From the open publishing newswire: "Bakunin" writes: I was out in the streets tonight. About 1,000 people showed up to protest Bush, the war in Iraq, and the election results. The spirit was good, and so was the turnout.

Unfortunately the police had us almost completely in control. They blocked streets at every red light, effectively dividing the march into sections. The section of the march I was in - towards the back - never took the streets, or even tried to. On several occasions the cops completely divided the march, not allowing those of us in the back to join our comrades on the other side of the street. There have been reports of a few arrests (six at this point) and the use of pepper spray. By 6:30 a couple hundred people made their way back to the Square, while another several hundred gathered at the intersection of 5th and Morrison. It was around this point (around 6:50) that I used my transfer to come home.

"christ" writes: Just got home from the Portland protests and am feeling a little... disheartened. Things started out well- nice to see the feminists, queers, radicals, progressives, anarchists, etc. all in one place and pissed off. We began marching ON THE SIDEWALKS, which sorta defeated the whole point of the march. At first, not many cops around... I think we could have taken the streets and dunno why we didn't.

It immediately became obvious that folks marching had many different ideas about what we were doing. The chants were random and short lived, some wanted to shout FUCK BUSH while others wanted to sing THIS IS WHAT DEMOCRACY LOOKS LIKE. But, I wondered, is this what democracy looks like? Marching ont he sidewalks? Waiting for the lights to change before we cross the street?

"lkae" writes: I'm a middle school teacher who could not stay at home with my depression and gloom and needed to be out with other angry folks. I have been saying for months that if he steals the election again we need to have riots in the streets. I have a five year old and a teaching job, so I don't feel like i can be a leader in this and serve jail time but we need to have the message sent that we are pissed. On one hand I am pleased with the way people abided the law and took the "high road" when confronted by the police. On the other I am wondering where the fuck is the rage?

PHOTOS: [ 1 | 2 | 3 ]

At the Square, various people took the mike, giving their viewpoints about the Bush Administration, the Election, and what the people must do in order to correct the radical swerve to the right our country is taking. Angry, yet thoughtful; raw, yet respectful of each other; boistrous, yet non violent, this first part of the evening, at the Square and afterwards for about an hour, saw much outrage, much condmenation of Bush policies and equally as much creative insight on how to achieve the change everyone was in the streets to generate.

This video gives a window into the mood of the crowd, some words of the speakers, most of whom seemed to be speaking spontaneously and eloquently from the heart of their outrage and disillusion. Mostly young people, but not only young people comprised the majority of the gathering.

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November 3, 2004

Downtown protest takes to the street

PORTLAND, Ore. - Angry protesters took to the streets of Portland on Wednesday, calling for an end to the Iraq war and greater scrutiny of President Bush's re-election victory.

The demonstrators, who numbered more than 100, were met by police in riot gear and on horseback. At least three people were arrested, but there were no reports of injuries.

The protesters chanted "Not our president, not our war," and sought an investigation into Bush's victory over Democrat John Kerry.

"I want to see democracy in America," said Cyrus Smith, 24. "I want all the votes scrutinized."

Raw video of a protester being arrested
Paul Bukta reports from the scene

As police arrested one man, protesters yelled, "Police go home." One held a sign reading: "Let's do what Kerry wouldn't - revolt."

One demonstrator, Eric Blickenstaff, 30, of Portland, lost his brother in the war in Iraq. Spc. Joseph M. Blickenstaff died last December when his combat vehicle tumbled off a dirt road in central Iraq.

"This is the international sign for distress," said Eric Blickenstaff, holding an upside-down American flag. "Our country is in distress. The religious right won the election."

A Portland alternative media Web site was encouraging people to gather Wednesday evening for an anti-war protest regardless of the outcome of the 2004 presidential election.

(From AP and KATU reports)

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  From the open publishing newswire: Today, I had planned on attending the vigil here in Eugene, mostly for photos and perhaps a story since I feel that it is important to document the dissent that is happening so that people know that we are not all conceding. I was not happy that Bush was going to continue in his charade as the president, but I didn't vote for Kerry either, so I would not be up in arms about Kerry's defeat like I knew a lot of those at the rally would be. To me, it seemed more than likely that Bush would be president for another four years given the great pains that he and his administration went to in putting their agenda into place, so the election results came as no surprise. My vote went to truth, to Nader.

