Remarks at protest at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission on the International Day of Peace, 2012
Our government likes to lie to us about nuclear weapons. This poor impoverished nation halfway around the world is about to nuke us. No, that one is. The result, of course, is mass murder. But there's another result potentially even worse. We begin to think there's something wrong with being terrified of nuclear weapons and nuclear energy. There isn't. This stuff should scare the hell out of us. And the arrogant lunacy of imagining that even an honest and accountable authority, much less our government, could set up a commission to regulate the winds of hell and deadly substances with a half-life as long as the age of the Earth must give us serious pause.

What are we thinking? How are we thinking? Are we thinking?

One Pentagon report documents 563 nuclear mistakes, malfunctions, and false alarms over the years so far -- near misses, near apocalypses.

Several Tanker trucks full of political ink have been spilled on Mitt Romney's tenure as a vulture capitalist at Bain Capital. A more important story, however, is the fact that Bain alumni, now raising big money as Romney bundlers are also in the electronic voting machine business. This appears to be a repeat of the the infamous former CEO of Diebold Wally O’Dell, who raised money for Bush while his company supplied voting machines and election management software in the 2004 election.

In all 234 counties of Texas, the entire states of Hawaii and Oklahoma, half of Washington and Colorado, and certain counties in swing state Ohio, votes will be cast on eSlate and ePollbook machines made by Hart Intercivic. Hart Intercivic machines have famously failed in Tarrant County (Ft. Worth), adding 10,000 non-existent votes. The EVEREST study, commissioned by the Ohio secretary of state in 2007, found serious security flaws with Hart Intercivic products.

On this International Day of Peace I am sitting in Kabul, Afghanistan with a handful of youth that want nothing but peaceful coexistence in their lives. This in some respects is like a dream because their entire lives have been surrounded by war, death, corruption, and struggle. Peace has been in short supply. For three years the Afghan Peace Volunteers have worked to develop friendships across ethnic lines in Kabul and various provinces throughout Afghanistan. The work has been difficult, trust is hard to come by in this war torn land, but they are adamant that non-violence is the only way forward. I have sat with similar groups in the West Bank, Gaza, Lebanon, Iraq, America and Israel. Rarely are their voices heard over the drums of war.

Established in 1981, by the United Nations General Assembly, the International Day of Peace was to coincide with its opening session. The first Peace Day was observed on September 21st, 1982. In 1982 the Soviet Union was increasing its troop presence in Afghanistan and facing fierce fighting throughout the provinces.

The Saturday headline in the Wall Street Journal was: “Anti-U.S. Mobs on Rampage.” The next day, a NATO airstrike killed eight women collecting firewood in the mountains of eastern Afghanistan, an event that garnered virtually zero mainstream U.S. headlines.

Somewhere in the gap between these two phenomena — the overheated news about our violent, irrational enemies in the Middle East and the silence surrounding our war and occupation of the region — lies American politics, values, the presidential race, the national identity. Beyond that gap lies the truth about who we are, and only when we have access to it does the future turn into creative possibility and peace become possible.

The conventional wisdom we’re fed in the mainstream media takes into account only the fear — the hysteria — implicit in the Wall Street Journal headline. The story, by Jay Solomon and Carol E. Lee, goes on to tell us:

Editor’s Note: This is the first in a series of investigative articles documenting who owns the electronic hardware and software used in the U.S. voting process. Our goal is simple: To reveal the man behind the curtain and expose the vulnerability of non-transparent, faith-based voting. ~ Bob Fitrakis, Editor.
Various far-right conspiracy researchers have been alleging for some months that George Soros somehow secretly will control the outcome of the 2012 Presidential election. The Free Press's exhaustive research can find not a single tangible link between George Soros and any manufacturer of voting equipment. Our research did find links much more frightening.

The Free Press widely reported the various dirty tricks employed by Karl Rove and company to apparently outright steal the election for George W. Bush in Ohio, and thus the nation, in 2004. Since then, a witness in our case has died in a mysterious plane crash, and all the players in the DRE (Direct Reporting Electronic) voting machine game have shifted seats in a gigantic game of musical chairs.