How The Election Integrity Story Broke Here On DU - An Interview With Althecat On Oped News

[althecat]

From: http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0907/S00129.htm
&
http://www.opednews.com/articles/Interview-with-Scoop-s-Ala-by-Joan-Brunwasser-090707-183.html

US Election Integrity IV with Scoop's Alastair Thompson - Part 1

By Joan Brunwasser

Election Integrity Ed., OpEdNews

First Published at OpEdNews - July 7, 2009

Welcome to OpEdNews, Alastair. You're an unknown quantity to many of our American readers. Yet your creation, Scoop.co.nz, been around for over ten years. Can you describe what Scoop is and what you do?

Joan, it's a pleasure to be answering questions about Scoop here on OpEdNews. We have watched this site grow over several years to occupy a similar place to that which Scoop started to stake out when we launched in 1999

… snip …

And, (and this will be the bit that your readers are most interested in) we also publish free and frank commentary and some press releases from around the world. In this area of publication, we concentrate on stories which are either being ignored in the mainstream or which are receiveing insufficient attention. Our US coverage for example has concentrated on subjects like: the lies that started the Iraq war, corporate malfeasance and criminality, impeachment, unanswered questions in the official 911 narrative, and the weaknesses in the US election system - particularly in relation to electronic voting machine vulnerablities.

…snip …

How did you become interested in examining the underbelly of American elections?

Through 2002, we had been following the drumbeats to war and publishing dissident views on the subject. Perhaps because of our coverage of that and issues like Unanswered Questions we were added to the press release distribution list of BlackBoxVoting.org founder and director Bev Harris.

In October 2002, we published a press release "Republicans Make the US Elections Voting Machines" from Bev Harris.

On the eve of the 2002 midterm elections, ES&S demanded removal of the article "Voting Machine Company Demands Removal Of Articles". We did not comply and instead published several more releases from Bev Harris.

On 12 November a week after the midterms, I personally decided to look a bit deeper into the record and published "American Coup: Mid-Term Election Polls vs Actuals" a report which found a pattern of inconsistencies around the critical senate and gubernatorial races which occurred in that election round.

That article, and several of the Bev Harris releases, were picked up by several big US websites - notably by Mark Karlin at Buzzflash.com and achieved very high levels of traffic. Little did we realize what was to come next.

Don't stop there, Alastair.

Well, the first thing that happened is that the story was hard to get traction around. Not only was it hard to get anyone to report anything about the subject, but criticism for us daring to attack the credibility of election results came thick and fast. But there was also considerable support. It was a fun time.

William Rivers Pitt was one of the first off the blocks to touch on the subject and Faun Otter had already written on it. Scoop started following the story closely and publishing anything we could find.

Then, in February 2003, we had a breakthrough - Bev Harris found an open FTP site with all the source code to the Diebold voting machines. These reports were closely followed by a report in the Guardian Newspaper and this fantastic report out of Baltimore. Salon's Farhad Manjoo joined the beat a few days later.

Scoop was rapidly becoming a clearing house for information on this new and fascinating area of inquiry. Bev Harris was telling me she was onto some really big material, (she rang to tell me) but then went a bit quiet. In March, elements of the Democratic Party finally woke up to what was going on.

But the big break was still ahead - it was to do with the breakthrough in February and the cache of Diebold source files.

Let's pause here, Alastair. Our readers are invited to join us shortly for the second part of this interview.

*************

PART 2

From: http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0907/S00130.htm
&
http://www.opednews.com/articles/Interview-with-Scoop-s-Ala-by-Joan-Brunwasser-090709-918.html

At the end of part one of our interview, you left off with Bev Harris's breakthrough discovery about Diebold. Please don't leave us hanging, Alastair!

In June 2003, (after the war started) Bev contacted me by phone. She had been trying valiantly to get computer scientists to look at the source code she had uncovered with no success. She was also becoming a little concerned for her own safety. Her own inquiries into the source code had confirmed that the machines and tabulators were foolishly hackable but getting someone official on the record to say so was proving impossible. Most scientists were afraid that if they broke the easily cracked zip passwords on some of the files they would be opening themselves up to felony prosecution under the DMCA .

