Paul E. Ester's Flogger

The voting machine wars are heating up and the implications of vote fraud in America are even more ominous.

Computer scientist Avi Rubin, whose Johns Hopkins University team found serious flaws in Diebold Election Systems software abruptly resigned from VoteHere, another election software company.

In a related story, on August 6th Maryland Governor Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. (R) gave a contract to Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) to review the Diebold Election System’s software in preparation for elections in Maryland. The report is due in four weeks.

Avi Rubin announced today his resignation from VoteHere, an elections systems company. His statement reads: “Effective immediately, I am resigning from the Technical Advisory Board of VoteHere, and I am returning all stock options, which have never been exercised, and which are not entirely vested.” Unexercised stock options may be the least of Rubin’s problems.

Rubin’s relationship with VoteHere was a surprise to many…. Rest of Article

Both the RCMP and CSIS identified Maher Arar to U.S. anti-terrorist agencies, but there was no Canadian involvement in Arar’s deportation to Syria.

That was the message from U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell in a December 2 telephone call to Foreign Minister Bill Graham.

Graham had asked Powell for an accounting of Canadian involvement in the case in early November.

Arar spent 10 months in detention in Syria, where he was regularly tortured, before being released in October and returning to Canada.

Arar, a Syrian-born Canadian citizen, was travelling to Canada on a Canadian passport when he was arrested at New York’s Kennedy Airport on Sept. 26, 2002.

CSIS, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, had previously said it had nothing to do with Arar’s arrest .

Powell contradicted that, telling Graham that information from both the RCMP and CSIS was used to target Arar.

But Powell said no Canadians were informed or consulted about the decision to deport Arar to Syria…. Rest of Article

A U.N. security guard was found dead with a gunshot wound to the head in an apparent suicide committed inside U.N. headquarters on Monday, police said.

Michael Holton’s body was found in a third floor lounge shortly before noon. He was discovered by two officers who were sent to check on Holton after he did not return to his duty station following a break, said Michael McCann, the U.N. security chief.

McCann told a news conference the incident — called an apparent suicide by police — was the first of its kind inside the United Nations buildings.

Holton, 41, was found in a lounge area where U.N. employees often take their breaks. He was seated in one of the chairs and his gun was on the chair next to his leg, McCann said.

Holton, of West Sayville, N.Y., was a 16-year veteran of the U.N. security department and was married with two children, McCann said. He was a U.S. citizen.
… Rest of Article

Neil Bush, younger brother of President Bush, detailed lucrative business deals and admitted to engaging in sex romps with women in Asia in a deposition taken in March as part of his divorce from now ex-wife Sharon Bush.

According to legal documents disclosed on Tuesday, Sharon Bush’s lawyers questioned Neil Bush closely about the deals, especially a contract with Grace Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp., a firm backed by Jiang Mianheng, the son of former Chinese President Jiang Zemin, that would pay him $2 million in stock over five years.

Marshall Davis Brown, lawyer for Sharon Bush, expressed bewilderment at why Grace would want Bush and at such a high price since he knew little about the semiconductor business…. Rest of ArticleThe article carries this gem at the end:He admitted in the deposition that he previously had sex with several other women while on trips to Thailand and Hong Kong at least five years ago.

The women, he said, simply knocked on the door of his hotel room, entered and had sex with him. He said he did not know if they were prostitutes because they never asked for money and he did not pay them.

”Mr Bush, you have to admit it’s a pretty remarkable thing for a man just to go to a hotel room door and open it and have a woman standing there and have sex with her,” Brown said.

”It was very unusual,” Bush said.