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Axis of fanatics -- Netanyahu and Ahmadinejad

With Ariel Sharon out of the picture, Benjamin Netanyahu has a better chance to become prime minister of Israel.

He’s media savvy. He knows how to spin on American television. And he’s very dangerous.

Netanyahu spent a lot of his early years in the United States. Later, during the 1980s, he worked at the Israeli Embassy in Washington and then became Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations. By the time he moved up to deputy foreign minister in 1988, he was a star on U.S. networks.

The guy is smooth -- fluent in American idioms, telegenic to many eyes -- and good at lying on camera. So, when Israeli police killed 17 Palestinians at Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa Mosque in October 1990, Netanyahu led a disinformation blitz asserting that the Palestinians were killed after they’d rioted and pelted Jewish worshipers from above the Wailing Wall with huge stones. At the time, his fable dominated much of the U.S. media. Later even the official Israeli inquiry debunked Netanyahu’s account and blamed police for starting the clash.

Now, with Netanyahu campaigning to win the Israeli election for prime

Being a Dem

http://mattbors.com

Active-duty military support for Bush and the Iraq war dropping

According to a poll of Military Times readers, support for President Bush's leadership as commander-in-chief and support for the war in Iraq is dropping among the U.S. military. Over the course of the last year support for the Iraq War dropped 9 percent, and barely a majority, 54 percent, view the commander-in-chief's performance as positive.

Losing the support of active duty military could be the final straw for President Bush in Iraq. Already, the foreign policy establishment – former military, former intelligence officials and former foreign service officers – have publicly expressed their opposition to the war. In addition, Gold Star families who have lost loved ones, military families with members currently serving, and Iraq War veterans are speaking out against the war. And, there have been increasing cases of soldiers refusing to return to Iraq. In addition, the military has been unable to meet its recruitment goals.

More Texan sleaze and stink

AUSTIN -- We live in a great nation. The police blotter of the Mill Valley Herald in California informs us that the constabulary there had to be called out on account of a citizen "dressed like a penguin" who was "standing on a street corner playing a ukulele." Makes me proud to be an American.

What does not make me proud to be an American is a specific twist in the Jack Abramoff/Tom DeLay scandal -- in fact, this makes me want to urp despite the fact that I have a strong stomach when it comes to political corruption. Practice, practice, practice, that's what Texas provides when it comes to sleaze and stink. Who can forget such great explanations as "Well, I'll just make a little bit of money, I won't make a whole lot"? And "There was never a Bible in the room"?

Biowarfare and terrorism

Biowarfare and terrorism
by Francis A. Boyle
Foreword by Jonathan King

This book outlines how and why the United States government initiated, sustained and then dramatically expanded an illegal biological arms buildup. Most significantly, U.S. expert Francis A. Boyle reveals how the new billion-dollar U.S. Chemical and Biological Defense Program has been reorientated to accord with the Neo-Conservative pre-emptive strike agenda--this time by biological and chemical warfare.

Linking U.S. biowarfare development to the October 2001 anthrax attack on Congress--the most significant political attack on the constitutional functioning of democracy in the United States in recent history--Boyle sheds new light on the motives for the attack, the media black hole of silence into which it has fallen, and why the FBI may never apprehend the perpetrators of this seminal crime of the 21st century.

Greed and gall: asking Iraq to pay for its occupation

The minority of Americans who support the war largely do so out of a sense of responsibility to Iraqis.  They favor reconstruction and restoration as well as ongoing occupation.  And most of the majority who favor ending the war support the financing of reconstruction, which – after all – costs less than war.  Reconstruction seems to be something we generally agree on.

Of course, very little reconstruction has been done or appears likely to be done, and recent reports are that the Bush Administration doesn't want any more money for it – having spent most of the money already allocated for reconstruction on other things.

So, I was disgusted to see a website called www.nationalreferendum.org promoting rebuilding New Orleans with payments from Iraqis.  We invaded their country, killed 100,000 people, left the place a wreck, and neglected our own cities – so they should pay us?

It gets worse.

What’s all the fuss about Diebold in Florida and California?

What in the World is Interpreted Code and What’s Wrong With It Anyway?

Earlier this month Leon County, Florida Supervisor of Elections Ion Sancho, invited computer experts to demonstrate the existence of a security flaw in Diebold optical scanners described in a report published on July 4, 2005.  The test was repeated in December in order to refute specific denials by Diebold. In statements to two different election officials Diebold claimed it was not possible to alter the outcome of an election in such a way that the perpetrator would not need passwords and the tampering would not be noticed during normal canvassing procedures.  Sancho set up the test environment on December 13, 2005 to prove these claims false.  The outside experts had no access to the optical scanner and the complete canvassing procedure was followed for 8 test ballots.  The result was that while the 8 paper ballots had a vote tally of 2 Yes and 6 No, all of the official reports - from the optical scanner on through to the publication of county results - showed an outcome of 7 Yes and 1 No.

Recipe for hacking ES&S and Sequoia, Hursti-style

Hold on to your lugnuts, ES&S and Sequoia may risk Hursti-style hack

Dec. 13, 2005: Harri Hursti performs devastating hack in Leon County Florida with Diebold optical scan system, proving he could control votes by manipulating a credit-card-sized memory card..

Jan. 3, 2006: Information received pointing to similar vulnerabilities in the ES&S and Sequoia "Optech" optical scan machines.

In an exclusive interview by BBV investigator Jim March with Dr. Douglas Jones, University of Iowa associate professor and a former voting machine examiner for the state of Iowa, it was learned that one of the most widely-used voting machines over the last 15 years may suffer from design flaws broadly similar to Diebold's version 1.94 and 1.96 optical scan system.

The first problem is that memory chip contents can be modified with easy to obtain reprogramming devices, in ways that could enable Hursti-style hacking.

The second problem is that Sequoia and ES&S have been able to force their way into intimate access to the mechanics of democracy. The electronic ballot

A new year’s message from Ramsey Clark

Dear friends,

The year 2005 brought new hardships but also new hope to the people of the world. Hope because the Bush administration has shown itself before the world to be lawless, cruel and brutal but also inept and incompetent. In Iraq the Pentagon has shown it is incapable of repressing a growing resistance from the Iraqi people. Meanwhile the government has been caught running torture camps inside Iraq and outsourcing torture around the world.

The people of the U.S. have decided the war is unjust and not worth the price in Iraqi lives or the sacrifice of our youth. Young people are refusing to enlist in the military in sufficient numbers to carry on the illegal occupation and continuing assault on the Iraqi people. In New Orleans the government did nothing for a week while the city drowned. Now more than four months later tens of thousands remain homeless. More and more of the population is outraged by the crimes emanating from the White House and are enlisting in the campaign to stop those crimes.

Primal smirk

I ache with fresh hope and foreboding at this time of year. The time is ripe for an overarching vision of a world without war - a tough, smart vision that can claim headlines and hold its own with the spin machines of government. Without it, we're doomed to . . . war with Iran?

"Of course, Bush has publicly stated for months that he would not take the possibility of a military strike (against Iran) off the table. What's new here, however, is that Washington appears to be dispatching high-level officials to prepare its allies for a possible attack rather than merely implying the possibility as it has repeatedly done during the past year."

This is from the German publication Der Spiegel, at the end of 2005. Even the cynic in me is shocked by the lack of subtlety in these calculations: "During his trip to Turkey," the article goes on, "CIA chief (Porter) Goss reportedly handed over three dossiers to Turkish security officials that purportedly contained evidence that Tehran is cooperating with Islamic terror network al-Qaida. A further dossier is said to contain information about the current status of Iran's alleged nuclear weapons program."

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