sounds like war to me.....

[Slit Skirt]

this was in my email...several different articles..check it out...sorry if it is a dupe.

Outrage in Ohio: Angry Residents Storm State House!
Massive Voter Suppression and Corruption - Democracy Failure

By David Solnit

November 3, Toledo Ohio -- Hundreds of angry Ohio residents marched
through the streets of Columbus, Ohio's Capital, this evening and stormed
the Ohio State House, defying orders and arrest threats from Ohio State
Troopers. "O-H-I-O, Suppressed democracy has got to go," they chanted.
After troopers pushed and scuffled with people, nearly a hundred people
took over the steps and entrance to the State's giant white column capital
building and refused repeated orders to disperse or face arrest. People
prepared for arrests, ready to face jail, writing lawyers phone numbers on
their arms, signing jail support lists and discussing non-cooperation and
active resistance (linking arms, but not fighting back).

A freshly painted banner held on the steps read, "ONE VOTE DENIED =
DEMOCRACY IN TROUBLE! 100'S OF 1000'S OF VOTES SURPRESSED = DEMOCRACY
FAILED. An unprecedented massive grassroots voter registration and get out
the vote effort and widespread opposition to Bush went up against the
massive coordinated Republican effort to suppress, intimidate and possibly
steal millions of votes. In addition to the voter suppression and
intimidation is the fact that Bush campaign co-chair Secretary of State
Kenneth Blackwell is in charge of the election and vote counting. But much
deeper questions about fundamental flaws in the system hang in the air.

STOLEN ELECTION?

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. Investigative reporter Greg Palast in an article
today details how the deciding states, Ohio and New Mexico, if all votes
were actually counted, should have gone to Kerry. Palast explains,
"Although the exit polls show that most voters in Ohio punched cards for
Kerry-Edwards, thousands of these votes were simply not recorded. 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."
(http://www.tompaine.com/articles/kerry_won_.php)

TESTIMONIES OF DISENFRANCHISEMENT

The Ohio State House takeover was the culmination of an eight-hour long
afternoon of protest at the state capital by Ohio student and youth
groups, including the Columbus and Toledo Leagues of Pissed Off Voters,
Reach Out--Bowling Green, and the Central Ohio Peace Network. The earlier
speak-out featured a litany of people who experienced or witnessed voter
suppression, intimidation and disenfranchisement before and during the
election. Thousand of Ohio voters had been disenfranchised by partisan
poll challengers, intimidation incidents, voters polling places opening
late, lines up to four and five hours long--often in the rain.

Here are a few of their stories:

Holly Roach of Toledo, Ohio spoke of her 74-year-old father, Frank Roach
and her 89-year-old grandmother; Hazel Thompson requested absentee1s
ballots in early October. Hazel Thompson is homebound and Frank Roach has
been scheduled for heart surgery on November 2. Absentee ballots never
arrived. They were told by the County Voting Commission that they could
not vote with either regular or provisional ballots, because they had
already requested absentee ballots and Secretary of State Kenneth
Blackwell has issued a directive forbidding provisional ballots by people
who have applied for absentee ballots for them and not received them
(including some US service people who returned from Iraq). A lawsuit late
in the afternoon of November 2 by a voter in Lucas County led to a late
afternoon order by Judge David Katz of the Northern District of Ohio
instructing the Ohio Secretary of State to immediately advise all county
boards of election to advise polling precincts in their counties to issue
provisional ballots to voters in this situation.

Evan Morrison, a young get out the vote volunteer, told of polls opening
late. One poll at Glenwood Elementary in Toledo, OH opened more than half
and hour late.. During that time, from 6:30 to after 7AM, more than 50
people left without having voted. An hour and a half after the polling
site opened, the Republican election official said they had run out of
pencils, bringing voting to a halt. Evan ran to the store and bought a
bunch of number 2 pencils out of his own pocket so voting could resume.
Voting continued until 11AM, by which time up to 100 more people had
walked away.

Suzie Husami, a University of Toledo student said in a press conference
that her voter registration challenged by Republicans along with 35,000
other mostly newer registrants. She received a letter from the Board of
Elections reading NOTICE OF HEARING Pursuant to Ohio Revised Code Section
3503.24: your registration is being challenged. The reason stated as the
basis for this challenge is that you are unqualified to vote because you
are not a resident of the precinct where you can vote. A hearing has been
set at the above stated place and time. You have the right to appear,
testify and call witnesses and to be represented by an attorney. The
letter was addressed from Paula Hicks-Hudson, Director of the Toledo Board
of Elections. Although the challenges to her were thrown out in court the
day before her hearing received such letters were likely discouraged from voting.

