Seeing through the veil … and hacking the vote
Hello, with Mercury in the heavens about to turn direct I was hoping to feel a little less woolly headed today, no joy yet so I guess I will just blame it on being Sunday. My brain has strong Union tendencies and tends to work to rule at weekends ( i.e. not a’tall — lol.)
There are some interesting stories out today that lift the lid on what has been known unofficially or subconsciously at least for a while, the story below however leaves me a little slack jawed. I’ve yet to put my finger on what particular game is being played out, but last time I checked Bolton was a diplomat who occasionally at least showed supposed allegiances to the UN not a US politician ( or a politicians puppet) with supposed allegiances to Israel.
Due to various forms of pressure and veto’s from the US, the condemnation of the Israel attacks had already been watered down, if one country can have this much control over an international organisation such as the UN and use that organisation as a mouthpiece for its own personal politics (the special relationship between Israel and the Republicans in the US is long standing) then how effective can the UN be in world politics? Accusing sponsors of the resolution as being abusers of human rights trying to cover their tracks is beyond ironic — Bolton obviously doesn’t check in with the news back home that often, with Guantanamo some mythical la la land as far as he is concerned. Let’s hope Bolton’s successor is a little more even handed and a little more in touch with reality.
Mel
Bolton in extraordinary outburst against United Nations
Calcutta news
Saturday 18th November, 2006
The U.S. Ambassador to the UN, John Bolton, launched a scathing attack on the United Nations Friday. Bolton was furious over the adoption by the General Assembly of a resolution which said the assembly regretted the deaths of 19 civilians in an attack by the Israeli military in the town of Beit Hanoun last week.
Despite the resolution being significantly watered down at the behest of the United States, and being passing by 156 votes to seven, Bolton launched a blistering attack on the UN, and many of its members.
“Many of the sponsors of that resolution are notorious abusers of human rights themselves, and were seeking to deflect criticism of their own policies,” he said.
“This type of resolution serves only to exacerbate tensions by serving the interests of elements hostile to Israel’s inalienable and recognized right to exist.”
“This deepens suspicions about the United Nations that will lead many to conclude that the organization is incapable of playing a helpful role in the region,” Bolton continued.
“In a larger sense, the United Nations must confront a more significant question, that of its relevance and utility in confronting the challenges of the 21st century. We believe that the United Nations is ill served when its members seek to transform the organization into a forum that is a little more than a self-serving and a polemical attack against Israel or the United States ,” he said.
“The Human Rights Council has quickly fallen into the same trap and de-legitimized itself by focusing attention exclusively on Israel . Meanwhile, it has failed to address real human rights abuses in Burma , Darfur, the DPRK, and other countries,” Bolton charged.
“The problem of anti-Israel bias is not unique to the Human Rights Council. It is endemic to the culture of the United Nations. It is a decades-old, systematic problem that transcends the whole panoply of the UN organizations and agencies,” he continued.
The United States, and Australia joined Israel in voting against the motion, together with four small Pacific island nations. All countries in Europe, including Britain , voted to support the resolution.
The original text condemned Israel over the Beit Hanoun attack and its operations in Gaza, however the adopted resolution had the General Assembly expressing, “regret.”
Rather than an outright investigation of the incident the assembly resolved to form a committee, “to look into the facts.” The resolution also carried a demand that the Palestinian Authority take action to stop rocket attacks on Israel.
Bolton launched his attack despite gaining these concessions. Equally critical was Israeli Ambassador Dan Gillerman who stormed out of the session after telling members, “I caution everyone who will support this resolution. By doing so, you will be an accomplice to terror. The blood of more innocents will be on your hands.”
The resolution was taken to the General Assembly after the United States used its veto to squash a similar motion in the Security Council. It was the 31st time the U.S. had used its veto at the UN to stop resolutions concerning Israel and the Palestinians.
Clear evidence 2006 Congressional Elections hacked
Oped News
November 17
A major undercount of Democratic votes and an overcount of Republican votes in U.S. House and Senate races across the country is indicated by an analysis of national exit polling data, by the Election Defense Alliance (EDA), a national election integrity organization.
These findings have led EDA to issue an urgent call for further investigation into the 2006 election results and a moratorium on deployment of all electronic election equipment.