We decided to proceed to publish Bev's findings as they stood.

On July 8 2003 we did so in a one-two punch. First up was my commentary on Bev's findings "Bigger Than Watergate" and then, seven minutes later, Bev's expose report "Inside a US Election Vote Counting Program" which explained in detail just how easy it is to hack a US election without being detected, if you have access to the tabulation computer.

In the first story, a link was also published to a copy of the cache of Diebold source files data.

Over the next few days, the story went ballistic. It was linked off of Slashdot.org and copies of both stories were posted on hundreds of websites across the US and the world - including Buzzflash.com and Whatreallyhappened.org. It was even translated into German and Robert Cringely of PBS picked it up.

Meanwhile, the cache of data files was downloaded hundreds of times - often by military computers - but most importantly by a group of scientists at Johns Hopkins University. And on July 25, they published their report, "Analysis of an Electronic Voting System."The source of the files they used is acknowledged in the footnotes.

The academic paper which examined the vulnerabilities of Diebold's touchscreen software was reported in the New York Times, "Computer Voting is Open to Easy Fraud, Experts Say" and suddenly it was game on . (You can see just how widely the NYT story was picked up here.)

I then introduced myself to the election reform crew at the Democratic Underground which was then the clubhouse for the team researching this stuff, and we prepared to do battle to get something done about this mess.

Well, having worked the election integrity beat since 2005, I'm not so confident that we've actually made much progress over the years. Media exposure is an important first step. But we're still working toward getting widespread recognition of the dangers of computerized voting to democratic values. What progress can you point to?

Precisely.

Actually, knowledge is only a small part of the solution, and, since 2002, we have seen three sets of compromised elections.

And probably most sad of all - nothing concrete is being done even now - and given the track record of the election fraudsters, I would fully expect the 2010 midterms to be compromised.

And when you realise that the corrupt election system is also being used to run primary races, you may quickly figure out why even with control of the House and the Senate, Obama is finding it tough going getting his agenda in place.

In the aftermath of the original revelations of 2003, I expected there to be significant and rapid moves to fix the problems. But precisely the opposite happened - election officials dug in and defended their machines - they called the election integrity movement names and attempted to sideline us.

Meanwhile, the media were little better, and even after the 2004 election, they were poking the borax - though at least then they did in fact report the idea of stolen elections on the front pages.

Unfortunately, politicians and naysayers have persistently maintained the view that unless there is a smoking gun they will not believe what they want not to believe.

The tragedy is that there is a smoking gun - one that emerged in the aftermath of the events described above.

After the source code leak, two more sets of leaks followed in the summer of 2003. First, the Diebold memos (made famous by the Swarthmore College civil disobedience action). These memos contained some interesting additional information about the Volusia County incident in the 2000 election.

In October 2003, I published my version of this story "Diebold Memos Disclose Florida 2000 E-Voting Fraud" based on information provided by Bev Harris. Bev's version of the same story can be found in her book on the subject.

This story proves election fraud has happened.

The timing, scale and nature of the discrepancy is such that it unquestionably played a part in the premature award of the 2000 election to George Bush by network news anchors on election night. It cannot be explained by any other credible explanation except computer hacking. It is the smoking gun.

Thank you, Alastair. We'll pause here with the smoking gun. When we come back, we'll talk about the 2004 presidential election, online independents, Scoop's mission statement, and the stable of Americans that write for Scoop. I hope you'll join us.

*****

Interview Continuing at OPED News Over The Next Few Days….

See..
http://www.opednews.com/

NOTE: The interview has three more parts to come and features a few more well known names from around here and the Election Reform Discussion Forum.

