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Video: Alternative
Views
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Censured Casualties
features rare footage
of war crimes against the Iraqi people suffered during
and after the Gulf War. The footage is from former Attorney
General Ramsey
Clark in his attempt to document the injustice
of United States military actions in the region.
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Video: Alternative
Views
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Another Unknown
War
features a film on the
struggle of the indigenous people of West Papua to remain
sovereign in the face of an Indonesian invasion backed
by world capital. Footage of Noam
Chomsky on Western involvments in the region and
the relation to East Timor.
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Doug's New Books & Related
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TV/Radio
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Tuesday, November 30, 2004
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Monday, November 29, 2004
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Ukraine vs. US
The mainstream media is wowed by a spectacle of voter fraud in a tiny mountain country but where is the interest in US voting fraud -- which whether or not it cost John Kerry the election (I still maintain that it may have) is documented to have been brutal and conspired and not just the fault of machinery.
The Judiciary and the people themselves have brought the Ukraine to a standstill as evidence is produced. This has not happened here -- is it because of the nature of the evidence?
No, what is charged in the Ukraine are cases of dead and non-existent people voting (same here in the US), of stuffed ballot boxes with numerous votes cast by the same person (same here in the US), of some districts having over 100% vote count (not here in the US to my knowledge, but we have e-voting glitches that add thousands of votes and subtract a big question mark of how many others), and of some districts being overwhelming for one candidate when the demographics would lead one to believe otherwise (this has been documented, for instance, in New Mexico and Indian country where people voted upwards of 5 out of 6 for Bush though exit and other polls pointed in the other direction completely).
The fraud charges are not dissimilar, then. Why is there no excitement over this story in the US?
Doug Kellner has wondered recently about having a truly impartial Judiciary to oversee the affairs and we know we do not have this.
But the real blame to date is square on the media themselves first and foremost -- as they say over and over in their conferences and spectacles of "how they got it wrong" after the fact, it is their job to probe and ask question and report as best they can the truth. This doesn't require objective news, but it does require that their are healthy numbers of newspeople that object to different party lines and interrogate the consumer status quo.
Second, the blame is on John Kerry and his campaign. If he would not have rested his case, the media would not have rested their's. Keith Olbermann has rightfully pointed out on his blog the ambiguous and political manner in which Kerry has attempted to steer his way out of this election without causing a fight and being tarnished a poor loser. This is pure politics at this point and has nothing to do with the good of the American people or democracy, save that in Kerry's own distorted ego he probably does really believe that if he maintains karma points from this election that he can fight on the Senate floor to push through legislation (like health care) that it is argued help people. Whether or not this is the case is too abstract a question for the likes of me -- I simply see someone of questionable belief patterns to begin with, shrinking from a fight as he wraps himself in the democratic blue and the American flag. Doesn't look good...
Third, the people themselves. This has been said many times. But truly, Americans must have it so well off -- well into the 50K and under Democratic base -- compared with the rest of the world, and our media is so hypnotic and adept at mind control that we cannot for more than one sustained minute rouse ourselves from our common identities to get out in the streets (as is done in the Ukraine and almost everywhere else in the world) upon high political crimes and misdemeanors and demostrate dissent and concern. The best of us sit on our computers and mouth off as blogging collectives. It's better than nothing at all -- don't get me wrong. But it's pretty tepid and it's certainly not going to take down a president. If Dave Winer or someone else would like to take that bet, I'm on...
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Sunday, November 28, 2004
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Salon.com | Counterinaugural at the Clinton library
here's an account by Sidney Blumenthal of Bush's petty and childish behavior at the Clinton library inaugaral that wells documents the smallness of the Shrub. Excerpt:
"At the dedication of the Clinton library last week in Little Rock, Ark., Karl Rove and President Bush received separate tours of the dramatic building, a glistening silver suspended boxcar filled with light and offering a panoramic view of the Arkansas River. Across the river stands an old railroad bridge that symbolically represents "the bridge to the 21st century," President Clinton's reelection slogan in 1996. The library exhibits, year by year, detail specific Clinton administration achievements in social and international policy, highlighting not only the arc of progress but the entwined method of governing and politics. And in one display, about the Republican Congress' failed impeachment trial of the president, emblazoned "The Fight for Power," the library makes explicit that these accumulated changes were fiercely resisted and hard won.
