What Does it Cost to Change the World? from WikiLeaks on Vimeo.

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What Does it Cost to Change the World? from WikiLeaks on Vimeo.

Via Postal Mail - You can post a donation via good old fashion postal mail to: WikiLeaks (or any suitable name likely to avoid interception in your country), BOX 4080, Australia Post Office - University of Melbourne Branch, Victoria 3052, Australia

Tuesday, March 24, 2009

 

Blogger has disabled my site Libertas.name, calling it a spam site!

This is a political freedom site, that speaks out against American Wars of Aggression, it is not spam, or porn, nor does it use any hate speech.

Google's Blogger has disabled my site. Their ROBOT automated software just "randomly" selected my site and (temporarily) took it off the internet, effectively stopping my ability to communicate in this PUBLIC SQUARE,
this VIOLATES MY RIGHT TO FREE SPEACH.

I would be interested in joining a class action law suit in the United 
States against this illegal violation of my rights. Google knows who I 
am, they know my search habits, they have far too much power to 
arbitrarily take down political speech in a free country.

What they should have done, if their "Automated Software" thought this was 
a SPAM SITE, is send me an email warning. Then, only if I didn't respond 
for more than 72 hours, and address their concern, should they be 
allowed to "hide" my web site content. No private entity should ever 
be allowed to curb free speech even temporarily.

How is this unreasonable seizure of my intellectual property and 
violation of my Constitutional Rights possibly consistent with 
GOOGLE's Philosophy:
4. Democracy on the web works. and
6. You can 
make money without doing evil.
http://www.google.com/corporate/tenthings.html

Freakn' Hypocrites

more

Friday, March 20, 2009

 

Black Box Voting, Update.

Usually fighting for public rights and observable elections is just like running on a hamster wheel -- constant battles about uncertified, defective voting machines, hiding freedom of information documents, and quibble, quibble, quibble about hand counts, spot checks, digital signatures, cryptography, certifications, testing...but Germany just took a big short cut and got off the hamster wheel altogether! We can learn a lot from what Germany just did.

What's important is WHY Germany banned computerized voting. Newspapers gave the impression that Germany banned e-voting due to "security issues" or bugs. NOT SO: The ban was based on HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS. This stopped e-voting dead in Germany. No more hamster wheel.

This decision represents spectacular progress for the US voting rights groups who believe computerized, secret vote counting violates inalienable rights. Germany gave us effective argumentation for this. It starts with reframing the issue of computerized voting into basic human rights.

The details of Germany's knock-out punch arguments are below. If you feel uncomfortable about computerized voting, the controversial Help America Vote Act (HAVA), and the new 2009 Holt Bill that expands on HAVA, here's real hope for change.

For years now, leaders like voting rights lawyer Paul Lehto, Nancy Tobi (Democracy for New Hampshire/Election Defense Alliance), and Bev Harris of Black Box Voting, and have been focusing on these issues from the standpoint of human rights. We believe that counting votes on computers controlled by insiders violates inalienable rights, specifically the right to public scrutiny of public elections.

Germany agrees.

Last week, Germany's Supreme Court equivalent, its federal constitutional court, issued a decision that computerized vote counting is unconstitutional.

HEY, AMERICA IS NOT GERMANY

But the principles in the German decision are very much in line with the principles underlying our own democratic structure.

As Paul Lehto explains, "We [the USA] insisted on the human rights provisions as a condition of approval of the post-war German Constitution. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights came out in December 1948, and the German Constitution was signed off by Allies and went into effect May 23, 1949. We insisted on human rights, including free, genuine public elections, for post-war Germany. We conditioned our approval specifically on these human rights being 'inviolable and inalienable.' Meaning, they can't be violated and they can't be lost, waived or forfeited."

WHAT WOULD GERMANY DO ABOUT COMPUTERIZED VOTING MACHINES?

