Monday, October 23, 2006

Ignorance Equals Strength


Orwell Rolls In His Grave - A documentary video of Republican lies and the consolidation of corporate media and how they help each other. Seems more like very good but long college video lectures especially if you include the supplemental materials.

Things you may not know.

1. - Here is one explanation for the very strong correlation of percentage of minority voters and rejected ballots. Optical scan ballots after being filled out can be feed by the voter into the optical scan reader. In very white precincts they had a ballot error rate as low as 0.5%, in high minority precincts it could be higher than 8%. Is this evidence of stupid minority voters? Consider that in white precincts a switch was turned on in back of the scanner to reject incorrect ballots, spit them back to the voter. Errors include stray marks or voting twice in one race which is not immediately obvious on the paper forms. The scanner rejects those bad ballots and pushes them back to the voter to correct - in white precincts. In strong minority precincts this feature was turned off.

2. - Reagan's Iranian campaign ploy was well documented. At least five witnesses reported seeing Reagan campaign officials in Paris meeting with Iranian government officials before the election. All described the Reagan campaign team, including Casey and Bush, promising military spare parts from Israel to Iran if Iran dragged out the negotiations with the Carter White House and only released the American hostages after Reagan took office. Israel sent the first of the shipments to Iran before the election and without the required notification to the Carter administration. Iran released the hostages minutes after Reagan took office. Two major US news-magazines had cover stories supposedly refuting these events but solely relied on Reagan and CIA officials after this came out during his administration.

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