Attendance Encouraged at Tomorrow's Hearing to Get Pima County to Comply with Existing Election Laws

Update:  From John Brakey-

PLEASE, be in court with us, and bring lots of friends, we need a big presence to show that this is a critical case and “we the people” are paying attention and we expect the judge to do the same.

 

Thursday, November 01, 2012 @  2 pm
Judge James E Marner’s  Courtroom 668

Pima Superior Court: 110 W. Congress, Tucson, AZ

All we want is “Verifiable Elections”, not more “Election Theater”  Our suit, “It demands that county races be included in the hand-count audit, which is not required by Arizona law. County staff workers and advocates dispute whether it is allowed.” From AZ Star 

Here are the links to what been filed in Pima County Superior Court:
Case No. C2012-6655 Assigned to Hon. Judge E. Marner.

We the People Vs Pima County: 

***Pima County Election Special Action OSC filed 10.25.12 -1 of 2.pdf:  http://tinyurl.com/8ploaky

***Election Special Action OSC filed 10.25.12 -2 of 2.pdf:  http://tinyurl.com/9olo5su

***Plaintiffs Memorandum in Support of Special Action 10.26.12.pdf: http://tinyurl.com/94ffguk

More info go to Face book “Pima County Elections - Trust but Verify” https://www.facebook.com/PimaCountyElections

Post from Last Friday:

Arizona Citizens Sue Pima County to Enforce Existing Election Laws

J.T. Waldron

Attorney Brad Roach represents the plaintiffs in a bid
to enforce existing election laws.

Citizens in Arizona concerned about Pima County voting procedures are part of a lawsuit compelling the county to follow state voting laws before the upcoming general election. A diverse group of plaintiffs registered as Democrats, Republicans, Libertarians, Greens and Independents are suing Pima County's Board of Supervisors to incorporate tasks specified by Arizona State Law 16-615.  The plaintiffs' stated mission is to restore public oversight to the elections process.  Like the rest of the nation, Arizonans share a growing concern that election computers make elections easy to cheat and impossible to challenge.

Laws in place but not currently followed by Pima County involve having poll workers include in every Official Return Envelope a copy of the signed “tally lists” or results tape.  Although this practice has been ignored or abandoned over time, the procedure is a valuable step in providing a useful auditing tool in the event of a recount or contested election.

In other words, the citizens are asking that the official returns be signed on the back by the poll workers and placed in the clear plastic envelope labelled "Official Returns Envelope" at the end of the night's count.

The recurring theme for any audit is the comparison of one set of numbers to another set of numbers and there are many circumstances that would require the comparison of ballots to the official returns or "poll tapes". To facilitate this process, citizens are also requesting the court issue an injunction mandating that Pima County separate the vote-by-mail ballots by precinct.

Handling of vote-by-mail ballots is another task that the citizens would like to see Pima County perform in compliance with ARS 16-602. To prevent Pima County's continued defiance of the law, plaintiffs are requesting that Pima County conduct sufficient randomly selected hand count audits of the vote-by-mail ballots as outlined in state law.

Attorney Brad Roach is representing the plaintiffs and states in his action: "Pima County has a long and sad history of blocking any attempt to monitor the elections process, verify the integrity of the computer systems, or audit the results."

Roach refers to the two billion dollar Regional Transportation Authority (RTA) Election and Pima County's resistance to public oversight and records requests (Pima County Superior Court cases C2007-2073 and C2008-5016).  "This persistent hindering, at every turn, of electors’ and political parties’ attempts to verify election integrity has cost the County hundreds of thousands of dollars in attorney’s fees and resulted in multiple court ordered releases of election information Pima County sought to hide."

This suit also requests the recovery of legal fees incurred.

Partisan politics are fierce on Arizona's Senate floor, but verifiable elections seem to transcend any political differences among the plaintiffs.  Green Party Candidate Dave Croteau, Republican Candidate Bill Beard, Libertarian Elections Specialist Jim March and Paul Hilts, the chair of the Pima County Democratic Party Elections Committee are among the plaintiffs with an interest in the November 5th, 2012 General Election.

Election integrity advocate John Brakey of AUDITAZ adds his take on a familiar theme,  "It's not about right or left, It's about right or wrong - and then when you look further, it's also about greed and corruption." Brakey is also part of the team that patiently waits for Pima County to step aside and allow for an actual audit and forensic exam of those 2006 RTA Election Ballots stored for a court case aimed at further restoring the integrity of elections in Pima County.

To monitor progress and get information for this 2012 elections lawsuit, visit their new facebook page:

Pima County Elections - Trust but Verify at http://facebook.com/pimacountyelections

Democracy at risk: Voting machines might be hacked

Iowa warns international observers of arrest

Politico
Bobby Cervantes

We don't need your oversight.  That's what the machines are for.

Iowa has joined Texas in warning international election observers of possible criminal prosecution if they violate state laws and get near polling places on Election Day.

Iowa Secretary of State Matt Schultz — like Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott last week — on Tuesday threatened Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe election observers with arrest if they came within 300 feet of a polling place’s entrance, in violation of state law. (In Texas, it’s 100 feet.)

“My office met with two delegation representatives last week to discuss Iowa’s election process, and it was explained to them that they are not permitted at the polls,” Schultz said in a statement. “Iowa law is very specific about who is permitted at polling places, and there is no exception for members of this group.”

The OSCE — comprised of 56 countries, including the United States — is chiefly a crisis mediation and conflict resolution group in Europe, Asia and North America. Since 2002, the organization’s poll watchers have observed six U.S. elections, without incident, said Janez Lenari, the OSCE’s director for the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights.