[althecat]

1. Dear ERD... please KnR The Cross Posted GD Thread Here

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=6039442&mesg_id=6039442

[althecat]

2. Out of curiousity why would anyone in DU unrec this thread... its about DU?

[WillYourVoteBCounted]

3. Du wrong place to promote Bev Harris on anniversary of Andy Stephenson's death

Consdering when he was sick she was trying to convince the public that he
was faking.

Right when we were raising money to save his life and all.

So, her name isn't welcome here.

Andy suffered alot thanks to Harris-ment.

Now Bev did have some fans over at Freeperland who helped stalk and mentally torture Andy.

They might bump up a thread celebrating her.

[althecat]

4. deleted

[kster]

5. May have broke here, but also got buried here

anyone in the DU-ER knows that all the ballots in an election have to be hand counted at the polling place. America can't have a hundred year old PAPERLESS clunker count ballots for the same reason you can't have a PAPERLESS DRE count ballots. The people can't hand count actual paper ballots at the polling place, at the close of an election.

ITS THAT SIMPLE! Screw that little audit mirage the paper ballots have to be available at ALL polling places throughout America. For voters that want them taken out of the ballot box/scanners to be hand counted at the close of election, THIS HAS TO BE BUILT INTO THE SYSTEM! NOW!

Hopefully this new rec/unrec feature will separate the bullshit from the facts, that even a 12 year old child would know better!

Bev Harris and Andy, "God rest his soul," were a diversion from this reality.

Lets use this new feature to get the real facts out, Good luck DU/ER!

Kick!

[althecat]

6. Hi Kev,

Buried is right in terms of this forum. My view is that it got taken over by difficult people which made it impossible for the good people to stick around.

And the unrec innovation unfortunately will just make it even easier for the disruptors to get in the way of solutions.

As to the Hand Counting debate - you are completely correct and once the final 2 parts of the interview are in you will see that you took some of those words straight out of my mouth.

And on that subject it appears that there is about to be another Holt vs Real Solutions debate take place.

Exclusive Interview with Democracy Warrior, Nancy Tobi
http://www.opednews.com/articles/Exclusive-Interview-with-D-by-Joan-Brunwasser-090712-612.html

[WillYourVoteBCounted]

7. "taken over by difficult people" ? irony considering you honor someone who was banned from DU

sadly the OP honors one of the biggest disruptors of the ER movement of all -
Bev Harris.

The owners of Democratic Underground were forced to ban her from DU.

She had threatened to sue DU.

She falsely accused several good election reform activists of filing a Qui Tam.
Meanwhile she was secretly filing a Qui Tam.

She falsely and publicly fired and maligned Andy Stephenson.

She falsely accused Andy Stephenson of faking illness right when we were raising funds to get
his surgery.

She berated him for not doing more right when his sister had just died.

She f'ed up ER's chances with Keith Olbermann.

She attacked many good activists who went "underground" in order to escape the "harris-ment".
I managed to get one to resurface, David Allen of High Point NC, who did great things in North Carolina. In fact, David wrote the clause in NC law that scared Diebold away.

If you want to criticize disruptors, then why honor someone who was so disruptive that she was banned from DU?

[diva77]

15. If Andy is as magnanimous as you depict him to be (I never knew him) do

you think in his honor he would have wanted people to bury the hatchet by now and concentrate on maximizing the effectiveness of the election integrity movement?

I don't think he would approve of the ongoing strongly worded posts about what happened 5 years ago. I know it stirs up great emotion for you, but I don't think it honors Andy's memory. It just perpetuates divisiveness, and perhaps there is a better way to honor Andy's memory.

[Kelvin Mace]

17. I'm sorry, but you just don't know what we went through back then,

And how Andy was hounded unto his death bed.

No, Andy had no great love for the person he worked very hard for, who utterly betrayed him, smeared him, then tried to cover it all up when the backlash came.

Since you were not there, let me point you to this link to get the facts:

"The Bev Harris story for newbies and those who have forgotten"

http://journals.democraticunderground.com/Kelvin%20Mace/2

I would STRONGLY suggest you read the statement made by DU when they banned Bev for her behaviour.

