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Friday, December 30, 2011
Occupying the Iowa Caucuses
Occupiers, forced out of "Zucotti Park" in New York, are in some sense re-convening in Iowa in an effort to impact the caucus process there. It is an interesting idea, one explained at the link below. The Occupation movement explains the invovlement in the Presidential political process as an effort to highlight the strong ties of both political parties to the oligarchs and plutocrats. Surely this point is obvious to all who look closely at the situation.
This "Occupying" of the Iowa caucuses is at least twelve years over-due. Remember the errant campaign of Nader and how he tried to call attention to this issue, only to enable the election of the President of Corporate America -- G. W. Bush? For 2012, it appears we have with us the kind of campaign we should have had then. This is a campaign which can make the point that America and its government are controlled by big money -- without acting as a spoiler in the Presidential voting itself. This is nearly the most hopeful development imaginable as America moves into an important, though deeply flawed, Presidential nominating process.
http://www.occupyiowacaucuses.org/iowa-caucus-faqs
This "Occupying" of the Iowa caucuses is at least twelve years over-due. Remember the errant campaign of Nader and how he tried to call attention to this issue, only to enable the election of the President of Corporate America -- G. W. Bush? For 2012, it appears we have with us the kind of campaign we should have had then. This is a campaign which can make the point that America and its government are controlled by big money -- without acting as a spoiler in the Presidential voting itself. This is nearly the most hopeful development imaginable as America moves into an important, though deeply flawed, Presidential nominating process.
http://www.occupyiowacaucuses.org/iowa-caucus-faqs
http://www.c-span.org/Events/quotOccupy-Des-Moinesquot-Discusses-Plans-for-Iowa-Caucus/10737426673/
Video Playlist
- Washington Journal with Representative of Occupy Iowa Caucus
- "Occupy The Caucus" Kick-off Event (video 1:38:30) I watched this earlier, this link isn't working so please go into it here and enjoy. I was pleasantly surprised to see this on TV finally something on mainstream.... http://www.c-span.org/Events/quotOccupy-Des-Moinesquot-Discusses-Plans-for-Iowa-Caucus/10737426673/) ...cal
"Occupy Des Moines" Discusses Plans for Iowa Caucus
"Occupy The Caucus" Kick-off Event
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Des Moines, Iowa
Wednesday, December 28, 2011
Members of the Occupy movement from Des Moines, Iowa and across the country gathered in the state capitol Tuesday to plan their activities during the final week before the Republican Presidential caucuses. More than 200 activists attended the event at the Teachout Building in downtown Des Moines.Wednesday, December 28, 2011
Wednesday, the Washington Journal interviewed one of the organizers, Ed Fallon, from Des Moines.
http://www.commondreams.org/newswire/2011/12/27-0
Excerpt:
Occupy Des Moines is part of the grassroots Occupy Wall Street movement working to make fundamental and systemic changes to our economy and our political system, and end the climate of corruption and corporate greed that has put our democracy in a chokehold.
Teach-ins will also be held from 10am to 5pm today at 500 East Locust Street. The schedule is below.
Tuesday 10:00:00 AM
How do we strategize to win, and what does victory look like? (Hour 1) Paul Engler, Occupy Los Angeles
Tuesday 10:00:00 AM
What is different about this Crisis! (hour 1) Tony Smith
Tuesday 11:00:00 AM
How do we strategize to win, and what does victory look like? (Hour 2) Paul Engler
Tuesday 11:00:00 AM
Citizens United : How Did We Get Here Stephen Toothman
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=96437123
Excerpt:
Teresa Purcell got a call from her husband nine days before Election Day. "You're not going to believe this," he said, "we're not going to be allowed to vote for president of the United States because we're not getting the ballots."
Robert Purcell was calling from Afghanistan, where he's serving with the New York National Guard.
He told his wife his troops got ballots, but that they were the wrong ones.
"He said, 'They gave us the ballots for the local Puerto Rico election,'" Teresa recalls.
It's not clear what happened, or whether the snafu can be fixed in time for his 13 troops to meet New York's deadline.
But his phone call — coming from a true battleground on the eve of the U.S. election — illustrates the many glitches in military voting.
