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Thu, 04 Nov 2021
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Rigged election: Researchers show how to hack a voting machine using $30 memory card

voting
© Jonathan Drake / Reuters
It is enough that the people know there was an election. The people who cast the votes decide nothing. The people who count the votes decide everything. -Joseph Stalin (allegedly)
One thing in US history is consistent throughout every single election cycle — allegations of voter fraud. These allegations, however, are not the ramblings of a kook with tinfoil wrapped around his head, they are substantiated and reach as high as the Supreme Court. Don't believe it? Ask Al Gore and George W. Bush. You can also ask the researchers over at Cylance, Inc., who just put out a short video showing how anyone can hack a voting machine with a $30 piece of hardware.

If you think that the ruling class would leave it up to the voters to decide who gets elected, you should think again. Every single candidate who actually challenges the status quo becomes a target.

This year is one of the worst years ever for voter fraud, as it's been captured on video — multiple times.

In February, Hillary Clinton declared herself the winner of the Democratic Party in the much-anticipated Iowa caucuses. Immediately after the 'victory,' Clinton went on CNN to bask in her counterfeit fame.

"I am so thrilled," Clinton told Wolf Blitzer in an interview Tuesday afternoon. "My luck was not that good last time around, and it was wonderful to win the caucus, to have that experience."

USA

Land of the free? New reports shows the US ranks dead last in electoral integrity

voting in america
As if further proof could possibly be needed of the sorry state of the American electoral process, a new study just ranked the United States dead last in electoral integrity among established Western democracies.

The Electoral Integrity Project (EIP)'s 2015 Year in Elections report is an independent research project by 2,000 elections experts from Harvard University and the University of Sydney in Australia assembled to examine the world's elections.

The EIP states that "the core notion of 'electoral integrity' refers to agreed international principles and standards of elections, applying universally to all countries worldwide throughout the electoral cycle, including during the pre-electoral period, the campaign, and on polling day and its aftermath. Conversely, 'electoral malpractice' refers to violations of electoral integrity."

Comment: Everyone should have the right to participate in sham elections. That's just democratic. It's also a gigantic waste of time.


Laptop

Assange defends free speech, responds to partisan criticism in official statement: "We cannot publish what we do not have"

Assange

Assange
In recent months, WikiLeaks and I personally have come under enormous pressure to stop publishing what the Clinton campaign says about itself to itself. That pressure has come from the campaign's allies, including the Obama administration, and from liberals who are anxious about who will be elected US President.

On the eve of the election, it is important to restate why we have published what we have.

The right to receive and impart true information is the guiding principle of WikiLeaks - an organization that has a staff and organizational mission far beyond myself. Our organization defends the public's right to be informed.

This is why, irrespective of the outcome of the 2016 US Presidential election, the real victor is the US public which is better informed as a result of our work.

Comment: The latest revelations to be found in the Podesta emails: Most Damaging Wikileaks.


Clipboard

Voting isn't mandatory: Here's 17 reasons why your vote doesn't count

voting
Despite the contentious candidates, insipid scandals, insidious corruption, raucous rallies, deleterious diatribes, and all-around farcical shit storm of a dystopian presidential election cycle — with all its rigged opprobrium — millions of Americans will cast aside logic, pull the wool over their eyes, and angrily take to the polls on Tuesday.

Because illusions about participating in a loosely-defined democratic kleptocracy — hammered into our brains through indoctrination equating voting to patriotic duty — have replaced the higher call to critically consider the magnitude of this mess, people still think voting matters.

But voting — at least for the foreseeable future — isn't mandatory.

We've been led to believe this illusion of options veiling the tightly-wrought control of limited dissent represents our only hope for a new term's better legislation and governance — when the mechanisms behind that veil instead operate purely with their own enrichment and survival in mind.

Sure, people might play the lesser-evil card to justify voting for any one of these criminals and hypocrites, including those trying the third-party route, but the 2016 election cycle — with all its incendiary madness — has handily proven the need for massive reform.

Comment: 'If voting changed anything, they'd make it illegal.' - Voting is the problem


Laptop

WikiLeaks reports servers under targeted DDoS attack since DNCLeak2

Wikileaks DoS attack
© Toru Hanai/Reuters
WikiLeaks has come under a DoS attack since publishing a new tranche of DNC e-mails, the whistleblowing website has announced on Twitter.


Previously WikiLeaks tweeted that the website was briefly down.


The announcement was made by WikiLeaks on its official Twitter account after the organization had released more than 8,000 emails from key figures in the Democratic National Committee.

The news comes against the backdrop of the whistleblowing website's ongoing Podesta email leaks and revelations about Hillary Clinton in Julian Assange's exclusive interview with journalist and documentary maker John Pilger.