Also, you don't "bury the hatchet" and work with someone who is working not for election reform, but for personal enrichment.

[WillYourVoteBCounted]

19. The OP glorifies someone who screwed alot of people

unfortunately, many suffered from Harris-ment.

And Andy died because his boss publicly fired him (posted it on her website),
didn't provide him health insurance while raking in gigantic bucks for the organization
he was employed by,
and she publicly and falsely stated on her website that Andy was faking being ill.
How does it feel when your employer fires (and humiliates you ) publicly
and also states publicly that you are pretending to be ill?
When you are dying?


Then freepers picked up the ball and set up a website to harass Andy,
even stalking his caregivers.

And someone then got his medical paypal account frozen, delaying his surgery by
2 weeks. Every extra day made his chances of survival slimmer and slimmer.

So no, Andy was suffering and perhaps died because of the misinformation spread
about him - including his former employer saying Andy wasn't sick.

Why with all the money she raked in - couldn't she have given him health insurance?

F--- HER.

[kster]

22. No shit, if I was Andy I would haunt every one of them, good God

Fend for yourself grow a pair and let me rest in peace is what Andy is probably thinking right now. Come up with some new shit! Every time you get in to trouble they write a sentence or two about me, Andy, or Bev. Then you think you won the debate, its laughable, grow a pair and get some new material start thinking for yourself for Gods sakes.

Andy probably wouldnt even be on their side anymore if he knew how they use him in every comback even now that hes dead, and Andys probably getting God awfully tired of their "Bev Harris for newbies link". Andys thinking if that link is all you got after 5 years your pretty pathetic, Hes saying if they use that link one more time, "I'm gonna strike you with lighting myself."

This is to Andy a guy who regularly pissed me off....

I hope you find peace Andy.

[Stephanie]

26. How dare you presume to speak for Andy?!

I understand why you don't want anyone to post the link, because Bev herself is there in all her glory scheming and lying and wriggling out of direct questions, and ultimately saying the worst thing I've ever heard a human being say, to a deathly ill man. I guarantee you if Andy could follow any of this discussion, he would want the truth to be told. He did not believe Bev Harris was working to guarantee free and fair elections. In fact he was convinced the opposite was the case. Not to mention the heinous things she did and said to him personally, including this, from the Bev Harris for newbies thread:

bailey77 (97 posts) Wed Mar-09-05 03:10 AM
Response to Reply #73
109. Nope, it's not true.

That one lie should make Andy Stephenson fear to meet his maker.

By the way, Bev Harris hasn't had a personal bank account since July 2003

[kster]

31. Did the DU, "election reform," four become five I don't think we

have met. Judging by your tone I don't really care. If you want to take the whole Democratic idea/concept of America, "ballots counted at the polling place by the hands of Ameriicans not by machines," and funnel into a petty little story like that.

Knock your socks off!

Your a real Caped Crusader.



:)

[kster]

9. "Holt" is the bully on a public playground

In the past the Holt crew has forced everyone to play in a small corner of the public playground. We are so used to playing in that corner that when Holt and his cronies mention that they are willing to give us a little extra playground. Some of us are willing to go along with him and his ilk just to get the extra space, even though every one playing in that small corner knows that we should take the whole public playgroung back. Any "ballot counting machine," thats paperless or otherwise keeps us in that corner and the bullies in charge.

Every one in DU/ER knows we need hand counted paper ballots at the polling place, anything less is a meaningless fight to get out of the corner.

HCPB-ATPP, NOW!

Im looking forward to reading the article.

[WillYourVoteBCounted]

10. I'm not excited about fed leg, but at least Holt isn't raising money off of this issue

There's no need to make personal attacks on Holt - if you don't like fed legislation,
then don't like it based on what it does.

But the people that article exhalts have not helped advance HCPB.

At maxium, Nancy's state has what about 25% HCPB? And not gaining ground.
And it turns out that her state has an unreliable chain of custody, to the point
that she said recounts or audits would be futile and she argued against them.

