Bush: Lies: War

Study: Falsehoods Preceded Iraq War

A study by two nonprofit journalism organizations found that President Bush and top Administration officials issued hundreds of false statements about the national security threat from Iraq in the two years following the 2001 terrorist attacks.

The study counted 935 false statements in the two-year period. It found that in speeches, briefings, interviews and other venues, Bush and Administration officials stated unequivocally on at least 532 occasions that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction or was trying to produce or obtain them or had links to al-Qaeda or both. "It is now beyond dispute that Iraq did not possess any weapons of mass destruction or have meaningful ties to al-Qaeda," according to Charles Lewis and Mark Reading-Smith of the Fund for Independence in Journalism staff members, writing an overview of the study. "In short, the Bush administration led the nation to war on the basis of erroneous information that it methodically propagated and that culminated in military action against Iraq on March 19, 2003."

The center said the study was based on a database created with public statements over the two years beginning on Sept. 11, 2001, and information from more than 25 government reports, books, articles, speeches and interviews. "The cumulative effect of these false statements — amplified by thousands of news stories and broadcasts — was massive, with the media coverage creating an almost impenetrable din for several critical months in the run-up to war," the study concluded.

Just to Prove How Bizarre I Can Be

I was on the subway the other day, and nosyparker that I am, I always look to see what other people are reading. A woman was reading a book titled "God's Footprints", and the image on the cover was sort of a more modern-looking version (though I can't tell you how) of an Irish trinity symbol, done in black and white.

Being a sick, sick creature, myself, MY first thought was that this image looked like the footprint of ED-209 from Robocop. See!? Look at ED's feet!

So, there you have it. Life's mysteries revealed: God is ED-209.

WWWomen Moves to New URL

The Web, by Women, for Women website is moving to http://wwwomen.3rdwwwave.com/. Please adjust your view of the universe accordingly.

While both the WWWomen and 3rd WWWave web projects are predominantly in maintenance mode, I remain stunned by and proud of what 6 pissed-off women can do with just words. We still get email today from

• emerging feminists, with a happy cry of recognition
• angry men or women trying to use the Bible to make us feel bad
• angry men or women trying to use the Koran to make us feel bad (quite a bit rarer)
• average Jills happy to see a group of women with a casual attitude toward discussing women's bodies out in front of everybody. We're not dirty, and we resent like hell anyone who tries to make us feel that way.
• scholars & editors wanting reprints of specific articles for books, magazines, or other projects

I'm damn proud. I was a pissed-off feminist in my 20s with an actual Real Woman's Body(tm), and I'm a pissed-off feminist in my 30s with an actual Real Woman's Body(tm) today.

Both projects I think of as a product of the 90s, though 3rd WWWave was more of a millennial work, and while each of us six contributors have moved on to various and sundry things (renewed study, both formal and informal, writing in other venues, life, etc.) none of us have lost our connection with or support of each other in our chosen endeavors.

Web, by Women, for Women, and The 3rd WWWave of Feminism, I salute you, and stand by my younger self's words. And I'll add some new ones, today:

Women are real people, with real body parts.
Women have sex, and sexual desire.
Sometimes women get pregnant.
Mystery about women's bodies isn't some spiffy "mystique". Ignorance kills.
Patriarchy sucks. Hard.

Maher Arar's Letelier-Moffitt Award Acceptance Speech

Mr. Arar, you'll recall, is the Canadian national who was illegally mailed to Syria by the US, to be tortured.

His Letelier-Moffitt International Human Rights Award acceptance speech

The Cat That Controls New Hampshire Voting Machine Programming

Reprinted by permission.

***

Please distribute widely, Digg, Blog, reprints, get this to the media, etc.

A YouTube video from Black Box Voting that you won't soon forget:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PiiaBqwqkXs

THE CAT THAT CONTROLS NEW HAMPSHIRE ELECTION PROGRAMMING

John Silvestro and his small private business, LHS Associates, has exclusive programming contracts for ALL New Hampshire voting machines, which combined will count about 81 percent of the vote in the primary. And as to Super Tuesday and beyond: Silvestro also has the programming contracts for the states of Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Vermont.

Silvestro IS the New Hampshire chain of custody in New England -- Or at least, a very large component in it.

Last fall, with the help of citizens like you, Black Box Voting began working on "Chain of Custody" projects, in which we identified some of the areas of concern that might affect many jurisdictions at once. First on the list for the Northeast U.S. is LHS Associates, a vendor with inside access to every memory card, as well as to the chips containing the "brain" of the Diebold optical scan machines.

