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Below
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These news articles include revealing information on the decision by
California to bring a lawsuit against a maker of electronic voting
machines, the war protest by Dennis Kucinich at the School of the
Americas, US secret aid to Pakistan to control its nuclear weapons, and
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California suing Nebraska voting machine maker
for $15 million
November 20, 2007, San Francisco
Chronicle (San Francisco's leading newspaper)

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/11/20/BA5QTFFQF.DTL

California
Secretary of State Debra Bowen sued a Nebraska voting machine company on
Monday, seeking fines and reimbursements of nearly $15 million from the
firm for allegedly selling nearly 1,000 uncertified machines to San
Francisco and ... Solano, Marin, Merced and Colusa counties. Bowen
learned of the possible violation last July and ordered an
investigation. "ES&S ignored the law over and over and over
again,
and it got caught," Bowen said in a statement after filing suit against
the
company. "I am not going to stand on the sidelines and watch a voting
system vendor come into the state, ignore the laws and make millions of
dollars from California's taxpayers in the process." Bowen's
decision could be a windfall for the affected counties. In the suit, the
secretary of state is seeking a $10,000 penalty for each of the
uncertified machines sold in the state, with half that fine intended to
go
to the counties that bought them. ES&S also would have to reimburse the
counties for the full cost of the machines, but the counties would be
able
to keep the AutoMARKs, which are now slated to receive full state
certification in early December. The reimbursement rule was added to the
state election code in 2004 in an effort to boost the penalties against
companies that ignore the state's certification rules. "I was surprised
to
see this happen," Bowen said in a telephone conference call Monday
afternoon. "I hope this will be the last time I have to use (the new
penalties)." Bowen said there is no ambiguity in the law. "Changes ...
must be submitted to the secretary of state before a voting machine can
be
sold or used in California," she said. "California law doesn't ask the
manufacturer to decide whether the changes are small or large or
medium-size." California only learned about the changes when an ES&S
representative inadvertently mentioned the new version of the AutoMARK in
a telephone conference call with state election officials. The company
never even mentioned to the state or the five counties that changes had
been made to the machines that were shipped, Bowen said.

Note:
For many revealing articles on the serious problems with the new
electronic
voting machines, click
here.



Kucinich protests U.S. army training
school
November 19, 2007, MSNBC/Associated
Press

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21879985

Longshot
Democratic presidential hopeful Dennis Kucinich joined thousands of
protesters in a demonstration Sunday against a U.S. Army school that
opponents accuse of fostering human rights abuses in Latin America.
Kucinich used the occasion to emphasize his opposition to the Bush
administration for leading the U.S. into war in Iraq and now threatening
to attack Iran. "We reject war as an instrument of foreign policy," the
Ohio congressman told the crowd, estimated by local police to number
about
10,000. Kucinich said one of his first acts if elected president would be
to shut down the school at Fort Benning, Georgia, which trains Latin
American soldiers, police and government officials. The Army's School of
the Americas moved to Fort Benning from Panama in 1984 and was replaced
in
2001 by the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, under
the Defense Department. The annual protests outside the gate to
the military installation are timed to commemorate six Jesuit priests who
were killed along with their housekeeper and her daughter in El Salvador
on Nov. 19, 1989. Some of the killers had attended the School of the
Americas. The military has acknowledged that some graduates
committed abuses after attending the School of the Americas, but has said
in the past that no cause-and-effect relationship has ever been
established. The new Western Hemisphere Institute has mandatory human
rights courses, but the demonstrators contend changes at the school are
only cosmetic. Kucinich said in an interview that he will continue
lobbying for the closure of the school even if his longshot candidacy for
president fails.


U.S. Secretly Aids Pakistan in Guarding
Nuclear
Arms
November 18, 2007, New York
Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/18/washington/18nuke.html