Alli Starr, also being a get out the vote volunteer told about how 25
minutes before polls closed in Toledo, Ohio, Republican challengers were
witnessed harassing voters at the Mott Library, Central City polling
station, a low-income African-American community. Observers said that they
believed these challengers had repeatedly called the police producing
absurd stories in order to intimidate voters. One of the Republican
challengers was recognized as Dennis Lange, a prominent local business
owner who owns Pumpernickels. Mr. Lange aggressively tried to push
back African-American community members who were poll watching and voting
at the site. At one point more than four police and sheriffs officers,
including undercover officers, were witnessed at the site for no apparent
reason. For a photo go to
http://michiganimc.org/newswire/display/7580/index.php

PRE-ELECTION VOTER SUPPRESSION

But even before election day, the Baltimore Chronicle reported November 1
that "Through a combination of sophisticated vote rustling, ethnic
cleansing of voter rolls, absentee ballots gone AWOL, machines that
'spoil' votes---John Kerry begins with a nationwide deficit that could
easily exceed one million votes."

Troy, Michigan Republican State Rep. John Pappageorge, a Michigan Bush
campaign Co-Chair, was quoted in July 16 edition of the Detroit Free Press
as saying, "If we do not suppress the Detroit vote, we're going to have a
tough time in this election." Blacks comprise 83 percent of Detroit's
population, and the city routinely elects Democratic candidates by
substantial margins. The British Broadcasting Company has also disclosed a
memo to top Republican officials in Florida identifying voters in
predominantly black precincts for possible challenge.

The secretaries of state, usually the chief election official at the state
level, in four battleground states--Michigan, Missouri, Florida, and Ohio
have all taken top campaign posts for Bush and have been accused of
manipulating state election laws to restrict voter access on behalf of
Republicans. Ultra-right Ohio Secretary of State, J. Kenneth Blackwell,
the co-chair of the Ohio Bush campaign, together with the Ohio Republican
Party are at the center of this nationwide effort to steal the election
through voter suppression, intimidation and corruption. In the months
leading up to the election, Blackwell attempted to require that
registration applications that were not posted on the correct weight paper
be cancelled. His efforts to suppress the vote have continued. Blackwell
sought to restrict access to provisional ballots: he challenged of the
validity of over 35,000 new voter registrations in the state (recently
thrown out by a Federal Judge): he issued unclear directives regarding the
right of ex-felons to vote.

"In state after state, Republican officials and operatives are working to
deny American citizens the right to vote," charges Wade Henderson,
executive director of Leadership Conference on Civil Rights (the country1s
largest civil and human-rights coalition). Miles Rapoport, former
Secretary of the State of Connecticut and President of the nonpartisan
public policy organization Demos, says "As the election approaches,
chilling reports continue to surface of major efforts to prevent people
from voting. Legions of partisan challengers' are being readied for the
polls on Election Day; Latino registrants in rural Georgia are being
targeted; and tens of thousands of new Ohio registrants have been
challenged. All appear to be organized campaigns. These anti-democratic
activities must be stopped."

TOUCH-SCREEN VOTING

Additionally, the new touch voting machines being used in 29 states and
the District of Columbia, have been widely criticized by elections
officials and computer scientists and as susceptible to hacking and
malfunction. Election Data Services, a consulting firm, predicted 29
percent of voters would use touch-screen machines on voting day.

According to the November 3 Globe and Mail, "several dozen voters in six
states -- particularly Democrats in Florida -- said the wrong candidates
appeared on their touch-screen machine's checkout screen, the coalition
said. In many cases, voters said they intended to select John Kerry but
when the computer asked them to verify the choice it showed them instead
opting for President Bush, the group said. Roberta Harvey, 57, of
Clearwater, Fla., said she had tried at least a half dozen times to select
Kerry-Edwards when she voted Tuesday at Northwood Presbyterian Church.
After 10 minutes trying to change her selection, the Pinellas County
resident said she called a poll worker and got a wet-wipe napkin to clean
the touch screen as well as a pencil so she could use its eraser-end
instead of her finger. Ms. Harvey said it took about 10 attempts to select
Mr. Kerry before and a summary screen confirmed her intended selection."

On November 9, 2003, the New York Times reported: "In mid-August, Walden
W. O'Dell, the chief executive of Diebold Inc., sat down at his computer
to compose a letter inviting 100 wealthy and politically inclined friends
to a Republican Party fund-raiser, to be held at his home in a suburb of
Columbus, Ohio. 'I am committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral
votes to the president next year,' wrote Mr. O'Dell, whose company is
based in Canton, Ohio. That is hardly unusual for Mr. O'Dell. A longtime
Republican, he is a member of President Bush's 'Rangers and Pioneers,' an
elite group of loyalists who have raised at least $100,000 each for the
2004 race. But it is not the only way that Mr. O'Dell is involved in the
election process. Through Diebold Election Systems, a subsidiary in
McKinney, Tex., his company is among the country's biggest suppliers of
paperless, touch-screen voting machines. Judging from Federal Election
Commission data, at least 8 million people will cast their ballots using
Diebold machines next November. ... Some people find Mr. O'Dell's pairing
of interests -- as voting-machine magnate and devoted Republican
fund-raiser -- troubling."
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/09/business/yourmoney/09vote.htm

*Co-founder of the Citizens Alliance for Secure Elections, Susan Truitt
said today: "Seven counties in Ohio have electronic voting machines and
none of them have paper trails. That alone raises issues of accuracy and
integrity as to how we can verify the count. A recount without a paper
trail is meaningless; you just get a regurgitation of the data. Last year,
Blackwell tried to get the entire state to buy new machines without a
paper trail. The exit polls, virtually the only check we have against
tampering with a vote without a paper trail, had shown Kerry with a lead.
... A poll worker told me this morning that there were no tapes of the
results posted on some machines; on other machines the posted count was
zero, which obviously shouldn't be the case."