Tuesday 10:00:00 AM
What is different about this Crisis! (hour 1) Tony Smith
Tuesday 11:00:00 AM
How do we strategize to win, and what does victory look like? (Hour 2) Paul Engler
Tuesday 11:00:00 AM
Citizens United : How Did We Get Here Stephen Toothman
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=96437123
Excerpt:
Teresa Purcell got a call from her husband nine days before Election Day. "You're not going to believe this," he said, "we're not going to be allowed to vote for president of the United States because we're not getting the ballots."
Robert Purcell was calling from Afghanistan, where he's serving with the New York National Guard.
He told his wife his troops got ballots, but that they were the wrong ones.
"He said, 'They gave us the ballots for the local Puerto Rico election,'" Teresa recalls.
It's not clear what happened, or whether the snafu can be fixed in time for his 13 troops to meet New York's deadline.
But his phone call — coming from a true battleground on the eve of the U.S. election — illustrates the many glitches in military voting.
http://blackboxvoting.org/
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| (USA) 10/11 - 15,000 VOTERS LEFT OFF 2008 VOTER LIST IN SHELBY COUNTY TENNESSEE - PERMISSION TO REPRINT OR EXCERPT GRANTED, with link to http://www.blackboxvoting.org 20% of All 18-year Olds Omitted -- Data Entry Failure for Last-Minute Registration Forms to Blame By Bev Harris: Part 2A of a 5-part series on voter list data There is still time to correct these problems by 2012. This story is not just about Shelby County, Tennessee, where I believe the elections commission is competently addressing these problems for 2012. Last-minute dumps of new voter registration forms was a national problem in 2008, and across America voters reported that when they showed up to vote, their name was missing from the list. The 2008 presidential election brought millions of new voters to the polls, with enthusiasm especially high among youth and minority voters. Yet in Shelby County (the home of the great city of Memphis), over 15,000 voters, disproportionately young or Black voters, were omitted from the list of valid voters at the time of early voting; by Election Day, the names finally made it to the list. Florida ballots in trash http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1lC3WbuX4I http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bev_Harris Excerpt: Diebold Investigation In 2003, she discovered the source code of voting machine manufacturer, Diebold Election Systems, which now operates under the name Premier Election Systems. After examining these files, Harris wrote an article on July 8, 2003 detailing how to bypass passwords and manipulate election results on the Diebold GEMS central tally system.[1] The information in Harris's article was subsequently confirmed by internal memos written by Diebold's own engineers.[2] Researchers at Rice University and Johns Hopkins University also studied the programs she obtained and found security weaknesses which afforded opportunities for abuse[3] Diebold officials and state election officials disputed the findings of the Rice and Johns Hopkins researchers.[4][5] [edit] Hacking DemocracyMain article: Hacking Democracy A nonprofit organization founded by Harris, Black Box Voting, was invited by Ion Sancho, Leon County, (Florida) Supervisor of Elections to conduct a series of tests election of Diebold's GEMS central tabulator and Diebold's optical scan voting machines. The tests took place February 14, 2005; May 2, 2005; May 26, 2005 and December 13, 2005 and allege to prove that Diebold machines were not secure and could be hacked and results altered.[6] |
http://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/streeracpripov.html
Excerpt:
Race, Prison, and Poverty
The Race To Incarcerate In The Age Of Correctional Keynesianism
Paul Street
In the last two-and-a-half decades, the prison population has undergone what the United States Bureau of Justice Statistics director Jan Chaiken last year called "literally incredible" expansion. Chaiken reported a quadrupling of the U.S. incarceration rate since 1975. That rate, more than 600 prisoners for every 100,000 people, is by far the highest in the industrialized world. The U.S. incarcerates its citizens at a rate six times higher than Canada, England, and France, seven times higher than Switzerland and Holland, and ten times Sweden and Finland. Beyond sheer magnitude, a second aspect of America's incarceration boom is its heavily racialized nature. On any given day, Chaiken reported, 30 percent of African-American males ages 20 to 29 are "under correctional supervision" ‹either in jail or prison or on probation or parole. Especially chilling is a statistical model used by the Bureau of Justice Statistics to determine the lifetime chances of incarceration for individuals in different racial and ethnic groups. Based on current rates, it predicts that a young Black man age 16 in 1996 faces a 29 percent chance of spending time in prison during his life. The corresponding statistic for white men in the same age group is 4 percent. According to Thomas K. Lowenstein, director of the Electronic Policy Network, 7 percent of Black children- nearly 9 times more than white children- have an incarcerated parent.
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