In a letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Lenari wrote, “The threat of criminal sanctions against OSCE/ODIHR observers is unacceptable. The United States, like all countries in the OSCE, has an obligation to invite ODIHR observers to observe its elections.”

Victoria Nuland, a State Department spokesman, said last week the group assured Texas authorities and the State Department that observers will respect Texas laws.

“To my knowledge, [Texas] is the only state that came forward and said ‘please reassure us that you’re going to follow our state electoral law.’ And they have now been reassured,” Nuland said.

Part II: Rigged Elections for Romney?

The Money Party
Michael Collins

Part I of this series suggested that there may well have been massive vote flipping for candidate Mitt Romney in the Republican primaries (Rigged Elections for Romney (10/22/12)  The article and the initial research analysis were received broadly.  In addition, highly motivated citizens across the country and a team of high school students contacted the authors for help replicating the research in their states.  The researchers, Francois et al., point out that this can be done with their open source techniques.

The basic argument is straightforward.  If you look at precinct level voting data arranged from the smallest to the largest precincts, you will see Romney’s gains increasing substantially as the cumulative vote increases.  For example, Ohio and Wisconsin show this clearly as do eleven other states presented here.  This extraordinary vote gain from smallest to largest precincts is so out of line, that the probability that this would happen by chance alone is often less than 1 out of a number represented by 1 preceded by 100 zeros and a decimal point, a value beneath the statistical package’s lower limits.  As a result, the researchers termed the suspected vote flipping for Romney the “amazing anomaly.” (The Amazing Statistical Anomaly)

The research team’s observation of Romney gains based on precinct size is not unique.   The anomaly was raised  previously concerning the Republican presidential primaries by a commenter on a political discussion forum.

Richard Charnin, posting as TruthIsAll, first noted the pattern with an analysis of the 2005 special election for a vacated seat for Ohio’s 2nd district, in the House of Representatives.  The candidates were the liberal-populist Democrat Paul Hackett versus a right-wing Republican, Jean Schmidt.  Charnin noticed that Schmidt’s votes and percentages increased substantially from the smallest to largest precincts in that district.  This was a patently absurd pattern of vote accumulation since the liberal Hackett wins were in highly conservative counties that rarely voted for any Democrat. (See Precincts with the most votes favored Schmidt at nearly 100%)

Vote flipping is a form of election fraud that occurs “when votes are changed [without the voter’s knowledge or consent] from one candidate to another or several others during electronic voting and vote tabulation.”  County election officials conduct computerized vote tabulation as precincts submit their voting results, but cannot detect the fraud because only the total number of votes is checked and vote flipping does not affect the total votes.  The activity is suspected in many of the critical Republican primaries in 2012.

In each case, Mitt Romney was the beneficiary.  For example, without vote flipping, Romney would have lost the Wisconsin, and Ohio, and Illinois primaries as well as primaries in other states.  A comprehensive review will appear in Part III of this series.

Critics of the analysis presented in the first article claim that there is a perfectly logical expectation: that Romney would be more popular in suburbs.  Hence the votes increase as precinct size increases, indicating a move to supposedly Romney favorable urban areas.  Part I of this series mentioned that the research group anticipated that criticism and had factored out urban density from the analysis.  The article linked to a fairly complex research analysis from the team.  Here is a much simpler explanation, via example.

Mitt Romney was a candidate in the 2008 Maryland Republican primary.  The race shows no statistical anomalies in vote accumulation from smallest to largest precincts for Romney.

 

In particular, you can see that Romney’s flat lined in the 2008 Maryland primary.  There is no indication that precinct size played any role in his accumulation of votes.  The demographic criticism fails on the basis of extensive statistical analysis presented by the research team and linked in the first article illustrated by the graphic representation above.

What is the Likely Explanation for the Amazing Anomaly?

Which step in the vote counting process best explains suspected vote flipping?

The researchers, Francois et al., maintain that the likely culprits are central tabulators used by county election departments.  Typically, election precincts submit their individual results to a county-run central tabulator.  The central tabulator combines the precinct totals for a county total for every candidate on the ballot.  That information is then transmitted to state election officials.  The candidate vote count produced by the central tabulators is the critical element in the election process.

The central tabulators are computing devices owned or serviced by private companies such as Dominion, ES&S, and Hart Intercivic.  The operational details and software engineering are almost always the exclusive knowledge and intellectual property of the private companies.  As a result, public officials and citizens lack the type of access necessary to monitor the vote process.

In addition the intermediate data between the precinct machines and the central tabulators is stored in a proprietary obfuscated binary format unavailable to even the county registrar of voters.  That represents a loss of the “electronic chain of custody” of the votes.

Their evidence from Francois et al. is straightforward and powerful.

The researchers asked two questions:  Did a county vote distribution violate the laws of probability in terms of increased vote totals for one or more candidates based on precinct size (an amazing anomaly)?  And was the county using a central tabulator or not?  The answer the second question moves us in the direction of isolating a locus for the process.

Fortunately, Wisconsin has a number of counties that do not use central tabulators.  One of those counties, Outagamie, is the sixth largest county in the state.

Tabulator versus No-Tabulator Counties in Wisconsin – Milwaukee Compared to Outagamie

The entire state of Wisconsin displayed the amazing anomaly of Romney gains as precinct size increased.  Central tabulator counties make up the vast majority of votes and voting precincts in the state.  This graph below, from Part I, displays that phenomenon. It is worth reviewing briefly.  The slope of Romney’s line is an amazing anomaly. As you can see with the red oval, the anomaly produces a trend that leads to victory for Romney.  Without the amazing anomaly, Romney would have lost Wisconsin by 53,991 votes: Romney 34.29%, Santorum 41.14%.