I mean,HCPB are sprouting up everywhere, including your home town, right?

Meanwhile, the big enemy of hand counted paper ballots is instant runoff voting,
which was the cause of Scotland giving up HCPB.

[WillYourVoteBCounted]

11. we had some HCPB only activists in one county in my state and you know what they got?

Their county bought DRES, with the toilet paper trail.

In Buncombe County NC, the HCPB folks lobbying backfired - county officials chose instead to listen to the County Board of Elections, who seemed more "reasonable" but who wanted DREs.


We found a new group to come in at the last minute (March 2006) and start advocating for optical scan,
and in 3 months time, that group had persuaded the County Commissioners to approve of selling the new
DRES that had been purchased for the May 2006 primary.
The county untlimately went 100% optical scan/automark thanks to the new group's last minute efforts.

SO HCPB is fine, but have you've been playing cheerleader for years now.
If you want HCPB, you might want to try to have a little local success to prove that your strategy works.

[WillYourVoteBCounted]

14. KSTR, Holt isn't stopping states from passing their own laws, how's your paper ballot law coming?

dozens of states have passed paper ballot laws, so I guess the big scary
man didn't bully us away from that.

he's not bullying you away from getting a law passed in your state either.

So get cracking!

[Kelvin Mace]

18. I'm looking forward to reading about how you are championing

your cause in your home state, or even your county. If you actually believe in this strongly, your should be doing what we did, changing the law.

Sloganeering is easy, real change is hard work.

[WillYourVoteBCounted]

30. KSTER, hand counted paper ballots are a "certified" voting system in my state

yet the HCPB activists here haven't taken the ball and run with it.

At least we set it up for them if they ever figure it out.

Are HCPB a certified voting system in your state?

I"m all for them, thats why I asked for them to be listed in our law as a certified system,
to ensure their creditability as a viable choice.

[Kelvin Mace]

12. Difficult?

Yeah, that about describes Bev and her gang. I rarely post here anymore, or much on the issue. I got tired of the constant attacks from Bev and her gang.

If folks are unhappy with Holt and how he's handling the issue, they have only Bev to blame. She poisoned the well and trashed the reputation of the movement with all politicians.

[Wilms]

13. "Bev to blame" for Holt's handling of election reform?

:eyes:

[Kelvin Mace]

16. No, go back and read what I wrote

she discredited the movement to such a degree that we no longer have the ear of the people crafting legislation.

When working on the law in NC the one reason we were taken seriously is that we distanced ourselves from Bev and antics.

[Wilms]

20. I stand by my reply.

Not that I'm insensitive to the idea that some of the movements members come off rather poorly.

But there's a wide range of people involved in helping or trying to help shape Holt's bills for the better. Holt and his staff do what they want.

Blaming the mis-steps on Bev is laughable. It's like blaming kster for the continued use of DREs in PA and GA.

[Kelvin Mace]

23. Holt initially was open to discussion

on the issue. Then Bev made an ass of herself, attacked other activists, and the doors in Washington closed.

Again, I speak from firsthand experience that Bev's name was poison amongst election officials and politicians. I, and other activists got more accomplished once folks realized we had no love for Bev and her wild accusations.

I hear LOTS of criticism of Holt, but see no organized or concerted effort by people who favor HCPB to actually make such a law in their own states/counties/cities. Nothing Holt is doing precludes TOUGHER standards at the local level, yet I don't see ANY HCPB advocates writing tougher bills and pushing them locally. Lots of sound and fury at DU and BBV.org, but no actual laws, or even drafts of laws, and no effort at any local level I am aware of.

People can either whine or do something. In my state we did something. It isn't perfect but I have yet to see any HCPB advocate get a law in a single township, never mind an entire state.

[Wilms]

25. If that makes you feel better about yourself...by all means.

Everything that doesn't go your way is the fault of Bev and/or HCPB advocates.