NATIONWIDE RESPONSE

Across Ohio other demonstrations were held in Toledo, Cleveland, Oxford,
Athens and Cincinnati. Across the United States on both elections night
and November 3 people erupted in protest with marches, direct actions, civil disobedience, vigils, breaking of bank
windows in San Francisco and rallies were held in at least 40 cites and
likely many, many more. Many of the outreach flyers for November 3 actions
were headlined, "NOV 2: VOTE! NOV 3: MAKE IT COUNT!"

Most of the actions planned by groups were planned to take place
regardless of the election outcome and were focussed more on the deeper
issues of democracy not empire, healthcare, not warfare and education not
occupation.

The day of action was initially called for by the Beyond Voting network,
whose call for actions read in part, "When your government has troops
stationed around the world, lets big corporations write the rules of the
global economy and pushes racist policies that promote fear, undermines
civil liberties, and rips off working people, you are living in an EMPIRE!
Empire is as system of global control that combines international
aggression with domestic repression to create a deeply undemocratic world.
REAL DEMOCRACY means we the people have direct control over the decisions
and resources that matter in our lives. Real democracy means that we make
the decisions that impact our neighborhoods, workplaces, schools and the
state of the world we hand off to our children. This year the world is
counting on us to expand the election year debate beyond Democrats versus
Republicans to the larger issue of whether the U.S. will be a Democracy or
an Empire."

Two other networks, This Time We Are Watching (a project of the League of
Pissed Off Voters, the Truthforce Training Center and the Ruckus Society
with many other groups) and No Stolen Elections (Global Exhange, Code
Pink, United for Peace and Justice,labor organizers and others) had also
begun to prepare a people power response for November 3. No Stolen
Elections publicized a pledge of action to stop a stolen election, but on
election night they chose not to call on people to take to the streets.
The Election Protection Coalition an umbrella group of volunteer poll
monitors that set up a hotline and planned to monitor and make public
voting irregularities. They may have missed one opportunity to make a
difference when Ralph G. Neas, president of the People for the American
Way which helped form the coalition, said to the media,"Overall, the
problems of outright voter intimidation and suppression have not been as
great as in the past."

The massive grassroots participation and activism -- the highest levels of
activism since before the Iraq invasion-- are hopeful. But electoral work
and single-issue campaigns without a broader systemic analysis are a
recipe for disappointment or failure. Moveon.org has reportedly not
returned press calls for two days after the election, perhaps because they
had naively thrown all their hopes with Kerry and lacked a deeper vision
or longer-term strategy.

The League of Pissed Off Voters was one of the most hopeful efforts within
the massive grassroots efforts to unelect Bush. Catalyzing activism around
the election among youth, especialy youth of color, they had a vision of
building power and organization beyond the elections using creative
tactics and rooting themselves in hip hop and youth culture. Other local
grassroots efforts like Ithaca, New York1s Bush Must Go Coalition, used
the energy of anti-Bush election build their organization and campaigns
that started before and will continue after the election gone. http://indyvoter.org

Let1s be honest. Kerry would have been an improvement to Bush and sent a
much better signal to the world, but he is more reactionary than Nixon; a
pro-war, pro-corporate capitalism millionaire who wants a more
multi-lateral approach to wars and U.S. empire building. It1s also an
important to remember what makes deeper changes in the world is movements
and communities and people power, not politicians. And if we step back and
look at things globally, Bush and his gang are fringe extremists whose
empire is overextended, and lacks any global legitimacy. While we are part
of a global majority, an ever growing movement of movements that is
creating common sense alternatives that will undermine the empire from
below.

*Quote from the Institute for Public Accuracy
http://accuracy.org
Attached Photos by Alli Starr

-----
David Solnit volunteered with the Mobilization for Democracy Not
Disenfranchisement and local anti-bush groups in NW Ohio in late
October/early November and is the editor of Globalize Liberation: How to
Uproot the System and Build a Better World
http://www.globalizeliberation.org

[Carl Brennan]

1. WOW!!!

This mofo's got legs!!!

Thanks for this.

[seemslikeadream]

3. Gotta get down to it.

Tin soldiers and Nixon's comin'.
We're finally on our own.
This summer I hear the drummin'.
Four dead in Ohio.