Last week's decision by Germany's high court ultimately prohibits voting machines from further use. Reasoning behind the decision is as follows -- I've broken it up into bite-sized chunks, scroll, skim, and re-read the parts that resonate with you:

----------------------
German decision: "The use of voting machines which electronically record the voters’ votes and electronically ascertain the election result only meets the constitutional requirements if the essential steps of the voting and of the ascertainment of the result can be examined reliably and without any specialist knowledge of the subject. "
----------------------

It goes on to state that such examination must be available to the public; in fact it says "A complementary examination by the voter, by the electoral bodies or the general public";

----------------------
"The use of electronic voting machines requires that the essential steps of the voting and of the determination of the result [the count] can be examined by the citizen reliably and without any specialist knowledge of the subject. This requirement results from the principle of the public nature of elections"
----------------------

WHAT WOULD GERMANY DO ABOUT THE HELP AMERICA VOTE ACT and THE HOLT "VOTER CONFIDENCE" BILL (WHICH EXPANDS ON HAVA)?

Germany had its own version of something similar to HAVA. This court decision declares that legislation to be unconstitutional.

----------------------
"The Federal Voting Machines Ordinance is unconstitutional because it infringes on the principle of the public nature of elections.

"The Federal Voting Machines Ordinance (Bundeswahlgeräteverordnung) is unconstitutional because it does not ensure that only such voting machines are permitted and used which meet the constitutional requirements of the principle of the public nature of elections. "
----------------------

In various parts of the decision, it makes it clear that the right to public scrutiny cannot be removed in order to make sure voters don't make a mistake on their ballot, cannot be removed for speedy results, cannot be removed and replaced with something else that does not involve the citizens themselves.

WHAT WOULD GERMANY SAY ABOUT CERTIFICATION AND TESTING OF VOTING MACHINES?

The USA has a decades-long history of inept and corrupt certification and testing processes. Just last week, the EAC admitted that it doesn't understand its own technical reports (leading us to wonder how "the public" is supposed to make sense of any of this.)

Here's what the German decision says about certification and testing:

----------------------
"Limitations of the possibility for the citizens to examine the voting cannot be compensated by an official institution testing sample machines in the context of their engineering type licensing procedure, or the very voting machines which will be used in the elections before their being used, for their compliance with specific security requirements and for their technical integrity."
----------------------

WHAT DOES GERMANY HAVE TO SAY ABOUT TRYING MITIGATING SECRET VOTE-COUNTING WITH AUDITS AND OTHER PROCEDURES?

What Americans have been calling an "audit" is mislabeled, because measures called election audits are actually spot checks, and missing the management report component of real audits; no effort is made to evaluate chain of custody as part of the spot check. But the German court decision correctly pointed out that Government substitution of public scrutiny with its own check is no substitute at all.

----------------------
"Also an extensive entirety of other technical and organizational security measures alone is not suited to compensate a lack of the possibility of the essential steps of the electoral procedure being examined by the citizens."
----------------------

The German decision should bring encouragement to Americans who just knew something was wrong. A whole nation agrees with you! Now, to get our own country to protect and defend our own rights. We all need to help, by clearly stating what we really want: public scrutiny of all phases of public elections.

* * *

(1) 2009 version of Holt "Voter Confidence" bill:

(2) Official English translation of the government statement on the German decision:

(3) German version:

Permission to reprint granted, with link to http://www.blackboxvoting.org


This message was sent by: Black Box Voting, Inc., 330 SW 43rd St Suite K - PMB 547, Renton, WA 98057

Forward to a friend:

Sunday, March 15, 2009

 

Why are our Comedians the only ones telling the truth?


Wednesday, March 11, 2009

 

White Nose Syndrome threatens to kill off American Bat Populations

A white fungus is killing half the bat species in the North Eastern United States. The cause may be a new class of insecticides, used upon food crops, called Neonicotinoids

Tobacco producers, faced with declining sales of their deadly products, are looking for new markets. Nicotine, the active ingredient in tobacco, is a natural insecticide that the plant uses against leaf eating beetles. Using their crop of genetically enhanced tobacco, which produces more of addictive nicotine, tobacco farmers can distill the natural insecticide and synthesize new "Organic" bug killers.

When these Neonicotinoids, which attack the nervous system, are sprayed upon other crops, like apples, the bees and other bugs that pollinate and feed upon such crops are poisoned. In their body, the toxic poison is concentrated, and when mammals, like bats, eat these poisoned bugs, they get a bigger dose, which attacks their central nervous system.

