Here is a link to an article about the recent

GAO report about election events in Ohio. That

GAO report, which is by the GAO, was written by

the GAO itself. That GAO report, which was authored by the GAO itself, not Crispin Miller,

was written by the GAO itself. Should I emphasise

that a little more? Should I make it a little

more clear for your "journalist" Farhad Manjoo?

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/energyresources/message/83649

Farhad Manjoo is the Bob Woodward of digital

journalism. What is his actual secret mission?

His presence, and especially his so-called "articles" on this subject, make Salon

look suspiciously like a "false-flag" establishment front. You really don't want people

to begin to suspect that your entire paper is

a sort of "vacuum-cleaner decoy" operation for

the Republican Party, do you? Then stop acting

like one, and keep your Mr. Manjoo away from this

or any other important political subject.

MIller is right on. The lack of curiosity by the mainstream media about the "coincidental" confluence of the introduction of electronic voting and the inexplicable failure of previously reliable polling methodologies is absolutely incredible.

The only rational inference is that election results are being manipulated. How can the press continue to ignore this issue? It truly is nothing less than the death of American democracy.

Robert Parry is honest. From his article:

Winer said Kerry didn't believe the evidence existed to prove systematic tampering with the vote in 2004.

It astounds me that men of good conscience can expose themselves to the compelling data put forth by Mark Crispin Miller and others, and yet be unwilling to conclude that Ohio's electoral votes, and the 2004 Presidential election should have gone to John Kerry.

The madness could have ended.

What frightens me even more, is that those of us who can see this clearly to be the case, have not risen up with great force to ensure that future elections, starting with 2006, will not AGAIN be corrupted and stolen by the same tactics and tacticians. These tacticians tragically, excel at the campaign but fail miserably at the governance.

If we don't intelligently and aggressively ACT on this concern, if 2006 rolls by with no explosive and effective action by the advocates of fair electoral mechanics, (BlackBoxVoting.org, for one,) then the future looks bleak:

We stand to lose a great opportunity - a Democratic victory in the House or Senate.

A return to some semblance of balance.

And what are our most powerful figureheads doing about it?

There was no reason to believe that Farhad Manjoo would ever accept Mark Crispin Miller's persuasive argument that the 2004 election was stolen--Manjoo had already made up his mind by November tenth,2004, when he told us all in no uncertain terms not to believe what seemed evident, that the election in Ohio had been stolen, and that Kenneth Blackwell was the engineer of the theft. Miller has done the legwork--Manjoo has not. I believe Miller, and I think that Manjoo should drop the subject--his input at this point is counterproductive to the revival of actual democracy in America.

I was very pleased to see the author's rebuttal to Farhad Manjoo's article trashing Mr. Miller's book, Fooled Again. I thank Salon for giving it a prominent position on the website.

While I had heard many complaints about Manjoo's slanted and insubstantial article, I did not want to read it and give Salon the impression that Manjoo is increasing circulation. I have long since given up any hope for anything from him other than superficial, snide articles kowtowing to whatever he perceives as the current conventional wisdom.

Mr Miller, on the other hand, has a history of original, in-depth, and fearless journalism, going bravely where hacks fear to tread. Even if he is wrong (which I have yet to see proved in any degree) Miller is expanding the bounds of debate and increasing the quality of discourse in a fashion John Stuart Mill would have proudly endorsed. The marketplace of ideas functions only in the presence of varied and competing ideas, fully discussed and debated.

Assigning a shallow stenographer like Manjoo to pan Miller's book was not only an insult to a long-time member of Salon's inner community (Miller has kept a long-term corrospondence active in Salon's Table Talk), it was also a betrayal of the concept of the liberal concept of reaching truth through competition between diverse ideas. Manjoo has a history of denying evidence of election fraud, and a stake in discrediting Miller's book. He also lacks the attention span and sophistication to make reasoned judgements between competing claims from different factions. Rather than engage Miller's thesis, he can only deny and trash them.

Next time you need an article written about politics, let Miller write it. Manjoo can better use his time playing Grand Theft Auto, which he has previously claimed a devotion to.

Leave the writing to the adults.

t should come as no surprise that I was not much pleased by Farhad Manjoo's attack on Fooled Again. Manjoo charges that my book presents "no proof" that Bush & Co. committed vast election fraud last year. In fact, the evidence in Fooled Again is both abundant and precise; whereas Manjoo's review itself presents no evidence to back its central accusation. "Miller's many suggestions of fraud dissolve under close scrutiny," writes Manjoo--who then comes up with just one trivial and dubious example: my passing reference to a certain fishy bloc of pro-Bush ballots cast (or not) in Ohio's Miami County on Election Day. Manjoo treats this mere aside as if it were the basis of my argument, devoting two whole paragraphs to a laborious rebuttal. Meanwhile, he cites none of the extensive evidence that Fooled Again includes.