Gotta get down to it.
Soldiers are gunning us down.
Should have been done long ago.
What if you knew her and
Found her dead on the ground?
How can you run when you know?

[Carl Brennan]

6. I love this!! Within two days of the election

the "wimpy dems" are counterpunching with marches

This issue of voting rights is so basic, no confusion, no question about legitimacy, no way these fascisti can spin this away. The Repugs are going to feel this.
:bounce:

"Four dead in Ohio" 34 years ago.

[nadinbrzezinski]

2. Hmmm ... anybody saws this story on CNN

What about the NYT?

What about, perish the thought, FOX News?

Thought so....

Now ... what we may be seeing is the begining of a very long night, or the begining for the Second Civil War... don't say we did not warn you folks... (to the freepers)...

Of course I could be dreaming and all of this has been a very, veeerrryyyy long nightmare.

[robbedvoter]

5. Let's spread it ourselves - as far as we can.

[Slit Skirt]

7. WE CAN NOT STOP NOW...WE MUST

email it to everyone we know....
and email all the media


THIS IS THE SECOND ELECTION STOLEN....IT WILL NOT STOP HERE...I GUARANTEE IT....

THIS IS THE BEGINNING OF THE END....SOMETHING REALLY UGLY...

[seemslikeadream]

8. House Judiciary Committee letter to GAO regarding voting machines

November 5, 2004

The Honorable David M. Walker

Comptroller General of the United States

U.S. General Accountability Office

441 G Street, NW

Washington, DC 20548

Dear Mr. Walker:

We write with an urgent request that the Government Accountability Office immediately undertake an investigation of the efficacy of voting machines and new technologies used in the 2004 election, how election officials responded to difficulties they encountered and what we can do in the future to improve our election systems and administration.

In particular, we are extremely troubled by the following reports, which we would also request that you review and evaluate for us:

In Columbus, Ohio, an electronic voting system gave President Bush nearly 4,000 extra votes. "Machine Error Gives Bush Extra Ohio Votes," Associated Press, November 5.

An electronic tally of a South Florida gambling ballot initiative failed to record thousands of votes. "South Florida OKs Slot Machines Proposal," Id.

In one North Carolina county, more than 4,500 votes were lost because officials mistakenly believed a computer that stored ballots could hold more data that it did. "Machine Error Gives Bush Extra Ohio Votes," Id.

In San Francisco, a glitch occurred with voting machines software that resulted in some votes being left uncounted. Id.

In Florida, there was a substantial drop off in Democratic votes in proportion to voter registration in counties utilizing optical scan machines that was apparently not present in counties using other mechanisms. http://ustogether.org/election04/florida_vote_patt.htm

The House Judiciary Committee Democratic staff has received numerous reports from Youngstown, Ohio that voters who attempted to cast a vote for John Kerry on electronic voting machines saw that their votes were instead recorded as votes for George W. Bush. In South Florida, Congressman Wexler's staff received numerous reports from voters in Palm Beach, Broward and Dade Counties that they attempted to select John Kerry but George Bush appeared on the screen. CNN has reported that a dozen voters in six states, particularly Democrats in Florida, reported similar problems. This was among over one thousand such problems reported. "Touchscreen Voting Problems Reported," Associated Press, November 5.

Excessively long lines were a frequent problem throughout the nation in Democratic precincts, particularly in Florida and Ohio. In one Ohio voting precinct serving students from Kenyon College, some voters were required to wait more than eight hours to vote. "All Eyes on Ohio," Dan Lothian, CNN, November 3, http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/blog/1...blog/index... ..

We are literally receiving additional reports every minute and will transmit additional information as it comes available. The essence of democracy is the confidence of the electorate in the accuracy of voting methods and the fairness of voting procedures. In 2000, that confidence suffered terribly, and we fear that such a blow to our democracy may have occurred in 2004.

Thank you for your prompt attention to this inquiry.
Sincerely,
John Conyers, Jr. Jerrold Nadler Robert Wexler
Ranking Member Ranking Member Member of Congress
House Judiciary Committee Subcommittee on the Constitution
cc: Hon. F. James Sensenbrenner
Chairman


http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=102&topic_id=963196&mesg_id=963196

[RebelYell]

10. I heard Randi Rhodes talking about it

Look out, cuz here we come. And we're PISSED.

[Karenina]

12. It's a NAZI COUP.

Which if allowed to stand unchallenged... :SIGH: :cry:

[Slit Skirt]

15. I am afraid that you are right.

[kitchen girl]

13. Nor in the local media...

unless it made the local TV news...which I don't watch.

[robbedvoter]

4. Ohioans, I love you!

It's very important to not roll over on this theft - even if we don't change the outcome. getting people to know it may make the GOP think twice next time, may get changes in the system, may get people off the kool-aid that we are a minotity and have to get religion and kick gays .
This is the lynchpin!