Over the
past six years, the Bush administration has spent almost $100 million on
a
highly classified program to help Gen. Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan’s
president, secure his country’s nuclear weapons. The aid, buried in
secret
portions of the federal budget, paid for the training of Pakistani
personnel in the United States and the construction of a nuclear security
training center in Pakistan, a facility that American officials say is
nowhere near completion, even though it was supposed to be in operation
this year. A raft of equipment — from helicopters to night-vision goggles
to nuclear detection equipment — was given to Pakistan to help secure its
nuclear material, its warheads, and the laboratories that were the site
of
the worst known case of nuclear proliferation in the atomic age. While
American officials say that they believe the arsenal is safe at the
moment, and that they take at face value Pakistani assurances that
security is vastly improved, in many cases the Pakistani government has
been reluctant to show American officials how or where the gear is
actually used. That is because the Pakistanis do not want to
reveal the locations of their weapons or the amount or type of new
bomb-grade fuel the country is now producing. In addition, the Pakistanis
were suspicious that any American-made technology in their warheads could
include a secret “kill switch,” enabling the Americans to turn off their
weapons. While Pakistan is formally considered a “major non-NATO
ally,” the program has been hindered by a deep suspicion among Pakistan’s
military that the secret goal of the United States was to gather
intelligence about how to locate and, if necessary, disable Pakistan’s
arsenal, which is the pride of the country.

Note:
Isn't it interesting that the U.S. administration has so fervently
attacked
Iraq and Iran for developing nuclear weapons, yet they seem unconcerned
about Pakistan, which is known to have supported terrorist groups.

FBI's Forensic Test Full of
Holes
November 18, 2007, Washington
Post

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/17/AR2007111701681.html

Hundreds
of defendants sitting in prisons nationwide have been convicted with the
help of an FBI forensic tool that was discarded more than two years ago.
But the FBI lab has yet to take steps to alert the affected defendants or
courts, even as the window for appealing convictions is closing, a joint
investigation by The Washington Post and "60 Minutes" has found. The
science, known as comparative bullet-lead analysis, was first used after
President John F. Kennedy's assassination in 1963. The technique used
chemistry to link crime-scene bullets to ones possessed by suspects on
the
theory that each batch of lead had a unique elemental makeup. In 2004,
however, the nation's most prestigious scientific body concluded that
variations in the manufacturing process rendered the FBI's testimony
about
the science "unreliable and potentially misleading." Specifically,
the National Academy of Sciences said that decades of FBI
statements to jurors linking a particular bullet to those found in a
suspect's gun or cartridge box were so overstated that such testimony
should be considered "misleading under federal rules of
evidence." A year later, the bureau abandoned the analysis. But
the FBI lab has never gone back to determine how many times its
scientists
misled jurors. Internal memos show that the bureau's managers were aware
by
2004 that testimony had been overstated in a large number of trials. In a
smaller number of cases, the experts had made false matches based on a
faulty statistical analysis of the elements contained in different lead
samples, documents show. The government has fought releasing the list of
the estimated 2,500 cases over three decades in which it performed the
analysis. For the majority of affected prisoners, the typical
two-to-four-year window to appeal their convictions based on new
scientific evidence is closing.



Get kids vaccinated or go to jail?
November 17, 2007, USA
Today/Associated Press

http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2007-11-17-vaccines-school_N.htm

Scores
of
grumbling parents facing a threat of jail lined up at a courthouse
Saturday
to either prove that their school-age kids already had their required
vaccinations or see that the youngsters submitted to the needle. The
get-tough policy in the Washington suburbs of Prince George's County was
one of the strongest efforts made by any U.S. school system to ensure its
youngsters receive their required immunizations. Two months into the
school year, school officials realized that more than 2,000 students in
the county still didn't have the vaccinations they were supposed to have
before attending class. So Circuit Court Judge C. Philip Nichols ordered
parents in a letter to appear at the courthouse Saturday and either get
their children vaccinated on the spot or risk up to 10 days in jail. They
could also provide proof of vaccination or an explanation why their kids
didn't have them. "It was very heavy handed," [school mom Aloma Martin]
said of the county's action. "From that letter, it sounded like they were
going to start putting us in jail." Any children who still lack
immunizations could be expelled. Their parents could then be brought up
on
truancy charges, which can result in a 10-day jail sentence for a first
offense and 30 days for a second. Maryland, like all states, requires
children to be immunized against several childhood illnesses including
polio, mumps and measles. In recent years, it also has required that
students up to high school age be vaccinated against hepatitis B and
chicken pox. Several organizations opposed to mass vaccinations
demonstrated outside the courthouse. While the medical consensus is that
vaccines are safe and effective, some people blame immunizations
for a rise in autism and other medical problems. "People should have a
choice" in getting their children immunized, said Charles Frohman,
representing a physicians' group opposed to vaccines.

Note:
For more revealing major media reports on the complex issues surrounding
vaccinations, click
here.