RARE VIDEO FOOTAGE

In an unusual confluence of available video, we obtained footage of Silvestro grappling with Harri Hursti, the master hacker who had his way with the Diebold optical scans in Leon County, Florida in the famous exploit that was showcased in the film Hacking Democracy.

The exact same make, model and version hacked in the Black Box Voting project in Leon County is used throughout New Hampshire, where about 45 percent of elections administrators hand count paper ballots at the polling place, with the remaining locations all using the Diebold version 1.94w optical scan machine. Because the voting machine locations tend to be urban, this represents about 81 percent of the New Hampshire voters.

The video shows Harri Hursti testifying on Sept. 19 before the New Hampshire legislature, attempting to explain significant vulnerabilities requiring urgent mitigations; throughout his testimony, Silvestro inserted his own comments, opinions, misstatements and speculations.

VOTING MACHINE CHECKUP

One area of disagreement between Hursti and Silvestro was the amount of expertise needed to exploit the Diebold 1.94w optical scan system. Silvestro claimed (in a strange contortion of reasoning) that he doesn't hire very skilled programmers, implying that this makes New Hampshire elections more secure.

Hursti pointed out that hiring programmers with a lack of knowledge is generally not considered a security feature, and also that an average high schooler can learn to exploit the system in two days to two weeks.

WE THINK IT DOESN'T TAKE THAT LONG

Black Box Voting purchased a Diebold optical scan with 1.94w firmware, and chose a computer repair shop out of the phone book, took it in, grabbed the first available technician. It took him less than 10 minutes to zero in on the memory card as a point of critical vulnerability -- and oh my, did he point out some other intersting things!

NEW HAMPSHIRE HASN'T UPGRADED SYSTEM SECURITY

Silvestro tries to claim that the security problems have been fixed in newer editions. Whether or not they have been, it's a moot point in New Hampshire where the upgrade is not made unless the Ballot Law Commission meets, and they have not met for ages.

Silvestro then points to extraordinary measures taken by other states to enact special procedural safeguards, but of course none of those were implemented in New Hampshire either, because the Ballot Law Commission has not bothered to meet since March 2006.

IN FACT, NEW HAMPSHIRE HAS NOT IMPLEMENTED MITIGATIONS FOR KNOWN RISKS

Not only that, they have turned all the programming over to a sole source private company, taking vote counting for 81 percent of New Hampshire citizens out of the public domain.

LHS is not subject to public records requirements, as the government is, at least, not in New Hampshire. The control over memory card contents is absolute; when cards malfunction or get lost, LHS brings the replacements.

CONTROL OVER THE "BRAINS" OF THE MACHINE: ACCESS TO THE CHIP

Since LHS maintains the machines, repairs the machines, and replaces the machines -- often on Election Day -- when they malfunction, they have intimate access to the chips, sockets, ports, communications devices and other electronic components.

Silvestro stated that the chip has "read only memory" and cannot be reprogrammed without frying it under ultraviolet light overnight.

Hursti never had a chance to examine the hardware, nor have most of the recent university studies had access. But our friendly neighborhood computer repair guy differed with Silvestro on the point of plug & play reprogramming of the guts of the machine.

After I push the button to send this message out to the media and the citizenry, I'll work on getting a short YouTube video of the Accuvote checkup by our local computer repairman. And before you say, "But wait! He's not a world class expert!" -- That's just the point.

Our local computer repairman may hit or miss on some of his analyses. You'll all be able to try your hand at second guessing him as soon as the next video is up. But if he hits even one of his ideas for how to exploit the machine to steal votes, that's all it takes. From someone who is not, certainly, a world class hacker or even a hacker at all.

I'll post the link to that in a follow up here: http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/1954/71200.html?1199744175 , and invite you techs to weigh in.

Please feel free to distribute, reprint or excerpt, with link to Black Box Voting and the video link above.

Bev Harris
Black Box Voting
bev@blackboxvoting.org


* * * * *

This is the year to support Election protection actions: http://www.blackboxvoting.org/donate.html
or mail to:
Black Box Voting
330 SW 43rd St Suite K
PMB 547
Renton WA 98057

Donations over $45 receive the "Hacking Democracy" DVD as a gift.

Padilla Suing Yoo

Padilla v. Yoo -- "José Padilla wants John Yoo to have a day in court."

UC Berkeley lawyer who justified harsh treatment of detainees sued

Padilla's complaint, filed last Friday, Jan 04, 2008.

Lakota Nation Declares Sovereign Status, Withdraws from Treaties w/US

I was just catching up on my blog-reading and spotting this from a December post by Cinnamon Swirl: Freedom! Lakota Sioux Indians Declare Sovereign Nation Status, and the Republic of Lakotah website.