[drunkdriver-in-chief]

9. Looks like the media censored this story -eom

eom

[Oak2004]

11. This is exactly what needs to be done right now!

People need to go, not just to their state house (though that's a great place to start), but to go to the county clerks and county commissioner meetings, or city and township clerks, or whatever unit of government is responsible for voting (and especially, choosing BBV).

We need to clog their meetings, month after month after month. Make it clear that we won't give up.

We need to phone and fax them, daily. And that includes at their homes. Be invasive and intrusive and pushy about it.

We need to talk to these people about voting fraud every time we see them in public. Every affected locality needs to have a "wanted" poster, with photos and names and addresses and contact info -- not to encourage violence towards them, but to make sure that no matter where they go in their communities, they're held accountable for their actions by their fellow citizens. Spouses, too, are fair game for those unexpected interruptions at the mall.

Those of a Rovian bent can start gossip about real or imaginary indiscretions of the people involved in choosing and operating BBV.

The point is to let them never find peace until they get rid of the machines and count the votes honestly. We have to make sure that we make them much more uncomfortable that the GOP fraudsters would make them if they stopped the fraud.

After all, we can't rely on throwing them out by the ballot box.

[Slit Skirt]

16. if we don't do this

we will have lost everything....
if we lose the right to vote.....that's it ...done...finished

[goodboy]

14. We need an organized effort to count all of ohio's votes...

[Greenbeard]

17. This is exactly how the first revolution began

Long before the first shots were fired at Lexington and Concord ordinary citizens shut down local courthouses across the colonies to let the British know that the colonists no longer saw them as their rightful leaders or judges. We aren't quite there yet and I sure hope the shots heard round the world are never fired but this so-called administration should reach out a hand and begin to listen to the concerns of it's citizens. All of them.

God help us if it is discovered that this election truly was fixed.

[JoMama49]

18. Something else we should ALL do!!!

While we're working to uncover the fraud we all know was perpetrated, here's something else we can do. Vote with our $. My husband and I, being fiscal conservatives, have no debt. We raise 5 children by paying for everything as we go. We have done this for 20 years. Recently, we moved our savings and checking accounts from Citibank to a small northern CA credit union. Then, we sent a dime for each account moved to Catherine Austin Fitts at Solari.com. Read this article and let me know if you agree!
In solidarity,
JoMama.

SNAP OUT OF IT!

The Day to Forget the November 2nd Election Forever is November 3rd

The Rest of the World Fights the Empire With Money -
What We Should Have Been Doing Here All Along

Now is the Time to Attack on the Fronts Where We
Have Real Power by Michael C. Ruppert

November 5, 2004 1900 PDT (FTW) - The rest of the world has known for some time that it is pointless to oppose this Empire either militarily or electorally. They haven't the resources for the former and are legally barred from the latter. I think it's time the American people adopted the same philosophy. We are, after all, legally barred from inspecting electronic voting machines. The rest of the world has been fighting with money and public relations because these tactics work and work well. This is a lesson that American activists and true patriots should have learned four years ago. Now the tempo of battle will increase just as surely as the stakes have been raised both globally and domestically for us all.

While everyone waits for the administration's first move a Rubicon has been crossed and there is no turning back. America will fight for oil wherever it feels the need.

Now the real Fourth World War begins. Sorry to disappoint all the scriptwriters and futurists who were thinking exclusively in terms of bombs, plagues, famine etc. The first weapons of mass destruction in this war will be economic and they will be devastating beyond imagination.

I feel good now, three days after the election. It was much easier for me to recover than most because FTW and its readers had less invested in the election than most. But I am not so glib or cavalier as to overlook the massive disillusionment that weighs like a wet blanket on all who had hoped that their prodigious efforts might oust the Neo-cons.

The biggest blessing today is that the disillusionment is so deep, so fundamental, that at last people who have bound themselves to ineffective political strategies may rethink their deeper core beliefs; their beliefs about what America was supposed to be versus what it has become. They will redraw their maps. Perhaps with that process - painful as it might be - will also come a willingness to abandon strategies which no longer work for entirely different ones that do. In order for that to happen, however, those on the so-called left, as well as those conservative and libertarian voices who wanted to return a degree of sanity to the Republican party, will have to admit that America is not America anymore.

We are living in a foreign land; a nation that is behaving like our enemy; a nation which has weaknesses and vulnerabilities.

This nation is so deeply divided that the words "civil war" stand for a possibility that is no longer remote. Next year, even the next few months, will reveal these deep and irreconcilable divisions. The electoral process is dead. Only the fear that there is nothing to replace it except revolution and bloodshed will prevent people from seeing that there are different ways to fight; ways that should have been adopted four years ago. The rest of the world knows that physical force is not effective in this struggle and the rest of the world has something to teach us. We will look anew perhaps at the Second Amendment to the Constitution, but it is in what's left of the First that we will find our strength. The freedom of association includes within it the right to decide where and how to spend our money.