 

The graphs below show candidate vote accumulations from the smallest to largest precincts in the county. The graphic representation of the vote accumulation in Outagamie (left) is well within the realm of statistical probability. The graph of Milwaukee County, below right, shows the amazing anomaly for Romney, as seen above, for the entire state. These two graphs represent the same election, same day, same state.

(Note:  An outside volunteer independently downloaded the data from Wisconsin’s counties and came up with the exact same results.  (Click for larger images)
(Click here for Excel of Wisconsin by precinct with amazing anomaly calculations)

In Outagamie County, WI Santorum won with 10,673 votes to Romney’s 9,750.  Romney won Milwaukee County48,424 to Santorum’s 28,491. Several other no-tabulator counties in Wisconsin fail to show an amazing anomaly increase for any candidate from smallest to largest precincts.

Milwaukee County, on the other hand, used ES&S electronic voting machines and an ES&S Unity Server central tabulator as part of the county elections division.  In Milwaukee County Romney’s vote totals and percentage for precincts increased at a highly improbable rate from the largest to the smallest precincts.

Hack the vote: Russian election chief rips US elections, voting machines

Russia Today
Robert Bridge

Vladimir Churov

Russia’s Central Election Commission chief has ranked the American electoral system among the “worst in the world.”

One of the main problems with the US electoral system is the lack of transparency, Vladimir Churov argues in an article published in Wednesday’s issue of Rossiyskaya Gazeta.

According to US law, international observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) are only granted access to polling stations in a handful of US states, including in Missouri, South Dakota, North Dakota, New Mexico, and the District of Columbia.

In the other states, US Governors have the final say over the question of allowing international observers to monitor the election process.

According to Churov, however, the dark side of the American election process is that “OSCE monitors have been barred from entering polling stations even in the states where they may do so under US law.”

This lack of transparency opens the door to numerous possibilities for corruption and manipulation of the system, he added.

Churov then discussed a perennial problem with American elections: electronic voting machines that do not provide voters with a receipt for their vote, and which are highly vulnerable to manipulation.

"American voting machines have not been designed to provide any documentary evidence of citizen participation in the electoral process,” the Russian observer noted. “Moreover, operators [of the machinery] are technically capable of adding or dropping votes in favor of one candidate or another, leaving behind no evidence of violations.”

In October’s issue of Harper’s Magazine, Victoria Collier shows that with the advent of modern technology, “a brave new world of election rigging emerged,” which emerged with the “mass adoption of computerized voting technology and the outsourcing of our elections to a handful of corporations that operate in the shadows, with little oversight or accountability.”

Collier called the “privatization of our elections…one of the most dangerous and least understood crisis in the history of American democracy.”

Meanwhile, another study demonstrated that a person armed with about 10 bucks and a limited knowledge of technology could hack the vote.

“Voting machines used by as many as a quarter of American voters heading to the polls in 2012 can be hacked with just $10.50 in parts and an eighth grade science education, according to computer science and security experts at the Vulnerability Assessment Team at Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois,” reported Salon.

The analysts showed that the “newly developed hack” could manipulate voting results while leaving “absolutely no trace” of the crime behind.

Computer specialists can easily break into the system and cook the results, Churov said, adding that the owners of the Diebold voting machines have openly stated in the past their support of the Republican Party.

In the run-up to the 2004 presidential election between George W. Bush and John Kerry, Diebold CEO Walden O'Dell wrote that he was "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president."

The outcome of the election, which showed John Kerry enjoying an insurmountable lead in exit polls, suggests that O’Dell was not exaggerating his support.

According to Collier, “In one Ohio precinct, exit polls indicated that Kerry should have received 67 per cent of the vote, but the certified tally gave him only 38 per cent. The odds of such an unexpected outcome occurring only as a result of sampling error are 1 in 867,205,553.”

To quote Lou Harris, the father of political polling: “Ohio was as dirty an election as America has ever seen.”

Churov then criticized the US polling process, which may lift candidates into office without full popular support.

"It is generally believed that the American people will elect their president on November 6. In fact, the president – an individual bestowed with enormous powers – will be elected by the so-called Electoral College.

The president will be elected by the 280 electors, not by all American citizens," the head of Russia's Central Election Commission noted.

One can only talk about the American people's right to elect their president with reservations, while the average American citizen's right to become president is completely out of the question," he said.

Unfortunately for the American voter, international observance of the US election process, which seems seriously vulnerable to manipulation, is not enough to guarantee democratic standards, Churov concluded.

On November 6, US voters head to the polls to decide the winner of the presidential contest, which pits the incumbent President Barack Obama against the Republican challenger Mitt Romney.

The Belief That CO2 Can Regulate Climate Is “Sheer Absurdity” Says Prominent German Meteorologist

NoTrickZone
P. Gosselin

Meteorologist Klaus-Eckard Puls

Physicist and meteorologist Klaus-Eckart Puls was interviewed by Bettina Hahne-Waldscheck of the Swiss magazine “factum“.

I’ve translated and summarized the interview, paraphrasing for brevity.

factum: You’ve been criticising the theory of man-made global warming for years. How did you become skeptical?

Puls: Ten years ago I simply parroted what the IPCC told us. One day I started checking the facts and data – first I started with a sense of doubt but then I became outraged when I discovered that much of what the IPCC and the media were telling us was sheer nonsense and was not even supported by any scientific facts and measurements. To this day I still feel shame that as a scientist I made presentations of their science without first checking it. The CO2-climate hysteria in Germany is propagated by people who are in it for lots of money, attention and power.

factum: Is there really climate change?

Puls: Climate change is normal. There have always been phases of climate warming, many that even far exceeded the extent we see today. But there hasn’t been any warming since 1998. In fact the IPCC suppliers of data even show a slight cooling.

factum: The IPCC is projecting 0.2°C warming per decade, i.e. 2 to 4°C by the year 2100. What’s your view?

