it is blinking and transmitting information or not.

· Use binoculars if needed, to observe the tabulator monitor screen in case you are not close enough to it. Write any error messages down in your notebook, noting the time. If the program suddenly disappears (program crash) or the computer crashes, note the time and file a public records request for the audit log. Call incidents in to the Election Protection Hotline at +1 866 OUR-VOTE.

· Carefully observe disk management.

· If any pre-opened disk is put into the tabulator, ask first that the disk be brought out and inserted into another computer to demonstrate that it has nothing on it.

1. Use a notebook to record the procedures for transferring interim vote totals to the county or state Web site. Do election officials recycle disks between the central tabulator and other computers? If so make a note of the time and the person doing so.

2. Is the Web upload computer networked? If so, ask or investigate the network to find out where the other networked computers are, observe who is sitting at them, write down names and employers.

· Write down the setup of the central tabulator. Take pictures. Where do the cables and wires lead? Ask about this. Are multiple tabulators networked together? If so, ask where the computer is that houses the final combined program. Make sure you can see it, and make a note of who touches every tabulator on the network.

· Watch to see if all polling places are uploaded into the central computer. Sometimes the trouble spots are held to the end, when observers are less vigilant. Sometimes they can't be uploaded at all.

[Thanks to Roxanne Jekot, Co-Founder of CountTheVote.org, Lillie Coney at the National Committee for Voting Integrity, the NAACP, and to BlackBoxVoting.org for contributions to the above section.]

NOTE: Because you cannot observe what goes on inside the central computer, memory cards, or over any network connections, vote count manipulation or miscounts could possibly occur even with the most diligent observations.

II. What Candidates Must Do If We Are to Repair U.S. Democratic Elections

Because every county in America currently publicly reports its election data in a way that hides the evidence of tampering, and no state monitors its own vote count data for accuracy, the most important thing all candidates must do, prior to conceding, if we are to repair our democracy, is to obtain the detailed vote count data for every election, race, and issue. Candidates must refuse to concede their elections, no matter how wide the reported vote margins, before first obtaining and analyzing the detailed vote count data for their own elections. In other words, candidates must demand to obtain their own unofficial and official reported vote counts broken out by precinct and by type of vote (absentee, early, provisional, mail-in, overseas, military, and Election Day). Otherwise insiders can pad votes for one candidate in one vote type, while simultaneously subtracting votes for another candidate in another vote type and yet hide the evidence.

It is not possible to ensure the future accuracy of U.S. Vote counts without the active assistance of candidates who run for office due to the lack of independent audits and the resistance by a many U.S. Election officials to publicly releasing the data which would allow vote miscounts to be detected and corrected. (See http://uscountvotes.org/ucvAnalysis/US/election_officials/Audits_Monitoring.pdf

It's that time again: a campaign year. All of a sudden all your political friends are calling you. You know why, and they know you know why. The system is so corrupt that the only way anybody can mount a successful campaign for the extraordinarily important job of guiding our country at what is arguably the most critical time in our history, is if they raise more money raise more money raise more money - and fast. While war and terror and disasters of every conceivable kind loom large around us, candidates have to spend God knows how many hours on the phone, and traveling, trying to do everything they possibly can to raise another buck. Unless they're independently wealthy, of course.

December 8 , 2005

Ever try to shift a paradigm? I salute the brave souls scattered around the continent — some of them are in Congress — who are doing just that, who are daring, right now, to challenge the conventional wisdom of war and peace at the highest levels at which the game of geopolitics is played, and are calling for the establishment of a Cabinet-level Department of Peace.

When long-time correspondent Bill Bhaneja, a senior research fellow at the University of Ottawa and retired Canadian diplomat, recently e-mailed me the proposal he co-authored with Saul Arbess for such an addition to Canada's government — inspired by U.S. Rep. Dennis Kucinich's H.R. 3760 — I confess to a queasy skepticism that such a project was just too darn idealistic.

Then I thought about bird flu — and George Bush's wild musings two months ago about combating it with National Guard troops, that is, by implementing martial law to enforce quarantines. This from the man who has "degraded" (in the words of one high-level health official) the nation's public health system and underfunded and politicized every branch of government created to deal with national emergencies.

For instance, there was Hillary Clinton the other day telling potential supporters of her run for the presidency, who I'd wager are against the war by a large margin, that the United States must "finish what it started" in Iraq, as though there's a consensus what, exactly, we started and what "finishing" it would mean, and how many more dead Iraqis and U.S. servicemen we might expect before we attain our unarticulated goal.

It was sheer politician-speak, in other words, betraying no courageous intelligence, no insight that our brutal occupation might be fueling the insurgency and creating the terrorists we're obliged to keeping fighting. But the media have already pegged Hillary a frontrunner, which means they're condemning America's anti-war majority, once again, to a campaign season without a presidential candidate who represents their ardent hopes.

This is intolerable. This is why I support and heartily endorse what is, in fact, a global movement to raise awareness by challenging the blood-myths of the nation-state and the inevitability of war, and the geopolitical canard extraordinaire that high-tech, high-kill, earth-poisoning modern wars have any chance of achieving controllable ends and do not spew incalculable suffering and future wars in their wake.

"What we seek," write Bhaneja and Arbess, "is a world in which peaceful relations between states are a systematically pursued norm and that the numerous non-aggression pacts between states become treaties of mutual support and collaboration. We envision a world in which a positive peace prevails as projected most recently in the U.N. International Decade for a Culture of Peace (2001-2010) Programme of Action."

The establishment of a peace academy, the training of peace workers, the promotion of nonviolent conflict resolution at every level of human interaction — there's no reason why such projects should be nothing more than the flickering dreams of protestors at candlelight vigils. There's no reason why they should not be the business of government. I have no doubt whatsoever that the public is ready to move beyond the barbarism history has bequeathed us, and would do so in an eye blink if enough respected voices said, "Now is the time."

And respected voices are saying this, if only we could hear them.

"What is quite clear — and would become clear as you go along with this campaign — is that you are trying, and I consider myself with you on this in every way . . . (to create) not only a massive but a basic change in our culture, in our entire approach to our relationships with other human beings. . . . It's not a matter of simply getting another department of government. You're speaking of an entire philosophical revolution."

This is Walter Cronkite, in conversation with Kucinich last September at a Department of Peace conference in Washington, D.C. Kucinich, the hero of this movement, first introduced Department of Peace legislation in 2001. The bill now has some 60 sponsors in the House and, in September, was introduced in the Senate (S. 1756) by Mark Dayton of Minnesota.

The architects of the war on terror have minds stuck in old paradigms of domination and conquest. Their enemy is always the same: Evil Incarnate. Today's jihadist was yesterday's Communist, playing the same game of dominos.

This war is doomed to create nothing but losers, and more and more people — including many who are in or close to the military, such as Jack Murtha — are grasping this. As they wake up, the Department of Peace will be waiting for them.

"Our world faces a crisis as yet unperceived by those possessing the power to make great decisions for good and evil. The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking, and thus we drift toward unparalleled catastrophe." — Albert Einstein