With a little time to spare before the rally, I went to a park close to where I work, with camera in hand. Being in nature always righteously aligns me, especially this time of year with the glorious bounty of autumn color. To my surprise one of my favorite creatures was there in the small bubbling brook running parallel to the McKenzie River. Gracefully poised in the late afternoon sun was a magnificent Blue Heron. I was standing so close to it, much closer than I had ever gotten to one before. As I approached her to take photographs, she started moving as if readying to fly and after a few moments, sure enough, off she went. The sight of a Blue Heron in flight is about one of the most majestic there is. And the sound of those wings...

From the open publishing newswire: I've been there, but not often. Tonight, I attended what I believe to be the longest standing vigil group in Oregon. I went to the Benton County Courthouse shortly after 5:PM. Hugs, extra signs and music were available. This was the support I was seeking and kept me committed until 6:pm in spite of the chilly north wind.

Across the street from the vigil group were about twenty Bush supporters. (minus the man with an American flag and the word, "victory" pasted atop who boldly joined us "nowar" demonstrators).

I'm not familiar yet with this year's election numbers but Bush won in Benton County four years ago in this conservative college town. Tonight's commuter response showed strong support for the Bush/Cheney group.

From the open publishing newswire: I don't for a moment believe that Kerry actually lost the popular vote. Of all the votes lost -- with partisan scrub lists, at-the-polls shenanigans over IDs, etc., and Diebold hackings, or just plain thrown out -- a majority would undoubtedly have voted for Kerry and put him over the top. What happened was simple: last time, the Republicans stole it by the seat of their pants, so this time they ratcheted up their efforts and stole it big. They got away with it this time because the Democrats never called them on it last time. Instead, the Democratic leadership and their national support groups spent four years building the myth that the blame was with Nader. Considering who was disenfranchised, this lack of action was nothing less than Racist with a capital "R".

...Given a choice between fighting or ignoring a serious injustice, the Democratic Party leadership chose to look the other way (belated mentions near the end of this year's campaign notwithstanding). The Party got what was coming to it on Tuesday when the number of disenfranchised and unrepresented voters grew in number, in just the right states.

What will we accomplish by getting in the streets today? The Democrats have not cried "Fraud!" If we stand in Pioneer Square today and shout "Fraud!" we will appear fanatical, insane, ridiculous; all of the things that we ascribe to the evangelists, the fundamentalists, and Zionists that have an approval rate of about 51%.

This is the time to center. Ground. Focus. Whatever you want to call it... and put your energy into your individual protests. Fight CAFTA. Fight the Forest Service. Fight those who exploit animals. Fight sweatshops. Fight corporate globalization. Fight privatization.

From the open publishing newswire: Over 30 cities across the nation are mobilizing for a time of popular outrage and widespread non-cooperation if Bush is elected, if the elections are canceled, or if there is overt election fraud again. No matter who wins, we will be uniting to open up a new political space to define democracy as grassroots and participatory.

What if on the day after the presidential election people from all walks of life across America mobilized in their communities to go beyond voting and demonstrate our visions for a truy democratic society? Because the crisis of our democracy did not start with Bush and won't end with Kerry, the Beyond Voting campaign is calling for our election year debate to expand beyond Democrats versus Republicas to the larger issue of whether the U.S. will be a Democracy or an Empire. No matter who wins, we will be uniting to open up a new political space to define democracy as grassroots and participatory. [ Read More ]

From the open publishing newswire: The votes are in, the selection is over. It never mattered. Liberals are turning radical, radicals are going revolutionary...and the conservative are second guessing themselves. I have been listening to portland imc web radio all day and I am now very excited, EXCITED, not despondent about tomorrow...and the next day...and the next.

Now, we can start our future the future that we have been begging for. Momentum is on our side. Had John Kerry won, we wouldve woken up late tomorrow and missed being out in the street. Now, they will make it a point, they may come out eary, they may take back the streets, maybe the city, and perhaps, just perhaps, they may begin to take back their lives.