Perhaps out of fear, perhaps out of prudence, I have been told that some activists and whistleblowers are planning on leaving the country in short order. A thought I have seen circulate in discussions since the election is that many well-known activists and whistleblowers think it wise to run before Dick Cheney and Karl Rove get their legs and start hunting us down, one by one. Reuters published a November 3rd story about many Democrats seeking to emigrate to Canada.

As a man who has written a book charging the President and especially the Vice President, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, the Commander of NORAD, the Secretary of Defense, the Attorney General and the former Directors of Central Intelligence and the FBI with multiple counts of premeditated murder, it is my belief that it is foolish to wait and see what the administration does. Now is the time to attack, and to attack with all of the vigor our movement and our wounded, offended spirits can muster. It is our best means of self healing. If we cut and run now, we die.

No longer is that word hyperbolic.

I am going on the attack.

Let me be quite clear about this: This is spiritual warfare. There is no place to run. There is no safe place to hide. On her home page (www.solari.com) Catherine Austin Fitts posts a great quote from Gandhi.

"The only devils in the world are those running around in our own hearts - that is where the battle should be fought."
- Mahatma Gandhi

Only the protection offered by a universe that responds more powerfully to love than to fear can be an effective shield now. That protection has no limits in geography, nor do the dangers against which it guards. I criticize no one for making a decision to expatriate. Some may have physical or financial limitations and concerns. Some may be honoring an old Special Forces axiom that running today makes possible a fight more likely to succeed another day. This is a sifting out for the battles that are to come; battles which will be unlike anything ever seen in this country. There will also be a great many new brethren who will show up on battle lines that we must now redraw to suit ourselves. We must begin choosing the times and places of battle to suit our needs. No task is more important than this.

We have expended our money, our liberty, our hearts and our souls by spending money as powers that be, and media programming describing a fictitious America, told us we should; by volunteering in efforts that were laid out for us by others; by believing that we were doing the right thing playing in a rigged game. The biggest ball and chain for us now is the notion that we might resurrect an electoral process that officially died four years ago. Anything brought to life now would be a Frankenstein rather than a happy ending to an episode of ER; and at what additional cost in terms of time and energy?

What happened on Election Day was no surprise to me and it should have been no surprise to long-term FTW readers. Perhaps now some of the over-conditioned "lefties" out there will start to ask serious questions about what kind of bang they get for their buck - and their dedication. Billions of dollars and countless man/woman-hours that could have been expended on real-deal strategies that had a chance of making a change have been diverted and pulled away and wasted as badly as the energy of tens of millions of demonstrators who poured into the world's streets for months in an effort to prevent the US invasion of Iraq in 2002-2003.

When will the American opposition start to ask what kind of return on investment they are getting? When will they start demanding better performance? What a waste and what a cost in broken hearts for the young, those just beginning to try and change the world. If the young are to save themselves (and us) they must refuse to be herded into a political process that is, in itself, their prison.

Even though there is evidence that Ohio was stolen, John Kerry has given up; conceded; thrown in the towel. There won't be any lawsuits because he won't allow it. Bush won the popular vote. If the 2000 election passed into history "as-is" it is certain that the 2004 election is zip locked. Fuggedaboudit! The people now performing that task of documenting electoral fraud in Ohio and elsewhere have safely made themselves historians and targets of lesser priority for Cheney and Rove. They are no longer activists.

There will be no successful suits over this election. The courts are rigged and lawyers are sea anchors. As I predicted a week after 9/11, every lawsuit since filed has been derailed, morphed, sidetracked or sabotaged from within. Any lawsuit over the 2004 election (assuming Kerry permitted it) would wind up in the Supreme Court. Has everyone forgotten Bill Rehnquist's cancer or that the Neocons get to pick the next three justices?

HUMAN AND MONETARY THERMODYNAMICS

Human energy works like physical energy.

Just a while ago I received a call from a source indicating that John Kerry ended his campaign with $45 million unspent dollars in his war chest. That money had reportedly been laid aside to pay for a recount or post-election court challenges. There will be none. The caller suggested that Kerry might get to keep it personally. This will need some checking but it would not surprise me.

In many respects the dynamics of money - as activists now spend it - parallels the Second Law of Thermodynamics. It only changes form in an entropic direction; from being able to do useful political and social work to being useless. But there is a way to make it multiply. This is the FTW model where dollars spent with us recirculate within the activist community and create more energy.

As Jesus pointed out, the gift of two pennies from the poor woman was infinitely more valuable than the large gift from the wealthy man. The corporations which profited from all the opposition advertising, the political campaign chests which swelled and spent that money, will never reinvest that money to slow America's descent into tyranny. That energy - created from the sweat of the people - has been pretty-well neutralized. Sure George Soros lost money (I suppose), but what was the percentage cost to him as opposed to all of the "little" Americans who opened their thinly-stretched purses in pursuit of regime change? Soros suckered you into spending money that was far more important to you than his was to him.