Like freepers and Clinton...


Stay irrelevant.

[Kelvin Mace]

27. You miss the point

I accomplished my goal in my state. I am not a believer in HCPB, so that's not my fight. Thus things have "gone my way". I am now waiting for the people who scream so loud on this board to actually get a law passed ANYWHERE in the U.S., then they have at least a "putting their money where their mouth is" leg to stand on.

Bev hasn't done this, nor has any other HCPB advocate. Folks like to throw mud at Holt and slime Bev's detractors, yet we have not seen a single law passed by her, or them.

Bev has raised well over a million dollars, probably two or three by now, and has NOTHING to point to as a tangible accomplishment. Our law was passed years ago in NC and we didn't ask for, nor did we take a single penny of anyone's money to do it.

[Wilms]

28. Again, it's a wide range of people.

Some who post here indeed have gotten legislation passed. Others have really worked on reform.

If you'll ignore the forum "HCPB or I'll kill your thread" posters, you'll have a brightened view of this place.

Meanwhile, no one significant is defending anyone's bad behavior.

So relax...and consider working on risk-based statistical audits.

[WillYourVoteBCounted]

8. Skinner's statement on banning Bev Harris from DU (over her threats and continued disruption of DU)

This is just one part of the disruption, this is even before she crapped all over Andy.

Statement on the Bev Harris situationFri Dec-03-04 02:31 PM

Over the past two years Bev Harris has received a great deal of support from the members of Democratic Underground, in her research, publicity efforts, and fundraising. In return we have played host to an 18 month-long squabble between Ms. Harris and other verified voting activists, and have even been threatened with lawuits by Ms. Harris herself. Despite this, we have publicly remained mostly silent on the verified voting squabbles.

We believe verified voting is a topic of crucial importance, and have been uncomfortable taking sides on an issue which, frankly, we should all be on the same side of anyway. Therefore we have kept most of our correspondence with the various factions private and attempted to cool things down behind the scenes. Like all issues discussed at DU, we have tried to focus the discussion of verified voting on the topic at hand, and not on the personalities of the participants. However, in light of the recent troubles, we feel compelled to make a statement.

In 2003 Bev Harris, along with a few other verified voting activists, were banned from DU for engaging in personal squabbles on the message board after they were repeatedly instructed to stop. Around that time, Ms. Harris threatened us with a libel lawsuit, claiming that we could be held responsible for comments made by other message board members who doubted the credibility of her project. She never followed through on this threat and we never heard from her lawyers.

Ms. Harris was reinstated shortly afterwards, after agreeing to put an end to the problems that got her banned in the first place. Nonetheless, those problems periodically recurred after her reinstatement. A few weeks ago, Ms. Harris again used our website to threaten DU with lawsuits, in her postings, in private messages to other members, and in rude alerts she sent to the moderators.

We sent a message to Ms. Harris telling her to stop hassling our moderators and members, and informing her that if she had a legal concern, she needed to contact us directly. We also let her know that her continued participation on this message board was dependent upon her behavior. The legal threats stopped, but we received no response from either Ms. Harris or her lawyers.

This is our personal experience with Ms. Harris. We cannot confirm or deny the veracity of claims made by others, including many former colleagues, her former publisher, and Keith Olbermann. But we can confirm that the claims made by others about Ms. Harris are not inconsistent with our own experiences.

We have remained as patient as possible in our dealings with Ms. Harris because we believe that the topic of verified voting is a crucial one. We were prepared to sacrifice a certain amount of tranquility on the message board if verified voting was being discussed in a generally positive manner.

Ms. Harris's recent spat with Keith Olbermann has made positive discussion of verified voting increasingly difficult on DU. For over a year and a half, our members have been split into pro- and anti-Bev factions, and recent events have only exacerbated that division. Yet this morning Ms. Harris returned to DU and started posting as if nothing had happened, while making liberal use of the alert button to complain to the moderators about our enforcement of the message board rules. At this point our patience finally ran out.

