Ernest Partridge

In another week, more than 100 million American citizens will go to the polls to choose their next president. -Or so most of those citizens believe, along with all of the corporate media and, of course, the candidates.

But might it be possible that the decision next Tuesday lies, not with those 100-plus million voters, but instead with a few dozen programmers who write the secret software for the voting machines that will record some 30 percent of the votes, and also for the computers that compile (i.e., collect and report) 80 percent of the "official election returns? The very idea is too horrible to contemplate, and so it is not contemplated; not by the media, not by most of the public, and not by the Democratic Party.

A presidential selection by anonymous programmers is not contemplated, much less discussed and publicized, in the face of compelling evidence that the 2004 presidential election, along with numerous congressional elections during the past decade, were in fact stolen.

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Stephen Lendman

Throughout much of American history, dissent was never tolerated if thought to threaten entrenched interests. Especially in times of war, economic crisis, or social stress. During the great Red Scare from 1917 - 1920. Under the 1917 Espionage Act that barred mailing materials advocating insurrectionist or forcible resistance, and the 1918 Sedition Act that banned criticism of the government and ongoing war effort. Later targeting those on the left by the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), the Smith Act, and during the age of Joe McCarthy. Post-9/11, anti-war activists, Latino immigrants, and Muslim Americans viciously targeted. The San Francisco Eight as well.

Former Black Panthers. On January 23, 2007, arrested in early morning raids in California, New York and Florida. Charged with the 1971 killing of a San Francisco police officer and various conspiracy acts from 1968 - 1973. A racist frame following decades of harassment and a ruthless vendetta against the Black Panther Party.

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Les Visible

Life means something different for a variety of classes of people. According to a particular ancient tradition there are seven rays, or soul paths that proceed out of the white light of spirit and find their way back again to the source which would mean, I think, that life is just a journey of discovery, or, possibly, nothing more than a process of remembrance.

I intuit from this that some colors blend with other colors more harmoniously but that could be subjective according to the predispositions of anyone on any ray. I intuit that on each ray there are levels of apprehension and cluelessness. One could argue that presuming cluelessness is a form of chauvinism and that everyone has the right to be an idiot or a savant and that it can be hard to tell which is which depending on what is considered important.

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Even, in Safe States, hints of fear and intimidation

Daniel Patrick Welch

Swampscott, Massachussetts, isn't the place you'd pick for right-wing hatemongering. Sandwiched between the industrial cities Lynn and Salem on Boston's North Shore (and somewhat wealthier and more conservative than both) Swampscott is a seaside bedroom community many people pass through on their way to and from Boston. In fact, M was doing just that when she came face to face with the kind of right wing tactics that have become infamous in swing states.

A woman--we'll call her M the Voter--takes the train to work in Boston, and parks at the station in Swampscott. A proud Obama supporter, she has a sticker prominently displayed on her car. She returned from work to find a sheet of paper stuck under her windshield. It read, in large caps, INDICTMENT. Below, the poster was more specific, informing her that she had been "listed in our registry" and "relevant information will be recorded and forwarded to the proper authorities."

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Sarah Meyer

[Click on graph to enlarge.]

Following Afghanistan Murder and Security catastrophes in September ‘08, we now have a global economic disaster. We also have forecasts of “doom” in Afghanistan.

Global financial meltdown followed the Bush Bailout vote on 1 October 2008. The US financial collapse is related to the “industrial military complex”, and defense expenditures. Eight days after 7% Bush signed the Bailout, while global markets were collapsing, a headline announced: "Pentagon Wants $450 Billion Increase Over Next Five Years." On / following 1 October '08, the US awarded, to date, AT LEAST $3.3 billion for military contracts for Afghanistan and Iraq. (see "contracts" below. * A proper assessment needs doing!) No, Mr. Bush and Co., for all your crocodile compassion, you failed to learn in Iraq, and now in Afghanistan, that human beings and community structure are more important than Propaganda, People- killing and Toys for the Boys.