What if John Kerry had won? He was going to add 100,000 troops to the army. He denied Peak Oil's existence and promised a chimerical "independence from Mid-East oil". He endorsed the notion that 19 hijackers operating from caves executed the attacks of September 11th. Then he said he would fight the war on terror better than George W. Bush. He said nothing about a corrupt economic system which has fed and sustained both him and George Bush all these years. He hasn't lost a penny.

A day after Kerry conceded defeat; The Boston Herald ran a story:

Bay State electric customers facing shock of high oil prices
By Jay Fitzgerald

Thursday, November 4, 2004

Massachusetts electric customers can expect more jolts in coming months as rising oil and natural gas prices drive up the cost of generating electricity.

Crude oil prices jumped by $1.26 yesterday after President Bush's election, settling at $50.88 a barrel.

Rising natural gas prices also pushed wholesale electricity in New England up. Natural gas is used to power plants that generate electricity.

The bottom line: Expect electric bills to head higher this winter with heating oil and other energy costs…

Another story talked about how oil and gas companies breathed a sigh of relief after the Bush win because they would face less regulation. Duh. But less regulation only means a more frenetic, thoughtless and careless mad scramble to suck up remaining hydrocarbon energy resources rather than an effort to mitigate our dependence on them by the only real choices available: a reduction in consumption and an intense, transparent effort to look for and liberate renewables and any technologies that may have been suppressed.

Will someone up there in elite land - Yo, you guys up there on Olympus! - please get it. We know what's going on. You are not fooling us.

EVERY VOTE MAY NOT BE COUNTED BUT EVERY DOLLAR ALWAYS IS

So if we don't keep trying to fix the electoral process what do we do? For four years we at FTW and elsewhere have also been consistently saying that the way to change what's wrong with America and the world was to get outside of the election box into which most activists and opposition forces have placed themselves as if under house arrest. The way to fight is not with votes but with money. Every vote may not be counted. But every dollar always is.

For activists wishfully clinging to an old and inaccurate map, there is good reason for despair. On the FTW map, and the map of great economic thinkers like Fitts - the accurate map - there are no grounds for discouragement here. Yes, things will surely now get worse before (if ever) they get better. Yes, Dick Cheney and Karl Rove, absent the need to show restraint before a re-election campaign, may now take the gloves off. Quel surprise!

So now what?

VOTE WITH YOUR MONEY

Since 9/11 we have witnessed the evolution of a number of powerful, truly authentic journalism syndicates. FTW is but one of many that are credible, trustworthy and which have proven themselves providers of valuable and accurate information. I know many of these people and small companies personally and we have all pretty much behaved the same way. Every dollar that was spent with used was used to benefit those who gave it to us. That keeps us all in the game.

In November of 2001, when I lectured at Portland State University I pledged to the audience there - and in the permanent record of my video "The Truth and Lies of 9/11" - that I would take money spent on us and devote it to making FTW bigger, more effective and capable of getting more important stories to them; stories that would give them information that might save their lives. In 2001 I had two part-time writers, an office staff of one and me.

Today FTW has an office staff of four, three editors/writers, four regularly contributing writers and now almost 20,000 subscribers in more than 40 countries. I have kept my promise and you have seen the results. I am still living in a studio apartment and driving a 9 year-old Ford. I may soon get to have - out of necessity - a larger and better place to live and for the first time own a home of my own but you get the point. There are many others who have behaved this way because we share a common sense of urgency.

But there's something else your help makes possible for me and for all of us. We are all knocking down the doors of the major media.

ANOTHER PROMISE - I'M GOING TO WASHINGTON

Before describing this economic warfare and how we can fight it let me make you another promise.

As soon as we can reasonably arrange it, I am throwing all of our meager funds for a book tour into one large, well-publicized book signing in Washington, D.C. Rubicon's publisher just did not have the resources to fund a book tour. I am going to ask for all the back-up and support I can get, for as many of you to come to Washington as possible, because I am going there - to the city where Bush, Cheney and Rove rule; the city where I was born - to stand up and publicly accuse them and others of murder: multiple counts, and with premeditation.

The world will be watching and your dollars made that possible.

The only way I know how to lead is from the front. We will keep you apprised of developments via the FTW web site.


MONEY IN THE WORLD - MONEY IN AMERICA

There's a great first rule in economic warfare. It's exactly the same reason why flight attendants instruct people to put on their oxygen masks before assisting others when an airliner's cabin depressurizes. To save the world you must save yourself first. The way you start to fight with money is to get out of debt. If that means simplifying your life then that's good anyway, you'll use less energy. But to be debt free is to stop paying your money to the corporations and banks that are creating this naked aggression anyway.

These are the same corporations and banks that will come and pluck your economic corpse when the economy crashes next year as it surely must. If you are debt free then there will be less for them to pluck.