[ Sad about having to wake up tomorrow... I No "winner" tonight I Bad news folks: I think it's over ]

  From the open publishing newswire: MONDAY Nov 1 2004: New information indicates that hackers may be targeting the central computers counting our votes tomorrow. All county elections officials who use modems to transfer votes from polling places to the central vote-counting server should disconnect the modems now.

There is no down side to removing the modems. Simply drive the vote cartridges from each polling place in to the central vote-counting location by car, instead of transmitting by modem. "Turning off" the modems may not be sufficient. Disconnect the central vote counting server from all modems, INCLUDING PHONE LINES, not just Internet. In a very large county, this will add at most one hour to the vote-counting time, while offering significant protection from outside intrusion.

It appears that such an attack may already have taken place, in a primary election 6 weeks ago in King County, Washington -- a large jurisdiction with over one million registered voters. Documents, including internal audit logs for the central vote-counting computer, along with modem "trouble slips" consistent with hacker activity, show that the system may have been hacked on Sept. 14, 2004. Three hours is now missing from the vote-counting computer's "audit log," an automatically generated record, similar to the black box in an airplane, which registers certain kinds of events.

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KERRY WON: Here are the Facts / Election Stolen in Ohio

    Kerry Won
    By Greg Palast
    TomPaine.com
    Thursday 04 November 2004

    Kerry won. Here's the facts.
    I know you don't want to hear it. You can't face one more hung chad. But I don't have a choice. As a journalist examining that messy sausage called American democracy, it's my job to tell you who got the most votes in the deciding states. Tuesday, in Ohio and New Mexico, it was John Kerry.

    Most voters in Ohio thought they were voting for Kerry. CNN's exit poll showed Kerry beating Bush among Ohio women by 53 percent to 47 percent. Kerry also defeated Bush among Ohio's male voters 51 percent to
49 percent. Unless a third gender voted in Ohio, Kerry took the state.

    So what's going on here? Answer: the exit polls are accurate. Pollsters ask, "Who did you vote for?" Unfortunately, they don't ask the crucial, question, "Was your vote counted?" The voters don't know.

    Here's why. Although the exit polls show that most voters in Ohio punched cards for Kerry-Edwards, thousands of these votes were simply not recorded. This was predictable and it was predicted. [See TomPaine.com, "An Election Spoiled Rotten," November 1.]

    Once again, at the heart of the Ohio uncounted vote game are, I'm sorry to report, hanging chads and pregnant chads, plus some other ballot tricks old and new.

    The election in Ohio was not decided by the voters but by something called "spoilage." Typically in the United States, about 3 percent of the vote is voided, just thrown away, not recorded. When the bobble-head boobs on the tube tell you Ohio or any state was won by 51 percent to 49 percent, don't you believe it ... it has never happened in
the United States, because the total never reaches a neat 100 percent. The television totals simply subtract out the spoiled vote.

    And not all vote spoil equally. Most of those votes, say every official report, come from African American and minority precincts. 

    We saw this in Florida in 2000. Exit polls showed Gore with a plurality of at least 50,000, but it didn't match the official count. That's because the official, Secretary of State Katherine Harris, excluded 179,855 spoiled votes. In Florida, as in Ohio, most of these votes lost were cast on punch cards where the hole wasn't punched through completely-leaving a 'hanging chad,'-or was punched extra times. Whose cards were discarded? Expert statisticians investigating spoilage for the government calculated that 54 percent of the ballots thrown in the dumpster were cast by black folks. 

    And here's the key: Florida is terribly typical. The majority of ballots thrown out (there will be nearly 2 million tossed out from Tuesday's election) will have been cast by African American and other minority citizens.

    So here we go again. Or, here we don't go again. Because unlike last time, Democrats aren't even asking Ohio to count these cards with the not-quite-punched holes (called "undervotes" in the voting biz).

    Ohio is one of the last states in America to still use the vote-spoiling punch-card machines. And the Secretary of State of Ohio, J. Kenneth Blackwell, wrote before the election, "the possibility of a close election with punch cards as the state's primary voting device invites a Florida-like calamity."