Indeed, Manjoo himself admits the comprehensiveness of my research: "To make his case, Miller cites hundreds of news accounts, online reports and videos, and postings from sites like Democratic Underground." And yet your readers could not know that Fooled Again includes, along with such a careful overview, much new information on Bush/Cheney's global frauds, from the computerized purge of Democratic voters from the rolls in Summit and Stark Counties in Ohio, to the pre-election break-ins at Democratic offices in Akron and Toledo (the thieves stole only those computers that contained election data), to the myriad statewide drives to disenfranchise black, Hispanic and Native American voters, to the stealthy criminal shenanigans of Sproul and Associates, which deftly disenfranchised countless would-be Kerry voters in at least half a dozen states across the country (a ploy that cost the RNC over 8 million dollars), to Bush/Cheney's grand subversion of the huge vote cast, or intended, by Americans abroad (a stroke that likely disappeared at least two million Kerry votes). The evidence of all such perfidy, and plenty more, is solid, copious and easily available, despite Manjoo's bizarre insistence that there's nothing there. (Indeed, I found some of that evidence in his own pre-election writings, which is why I thank him warmly on p. 349 of Fooled Again.)

Manjoo tries to build his case by lauding Mark Hertsgaard's attempt, in the latest issue of Mother Jones, to cast doubt on the "theory" that Bush/Cheney stole the election in Ohio. (Manjoo repeats Hertsgaard's canard that Fooled Again deals mainly with the fraud committed in that state.) I take no pleasure in reporting it, as Hertsgaard is an old friend of mine, but that piece too is full of holes. Those points of his that Manjoo finds especially compelling are in fact untenable.

First, Hertsgaard avers that Sherole Eaton, a Democratic whistle-blower in Ohio's Hocking County, told him that she really "{doesn't} know if there was fraud" committed there--a claim that Eaton has indignantly denied. (Her words were taken out of context, she complained to Mother Jones: "I suggest that you assign someone else to write an article on the same subject without any slant.") Manjoo also seconds Hertsgaard's argument that there was certainly no fraud in Warren County--where a sudden "terrorist alert" allowed officials to eject reporters from the premises before the votes were counted. (Warren was among the last Ohio counties to report their tallies on Election Night.) Hertsgaard bases his contention on the say-so of "a Democrat" who told him that that "terrorist alert" was not suspicious. But Hertsgaard fails to note the FBI's denial, on Nov. 3, that there had really been a terrorist alert, nor does he tell us that the plan to sound that false alarm had been in place for some nine days. (Both stories were reported in the Cincinatti Enquirer.) Hertsgaard also fails to mention two eyewitnesses who claim that, after the "alert," ballots were improperly diverted to an unofficial storage site managed by a GOP operative. (Hertsgaard was told about those witnesses by attorney Bob Fitrakis, but evidently did not try to reach them.)

Both Manjoo and Hertsgaard have dismissed my book as an extended exercise in wishful thinking by a diehard partisan, portraying themselves as skeptical, hard-headed journalists, devoted only to "the facts." But it is they who are the partisans; for in their staunch refusal to perceive the glaring evidence of fraud, they are merely echoing the tense accommodationism of the over-cautious Democratic Party. In other words, they claim to see "no story" in last year's race because the Democrats (with all too few exceptions) claim there isn't one--a sort of faith-based journalism every bit as dangerous as the kind that has us fighting in Iraq. Surely we must base our civic conduct on reality itself, and not on what the stars of either party claim "reality" to be.

This brings me, finally, to John Kerry's role in the far right's ongoing struggle for dominion. Manjoo begins his rant with a sarcastic take on the brief controversy over my exchange with Kerry, in Manhattan on Oct. 28, on the theft of the 2004 election. Manjoo hints that I was lying about Kerry's claim that he believes the race was stolen, as Kerry's office had denied we ever had that conversation (and, of course, whatever Kerry says is true). If Manjoo were a less partisan reporter, he would have noted Robert Parry's article, posted on Consortiumnews.com on Oct. 29, revealing that Jonathan Winer, a longtime adviser to the senator, confirms that Kerry has suspected all along that last year's race was stolen, but never said so, fearing general ridicule. "'The powers in place would have smashed him,' Winer said."

But this is not about John Kerry's image, any more than it's about the sales of Fooled Again, or about Salon's political position, or Farhad Manjoo's or Mark Hertsgaard's career. It's about the mammoth threat confronting this republic, which will not last if we continue to ignore the scandal of last year's election. If anyone should be attacked, it's those extremists who conspire against American democracy, and not those citizens who try to talk about it.

-Mark Crispin Miller