All around the globe we see newly forming economic and political alliances. In South America and elsewhere new regional common markets are evolving rapidly. The Euro is rising to new significance as a world currency and a way to pull the rug from under the Empire. From Russia, to Iran, to China to Venezuela, to Saudi Arabia the world is drifting inexorably to a decision to price oil in Euros. China has just raised interest rates. In 2005 Iran is planning on opening an oil bourse trading futures in Euros and is quietly building consensus support. This is, in my opinion, the major motive for pressuring Iran just as Saddam Hussein's decision to price oil in Euros was his chief crime.

I still believe that any military adventurism against Iran is not possible and that the US knows this.

On October 22 Pravda reported that the Russian Central Bank had stopped supporting the US dollar. As I write this essay the Euro is now trading at close to $1.30 US (a record high) and gold is holding steady at close to $430 an ounce. It was $280 an ounce just three years ago. Sure, oil prices have dropped a bit but that has no bearing on the reality of Peak Oil. I am still expecting oil to hit $100 a barrel in 2005. What happens to your job then? Your mortgage? The housing bubble is on the verge of collapse and Fannie Mae is under criminal investigation. There may be three times more paper mortgages floating around than there are physical properties. (www.solari.com; www.sandersresearch.com)

Think again of the significance of the fact that Vladimir Putin in Russia has just ratified the Kyoto protocols limiting greenhouse gas emissions. This takes on a whole new meaning when one remembers that for the last 50 years there has been an overwhelming correlation between GDP growth and greenhouse gas emission. In other words, economic growth is not possible without burning more energy and this empire's Achilles heel is its insatiable living requirement of infinite growth even unto the death of the planet. This is the price of fractional reserve banking, debt-based growth, a fiat currency, and markets trapped in Price/Earnings ratios.

Russia's move is significant because under the Kyoto treaty - as reported by The Economist on October 7th - Russia's voice in resurrecting the 1997 accord carries special weight:

LIKE a swamp creature in a bad horror movie, the Kyoto treaty on climate change has risen from the dead. A certain Texan cowboy thought he had killed the Japanese monster. Alas, thanks to a last-minute betrayal by an inscrutable Russian spymaster, the green beast is back.

That is only a slight exaggeration of how some people view the revival of the Kyoto protocol. The controversial UN treaty, agreed in Japan in 1997, commits rich countries to cuts in emissions of greenhouse gases by 2012. But it was dealt a near-fatal blow when George Bush confirmed America's rejection in 2001. The EU, Japan, Canada and over 100 others remained in, but Russia wavered. If it did not ratify, the pact would fail.

Today, as I finished this essay, Putin has ratified the accord after overwhelming passage by the Russian legislature. The BBC writes:

Putin clears way for Kyoto treaty

Russian President Vladimir Putin has signed the Kyoto protocol on climate change - clearing the way for the treaty to come into force next year.

This is Russia's final and crucial stamp of approval for Kyoto. The pact needed support from countries responsible for 55% of the world's greenhouse gas emissions, which most scientists blame for global warming.

After the United States refused to ratify it, only Russia could enable this threshold to be passed.

The significance is clear. Limit greenhouse gas emissions and you limit economic growth. Limit economic growth and you undermine America's financial and economic vampire. The world is fighting back. We can too and in this way we can force a change.

HOW DO AMERICANS DO THIS?

There's a reason why I asked former Assistant Housing Secretary Catherine Austin Fitts to write the foreword for Crossing the Rubicon. She knows money and she knows how to change the system. I spoke with her yesterday and neither of us is contemplating a cut and run strategy. We are both committed to taking the fight to Washington and New York, no matter the cost.

"I can show these people how they and all of us can make more money by fixing money and what it does. But the first requirement is that people understand that they have to stop feeding the tapeworm that is creating all of this."

Perhaps now disillusioned Kerry supporters will take a second look at what FTW has been teaching for years.

Get out of debt.
Spend your money and time on things that give you energy and provide you with useful information.
Stop spending a penny with major banks, news media and corporations that feed you lies and leave you exhausted.
Learn how money works and use it like a weapon.
It is already becoming clear that as Peak Oil becomes a stark reality, survival will become a place-based, local phenomenon. Local economies, to the degree that they exist and are flourishing will provide strength to resist what is coming. Everyone who sees this essay should compare the return on investment they got with the election against something that offers more payoffs, an opportunity to become real, independent actors on the fields of their own lives.

Go to Fitts' web site http://www.solari.com and look at the section "Coming Clean". Not until each one of us looks at the ways that we feed the beast and accept responsibility for that do we have a chance for today and for tomorrow.

As I have said in Crossing the Rubicon and in almost every lecture for the last three years, "We will change nothing until we change the way that money works."

Perhaps now some people will be willing to listen to our voices crying in the wilderness.

Michael C. Ruppert

[Slit Skirt]

19. yes, yes, yes....

keep these ideas coming....AND IMPLEMENT THEM ALL!

[Greenbeard]

20. excellent info

thanks