Show Details for October 29th, 2006

Headlines:
Confession That Formed Base of Iraq War was Acquired Under Torture: Journalist
UN Official: US Terror Law May Violate International Treaties
Cheney Confirms That Detainees Were Subjected to Water-Boarding
CIA Tried to Silence EU on Torture Flights
Tackle Climate Change or Face Deep Recession, World’s Leaders Warned
FDA Hearing Will Review Rules for `Functional’ Foods
Voter Registration Lists May Foil Voters
Shannon Young, live from Oaxaca, MexicO

Shannon Young is a former Houstonian and Monitor co-host, now living in Oaxaca, Mexico. She is fluent in Spanish, and is on the staff of Free Speech Radio News.

Oaxaca has seen a teachers’ strike in May of this year grow into an expanded strike and determined attempts to rid the province of its governor. There have been blockades, and increasingly, a violent response from the state government. Now, an IndyMedia photojournalist has been shot and killed there. Mexican President Vicente Fox has sent into federal troops today. Shannon will update us on this tense situation.

<> ~ 6:35 pm CST — Two computer scientists tell how they

hacked actual US voting machines

1. Finnish computer scientist Harri Hursti told Monitor listeners how he hacked a Diebold optical scan election system right in front of the chief election official (Ion Sancho of Tallahassee, Florida). June 2005.

2. Princeton University professor of computer science and public affairs Ed Felten is known for his groundbreaking work in computer security. This is a clip of the findings he shared with Monitor listeners in September 2006.

Diebold DREs are the most widely used electronic voting platform in the United States. The Diebold TS is used in a total of 357 counties across the country representing about 10% of voters. The entire states of Maryland and Georgia depend on the Diebold TS. Prof. Felten’s team examined the Diebold TS, and found that:

Malicious software running on a single voting machine can steal votes with little if any risk of detection. The malicious software can modify all of the records, audit logs, and counters kept by the voting machine, so that even careful forensic examination of these records will find nothing amiss. We have constructed demonstration software that carries out this vote-stealing attack. …The AccuVote-TS machine we studied is vulnerable to attacks that steal votes from one candidate and give them to another. Such attacks can be carried out without leaving any evidence of fraud in the system’s logs.

ARTICLES:
Security Analysis of the Diebold AccuVote-TS Voting Machine
by Ed Felten et al.
http://itpolicy.princeton.edu/voting
(includes video)

“Hotel Minibar” Keys Open Diebold Voting Machines
September 18, 2006
by Ed Felten
Freedom to Tinker
http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/?p=1064

Even A Remote Chance?
By Pokey Anderson
July 2006
VotersUnite.org
http://www.votersunite.org/info/EvenARemoteChance.asp

Election Integrity Film coming

Hacking Democracy by Russell Michaels
Premieres on HBO — Thursday, November 2, with multiple showings to follow
http://www.hbo.com/docs/programs/hackingdemocracy/index.html

Musician Hank Woji



An experienced musician, Hank Woji now lives in Houston after many years playing in the NY/NJ metro area. His music combines elements of Folk, Blues, and Rock with Brasilian, Cuban, African and Indian rhythms. In 2002, Hank was chosen as one of the top 40 songwriters in the Kerrville Folk Festival’s New Folk Competition. His work on his album “Medallion” has gotten Hank nominated for the “Producer of the Year” award, by the Academy of Texas Music.

He will play a song or two for us today. His newest album is “Patriot Games.” All profits from the single from that album, by the same name, will go to United for Peace and Justice (www.unitedforpeace.org).

WEBSITE:
www.hankwoji.com

Show Details for October 22nd, 2006

Dr. Les Roberts: 650,000 casualties in Iraq


Mark Bebawi will speak with Dr. Les Roberts about his recent study of civilian deaths in Iraq. The study, published in the widely-respected journal The Lancet, concluded that since the 2003 invasion, 655,000 Iraqis have died above the number that would be expected in a non-conflict situation, with over 600,000 of the deaths resulting from violent causes. This is triple the deaths in Darfur over the past 31 months.

Dr. Roberts is an epidemiologist experienced in counting people in conflict zones. He has taught in the department of geography and environmental engineering at Johns Hopkins University School of Engineering. He received his MSPH degree from Tulane and his PhD degree from Johns Hopkins in environmental engineering.

Dr. Roberts worked at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for four years and worked with the World Health Organization in Rwanda during the civil war of 1994. He is presently the director of health policy at the International Rescue Committee, America’s largest agency providing services to those affected by war.