Comment: John Pilger interviews Julian Assange: 'Russia not source of Clinton leaks' (full transcript, VIDEO)

This was followed shortly after by a major Twitter outage in Japan and the U.S.

twitter outage
© Downdetector
Twitter outages reported in Japan and across the US



Health

Red Cross says medical evacuation from Aleppo failed - rebels wouldn't provide safety guarantees

red cross
© REUTERS/ Ammar Abdullah
Medical evacuation of even 10 patients with families, instead of the previously agreed 200 in eastern Aleppo, Syria, has failed due to a lack of security guarantees, a senior official at the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) told Sputnik.

"In the beginning, discussions were round the figure you mentioned — 200 critically injured and family members," Robert Mardini, the ICRC's regional director for the Middle East, said.

"During the discussions, the number of 200 went to 10 persons with families — that was the final figure articulated in the discussion, and even this didn't happen because we didn't have enough security guarantees to carry out this medical evacuation," he said. "So nothing happened."

Comment: Robert Mardini, a senior official at the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), clarified:
"Last week, when the medical evacuations were discussed, we didn't get the security guarantees from the groups inside Eastern Aleppo," Mardini, the ICRC's regional director for the Middle East, said when asked which side did not provide the guarantees for medical evacuation.



USA

Crowd cheers Killary slam at a rally FOR her

Iowa rally Clinton
© WHOtv.com
The president of the Iowa State University Bernie Sanders club was dragged off of the stage at a Hillary Clinton rally which he was invited to speak at by her campaign — after telling the crowd not to vote for her.

Sanders was in town holding the rally to drum up support for his formal rival on Saturday. Enthusiastic Sanders supporter Caleb Vanfosson was invited to open the event, but instead of echoing Sanders' endorsement, the college sophomore laid down exactly why he will not vote for her.

"I got a call the other day asking me if I wanted to speak for Hillary, basically they wanted to use me like a puppet," Vanfosson told Fox News. "Trump's not any better, but Hillary Clinton is still terrible."

His speech began in typical fashion, introducing himself and speaking about student debt. "While the part time reality TV show star and full time bigot Donald Trump thinks that hard working immigrants is what's wrong with our country," Vanfosson said to laughter from the crowd, "he's failing to even talk about this issue."
"But unfortunately Hillary doesn't really care about this issue either, the only thing she really cares about is pleasing her delegates — the delegates who won her the election," he said. "The only people who can really trust Hillary are Goldman Sachs. CITIGroup can trust Hillary. The military industrial complex can trust Hillary. Her good friend Henry Kissinger can trust Hillary."
Vanfosson's words clearly resonated, as cheers and applause erupted from the crowd.

Comment: So much for freedom of speech, while giving a speech at a rally for the election of a leader of the people who is obligated to champion things like...freedom of speech.


Bulb

Massive blackout in Murmansk, Russia after reported blast at power plant

Murmansk, Russia black out
© vovafly/Instagram
Some 300,000 people have been left without electricity in Russia's northern city of Murmansk, local media reported, citing an emergency at a power plant as possible causes of the blackout.

There have been eyewitnesses' reports of a "huge blast" at one of the city's electrical substations, according to SeverPost news agency.

Emergency services are working at the scene, the agency said, adding that there have so far been no official comments from rescue teams.


Stormtrooper

FBI harasses Muslims in 8 states ahead of election day

American Muslims
© Stephanie Keith / Reuters
American Muslims in eight states have been contacted by the FBI in recent days to answer a series of questions regarding any connections to Al-Qaeda leaders or knowledge of any terror plots, a civil rights group said

Officials with the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), a civil rights organization for Muslims in the US, said that over the weekend, FBI agents visited the homes of Muslim-Americans in California, Florida, Kansas, Michigan, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Washington to ask if the individuals knew certain Al-Qaeda leaders killed in a recent US airstrike and if they knew anyone planning to harm Americans domestically or abroad, among other questions, according to CAIR reports and the Washington Post.

"The FBI actions . . . to conduct a sweep of American Muslim leaders the weekend before the election is completely outrageous and . . . borderline unconstitutional," Hassan Shibly, executive director of CAIR-Florida, told the Post. "That's the equivalent of the FBI visiting churchgoing Christians because someone overseas was threatening to blow up an abortion clinic. It's that preposterous and outrageous."

Bulb

What an idea! Denver police to give city jobs to homeless people

men clapping
Over the next year, the city of Denver, Colorado will try something new. While some people will consider this outrageous, others will wonder why we've never tried this before: the city will make paying jobs available to the hundreds of homeless people without jobs.

The Denver Day Works Program started November 1st and is expected to run until next October. The program will offer day-by-day jobs to the people who are currently living on the streets. The work will be for the city and will include park maintenance, planting trees, and clearing snow.

Spokesperson for Denver Human Services, Julie Smith said: "We want it to be low to no barriers. No background checks. Do you want to work? We're going to put you to work today."

"The goal is to engage about 300 people," said Jenna Espinoza, spokesperson for the Mayor of Denver, Michael Hancock. The city is hoping that about half of those people will participate regularly and that eventually some of those people will move on to more permanent long-term jobs with the city of Denver, or elsewhere.