“We see evidence of pervasive fraud, but apparently calibrated to political conditions existing before recent developments shifted the political landscape,” said attorney Jonathan Simon, co-founder of Election Defense Alliance, “so ‘the fix’ turned out not to be sufficient for the actual circumstances.” Explained Simon, “When you set out to rig an election, you want to do just enough to win. The greater the shift from expectations, (from exit polling, pre-election polling, demographics) the greater the risk of exposure–of provoking investigation. What was plenty to win on October 1 fell short on November 7.
“The findings raise urgent questions about the electoral machinery and vote counting systems used in the United States ,” according to Sally Castleman, National Chair of EDA. “This is a nothing less than a national indictment of the vote counting process in the United States!”
“The numbers tell us there absolutely was hacking going on, just not enough to overcome the size of the actual turnout. The tide turned so much in the last few weeks before the eleciton. It looks for all the world that they’d already figured out the percentage they needed to rig, when the programming of the vote rigging software was distributed weeks before the election, and it wasn’t enough,” Castleman commented.
Election Defense Alliance data analysis team leader Bruce O’Dell, whose expertise is in the design of large-scale secure computer and auditing systems for major financial institutions, stated, “The logistics of mass software distribution to tens or even hundreds of thousands of voting machines in the field would demand advance planning�”at least several weeks–for anyone attempting very large-scale, systematic e-voting fraud, particularly in those counties that allow election equipment to be taken home by poll workers prior to the election.
“The voting equpment seems to be designed to support two types of vote count manipulation–techniques accessible to those with hands-on access to the machines in a county or jurisdiction, and wholesale vulnerabilities in the underlying behavior of the systems which are most readily available to the vendors themseleves. Malicious insiders at any of the vendors would be in a position to alter the behavior of literally thousands of machines by infecting or corrupting the master copy of the software that’s cloned out to the machines in the field. And the groundwork could be laid well in advance. For this election, it appears that such changes would have to have been done by early October at the latest,” O’Dell explained.
In a reprise of his efforts on Election Night 2004, Jonathan Simon captured the unadjusted National Election pool (NEP) data as posted on CNN.com, before it was later “adjusted” to match the actual vote counts. The exit poll data that is seen now on the CNN site has been adjusted already. But Simon points out that both adjusted and unadjusted data were instrumental to exposing the gross miscount.
Simon, surprised that unadjusted polling data was publicly revealed, given the concerns after the 2004 election about the use of exit polls, downloaded as much of the data as he could in real time. Scheduled and planned revisions on the CNN site took place throughout the evening and by the following morning, the unadjusted exit poll data had been replaced with data that conformed with the reported, official vote totals. This was the planned procedure as indicated by the NEP’s methodology.
Adjusting the exit poll data is, by itself, not a troublesome act. Simon explained, “Their advertised reason to do the exit polls is to enable analysis of the results by academic researchers–they study the election dynamics and demographics so they can understand which demographic groups voted what ways. As an analytic tool, the exit poll is considered more serviceable if it matches the vote count. Since the vote count is assumed to be gospel, congruence with that count is therefore assumed to give the most accurate picture of the behavior of the electorate and its subgroups.
“In 2004 they had to weight it very heavily, to the point that the party turnout was 37% Democrat and 37% Republican, which has never been the case–leading to the claim that Rove turned out the Republican vote. This was nowhere witnessed, no lines in Republican voting places were reported. As ridiculous as that was, the distortion of actual turnout was even greater in 2006. The adjusted poll’s sample, to match the vote count, had to consist of 49% 2004 Bush voters and only 43% 2004 Kerry voters, more than twice the actual margin of 2.8%. This may not seem like that much, but it translates into more than a 3,000,000 vote shift nationwide, which, depending on targeting, was enough to have altered the outcome of dozens of federal races.
“It should be very clear that weighting by a variety of carefully selected demographic categories, which yields the pre-adjustment exit polls, presents a truly representative electorate by every available standard except the vote count in the present election. So you have a choice: you can believe in an electorate composed of the correct proportions of men and women, young and old, rural and urban, ethnic and income groups, Democrats, Republicans, and Independents–or you can believe the machines. Anyone who has ever wondered what is really in a hot dog should be aware that the machines are designed, programmed, deployed, and serviced by avowedly partisan vendors, and can easily be set up to generate entirely false counts with no one the wiser, least of all the voters.”
