Were the voting machines rigged?

December 3, 2008Leave a comment

1 December, 2008

WASHINGTON, Dec 01, 2008 /PRNewswire-USNewswire via COMTEX/ — In an exclusive interview with Velvet Revolution (”VR”), a DC based non-profit dedicated to a clean and accountable government, a former Diebold vote machine contractor who was in charge of preparing the 2002 election between Saxby Chambliss and Max Cleland has stated that the software patches placed on the voting machines in the weeks prior to the election could have rigged the election in favor of Republican Chambliss.

The contractor, Chris Hood, was ordered by the President of Diebold, Bob Urosevich, to secretly install uncertified software patches on machines in predominantly Democratic counties, according to Mr. Hood. Saxby Chambliss won a surprising victory after trailing badly in the pre-election polls.

Rebecca Abrahams, a former ABC News producer who conducted the interview, states, “Jim Martin should be concerned about the veracity and validity of the runoff election results after anomalies in the last election and the statement by Chris Hood. In fact, voters should demand to know if Chambliss had any knowledge that the 2002 election was rigged and whether he knew that Georgia citizens voted on electronic voting machines that had been patched with uncertified software days before the election in clear violation of Georgia law.”

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Bruce Dixon: I Remember Fred Hampton

December 3, 2008Leave a comment

(This article, with minor revisions, was originally published in Black Commentator on December 7, 2004)

December 4, 2008 marks the 39th anniversary of the police executions of Black Panthers Fred Hampton and Mark Clark, in Chicago. Bruce Dixon, then a member of the Illinois Chapter of the Black Panther Party, offers this recollection of Hampton.

I remember Fred Hampton. For the last year of his life, which was the whole time I knew him, he was Deputy Chairman of the Illinois Chapter of the Black Panther Party. Fred was a big man whose inexhaustible energy, keen insight and passionate commitment to the struggle made him seem even larger still. We called him Chairman Fred. Chairman Fred was murdered by the FBI and Chicago Police Department in the pre-dawn hours of December 4, 1969. He was just 21 years old. Fred’s family and comrades mourned him for a little while and have celebrated his life of struggle, service, intensity and sacrifice ever since.

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Sucker bait or the politics of smoke and mirrors By William Bowles

December 3, 20083 Comments

3 December 2008

To say that I’m amazed at all those liberal/lefties who claim that somehow Barack Obama has ‘deserted’ them is somewhat of an understatement. Amazed? Gobsmacked would be closer to the truth. But then it points to a political system based not on politics but on personalities and glib, throwaway lines geared to a populace who have been kept not only ignorant of the facts but raised on a diet of throwaway one-liners.

“He’s suckered himself into believing that we need a bipartisan foreign and military policy.” — ‘With Gates, Obama Opts for Empire’ By Matthew Rothschild

Oh really? Does Barack Obama really decide policy? Who is being suckered here? For that matter did George Bush decide policy? We’re talking about a ruling class who will do anything to hold on to power. But we’ve been fooled into thinking that a president or prime minister actually decides policy, but policy is something that stretches into the dim and distant past, it’s part of a continuum of action the basis of which stems from over-arching economic and political strategies that literally span the generations.

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Mike Whitney: Somalia: Another CIA-backed coup blows up

December 3, 2008Leave a comment

2 December, 2008 Global Research,

‘The Ethiopian invasion, which was sanctioned by the US government, has destroyed virtually all the life-sustaining economic systems which the population has built for the last fifteen years.’ — Abdi Samatar, professor of Global Studies at the University of Minnesota, Democracy Now

Up until a month ago, no one in the Bush administration showed the least bit of interest in the incidents of piracy off the coast of Somalia. Now that’s all changed and there’s talk of sending in the Navy to patrol the waters off the Horn of Africa and clean up the pirates hideouts. Why the sudden about-face? Could it have something to do with the fact that the Ethiopian army is planning to withdraw all of its troops from Mogadishu by the end of the year, thus, ending the failed two year US-backed occupation of Somalia?

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