We humans know how this sinister class of nicotine poisons is both highly addictive and destroys our immune systems. In other mammals, like bats, the effect is to weaken their immune systems allowing natural parasites, like the white fungus, to multiply and kill them in mass.

United States Fish and Wildlife Service - something is killing our bats.

New 'organic' pesticides are killing off our bats, and this will cause an increase in the pests these bats usually eat. These pests will eat our crops, and spread disease. The only way to correct this imbalance is to stop the use of these deadly Neonicotinoids.

Friday, March 06, 2009

 

Sign Sen. Patrick Leahy's petition at BushTruthCommission.com



Dear Activist,

We have just emerged from a time when White House officials often acted as if they were above the law. That was wrong and must be fully exposed so it never happens again.

That is why I proposed the idea of a truth and reconciliation commission to investigate abuses during the Bush-Cheney Administration. These abuses may include the use of torture, extraordinary rendition, and executive override of laws.

During the past several years, this country has been divided as deeply as it has been at any time in our history since the Civil War. It has made our government less productive and our society less civil. As we commemorate the Lincoln bicentennial, there is need, again, "to bind up the nation's wounds." President Lincoln urged that course in his second inaugural address some seven score and four years ago.

Rather than vengeance, we need a fair-minded pursuit of what actually happened. The best way to move forward is ge tting to the truth, finding out what happened, so we can make sure it does not happen again.

Please sign my online petition at BushTruthCommission.com -- and urge Congress to consider establishing a truth and reconciliation commission to investigate the Bush-Cheney Administration's abuses.

The Obama Administration has already made huge strides to restore the Constitution and renew our commitment to international law after eight corrosive years. But we must read the full page on this dark chapter in American history before we can turn it for good, which is why I feel so strongly about investigating what really happened.

I hope you agree.

Please sign my online petition at BushTruthCommission.com -- and urge Congress to consider forming a truth and reconciliation commission to investigate the Bush-Cheney Administration's abuses.

Last month, I delivered a speech at Georgetown University where I outlined my ideas about why we need a truth and reconciliation commission and how it could work. You can click here to watch some of my remarks.

Our petition at BushTruthCommission.com has already started building grassroots support for the idea of a truth and reconciliation commission, leading the press, outside groups, my Congressional colleagues, and the White House to start giving it serious attention as well.

But I need your help to show that the American people are committed to uncovering the truth about the misdeeds of the last administration -- so that we can ensure the same mistakes are not repeated.

Please sign my online petition at BushTruthCommission.com -- and urge Congress to consider establishing a truth and reconciliation commission to investigate the Bush-Cheney Administration's abuses.

Thank you for taking action to prevent history from repeating itself by supporting the creation of a truth and reconciliation commission to investigate the misdeeds of the past eight years.

Sincerely,
Patrick Leahy
U.S. Senator

 

The man who suborned torture should not be a federal judge.

Help CREDO Tell Rep. Davis: Impeach Jay Bybee.

Jay Bybee wrote memos giving the Bush administration legal cover to undermine the Constitution. He should not be a federal judge.

When presidents and federal judges take office, they must swear to support and defend the Constitution. But federal judge Jay Bybee worked long and hard to undermine the Bill of Rights — and to make sure that President George W. Bush could do the same.

On March 2, the Justice Department released a series of legal memos, some authored by Jay Bybee, that gave the Bush Administration legal cover to wiretap Americans without court approval, to send prisoners oversees where they were likely to be tortured, to use U.S. military forces for domestic purposes, and a number of other actions that previously would have been considered unconstitutional.

For his service, Bybee was rewarded by the Bush administration with a federal judgeship — a lifetime appointment. CREDO worked to oppose his nomination, but only 19 senators sided with us, and Bybee was overwhelmingly confirmed. Now that we know the extent of the crimes he authorized — the extent to which he worked against our own Constitution — Bybee must be impeached.

The Bush administration didn't bother to repudiate the Bybee memos until five days before President Obama took office. While his federal judgeship is a lifetime appointment, Congress has the power to remove him from the bench. The House Judiciary Committee should begin impeachment hearings immediately to learn the full scope of Bybee's successful campaign to undermine the Constitution.

Click here to tell Rep. Davis to vote to impeach Judge Bybee.

Thank you for working to support and defend our Constitution.

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