ARTICLE:
“Mortality after the 2003 invasion of Iraq: a cross-sectional cluster sample survey”
By Gilbert Burnham, Riyadh Lafta, Shannon Doocy, Les Roberts
The Lancet Published online October 11, 2006 (8 pages)

QUOTE:
“We estimate that, as a consequence of the coalition invasion of March 18, 2003, about 655,000 Iraqis have died above the number that would be expected in a non-conflict situation, which is equivalent to about 2.5% of the population in the study area. About 601,000 of these excess deaths were due to violent causes. … [By comparison,] recent estimates are that 200,000 people have died in Darfur over the past 31 months.”

New York Times columnist FRANK RICH


Pokey Anderson will speak with New York Times columnist Frank Rich about what he’s called the Bush administration’s “carpetbombing” of Americans with fictions.

He’s said that Dick Cheney “is a particularly shameless master of these black arts [obsessive secrecy and constructing an alternative reality built on spin and outright lies].”

Frank Rich has been at the New York Times since 1980. While a theater critic, his sometimes scathing reviews earned him the nickname “The Butcher of Broadway.” Beginning in 1994, he became an Op-Ed columnist. He was a film and television critic at Time magazine before that. He earned a B.A. degree in American History and Literature, graduating magna cum laude from Harvard College in 1971. Rich and his wife live in Manhattan. “The Greatest Story Ever Sold” is his fourth book.

BOOK:
The Greatest Story Ever Sold: Bush’s America from ‘Mission Accomplished’ to ‘Heckuva Job, Brownie’

APPEARANCE:
Next Sunday, Oct. 29, 7:30 pm, Frank Rich will speak at the local speakers series called The Progressive Forum (not to be confused with KPFT’s Progressive Forum which airs on Thursday evenings).
Cullen Theater at the Wortham Theater Center downtown.
Tickets are available at the door, by phone at 832-251-0706, or
online at www.progressiveforumhouston.org

Show Details for October 8th, 2006

Human Rights, Civil Rights and Voting Rights – Chip Pitts and Rady Ananda


Mark Bebawi welcomes Chip Pitts back to the show.  They will continue last week’s discussion (with Marjorie Cohn), about the recent legislation by Congress.  Known as the Military Commission law, the effect is that the President can suspend habeas corpus and other Constitutional protections against arbitrary imprisonment.  Last week, Michael Ratner told Amy Goodman: ““This was really, as the senator said, probably the worst piece of legislation I’ve seen in my 40-year career as a lawyer.”

They will also discuss the status of other legislation, and the current legal landscape on human rights.

Chip Pitts is past chair of the Amnesty International USA Board.  He has been a national leader with the Bill of Rights Defense Committee movement and the corporate social responsibility movement. He is an international attorney, investor and entrepreneur, and law educator who advises businesses on international, strategic, intellectual property, marketing, legal, and ethics matters. Formerly Chief Legal Officer of Nokia, Inc. and partner at a major global law firm, he is a Lecturer in Law at Stanford University Law School and is a frequent speaker, writer, and commentator on ethical globalization, human rights, and foreign affairs.

Pitts has worked in South Africa against apartheid, represented both the U.S. government and Amnesty International as well as other leading human rights and economic development organizations at the United Nations and international conferences, and provided pro bono representation to hundreds of victims of human rights abuses from all over the world. He is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations in New York and the Pacific Council on Foreign Policy in San Francisco.  He has written articles for the Washington Post, The Nation, The American Prospect, the Wall Street Journal, and has provided commentaries for NPR, among others.

Follow This Link to sign the Amnesty “America I believe in” Pledge.

  Pokey Anderson welcomes Rady Ananda to the show.  Rady is based in Ohio, and will give us an update on the recent election reform conference in Cleveland.  Rady is a citzen activist who is NOT in favor of voter-verified paper trails or optical scans; rather, she endorses hand counted paper ballots as the way to cast and count votes. 

After working as a paralegal or legal investigator for eight years, then intending to work on environmental issues, Rady switched gears in 2004 when she learned of the dangers of voting on electronic machines.  Today she applies her skills in exposing fraud and weaknesses in the US election system, and in crafting solutions that support free, transparent and accurate elections.  

When Duke Cunningham was forced from Congress to jail for accepting bribes, a special election to replace him this summer became embroiled in controversy.  Rady became involved in July 2006, assisting attorneys and activists in objecting to the illegal conduct of the June 6, 2006 election for Congress in San Diego.

Rady matrilineally descends from Mayflower passenger (and Massachusetts’ first governor), William Bradford.  Her great-great grandmother, Sophia Churchill, headed the California Women’s Christian Temperance Union, and set national precedent for WCTU by publicly endorsing women’s suffrage in 1883 at the WCTU’s Annual Convention. 