Puls: These are speculative model projections, so-called scenarios – and not prognoses. Because of climate’s high complexity, reliable prognoses just aren’t possible. Nature does what it wants, and not what the models present as prophesy. The entire CO2-debate is nonsense. Even if CO2 were doubled, the temperature would rise only 1°C. The remainder of the IPCC’s assumed warming is based purely on speculative amplification mechanisms. Even though CO2 has risen, there has been no warming in 13 years.

factum: How does sea level rise look?

Puls: Sea level rise has slowed down. Moreover, it has dropped a half centimeter over the last 2 years. It’s important to remember that mean sea level is a calculated magnitude, and not a measured one. There are a great number of factors that influence sea level, e.g. tectonic processes, continental shifting, wind currents, passats, volcanoes. Climate change is only one of ten factors.

factum: What have we measured at the North Sea?

Puls: In the last 400 years, sea level at the North Sea coast has risen about 1.40 meters. That’s about 35 centimeters per century. In the last 100 years, the North Sea has risen only 25 centimeters.

factum: Does the sea level rise have anything to do with the melting North Pole?

Puls: That’s a misleading conclusion. Even if the entire North Pole melted, there would be no sea level rise because of the principles of buoyancy.

factum: Is the melting of the glaciers in the Alps caused by global warming?

Puls: There are many factors at play. As one climbs a mountain, the temperature drops about 0.65°C per 100 meters. Over the last 100 years it has gotten about 0.75°C warmer and so the temperature boundary has shifted up about 100 meters. But observations tell us that also ice 1000 meters up and higher has melted. Clearly there are other reasons for this, namely soot and dust. But soot and dust do not only have anthropogenic origins; they are also caused by nature via volcanoes, dust storms and wildfires. Advancing and retreating of glaciers have always taken place throughout the Earth’s history. Glaciology studies clearly show that glaciers over the last 10,0000 years were smaller on average than today.

factum: In your view, melting Antarctic sea ice and the fracture of a huge iceberg 3 years ago are nothing to worry about?

Puls: To the contrary, the Antarctic ice cap has grown both in area and volume over the last 30 years, and temperature has declined. This 30-year trend is clear to see. The Amundsen Scott Station of the USA shows that temperature has been declining there since 1957. 90% of the Earth’s ice is stored in Antarctica, which is one and half times larger than Europe.

factum: Then why do we always read it is getting warmer down there?

Puls: Here they are only talking about the West Antarctic peninsula, which is where the big chunk of ice broke off in 2008 – from the Wilkins-Shelf. This area is hardly 1% of the entire area of Antarctica, but it is exposed to Southern Hemisphere west wind drift and some of the strongest storms on the planet.

factum: What causes such massive chunks of ice to break off?

Puls: There are lots of factors, among them the intensity of the west wind fluctuations. These west winds have intensified over the last 20 years as part of natural ocean and atmospheric cycles, and so it has gotten warmer on the west coast of the Antarctic peninsula. A second factor are the larger waves associated with the stronger storms. The waves are more powerful and so they break off more ice. All these causes are meteorological and physical, and have nothing to do with a climate catastrophe.

factum: Then such ice breaks had to have occurred in the past too?

Puls: This has been going on for thousands of years, also in the 1970s, back when all the talk was about “global cooling”. Back then there were breaks with ice chunks hundreds of square kilometres in area. People were even discussing the possibilities of towing these huge ice chunks to dry countries like South Africa or Namibia in order to use them as a drinking water supply.

factum: What about all the media photos of polar bears losing their ice?

Puls: That is one of the worst myths used for generating climate hysteria. Polar bears don’t eat ice, they eat seals. Polar bears go hungry if we shoot their food supply of seals. The polar bear population has increased with moderately rising temperatures, from 5000 50 years ago to 25,000 today.

factum: But it is true that unlike Antarctica, the Arctic is melting?

Puls: It has been melting for 30 years. That also happened twice already in the last 150 years. The low point was reached in 2007 and the ice has since begun to recover. There have always been phases of Arctic melting. Between 900 and 1300 Greenland was green on the edges and the Vikings settled there.

factum: And what do you say about the alleged expanding deserts?

Puls: That doesn't exist. For example the Sahara is shrinking and has lost in the north an area as large as Germany over the last 20 years. The same is true in the South Sahara. The famine that struck Somalia, Kenya and Ethiopia was mainly caused by the leasing of large swaths of land to large international corporations so that they could grow crops for biofuels for Europe, and by war. But it is much easier for prosperous Europe to blame the world’s political failures on a fictional climate catastrophe instead.

factum: So we don’t need to do anything against climate change?

Puls: There’s nothing we can do to stop it. Scientifically it is sheer absurdity to think we can get a nice climate by turning a CO2 adjustment knob. Many confuse environmental protection with climate protection. it’s impossible to protect the climate, but we can protect the environment and our drinking water. On the debate concerning alternative energies, which is sensible, it is often driven by the irrational climate debate. One has nothing to do with the other.

Aspartame is linked to leukemia and lymphoma in new landmark study on humans

Natural News
Ethan Evers

As few as one diet soda daily may increase the risk for leukemia in men and women, and for multiple myeloma and non-Hodgkin lymphoma in men, according to new results from the longest-ever running study on aspartame as a carcinogen in humans. Importantly, this is the most comprehensive, long-term study ever completed on this topic, so it holds more weight than other past studies which appeared to show no risk. And disturbingly, it may also open the door for further similar findings on other cancers in future studies.