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Len Hart

[Princeton Report Rips N.J. E-voting Machines as Easily Hackable.] Even prominent Republicans now concede that George W. Bush presided over the destruction of America, the subversion of the Constitution, defiance of the rule of law. Bush did this by way of two stolen elections. This article reveals how they did it and proposes a 'fool proof' method by which elections can be made theft proof!

Princeton University has demonstrated how easily the GOP may 'hack' voting machines in key precincts, how simple it is to upload malicious code that turns votes for Democrats into votes for the GOP! It not enough to simply make this conduct punishable as 'high treason'. It can be prevented --thus sparing a guilty gopper hard time in a GOP 'corporate' prison guarded by Blackwater. A team from Princeton University set out to prove once and for all the Diebold voting machines could be hacked easily. Not only did they prove this to be a fact, they created a Diebold specific virus that spreads from voting machine to voting machine.

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Robert Dreyfuss

Of course, the very invasion of Iraq was illegal in 2003, and it flouted international law. So some may say, these cross-border raids are small potatoes. But they're not. This is a big deal. If it becomes a standard part of U.S. military doctrine that any country can be declared "criminal" and thus lose its sovereignty, then there is no such thing as international law anymore.

A parallel new Bush doctrine is emerging, in the last days of the soon-to-be-ancien regime, and it needs to be strangled in its crib. Like the original Bush doctrine -- the one that Sarah Palin couldn't name, which called for preventive military action against emerging threats -- this one also casts international law aside by insisting that the United States has an inherent right to cross international borders in "hot pursuit" of anyone it doesn't like. They're already applying it to Pakistan, and this week Syria was the target. Is Iran next? Let's take Pakistan first.

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Charles E. Carlson

To my Son,

Now that you are a senior and will soon be off to college, there is something I hope you will examine before you make any career decisions. I call it "the Outfit," and to most a job there would be the ultimate in success and career achievement…fixed for life. But it has one drawback, for some there is a moral problem. I think you are smart enough to decide and to learn from the Outfit successes.

First, I want you to see what the outfit does. One of its capabilities is the demolition of skyscrapers. Included here are the You Tube links to parts of two films about the demolition of the three World Trade Center buildings on Day911, that appears to be one of the Outfit‘s projects; it did not build them, but it brought them down.

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Chris Floyd

Here's a story that seems to be getting little play in the American media: a candidate for the U.S. Congress who is proudly running on his record as a torturer of innocent civilians in Iraq. Pressing time constraints today prevent me from writing fully on this, but read Johan Hari's report in The Independent. (Yes, once again, you have to cross the ocean to find out what's going on in America).

Read the whole piece. I have some disagreement with Hari's conclusion, when he says: "The gap between the Republican and Democratic Parties is too narrow, but on this issue it is hefty." I have not seen any calls whatsoever from the Democratic leadership to prosecute all those involved in the vast apparatus of torture spawned by the "War on Terror." The Democrats have condemned "torture," of course, but what of that? Bush does the same, even as he orders it up. And of course, a few small fry can be served up; again, Bush has done the same. But there is no indication whatsoever that an Obama administration or an even larger-majority Democratic congress will ever pursue justice against the officers, the agency chiefs and department heads, the atrocity-abetting lawyers -- and, of course, the very highest officials of the state -- who created and maintained this evil system.

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Gaither Stewart

“We are not fighting against men or a kind of politics but against the class which produces those politics and those men.” (from Dirty Hands, a political play by Jean Paul Sartre, first performed in Paris on April 2, 1948.)

“It takes a day to make a senator and ten years to make a worker.” AND, as Caligula says to the senators: “It is much easier to descend the social ladder than to climb back up.” (from the play Caligula by Albert Camus, first performed in Paris in 1945, words I include here just for fun, mockery and a hint of warning.)

(Rome) It’s a capricious irony of history that the word bourgeois, which pinpoints the capitalist class, is perceived by nearly everyone, including the bourgeois themselves, as an epithet and is almost universally rebuffed!

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