Simon concluded, “These machines are completely and utterly black box. The idea that we have this enormous burden of proof that they are miscounting, and there’s no burden of proof that they are counting accurately–that, first and foremost, has to change.”
Britain dragging its feet on treaty to ban cluster bombs, say activists
The Independent
18 November 2006
Britain has been accused of kicking negotiations aimed at banning cluster bombs into the long grass as a group of 25 countries called for talks to agree curbs on the deadly weapons.
Campaigners said the Government had blocked full-scale talks to draw up a weapon control treaty. They claimed that British promises announced last week to phase out “dumb” (untargeted) cluster bombs would have no effect.
The Government argued that Britain needed to engage with the main holders of cluster bombs, including Russia, the United States and China. The Foreign Office said that Britain wanted to work with the international community to ensure that weapons were more reliable and had minimum impact on civilians.
Arms control talks in Geneva ended yesterday with the Norwegians, who had argued for full negotiations towards curbs on cluster bombs, announcing that they would call their own international meeting on cluster bombs to try to move toward a treaty to ban the weapons.
Britain agreed to enter into “discussions” on the problem of unexploded weaponry left over from wars, a move dismissed by campaigners as creating a “talking shop” that would not lead to controls.But the Foreign Office insisted that talks that did not include the main users of the weapons would not secure new arms controls.
Cluster bombs and shells scatter hundreds of deadly “bomblets” over a wide area. Israel ’s conflict with Hizbollah in the summer left the country littered with up to a million unexploded sub-munitions.
Simon Conway, director of Landmine Action, said: “The pledge to phase out ‘dumb’ munitions is an attempt to appear to be doing something while in reality they are kicking things into the long grass.”
CIA analysis finds no Iranian nuclear weapons drive
AFP
19 November
A classifed draft CIA assessment has found no firm evidence of a secret drive by Iran to develop nuclear weapons, as alleged by the White House, a top US investigative reporter has said.
Seymour Hersh, writing in an article for the November 27 issue of the magazine The New Yorker released in advance, reported on whether the administration of Republican President George W. Bush was more, or less, inclined to attack Iran after Democrats won control of Congress last week.
A month before the November 7 legislative elections, Hersh wrote, Vice President Dick Cheney attended a national-security discussion that touched on the impact of Democratic victory in both chambers on Iran policy.
“If the Democrats won on November 7th, the vice president said, that victory would not stop the administration from pursuing a military option with Iran,” Hersh wrote, citing a source familiar with the discussion.
Cheney said the White House would circumvent any legislative restrictions “and thus stop Congress from getting in its way,” he said.The Democratic victory unleashed a surge of calls for the Bush administration to begin direct talks with Iran.
But the administration’s planning of a military option was made “far more complicated” in recent months by a highly classified draft assessment by the Central Intelligence Agency “challenging the White House’s assumptions about how close Iran might be to building a nuclear bomb,” he wrote.
“The CIA found no conclusive evidence, as yet, of a secret Iranian nuclear-weapons program running paallel to the civilian operations that Iran has declared to the International Atomic Energy Agency,” Hersh wrote, adding the CIA had declined to comment on that story.
A current senior intelligence official confirmed the existence of the CIA analysis and said the White House had been hostile to it, he wrote.Cheney and his aides had discounted the assessment, the official said.
“They’re not looking for a smoking gun,” the official was quoted as saying, referring to specific intelligence about Iranian nuclear planning.
“They’re looking for the degree of comfort level they think they need to accomplish the mission.”
The United States and other major powers believe Iran’s uranium enrichment program is ultimately aimed at producing fissile material for nuclear weapons.Iran insists it will use the enriched uranium only to fuel nuclear power stations, something it is permitted to do as a signatory to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
The major powers have been debating a draft United Nations resolution drawn up by Britain, France and Germany that would impose limited sanctions on Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile sectors for Tehran’s failure to comply with an earlier UN resolution on halting enrichment.
On Wednesday, Israel’s outgoing US ambassador Danny Ayalon said in an interview that Bush would not hesitate to use force against Iran to halt its nuclear program if other options failed.
“US President George W. Bush will not hesitate to use force against Iran in order to halt its nuclear program,” Ayalon told the Maariv daily.
Israel, widely considered the Middle East’s sole if undeclared nuclear power, views Iran as its arch-foe, pointing to repeated calls by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to wipe the Jewish state off the map.
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