The most thorough study yet on aspartame - Over two million person-years

For this study, researchers prospectively analyzed data from the Nurses' Health Study and the Health Professionals Follow-Up Study for a 22-year period. A total of 77,218 women and 47,810 men were included in the analysis, for a total of 2,278,396 person-years of data. Apart from sheer size, what makes this study superior to other past studies is the thoroughness with which aspartame intake was assessed. Every two years, participants were given a detailed dietary questionnaire, and their diets were reassessed every four years. Previous studies which found no link to cancer only ever assessed participants' aspartame intake at one point in time, which could be a major weakness affecting their accuracy.

One diet soda a day increases leukemia, multiple myeloma and non-Hodgkin lymphomas

The combined results of this new study showed that just one 12-fl oz. can (355 ml) of diet soda daily leads to:

- 42 percent higher leukemia risk in men and women (pooled analysis)
- 102 percent higher multiple myeloma risk (in men only)
- 31 percent higher non-Hodgkin lymphoma risk (in men only)


These results were based on multi-variable relative risk models, all in comparison to participants who drank no diet soda. It is unknown why only men drinking higher amounts of diet soda showed increased risk for multiple myeloma and non-Hodgkin lymphoma. Note that diet soda is the largest dietary source of aspartame (by far) in the U.S. Every year, Americans consume about 5,250 tons of aspartame in total, of which about 86 percent (4,500 tons) is found in diet sodas.

Confirmation of previous high quality research on animals

This new study shows the importance of the quality of research. Most of the past studies showing no link between aspartame and cancer have been criticized for being too short in duration and too inaccurate in assessing long-term aspartame intake. This new study solves both of those issues. The fact that it also shows a positive link to cancer should come as no surprise, because a previous best-in-class research study done on animals (900 rats over their entire natural lifetimes) showed strikingly similar results back in 2006: aspartame significantly increased the risk for lymphomas and leukemia in both males and females. More worrying is the follow on mega-study, which started aspartame exposure of the rats at the fetal stage. Increased lymphoma and leukemia risks were confirmed, and this time the female rats also showed significantly increased breast (mammary) cancer rates. This raises a critical question: will future, high-quality studies uncover links to the other cancers in which aspartame has been implicated (brain, breast, prostate, etc.)?

There is now more reason than ever to completely avoid aspartame in our daily diet. For those who are tempted to go back to sugary sodas as a "healthy" alternative, this study had a surprise finding: men consuming one or more sugar-sweetened sodas daily saw a 66 percent increase in non-Hodgkin lymphoma (even worse than for diet soda). Perhaps the healthiest soda is no soda at all.

Sources for this article include:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23097267
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16507461
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17805418


About the author:

Ethan Evers is author of the award-winning medical thriller "The Eden Prescription," in which cutting-edge researchers perfect an effective, all-natural treatment for cancer, only to be hunted down by pharmaceutical interests which will stop at nothing to protect their $80 billion cancer drug cash machine. The Eden Prescription is based on the latest science and draws on real historical events stretching back to the beginning of the "War on Cancer." Ethan has a PhD in Applied Science.

Electronic Voting Machines Designed to “Steal Elections”

Global Research
Harvey Wasserman

CICJ Books has just released “Grassroots, Geeks, Pros, and Pols: The Election Integrity Movement’s Rise and Nonstop Battle to Win Back the People’s Vote, 2000-2008″ by Marta Steele.

Marta Steele has done yeoman work for the election integrity movement. She has plowed through more websites and blogs than one can even imagine. She set out with the nearly impossible task of writing the definitive historical narrative of the folly of electronic voting in the United States between 1988 and 2008. More shockingly, she accomplished that task.

Electronic voting machines are perfectly designed to steal elections. That’s their principle purpose. Ireland has just gotten rid of them altogether. Germany, Japan, Canada, Switzerland all use paper ballots. Why? Because you can actually count them in public, and then count them again.

But here in the US, elections are corporate-owned and operated. Anyone who experienced pushing the e-spot for John Kerry and having the name George W. Bush light up—as happened so often in Ohio 2004—knows all too well that what Marta Steele documents in this remarkable book has become the defining reality in American election theft.

What she has done by way of documentation is truly impressive. Never again will those who question the validity of electronic voting be called “conspiracy theorists.” Through sheer tenacity, the author has scoured the vast morass of cyberspace and brought back all the essential data and assembled it in an understandable and analytical fashion. Readers can only draw one conclusion from her work – those who deny the death of democracy are foolish “coincidence theorists.”

She accumulated mountains of incidences that show the so-called “red shift” in favor of the Republican Party is not an anomaly or computer “glitch,” but evidence that there is systematic tampering of computerized voting machines by private companies connected to the Republican Party. Although our newspaper, the Columbus Free Press, and our website freepress.org published plenty on the flaws of electronic voting and election irregularities, we were nonetheless overwhelmed by the research documented in this volume. Those who read this book will no longer fall for the easy propaganda lines and talking points put forth by Karl Rove and his cohorts in explaining away impossible election results.

This book is important because its research is so detailed, its history so clear, and its analysis so convincing. The book destroys the mythology that “it can’t happen here” – that our system is an old and infallible democracy that can’t be corrupted. This powerful work will force all who read it to take a side, but more importantly, to take action, perhaps even direct action.

A key breakthrough that the book allows is to shatter the absurd notion that the empire of the United States may very well meddle in and steal elections abroad, but would never use these tactics at home. The fact that the Bush family, with their patriarch George Herbert Walker Bush being the CIA director, is so inextricably linked to the rise of electronic voting and improbably election results, should be no surprise. That’s why it is no coincidence that she starts her history of election voting irregularities in the year that George H.W. Bush wins the New Hampshire and becomes president.