"Helicopter Parents" -- Those Meddling Adults

Wow. This is insane.
The curse of the meddling parent: "Helicopter parents" who "hyperactively intervene" in the lives of their offspring could damage their children's job prospects.

I agree with the article - as an employer or manager, you bet I want someone self-reliant.

I'm so glad I grew up before this trend. I've called it "styrofoaming" in the past, in conversations with friends, meaning the relentless insulation by parents of their children from every possible danger, and thus, quite a bit of life. But I think I like "helicopter parents" better.

Or, maybe here in the US it's better considered a form of isolationism, with parent as the border fence, border guards, searches, seizures, security theater, etc., and child as the protected territory. Hm.

Touch Screens Out in Ohio

Ohio SoS to Cleveland: Ditch the Touch Screens

[New Secretary of State] Jennifer Brunner cast the deciding vote in the 3-2 decision to get rid of Cleveland's touch screen voting machines, which have helped the Republicans cheat their way to victory in the last several elections.

Q's for Candidates, and CIA Torture

Nieman Watchdog lists a series of questions every candidate should get asked. It's not about Bush-bashing, it's about defining how you, Candidate, will operate as president.

Inside the CIA's notorious "black sites".

The nightmare started for him back in fall 2003. Bashmilah had traveled to Jordan from Indonesia, where he was living with his wife and working in the clothing business. He and his wife went to Jordan to meet Bashmilah's mother, who had also traveled there. The family hoped to arrange for heart surgery for Bashmilah's mother at a hospital in Amman. But before leaving Indonesia, Bashmilah had lost his passport and had received a replacement. Upon arrival in Jordan, Jordanian officials questioned his lack of stamps in the new one, and they grew suspicious when Bashmilah admitted he had visited Afghanistan in 2000. Bashmilah was taken into custody by Jordanian authorities on Oct. 21, 2003. He would not reappear again until he stepped out of a CIA plane in Yemen on May 5, 2005.

Bashmilah's apparent innocence was clearly lost on officials with Jordan's General Intelligence Department. After his arrest, the Jordanians brutally beat him, peppering him with questions about al-Qaida. He was forced to jog around in a yard until he collapsed. Officers hung him upside down with a leather strap and his hands tied. They beat the soles of his feet and his sides. They threatened to electrocute him with wires. The told him they would rape his wife and mother.

It was too much. Bashmilah signed a confession multiple pages long, but he was disoriented and afraid even to read it. "I felt sure it included things I did not say," he wrote in his declaration to the court delivered Friday. "I was willing to sign a hundred sheets so long as they would end the interrogation."

The CIA's torture teachers

According to congressional sources and mental healthcare professionals knowledgeable about the secret program who spoke with Salon, two CIA-employed psychologists, James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen, were at the center of the program, which likely violated the Geneva Conventions on the treatment of prisoners.

Finally, a Horoscope that's "Me"

From The Onion, of course:

Dec 11, 2007

Libra SEPTEMBER 23 - OCTOBER 23
An engrossing read will soon transport you to a strange and faraway land, leaving you stranded in Harlem after 30 missed stops.

Feminism the Movement and Feminism the Ideology

One may wax and wane, but every woman who says "I'm not a feminist, but" actually is one.

Why Young Women Fear the Feminist Label. Or: The Rise and Fall and Rise and Fall and Rise of Feminism.

The Fundamentalism Project

Book series. Excellent discussion in context over at Group News Blog: Teen Killed by Fundamentalist Father

Canada Holds US Violating Convention Against Torture, Will Accept Refugees, Asylees

Federal court strikes down refugee agreement

"... The United States' policies and practices do not meet the conditions set down for authorizing Canada to enter into a STCA," Phelan wrote in his 126-page decision.

"The U.S. does not meet the Refugee Convention requirements nor the [UN] Convention Against Torture prohibition (the Maher Arar case being one example). Further, the STCA does not comply with the relevant provisions of the Charter."

Reduce Oil Spills?

You know, if we used less oil, there'd probably be fewer oil spills of ships transporting the stuff or other facilities.

Beaches blackened in South Korea's worst oil spill.

San Francisco California Oil Spill Pilot To Surrender License

Philippines Oil Spill Spread to Lake Feared

Santa Barbara California: Crude Oil Spills into Sisquoc River Tributary

Russian Spills in Kerch Strait

And in other news,

BP Pleads Guilty in 2006 Alaska Spill. BP Exploration Alaska entered its guilty plea on Thursday, Nov. 29, to one violation of the Clean Water Act for a 200,000-gallon spill at the Prudhoe Bay field in March 2006.