    But this week, Blackwell, a rabidly partisan Republican, has warmed up to the result of sticking with machines that have a habit of eating Democratic votes. When asked if he feared being this year's Katherine Harris, Blackwell noted that Ms. Fix-it's efforts landed her a seat in Congress.

    Exactly how many votes were lost to spoilage this time? Blackwell's office, notably, won't say, though the law requires it be reported. Hmm. But we know that last time, the total of Ohio votes discarded reached a democracy-damaging 1.96 percent. The machines produced their typical loss-that's 110,000 votes-overwhelmingly
Democratic.

    The Impact Of Challenges
    First and foremost, Kerry was had by chads. But the Democrat wasn't punched out by punch cards alone. There were also the 'challenges.' That's a polite word for the Republican Party of Ohio's use of an old Ku Klux Klan technique: the attempt to block thousands of voters of color at the polls. In Ohio, Wisconsin and Florida, the GOP
laid plans for poll workers to ambush citizens under arcane laws-almost never used-allowing party-designated poll watchers to finger individual voters and demand they be denied a ballot. The Ohio courts were horrified and federal law prohibits targeting of voters where race is a factor in the challenge. But our Supreme Court was prepared to let
Republicans stand in the voting booth door.

    In the end, the challenges were not overwhelming, but they were there. Many apparently resulted in voters getting these funky "provisional" ballots-a kind of voting placebo-which may or may not be counted. Blackwell estimates there were 175,000; Democrats say 250,000. Pick your number. But as challenges were aimed at minorities, no one
doubts these are, again, overwhelmingly Democratic. Count them up, add in the spoiled punch cards (easy to tally with the human eye in a recount), and the totals begin to match the exit polls; and, golly, you've got yourself a new president. Remember, Bush won by 136,483 votes
in Ohio. 

    Enchanted State's Enchanted Vote

    Now, on to New Mexico, where a Kerry plurality-if all votes are counted-is more obvious still. Before the election, in TomPaine.com, I wrote, "John Kerry is down by several thousand votes in New Mexico, though not one ballot has yet been counted."

    How did that happen? It's the spoilage, stupid; and the provisional ballots.     CNN said George Bush took New Mexico by 11,620 votes. Again, the network total added up to that miraculous, and non-existent, '100 percent' of ballots cast.

    New Mexico reported in the last race a spoilage rate of 2.68 percent, votes lost almost entirely in Hispanic, Native American and poor precincts-Democratic turf. From Tuesday's vote, assuming the same ballot-loss rate, we can expect to see 18,000 ballots in the spoilage bin.

    Spoilage has a very Democratic look in New Mexico. Hispanic voters in the Enchanted State, who voted more than two to one for Kerry, are five times as likely to have their vote spoil as a white voter. Counting these uncounted votes would easily overtake the Bush 'plurality.'

    Already, the election-bending effects of spoilage are popping up in the election stats, exactly where we'd expect them: in heavily Hispanic areas controlled by Republican elections officials. Chaves County, in the "Little Texas" area of New Mexico, has a 44 percent Hispanic population, plus African Americans and Native Americans, yet George Bush "won" there 68 percent to 31 percent.

    I spoke with Chaves' Republican county clerk before the election, and he told me that this huge spoilage rate among Hispanics simply indicated that such people simply can't make up their minds on the choice of candidate for president. Oddly, these brown people drive across the desert to register their indecision in a voting booth.

    Now, let's add in the effect on the New Mexico tally of provisional ballots.     "They were handing them out like candy," Albuquerque journalist Renee Blake reported of provisional ballots. About 20,000 were given out. Who got them?

    Santiago Juarez who ran the "Faithful Citizenship" program for the Catholic Archdiocese in New Mexico, told me that "his" voters, poor Hispanics, whom he identified as solid Kerry supporters, were handed the iffy provisional ballots. Hispanics were given provisional ballots, rather than the countable kind "almost religiously," he said, at polling stations when there was the least question about a voter's identification. Some voters, Santiago said, were simply turned away.