The Bush family ascendancy corresponds to black box, nontransparent voting in America. The more we’ve privatized our software and hardware and called it “trade secrets,” the better the Bush family candidates have done, against all odds. Their presidential victories, with the official exit polls falling well outside the margin of errors and predicting victories for their opponents, would easily be denounced by election observers in a Third World country.

Small wonder that when push came to shove, Ohio’s Republican Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell refused to allow United Nations observers into the Buckeye State polling places to check the veracity of the 2004 balloting.

We believe this book does more than any other to expose the evils of electronic voting. The endnotes alone amount to a giant step forward in revealing the crimes of privatized e-voting in our nation.

As Al Gore and John Kerry refused to do, we must now face the reality that as long as our balloting process is dominated by electronic machines, the outcome of any election can be flipped by a governor or secretary of state with a few late-night key strokes. Considering the hundreds of millions the rich and super-rich are willing to spend to control the government, would you ever doubt they would hesitate to buy an election?

What Marta Steele has done is to confirm far beyond any reasonable doubt that as long as electronic machines are at the core of our vote count, there is no such thing as democracy in the USA. What we have instead is an electronic corporatocracy….proprietary, secretive, anti-democratic and for sale (or lease) to the highest bidder. The real question is: now that Marta had made this all perfectly clear, what are we going to do about it?

~ with Harvey Wasserman

Wouldn't It Be Nice

Wouldn't it be nice if there actually was a band of technically savvy, ideologically committed, intellectually honest students of the harsh discipline of objectivity sporting Guy Fawkes masks and willing to play the role of vigilante superheroes to wage a fierce, personal battle against war criminals and treasonous banksters?

Unfortunately, it is probably the war criminals and treasonous banksters behind these vague messages from Anonymous serving as the last ditch effort to console an unknown percentage of those who know enough to be dangerous.

Let's be even more dangerous and acknowledge that no matter how many soothing mono-toned, Guy Fawkes YouTubes promising justice, regardless of what eventually drips out as public record from the likes of Wikileaks and no matter what moving concession goes viral from the next ineffectual liberal du jour, there will be no change.

Not until we are able to look into the mirror with our own unmasked faces and believe one simple thing: "I like what I see."

Here is anonymous putting our fears to rest about Karl Rove's work to disenfranchise voters in this upcoming election.  It shouldn't be enough for any of us.

BBC SHUNNED ME FOR DENYING CLIMATE CHANGE

Express
HELEN DOWD

Two strikes against David Bellamy for the BBC
1.  Not a believer in Anthropogenic Global Warming
2.  Not a child molester

FOR YEARS David Bellamy was one of the best known faces on TV. A respected botanist and the author of 35 books, he had presented around 400 programmes over the years and was appreciated by audiences for his boundless enthusiasm.

Yet for more than 10 years he has been out of the limelight, shunned by bosses at the BBC where he made his name, as well as fellow scientists and environmentalists.

His crime? Bellamy says he doesn’t believe in man-made global warming.

Here he reveals why – and the price he has paid for not toeing the orthodox line on climate change.

CLANGER: Bellamy says Al Gore has 'no proof'
 that millions will die due to global warming

"When I first stuck my head above the parapet to say I didn’t believe what we were being told about global warming I had no idea what the consequences would be.

I am a scientist and I have to ­follow the directions of science but when I see that the truth is being covered up I have to voice my ­opinions.

According to official data, in every year since 1998 world temperatures have been getting colder, and in 2002 Arctic ice actually increased. Why, then, do we not hear about that?

The sad fact is that since I said I didn’t believe human beings caused global warming I’ve not been allowed to make a TV programme.

My absence has been noticed, because wherever I go I meet people who say: “I grew up with you on the television, where are you now?”

It was in 1996 that I criticised wind farms while appearing on Blue Peter and I also had an article published in which I described global warming as poppycock.

The truth is, I didn’t think wind farms were an effective means of alternative energy so I said so. Back then, at the BBC you had to toe the line and I wasn’t doing that.

At that point I was still making loads of television programmes and I was enjoying it greatly. Then I suddenly found I was sending in ideas for TV shows and they weren’t getting taken up. I’ve asked around about why I’ve been ignored but I found that people didn’t get back to me.

CAMPAIGNER: Bellamy says we must stop
destroying tropical rainforests

At the beginning of this year there was a BBC show with four experts saying: “This is going to be the end of all the ice in the Arctic,” and hypothesising that it was going to be the hottest summer ever. Was it hell! It was very cold and very wet and now we’ve seen evidence that the glaciers in Alaska have started growing rapidly – and they’ve not grown for a long time.

I’ve seen evidence, which I believe, that says there has not been a rise in global temperature since 1998, despite the increase in carbon dioxide being pumped into the atmosphere. This makes me think the global warmers are telling lies – carbon dioxide is not the driver.

The idiot fringe have accused me of being like a Holocaust denier, which is ludicrous. Climate change is all about cycles, it’s a natural thing and has always happened. When the Romans lived in Britain they were growing very good red grapes and making wine on the borders of Scotland. It was evidently a lot warmer.

If you were sitting next to me 10,000 years ago we’d be under ice. So thank God for global warming for ending that ice age; we wouldn’t be here otherwise.

People such as former American Vice-President Al Gore say that millions of us will die because of global warming – which I think is a pretty stupid thing to say if you’ve got no proof.

And my opinion is that there is absolutely no proof that carbon dioxide is anything to do with any impending catastrophe. The ­science has, quite simply, gone awry. In fact, it’s not even science any more, it’s anti-science.

There’s no proof, it’s just projections and if you look at the models people such as Gore use, you can see they cherry pick the ones that support their beliefs.

To date, the way the so-called Greens and the BBC, the Royal Society and even our political parties have handled this smacks of McCarthyism at its worst.