The opening ceremony was biblical in its spectacle, length and rain. For more than four hours we huddled in thin ponchos under the unrelieved downpour, through many church choirs and a Colombian children's band, a jazz trumpeter and Bono, awaiting four presidents. Only on election nights, after Clinton's two victories, was Little Rock previously inundated with such a cast of thousands -- former advisors and Cabinet secretaries, the diplomatic corps and high school friends of Bill, Wes Clark and Barbra Streisand, Madeleine Albright and Robin Williams -- spilling out of the Capital and Peabody hotels and down the main drag, and milling in the bars and streets until the wee hours. For the assembled Democrats, beneath the nostalgic celebration it was an unofficial convention, a kind of counterinaugural, with rueful discussions of the recent defeat.
Sen. John Kerry entered to take his front-row seat to defiant cheering from the crowd. Then, when the presidents were announced, Bush tried to push his way past Clinton at the library door to be first in line, against the already accepted protocol for the event, as though the walk to the platform was a contest for alpha male.
In his speech, Clinton sought to clarify the present by his broad analysis of globalization -- "an age of interdependence with new possibilities and new dangers" -- and the offer of conciliation: "America has two great dominant strands of political thought; we're represented up here on this stage: conservatism, which at its very best draws lines that should not be crossed; and progressivism, which at its very best breaks down barriers that are no longer needed or should never have been erected in the first place."
In his effort to transcend the division of America into two nations, red and blue states, Clinton was applying his tradition -- the absence of dogma, the belief that good ideas can come from anywhere, and that solutions cannot be imposed but must be worked out in democratic politics by building coalitions, compromises and experimentation, of which he was leading practitioner and survivor, ever the Comeback Kid.
Offstage, beforehand, Rove and Bush had had their library tours. According to two eyewitnesses, Rove had shown keen interest in everything he saw, and asked questions, including about costs, obviously thinking about a future Bush library and legacy. "You're not such a scary guy," joked his tour guide. "Yes, I am," Rove replied. Walking away, he muttered deliberately and loudly, "I change Constitutions, I put churches in schools ..." Thus he identified himself as more than the ruthless campaign tactician -- as the invisible hand of power, pervasive and expansive, designing to alter the fundamental American compact.
On his tour Bush appeared distracted and glanced repeatedly at his watch. When he stopped to gaze at the river, where Secret Service agents were stationed in boats, the guide said, "Usually, you might see some bass fishermen out there." Bush replied: "A submarine could take this place out."
Was the president warning of an al-Qaida submarine, sneaking undetected up the Mississippi, through the locks and dams of the Arkansas River, surfacing suddenly under the bridge to the 21st century to dispatch the Clinton library with a torpedo that could travel on water and land? Is that where Osama bin Laden is hiding?
Or was this a wishful, paranoid fantasy of ubiquitous terrorism destroying Clinton's legacy with one blow? Or was it a projection of menace and messianism, with only Bush grasping the true danger, standing between submerged threat and civilization? Was his apparent non sequitur a reflection of his inner logic about American politics in a fog of war, where little is discernible in the miasma but fear? Or was this simply his way of saying he wouldn't build his library near water? Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, a submarine just a submarine. And sometimes we all live in a yellow submarine.
Clinton concluded his remarks with a challenge to Bush couched in terms of his own failure: "Where we fell short ... the biggest disappointment in the world to me ... peace in the Middle East ... I did all I could." He turned to face Bush seated behind him: "But when we had seven years of progress toward peace, there was one whole year when, for the first time in the history of the state of Israel, not one person died of a terrorist attack, when the Palestinians began to believe they could have a shared future. And so, Mr. President, again, I say: I hope you get to cross over into the promised land of Middle East peace. We have a good opportunity, and we are all praying for you."
At the private luncheon of distinguished guests afterward, in a heated tent pitched behind the library, Shimon Peres delivered a heartfelt toast to Clinton's perseverance in pursuing the Middle East peace process. Upon entering the tent, Bush, according to an eyewitness, told an aide, "One gulp and we're out of here." He had informed the Clintons he would stay through the lunch, but by the time Peres arose with wine glass in hand the president was gone."
Salon.com | Counterinaugural at the Clinton library
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Canadians ask: Pull welcome mat for 'war criminal' Bush?
how will War Criminal Bush be received in Canada?
The Smirking Chimp: "Canadians ask: Pull welcome mat for 'war criminal' Bush?"
