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NEW $500 CHALLENGE
Due to the popularity of the last two Wheel of VOTER Challenges 2004 — in which it was paper-trail voting emerged to have an unrivaled mandate and undetectable machine hackability became shockingly indisputable — we at WVC headquarters now offer the following $500 opportunity for an equally tantalizing issue:
We will send a $500 cashier’s check to the first Diebold or Tri Ad elections systems information technology employee who provides proof they:
a) Voted for Gore (…)

by Shanikka
Since the election all the discussions which have raised the issue of Black disenfranchisement — whether in the context of Ohio this year, Florida in 2000, or generally — as a form of electoral fraud have ended up devolving into ignorance.
Waking up at my usual 4:30 AM Cali time to read DailyKos today in preparation for a long day in court made me glad that I’m a hard core Peets drinker, I’ll say that. Who knows what I’d be writing right now if I hadn’t had a cup first. (…)

By Michael Schwartz
The chilling reality of what Fallujah has become is only now seeping out, as the US military continues to block almost all access to the city, whether to reporters, its former residents, or aid groups such as the Red Crescent Society. The date of access keeps being postponed, partly because of ongoing fighting - only this week more air strikes were called in and fighting "in pockets" remains fierce (despite US pronouncements of success weeks ago) - and partly because of (…)

By PATRICK COCKBURN
Baghdad.
Gunmen raked a car with machine-gun fire in the northern city of Mosul yesterday, killing three foreigners and their driver. They then cut off the head of one of their victims.
The killings show that at the same time as the US was recapturing Fallujah in a heavily publicised assault it largely lost control of Mosul, Iraq’s northern capital. Though US troops launched a counter-attack, their grip on the city remains tenuous. The four men who died yesterday (…)

Nearly six weeks after US marines stormed the rebel enclave of Fallujah, military psychologists are still seeing a steady stream of service personnel traumatised by the long days and nights of ferocious street fighting.
In the macho culture of the US Marine Corps, it is sometimes hard for its personnel, male or female, to admit they have a problem and some try to ride out the symptoms, only seeking help after weeks of suffering in silence.
The warning signs can range from irritability to (…)

By Severin Carrell
Nearly 3,000 British troops have been flown back to the UK for hospital treatment after being wounded, injured or falling sick in Iraq, the Ministry of Defence has disclosed.
The figure - which dwarfs the death toll of 74 troops and aircrew who have died since the invasion in March 2003 - includes hundreds of soldiers evacuated from Iraq with serious injuries or illnesses, some critical.
The MoD has revealed that by last Wednesday, 2,862 personnel had been evacuated (…)

Greatest single news event of 1938 took place on September 29, when four statesmen met at the Fuhrerhaus, in Munich, to redraw the map of Europe. The three visiting statesmen at that historic conference were Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain of Great Britain, Premier Edouard Daladier of France, and Dictator Benito Mussolini of Italy. But by all odds the dominating figure at Munich was the German host, Adolf Hitler.
Fuhrer of the German people, Commander-in-Chief of the German Army, Navy (…)

Voting, Rodeo, and Football Fans: The U.S. voting system is broken, let’s ignore it. I have outlined the 37 arguments AGAINST re-voting and re-counting (Ohio and Florida in particular) below. And in the spirit of the anti-election reform crowd (in a football parallel), "No, the fans, players, or coaches may not challenge the results." Despite the fact that there are 57,000 reported reasons that our election system — as reported to the Government Accounting Agency — is broken, there are (…)

BY JEAN-GUY ALLARD -Special for Granma International-
"WHEN he saw Gerardo, he was naked, locked up in what they called the "box," that is to say a "hole" within the "hole", with no clothes and with absolutely no contact with the outside world. When they took him out, they removed all the other prisoners who were in the "hole" because he was not allowed to be seen, or hear another human voice or see another human being," explained Ricardo Alarcón, recalling how New York lawyer Leonard (…)

During the weeks leading up to the Republican National Convention in August of 2004, the Bloomberg Administration and the New York Police Department demonstrated open contempt for freedeom of speech and assembly by denying antiwar demonstrators their right to rally in Central Park.
Despite the fact that Central Park has been the site of numerous large events, including concerts that have drawn more than 100,000 listeners, the Bloomberg Administration refused to allow a peaceful (…)