Global warming is part of a natural cycle and there’s nothing we can actually do to stop these cycles. The world is now facing spending a vast amount of money in tax to try to solve a problem that doesn’t actually exist.

And how were we convinced that this problem exists, even though all the evidence from measurements goes against the fact? God knows. Yes, the lakes in Africa are drying up. But that’s not global warming. They’re drying up for the very ­simple reason that most of them have dams around them.

So the water that used to be used by local people is now used in the production of cut flowers and veget­ables for the supermarkets of Europe.

One of Al Gore’s biggest clangers was saying that the Aral Sea in Uzbekistan was drying up because of global warming. Well, everyone knows, because it was all over the news 20 years ago, that the Russians were growing cotton there at the time and that for every ton of cotton you produce you use a vast amount of water.

The thing that annoys me most is that there are genuine environmental problems that desperately require attention. I’m still an environmentalist, I’m still a Green and I’m still campaigning to stop the destruction of the biodiversity of the world. But money will be wasted on trying to solve this global warming “problem” that I would much rather was used for looking after the people of the world.

Being ignored by the likes of the BBC does not really bother me, not when there are much bigger problems at stake.

I might not be on TV any more but I still go around the world campaigning about these important issues. For example, we must stop the dest­ruc­tion of trop­ical rainforests, something I’ve been saying for 35 years.

Mother nature will balance things out but not if we interfere by destroying rainforests and overfishing the seas.

That is where the real environmental catastrophe could occur.

Editor's note: Here are some interesting follow-up videos concerning David Bellamy. First is an appearance on the Late, Late show in 2009. Second, is one of the rare debates between David Bellamy and AGW advocate George Monbiot. If you visit the YouTube link, the debate is proudly entitled, "David Bellamy being humiliated by George Monbiot over climate change." Bellamy does not clarify his source for refuting the irreversibly shrinking glacier theory, but growing glaciers, ironically, have been confirmed since by the BBC itself (there might have been some children involved). The rest of the debate is a classic example of one side (Bellamy) requesting to "show the evidence" and the other side (Monbiot) appealing to scientific authority and scientific consensus. It's an important exchange primarily to see Monbiot's campaign. You will also notice that this YouTuber either refused comments or deleted the comments thread for the clip. Probably because Monbiot's style and the Arctic ice issue has long since been eviscerated (among those actually looking at the issue, of course).

Frankenstorm

Climate Etc.
Judith Curry

Hurricane Sandy is the largest Atlantic hurricane on record in terms of diameter of the storm. Sandy was associated with an estimated 13 foot storm surge in areas near New York City.

The Wikipedia has a good discussion of the meteorology, preparations, and impacts of Sandy.

CFAN’s forecasts

Sandy was a highly predictable storm. Allow me some bragging rights regarding the forecasts made by my company CFAN (see this post describing our forecast methods).

We began watching the potential for disturbance in the Caribbean on 10/12, and on 10/16 we forecast a 40% of forming a TC and on 10/19 we predicted a high probability of formation. On 10/23, the NHC named Sandy as a tropical storm. CFAN’s forecast on 10/23 predicted a high probability of Sandy becoming a hurricane, with a 30% probability of landfall on the U.S. northeast coast. On 10/24, we predicted 50% probability of a landfall on the northeast U.S. coast on 10/29 or 10/30, with the most likely location between Delaware and New Jersey. On 10/24 we also forecast a horizontal size of 1250 km and a large storm surge.

Last Friday, CFAN’s lead forecasters conducted a webinar briefing for over 400 people in the energy sector, to help understand and plan for impacts in the energy sector (power outages, energy demand, impacts on northeast refineries).

Global warming (?)

I’m sure you have all spotted articles that blame Hurricane Sandy on AGW. Bill McKibben, in a post on democracynow, sums it up as:

Bill McKibben on Hurricane Sandy and Climate Change: “If There Was Ever a Wake-up Call, This Is It”

In the midst of a lot of unwarranted alarmisn on this issue, I have spotted two articles that, IMO, treat this issue appropriately

NPR

Eric Berger

One of my first blog posts at Climate Etc. was entitled Hurricanes and global warming: 5 years post Katrina. If you missed it the first time, have a look. Heck, even if you’ve read it before, read it again. The science has not changed, my assessment still stands.

The only possible impact of global warming that I am seeing on the Atlantic hurricanes is the extension of the tropical Atlantic warm pool eastward (towards Africa), which means formation is occurring further east than previously and results in more TCs curving North into the Atlantic (so called fish storms). Note: the impact of warming on hurricane intensity seems theoretically robust, but impossible to sort out an AGW signal from the the natural variability.

Kevin Trenberth frequently says that global warming is affecting all of weather. He is probably right, but apart from the relative magnitude of the effect, this begs the question as to whether the effect is good or bad; arguably in terms of Atlantic hurricanes, the warming is resulting in fewer U.S. landfalls.

2012 hurricane season

So far, the 2012 Atlantic hurricane season has seen 19 named storms, 10 hurricanes, and 1 major hurricanes, currently tied with 1887, 1995, 2010, and 2011 as the 3rd most active season for which we have records. At the beginning of the hurricane season, I had a post entitled 2012 Atlantic Hurricane Season. Pretty much everyone was predicting below normal activity; revisions on Aug 1 raised the levels to closer to normal activity. Note: I do not make seasonal hurricane forecasts myself.

What happened? A big part of the failed seasonal hurricane forecasts is ENSO. From my post:

Bottom line ENSO forecast: many forecasters think we are headed for El Nino by late summer/autumn. I agree that the most likely scenario is to have the ENSO index positive, it is not clear whether it will stay in neutral territory or make it to El Nino. Note: there is no sign of a Modoki (central Pacific warming), which is more predictable than ENSO.