    Your Kerry Victory Party

    So we can call Ohio and New Mexico for John Kerry-if we count all the votes.     But that won't happen. Despite the Democratic Party's pledge, the leadership this time gave in to racial disenfranchisement once again. Why? No doubt, the Democrats know darn well that counting all the spoiled and provisional ballots will require the cooperation of Ohio's Secretary of State, Blackwell. He will ultimately decide which spoiled and provisional ballots get tallied. Blackwell, hankering to step into Kate Harris' political pumps, is unlikely to permit anything close to a
full count. Also, Democratic leadership knows darn well the media would punish the party for demanding a full count.

    What now? Kerry won, so hold your victory party. But make sure the shades are down: it may be become illegal to demand a full vote count under PATRIOT Act III.

    I used to write a column for the Guardian papers in London. Several friends have asked me if I will again leave the country. In light of the failure-a second time-to count all the votes, that won't be necessary. My country has left me. 
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    Greg Palast, contributing editor to Harper's magazine, investigated the manipulation of the vote for BBC Television's Newsnight. The documentary, "Bush Family Fortunes," based on his New York Times bestseller, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, has been released this month on DVD.

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  We who live in the post-World War II period possess an immensely valuable symbol, even if we don't understand it or use it effectively: the example of Nazi Germany.

"The German experiment, except to those who are its victims, is particularly interesting, and, like the offer of a strong man to let himself be vivisected, should make a great contribution to political science. For the Germans are the most gifted and most highly educated people who ever devoted the full strength of a modern state to stopping the exchange of ideas; they are the most highly organized people who ever devoted all the coercive power of government to the abolition of their own intellectual life; they are the most learned people who ever pretended to believe that the premises and the conclusion of all inquiry may be fixed by political fiat."

Walter Lippmann. (1936), The Good Society

     The 2004 election revealed that American citizens are as intellectually and morally incompetent as the Germans in 1930. Such incompetence and ignorance always lead to tyranny. The United States is exactly at the same point in national degradation as the German nation in the 1930s when Hitler assumed absolute power and began his regime of mass murder and war crimes against the people of the world.

     We've been conditioned to see Germany under Hitler as an unquestionably horrible example of dictatorial tyranny and inhuman barbarity--and to see our present American culture as completely opposite to that of Nazi Germany. And we like to think that if a tyranny such as that in Germany under the Nazi regime were present and growing in America we'd unquestionably be able to see it.

     So it's a shock when we realize: most people living in Nazi Germany didn't see the tyranny! They thought it was the best time of their lives!

Milton Mayer's book, They Thought They Were Free, concerns Germans still living after World War II who had been members of the Nazi Party. Mayer came to know them and studied their lives and attitudes.      "As we know Nazism, it was a naked, total tyranny which degraded its adherents and enslaved its opponents and adherents alike; terrorism and terror in daily life, private and public; brute personal and mob injustice at every level of association . . .      "These nine ordinary Germans [who lived in Nazi Germany] knew it otherwise, and they still know it otherwise.       "An autocracy? [they say] Yes, of course . . . But a tyranny, as you Americans use the term? Nonsense."

     How could Germans living under Hitler's National Socialism not have seen what it was? How did their lack of social and personal awareness make them blind to their reality?

      How could Americans now possibly be living under a creeping dictatorship and not know it? And how could we not only not see a police state condition but actually think we're living in complete freedom?

     Because most of us don't WANT to know what's going on. We've lost the ability to think critically about political, economic, and social dangers confronting us.

      If we have a job--as most people did in Nazi Germany--if the political-economic system seems stable--as it does in America--then that's all we want to know.

"When [modern man] is completely infantile ... he does not need and does not have an understanding of the outer world. It exists for him merely as gratification or denial." Walter Lippmann (1889-1973)

More- WHY AMERICA IN 2004 IS GERMANY IN 1930

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APFN MSG BOARD:
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ed: [ An Election Spoiled Rotten - Kerry Already Down 1 Million votes | Greg Palast - newest BBC report on Florida Black Voter 'caging' | New Florida vote scandal feared | VOTERS BEWARE!! FRAUD HAS BEGUN! | E-Voting Tests Get Failing Grade & so does its fraudulent 'creditation' framework | Why Do Americans Need a Machine to Vote? | USA, world's so-called 'beacon of democracy,' breaks down before one vote counted ]