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Observer | Revealed: how Britain was told full coup plan
both the US and Brit Govt were told in advance of British coup plan in Africa that Mark Thatcher, Maggie's brat, was involved in and did nothing, a brewing scandal for Britain but probably just more teflon for the Bush-Gang
Observer Revealed: how Britain was told full coup plan
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Saturday, November 27, 2004
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Ian H. Solomon: 'Validate the vote'
suspicions of vote fraud in US election continue to circulate
The Smirking Chimp
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Friday, November 26, 2004
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Thursday, November 25, 2004
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MSNBC -Zogby Vs. Mitofsky (Keith Olbermann)
here's Keith Olbermann's blog on possible election fraud, the only mainstream media figure that I know of pursuing the story....
MSNBC -
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Robert Parry: 'US vs Ukraine elections: Big media's democracy double standards'
here's a spot-on critique of double standards hyprocrisy of US media and politicians jabbering about Ukraine election and keeping silent about US system
The Smirking Chimp
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washingtonpost.com: Ukraine Opposition Files Supreme Court Appeal
Let's bring in the EU and Russia to check Ohio, Florida and other state ballot results, as well as the computer voting machines; what hutzpah for Powell to go on TV and say that there was a pattern of corrupt balloting in Ukraine and that this is unacceptible to the US washingtonpost.com: Ukraine Opposition Files Supreme Court Appeal
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Wednesday, November 24, 2004
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Anthony Wade: 'How much is enough for the media to cover votergate 2004?'
as evidence of election fraud grows the corporate media respond with a resounding silence
The Smirking Chimp: "Anthony Wade: 'How much is enough for the media to cover votergate 2004?'"
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Sara S. DeHart, Ph.D.: 'Exit poll data in Republic of Georgia vs. USA'
in democracy, they investigate and protest election fraud; where there are statistical anomalies, there is something rotten;
Indeed, "Something is rotten in the state of Denmark."
The Smirking Chimp
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Tuesday, November 23, 2004
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Salon.com | Bush, The ugly American
Bush the global embarassment; so far, no one has mentioned how rash it was for Bush to rush into a crowd to play the macho when the crowd could have torn him apart. Here's Norman Birnbaum's take on the incident:
"On Sunday, President Ricardo Lagos of Chile canceled a dinner in honor of President Bush rather than have his other guests endure metal detectors and the other attentions of the U.S. Secret Service. Lagos apparently took the view that the dignity and sovereignty of his country counted for something. I can recollect another occasion when determined hosts resisted the importunities of an American guest.
May 8, 1985, was the 40th anniversary of Germany's capitulation and the end of the Third Reich. I was in Strasbourg with the Rev. Jesse Jackson, who spoke that day at the invitation of the Socialist group of the European Parliament at a ceremony commemorating the European resistance. The Parliament's official guest was, however, President Ronald Reagan. The invitation to Reagan had caused considerable dismay to many parliamentarians. He came directly from the grotesque German-American event at the cemetery in Bitburg, Germany, where S.S. graves marked the landscape.
The Parliament's president was Pierre Pflimlin, notable for having opposed de Gaulle's return to power in 1958 as French premier, only to figure immediately as vice premier in de Gaulle's government. Pflimlin, in order to invite Reagan, had on his own canceled a speech to be given that day by President Sandro Pertini of Italy. Pertini, a Socialist, was released from prison with the fall of the Mussolini regime in 1943, but had refused to leave jail until his Communist fellow prisoners were also freed. The king and his generals having abandoned Rome with indecent haste to flee the advancing Germans, Pertini organized resistance to the invaders at the gates of the city.
When Pflimlin informed the parliamentarians that they would have to submit to metal detectors before entering their own chamber to listen to Reagan, their accumulated anger surfaced. A group of women members, led by Luciana Castellana of Italy and Heidi Wieczorek-Zeul of Germany (now that nation's minister for development aid) wrote to Pflimlin expressing their distress at the distinguished visitor's apprehension about his safety. For their part, they would undertake to reassure him that they were not carrying weapons by entering the chamber without clothing. Pflimlin immediately canceled the metal-detector test, and the Reagan visit took its uninspiring course.
The misadventures of the Secret Service abroad are not the stuff of legend, alas, but of fact. Michel Rocard, the premier of France in 1989, recounted an attempt by Americans guarding the elder President George Bush to keep Rocard from entering President Mitterrand's office at the Elysée Palace. French agents then intervened in rather strenuous fashion to open the way for their head of government. In Santiago yesterday, President Bush himself joined a confrontation between Chilean security and some of his agents. Perhaps the American president wished to consolidate his support among that considerable segment of our citizenry that instinctively dislikes foreigners -- and whose understanding of manliness makes the primitives studied by anthropologists, or the large apes studied by the primatologists, seem very civilized. Perhaps he was inspired by the example of the NBA player Ron Artest, who the other day took on officials, players and the public in a violent episode at Detroit. He was suspended by the NBA for the duration of the season. But no one has the authority to discipline the president: We may have to wait a very long time for him, in matters great and small, to exhibit self-restraint.