In an ENSO neutral year, the AMO and PDO have substantial control. At the beginning of the summer:

With regards to AMO and PDO, the AMO index is currently moderately positive, the PDO index is currently moderately negative.

In this regime (which characterized the 1950’s), there were a large number of U.S. landfalls, particularly on the Atlantic coast.

Sandy impacts

At the time I am writing this, 16 people have been killed and the early estimates of insured damage are $10-$20B. Given the magnitude of this storm, size of population impacted and concentration of property in the path of the storm, these numbers are really astonishing low. The forecast for this storm was spot on, and the NHC pretty much had it right about 5 days in advance. FEMA and other agencies were on this very early in the game. Mayors of cities were primed for effective action after Hurricane Irene. NCY Mayor Bloomberg has done an exceptional job in this regard.

Sandy is a terrific example of how the U.S. is adapting to the elevated hurricane activity. Hurricane Katrina was a huge wake up call. A key element of this adaptation is good weather forecasts. Another key element is good partnership between the forecasters and decision makers. It is reassuring to see this success, particularly in view of the issues surrounding the Italian seismologists.

Poland found explosives on wreckage of president's plane-report

Reuters

1 of 1Full Size

WARSAW (Reuters) - Polish investigators found traces of explosives on the wreckage of the government jet that crashed in Russia two years ago, killing Poland's president and 95 others, daily Rzeczpospolita reported on Tuesday.

Without citing sources, the newspaper said prosecutors and explosive experts who examined the remains of the plane in Russia found signs of TNT and nitroglycerin on the wings and in the cabin, including on 30 seats.

Traces of explosives were also found in the area where the Tu-154 crashed during its approach to a small airport near the Russian city of Smolensk on April 10, 2010, the daily reported.

Poland's military prosecutor's office plans to respond to the report later on Tuesday, its spokesman said.

Russian investigators had blamed the Polish crew for trying to land in heavy fog, while their Polish counterparts also said the airport controllers should not have allowed the plane to attempt an approach.

Some rightist groups in Poland, including main opposition party Law and Justice, had rejected the findings and suggested the crash could have been an assassination of President Lech Kaczynski and political and military leaders who flew with him.

In their official reports, investigators said they found no proof of the involvement of third parties.

The investigators have not ruled out the possibility that the traces of explosives come from unexploded bombs dating back to World War Two that could have remained in the area where the aircraft came down, the newspaper said.

Gunshots heard at Polish Plane Crash Site






Digital Enhancement Of Amateur Plane Crash Site Footage (w / English Subtitles) In Smolensk

Report: Fast and Furious a product of DOJ ‘deliberate strategy’ laid out by Eric Holder, other senior Obama officials

Daily Caller
Matthew Boyle

The latest congressional report on Operation Fast and Furious found that the gunwalking-program-turned-scandal was the result of a “deliberate strategy created at the highest levels of the Justice Department aimed at identifying the leaders of a major gun trafficking ring.”

The report is the second installment in a three-part series from Senate Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Sen. Chuck Grassley and House oversight committee Chairman Rep. Darrell Issa.

That “deliberate strategy,” congressional investigators argue, sprang from “a series of speeches about combating violence along the Southwest border” that Attorney General Eric Holder delivered shortly after taking office.

“Although [the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives] ATF did not officially open the Fast and Furious investigation until the fall of 2009, the groundwork for the strategy that would guide the operation began shortly after new leadership took control of the Department of Justice nine months earlier,” the report reads. “On February 25, 2009, just one month after Attorney General Eric Holder took office, he gave a speech noting the danger of the Mexican drug cartels, focusing on the Sinaloa cartel in particular.”

On Feb. 25, 2009, Holder said the drug cartels “are lucrative, they are violent, and they are operated with stunning planning and precision” and, under his leadership, he promised “these cartels will be destroyed.”

A little more than a month later, on April 2, 2009 in Cuernavaca, Mexico, congressional investigators say Holder “gave further insight into the department’s new strategy for combating these dangerous cartels.”

“He spoke about the development of a prosecution and enforcement strategy with respect to firearms trafficking, noting that the ‘administration launched a major new effort to break the backs of the cartels,’” the report reads. “In particular, the attorney general said that the Justice Department was committed to adding ‘100 new ATF personnel to the Southwest Border’ and that Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) would add ‘16 new positions on the border.’ Most importantly, the attorney general noted that there must be ‘an attack in depth, on both sides of the border, that focuses on the leadership and assets of the cartel.’”

Shortly after that April 2, 2009 speech by Holder, congressional investigators say “a Firearms Trafficking Working Group was formed.” Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer, the head of DOJ’s Criminal Division, led the working group. It was tasked with “exploring and recommending proposals to enhance law enforcement efforts to curb firearms trafficking, focusing specifically on investigation, interdiction, training, prosecution, and intelligence-sharing.”

Later, on June 30, 2009, congressional investigators say Deputy Attorney General David Ogden argued that the border between the U.S. and Mexico was the “front line” to fight firearms trafficking. The report lays out how Ogden “also said that ATF and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) would sign a new agreement to ‘ensure coordination between the departments on firearms investigations.’”

Then, on Aug. 19, 2009, that working group presented its recommendations to Holder in a memo. “The recommendations section of this August 2009 memo included many of the previous public comments by Attorney General Holder and Deputy Attorney General Ogden,” the congressional report says of that memo.

“The document went on to recommend “intelligence-based, prosecutor-led, multi-agency task forces,’” congressional investigators write. “It suggested that under its new model, ‘we develop priority targets through the extensive use of intelligence,’ which would allow it to ‘build cases, coordinating long-term, extensive investigations to identify all the tentacles of a particular organization.’”