RADY’S QUOTE: “It’s sadly ironic that my ancestors arrived here with a dream that, nearly 400 years later, hasn’t been realized.  We’re still fighting for the commoner’s right to vote, for citizens’ right to determine who represents our interests, who protects our fragilities.”

“Grandma Churchill didn’t live long enough to realize her dream of ‘Votes for Women’ but she inspires me today as we resist the privatization of our elections.  Democracy is something you do: we citizens need to hand-count paper ballots at the precinct, before all who wish to observe.  Corporations should be nowhere near the people’s vote.  That’s democracy.”

RELATED WEBSITE, THE CLEVELAND CONFERENCE ON ELECTIONS:
http://www.wecount2006.org

Show Details for October 1st, 2006

– Law professor MARJORIE COHN on new legislation enabling torture, imprisonment without access to evidence or counsel

Mark Bebawi will discuss with law professor Majorie Cohn the draconian legislation passed by Congress this week, that negates protections for citizens and non-citizens against imprisonment, torture, lack of counsel, etc.

Majorie Cohn is a frequent legal analyst at The Monitor. Professor Cohn is the President-elect of the National Lawyers Guild. She is professor of law at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, where she teaches criminal law and procedure, evidence, and international human rights law. She lectures throughout the world on international human rights and US foreign policy. Professor Cohn writes columns for Counterpunch, Buzzflash, CommonDreams, the Los Angeles Daily Journal and the San Francisco Daily Journal, is a news consultant for CBS News, and a legal analyst for Court TV. She provides legal and political commentary on BBC, CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, NPR and Pacifica Radio.

Co-author of the book Cameras in the Courtroom: Television and the Pursuit of Justice, Professor Cohn has published numerous articles in such journals as Fordham Law Review, Hastings Law Journal and Virginia Journal of International Law, as well as The National Law Journal, Christian Science Monitor and Chicago Tribune.
She was a legal observer in Iran on behalf of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers, and she has participated in delegations to Cuba, China and Yugoslavia. She lived in Mexico and is fluent in Spanish.

RELATED ARTICLES:

Marjorie Cohn
A Constitutional Shredding
Rounding Up U.S. Citizens

Habeas Corpus, R.I.P. (1215 – 2006)
With a smug stroke of his pen, President Bush is set to wipe out a safeguard against illegal imprisonment that has endured as a cornerstone of legal justice since the Magna Carta.
by Molly Ivins
September 28, 2006
by TruthDig
http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0928-20.htm

RELATED RADIO STORY:
If you missed Senator Patrick Leahy and Michael Ratner on Democracy Now Frday, there’s a 12 minute audio, plus the transcript, here. Well worth it.

Ratner: “This was really, as the senator said, probably the worst piece of legislation I’ve seen in my 40-year career as a lawyer.”

“A Total Rollback Of Everything This Country Has Stood For”
Sen. Patrick Leahy Blasts Congressional Approval of Detainee Bill
Broadcast : 09/29/06
Democracy Now! <http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/09/29/150254>
Runtime 12 Minutes — AUDIO INCLUDED AT LINK
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article15161.htm

– Journalist HEATHER WOKUSCH on the prospects for an October surprise. Also, what citizens can do.

Pokey Anderson will discuss with journalist Heather Wokusch the prospects for an October Surprise, and some aspects of US nonconventional weapon development. Also, what YOU can do!

Heather has recently authored two volumes in a series entitled: The Progressives’ Handbook: Get the Facts and Make a Difference Now.

Heather has traveled to over 30 countries and lived in eight. Her political awakening came in 1986 when she spent a year doing development work in the Philippines and witnessed the People Power Revolution firsthand. A former jazz singer, she has an MA in clinical psychology and more than 20 years of experience in education. She currently works as a journalist, educator and cross-cultural trainer, sharing her life with husband Norbert and their four cats. A native Californian, Heather splits her time between Europe and the U.S., and she’ll be speaking with us from Vienna.

ARTICLE:
Anthrax, Iran & bin Laden: Waiting for the October Surprise
by Heather Wokusch
Wednesday, September 27, 2006
CommonDreams.org
http://www.commondreams.org/cgi-bin/print.cgi?file=/views06/0927-31.htm

WEBSITE:
www.heatherwokusch.com

BOOKS (two volumes so far):
The Progressives’ Handbook: Get the Facts and Make a Difference Now

Some links on the Foley Case

Former page: We knew about Foley for years

Chicago Tribune: GOP leadership knew of scandal months beforehand, and did nothing to investigate

NY Times: GOP knew of emails in late ‘05

Daily News: Bush himself knew about scandal before it broke. Hastert caught lying about scandal

Roll Call: GOP leadership knew of scandal last year

Hat Tip: Mark Murphy