It is not only the Secret Service that seeks to extend American sovereignty beyond our borders. Even before the attack of Sept. 11, 2001, and the liberties taken by American officials for the sake of "national security," they zealously ignored other nations' borders, laws and rights. The extreme distrust with which our present government regards supposed threats to our sovereignty in international treaties isn't matched by responsiveness to the concerns of others. It is now American policy that it is legitimate to abduct or murder foreigners in other countries, with or without the approval of their governments. When other nations refer to their own standards of justice, the recent American response has been to accuse them of egoism, short-sightedness, or "anti-Americanism." The arbitrary denial of visas to academic visitors, business representatives and students is a symptom of the same pathology. It is a complicated illness, combining extreme phobia and fantasies of omnipotence in a megalomaniac synthesis.
Of course, half the nation deplores our increasing isolation in the world community. There is method to the madness of the White House. By evoking systematic opposition abroad, it provides its most fervent supporters with tangible evidence of America's beleaguered state. That in turn serves as justification -- even without colored alerts -- for a perpetual state of domestic emergency. Recall the abusive treatment meted out in the past years to demonstrators protesting the president's policies, or the obsessive screening of those attending his campaign rallies. The attempt to extend abroad the unconstrained power of the American state is inextricably connected to the offensive against our liberties at home."
Salon.com | The ugly American
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Rather to Step Down in March (washingtonpost.com)
Rather's blunders in accepting Bush Air Guard memos seem to have done him in, combined with fierce rightwing attacks on him as biased against Bush (as should be every living and thinking human)
Rather to Step Down in March (washingtonpost.com)
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Keith Olbermann: 'Relax about Ohio, relax about the guy tailing me
Keith Obermann on how the Ohio vote controversies are playing out and the various challenges and scenarios-- so far, except for Keith, the mainstream has not touched this
The Smirking Chimp
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Monday, November 22, 2004
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Steven Rosenfeld: 'Ohio presidential results to be challenged'
Ohio election fraud will be challenged in court
The Smirking Chimp
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Sunday, November 21, 2004
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Children Pay Cost of Iraq's Chaos (washingtonpost.com)
Iraqi children are paying the cost for the insane US invasion of Iraq. Read and weep and then get angry...
Excerpt: "Acute malnutrition among young children in Iraq has nearly doubled since the United States led an invasion of the country 20 months ago, according to surveys by the United Nations, aid agencies and the interim Iraqi government.
After the rate of acute malnutrition among children younger than 5 steadily declined to 4 percent two years ago, it shot up to 7.7 percent this year, according to a study conducted by Iraq's Health Ministry in cooperation with Norway's Institute for Applied International Studies and the U.N. Development Program. The new figure translates to roughly 400,000 Iraqi children suffering from "wasting," a condition characterized by chronic diarrhea and dangerous deficiencies of protein."
Children Pay Cost of Iraq's Chaos (washingtonpost.com)
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John Pilger: The Greatest Political Scandal of Our Time
In a brilliant and timely article on the horrors of Fallujah and its normalization by the media, John Pilger delves into the 9/11 Commission report and notes that uniquedly the Norad antihijacking forces were not in the alert and action mode that morning and that Cheney and Rumsfeld should have been active and engaged (while Bush read My pet goat). Their inaction is a scandal not yet really confronted. Here's Pilger:
"Flying into Philadelphia recently, I spotted the Kean congressional report on 11 September from the 9/11 Commission on sale at the bookstalls. "How many do you sell?" I asked. "One or two," was the reply. "It'll disappear soon." Yet, this modest, blue-covered book is a revelation. Like the Butler report in the UK, which detailed all the incriminating evidence of Blair's massaging of intelligence before the invasion of Iraq, then pulled its punches and concluded nobody was responsible, so the Kean report makes excruciatingly clear what really happened, then fails to draw the conclusions that stare it in the face. It is a supreme act of normalising the unthinkable. This is not surprising, as the conclusions are volcanic.
The most important evidence to the 9/11 Commission came from General Ralph Eberhart, commander of the North American Aerospace Defence Command (Norad).