The fact that the disruptions have continued, despite repeated warnings from the administrators, leaves us with no other option but to bar Bev Harris from posting on this website. We no longer believe that it is productive to allow her to use DU as a platform to promote herself while simultaneously trashing us, our moderators, and others who have been previously supportive of her cause.

We still remain firmly committed to promoting discussion of verified voting, and we wish Ms. Harris well in her efforts to shed light on this important issue. From now on, we encourage all of our members to focus on discussing the verified voting issue itself, rather than the personalities involved.

-----------------

This thread will remain open until further notice. Again, we would like to remind everyone to take care to avoid personal attacks. Thank you for your continued cooperation.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x108750

[kster]

21. kick.nt

[Kelvin Mace]

24. Rather interesting

that in the course of the entire interview, my name isn't mentioned once. Given that it is mentioned on your site in direct connection with the events described in the interview, I can only assume that you decided not to annoy Bev by bringing me up. After all, keeping her happy is more important than a factual recounting of the actual events that took place and the people involved in those events.

Now, I am sure that Bev's supporters will accuse me of having an inflated ego, but hey, I was there, and I did make a number of non-trivial contributions, contributions that even Bev's cronies have admitted to (after initially denying them, so depending on which way the wind is blowing, they may be back to denying them).

Given the choice of an accurate accounting and keeping Bev happy, you seem to have chosen the latter path. After all, you know I will simply chide you here and that will be that, whereas pissing off Bev would mean a serious, perpetual grief.

[althecat]

32. David... leaving you out was an oversight

And for that I apologise. There were others who did big things who were not mentioned also. Roxanne Jekot for one.

I can assure you I had no desire to keep Bev happy. And in any event doing so is impossible as you well know.

I have had very little contact with Ms Harris since 2004.

I really wish people in this forum would stop obsessing about Bev Harris. She's gone from here.

[Kelvin Mace]

33. Thank you, Alastair

Apology accepted. And I apologize for jumping to a conclusion.

The problem with posting the interview here, is that DU, for the most part, has little love for Bev. A posting which sings her praises yet omits her sins is going to get pounced on.

Also, some people who have come along since then, who rely on information from Bev, or from Wikipedia (diligently scrubbed of any factual criticism by Bev supporters), will get a fraction of the story. Bev is gone from here, but her evil lingers, and must never be forgotten, glossed over, or excused.

Also, people who may be considering giving her money need ALL the facts before doing so.

Some sins are never forgiven, especially in the absence of any contrition.

[WillYourVoteBCounted]

29. Al, your efforts are appreciated

Althecat, I love you for your caring about our elections. I know you really do.

I appreciate your effort and also understand that the shit that the US stirs up
impacts your country. I have cousins in both Australia and New Zealand, and they
feel like their country and the world - pay for the horrible stuff that ours does.
(I wish you would write about your health care system sometime, I've heard great things
about it that would shock US folks)

Even the economy.

Its just that some of us will never wish to see DU as an enabling mechanism for Bev Harris.

She could have been so much more than she is now - but when she got her 15 + minutes of fame,
she turned on so many who were integral to what happened. And this wasn't a mild turn, but
a horribly obscenely vicious turning against.

So we have someone who is far less than she could be, because of who and how she hurt many people.
She could have been a leader, but instead was a "celebrity".

The attack on Andy Stephenson was so vile, so cruel, so hurtful, and done when Andy was dying.

That was the last straw for any of us who weren't already done with her.

How do you forgive someeone who does what she did to Andy?
Some things are so grievous, they can't be forgotten.

Fortunately, people have worked state by state and that has been succeeding.
Other states join in after they see it work in the ones who've adopted paper.

I don't think Bev impacts much, now because you can't burn that many people and then
have much influence.

I am ambivalent about federal legislation for a few reasons, they're my own, but I think
that Rush Holt is trying to help the situation, not hurt it.

I don't think it will pass anyway, if it isn't for the banks or for bombs, it hasn't got
much chance.