"Air force jet fighters could have intercepted hijacked airliners roaring towards the World Trade Center and Pentagon," he said, "if only air traffic controllers had asked for help 13 minutes sooner . . . We would have been able to shoot down all three . . . all four of them."
Why did this not happen?
The Kean report makes clear that "the defence of US aerospace on 9/11 was not conducted in accord with pre-existing training and protocols . . . If a hijack was confirmed, procedures called for the hijack coordinator on duty to contact the Pentagon's National Military Command Center (NMCC) . . . The NMCC would then seek approval from the office of the Secretary of Defence to provide military assistance . . . "
Uniquely, this did not happen. The commission was told by the deputy administrator of the Federal Aviation Authority that there was no reason the procedure was not operating that morning. "For my 30 years of experience . . ." said Monte Belger, "the NMCC was on the net and hearing everything real-time . . . I can tell you I've lived through dozens of hijackings . . . and they were always listening in with everybody else."
But on this occasion, they were not. The Kean report says the NMCC was never informed. Why? Again, uniquely, all lines of communication failed, the commission was told, to America's top military brass. Donald Rumsfeld, secretary of defence, could not be found; and when he finally spoke to Bush an hour and a half later, it was, says the Kean report, "a brief call in which the subject of shoot-down authority was not discussed." As a result, Norad's commanders were "left in the dark about what their mission was."
The report reveals that the only part of a previously fail-safe command system that worked was in the White House where Vice-President Cheney was in effective control that day, and in close touch with the NMCC. Why did he do nothing about the first two hijacked planes? Why was the NMCC, the vital link, silent for the first time in its existence? Kean ostentatiously refuses to address this. Of course, it could be due to the most extraordinary combination of coincidences. Or it could not.
In July 2001, a top secret briefing paper prepared for Bush read: "We [the CIA and FBI] believe that OBL [Osama Bin Laden] will launch a significant terrorist attack against US and/or Israeli interests in the coming weeks. The attack will be spectacular and designed to inflict mass casualties against US facilities or interests. Attack preparations have been made. Attack will occur with little or no warning."
On the afternoon of 11 September, Donald Rumsfeld, having failed to act against those who had just attacked the United States, told his aides to set in motion an attack on Iraq when the evidence was non-existent. Eighteen months later, the invasion of Iraq, unprovoked and based on lies now documented, took place. This epic crime is the greatest political scandal of our time, the latest chapter in the long 20th-century history of the west's conquests of other lands and their resources. If we allow it to be normalised, if we refuse to question and probe the hidden agendas and unaccountable secret power structures at the heart of "democratic" governments and if we allow the people of Fallujah to be crushed in our name, we surrender both democracy and humanity."
John Pilger: The Greatest Political Scandal of Our Time
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Asia Times - Counterinsurgency run amok
here's a strong analysis of parallels with Vietnam using Hardt and Negri's notion of insurgency and US notions of counterinsurgency to describe the monstrosity of the US assault on Fallujah, and its inevitable failure and blowback
Asia Times - Asia's most trusted news source for the Middle East
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NYT: US invasion of Iran would be catastrophe
next up Iran, number 2 in the Axis of Evil Hit List. Once again "no credibility" Colin "moderate" Powell is talking of Iraqi nuclear and missile programs and Bush is rattling the saber. This time, as NYT editorial suggests, it would hit the fan hard if US invaded a highly organized and well-defended Iran; how insane can these Bush lunatics be?
NYT: US invasion of Iran would be catastrophe
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Saturday, November 20, 2004
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Why Did Kerry Fold? Ohio Recount Stirs Distressing Nuttiness
although Ron Rosenbaum has not yet bought the Bush voting scam story, he is absolutely right about Kerry: his concession was inexcusable and he could have easily called for waiting for all the Ohio votes to be tallied-- that would create a space to go after possible voting fraud and dramatize the problem with the voting machines that must be addressed and solved if US democracy is to survive
Why Did Kerry Fold? Ohio Recount Stirs Distressing Nuttiness
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Recount New Hampshire
Russ Baker's article points out that it is DIEBOLD OPTICAL SCANNERS that have produced a fishy voting count in New Hampshire; its the same in Florida and Ohio, the Diebold optical scanner machines, even more than the new computer voting machines, that provide the fishy counts; this story is much bigger than anyone in the mainstream will admit: it could be that Diebold and perhaps other machines have SYSTEMATICALLY boosted Bush's vote everywhere and it could easily have been decisive in Ohio....
Recount New Hampshire
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