"Death Is Not the End, but the Beginning of Something New" ~ Taryn Crimi

While we each have our own belief systems about death/birth, etc., I found this one to be synonymous with my own......
click link to read article.

http://ascension2012andbeyond.com/

Abuse in Later Life (NCALL)

National Clearinghouse on Abuse in Later Life (NCALL)
A Project of Wisconsin Coalition Against Domestic Violence
307 S. Paterson St., Suite 1, Madison, Wisconsin 53703-3517
Phone: 608-255-0539 • Fax/TTY: 608-255-3560 • www.ncall.us • www.wcadv.org

Abuse in Later Life Wheel

In 2006, NCALL adapted the Power and Control Wheel, developed by the Domestic Abuse Intervention Project, Duluth, MN.
Resource updated, April 2011.Tactics Used by Abusers
During 2005, NCALL staff asked facilitators of older abused women’s support groups to have participants review the Duluth Domestic Abuse Intervention Project’s Power and Control Wheel. Over 50 survivors from eight states responded. NCALL created this Abuse in Later Life Wheel from their input.
In addition to the tactics on the wheel, many offenders justify or minimize the abuse and deny that they are abusive. Perpetrators of abuse in later life may make comments like “she’s just too difficult to care for” or “he abused me as a child” to blame the victim, or try to minimize the abuse by stating the victim bruises easily or injuries are the incidental result of providing care. The list below provides additional examples of some of the behaviors victims might experience under each tactic included on the wheel.


Denies Access to Spiritual & Traditional 
Events
 Refuses transportation or access
 Destroys spiritual or traditional items of
importance

Ridicules Personal and Cultural Values
 Disrespectful of cultural practices
 Ignores values when making decisions

Uses Family Members
 Misleads family members regarding
condition of elder
 Excludes or denies access to family; Isolates
 Controls what elder does, who they see
and what they do
 Denies access to phone or mail

Physical Abuse
 Hits, chokes, burns, pinches, throws
things
 Restrains elder to chair or bed

Sexual Abuse
 Sexually harms during care giving
 Forces sex acts
 Forces elder to watch pornography

Psychological Abuse
 Engages in crazy-making behavior
 Publicly humiliates

Emotional Abuse
 Yells, insults, calls names
 Degrades, blames

Targets Vulnerabilities and Neglects
 Takes or denies access to items needed for
daily living
 Refuses transportation
 Denies food, heat, care, or medication
 Does not follow medical
recommendations
 Refuses to dress or dresses
inappropriately


Uses Privilege 
 Speaks for elder at financial and medical
appointments
 Makes all major decisions
Financial Exploits
 Steals money, titles, or possessions
 Abuses a power of attorney or
guardianship

Threatens

 Threatens to leave or commit suicide
 Threatens to institutionalize
 Abuses or kills pet or prized livestock
 Displays or threatens with weapons

Top 10 Reasons to Legalize Marijuana Now | Alternet

CLICK HERE FOR ARTICLE: Top 10 Reasons to Legalize Marijuana Now | Alternet

"The 5th Key of Compassion" by Jelaila Starr

Excerpt from Dancing with the Dark 
The 5th Key of Compassion

Dancing with the Dark

 

Life sure changes when you begin to dance in step with the Dark, using your god-given dark abilities and skills.  For example, life becomes more fun because you don’t get as frustrated since you are aware that you have the right to speak up and stand your ground.  Though it would take a book to define all the ways that you change when you begin living your life using your dark skills and abilities, here’s a few of the more noticeable changes.

You set personal boundaries.

Since one of the major purposes of Dark Power is protection, it only makes sense that the first thing we do protect ourselves better.  I don’t mean throw up walls.  I mean setting boundaries that are flexible and breathable.  Boundaries are limits that you set on how much energy you will expend.  People with healthy boundaries are healthier and more emotionally resilient than those without them.  When you have healthy boundaries you have plenty of energy and don't get that scattered, fuzzyheaded feeling caused by other people draining your energy.  Boundaries are self-love in action.

You use agreements.

As explained in Agreements, the 6th Key of Compassion, an agreement is a verbal or written arrangement by which a designated set of needs is fulfilled.  Just as boundaries are self-love in action, agreements are self-empowerment in action.  Agreements are what responsible, self -empowered people use to communicate their needs and ask for what they want.  People who use agreements are empowered and find it easy to trust and feel safe in their relationships.  As a result, they are able to commit on a much deeper level, and therefore enjoy the rich satisfaction of a strong and emotionally satisfying relationship.  A relationship built on the self-empowering foundation of agreements is a relationship that feeds the soul and makes the heart sing.  It is the kind of relationship we all desire in our lives.

An agreement is also a promise to fulfill the needs designated in the arrangement, thus when we create agreements our integrity comes into play.  In fact, the power of the agreements to create the desired outcome, a happy and fulfilling relationship, is directly proportionate to the integrity of the partners.  In other words, does your word mean anything?  Is it a matter of honor or not?  To what length are you willing to go to keep from breaking your agreement only because you said it would be so?  An agreement is not a rule.  Rules are made to be broken because they are based on a win/lose principle.  Rules also tend to empower only one side while disempowering the other.

Once we come to understand this God-conscious concept and add agreements to our existing relationships, we will see the magic of their power to heal, nurture and bring back into balance what could not be balanced in our relationships no matter how hard we tried.  Here’s a heart-warming example to explain what I mean.

Jonathan and my then 10 year-old daughter Danielle were not getting along after I moved to LA.  Danielle had been living with her father for the past 2 years and after a lengthy court battle that ended in late 1997, I was not willing to battle him again in order to take her with me, plus, I felt that only time apart could break the co-dependent attachment between Danielle and I.  Being too young to understand, Danielle just felt abandoned and hurt.  Her pain and anger were enormous, and not having any supportive authority figures, (her dad believed that anger should not be expressed) she didn’t have a way to work through it.  Additionally, she didn’t want to risk losing me entirely if she vented the anger at me, so she expressed it at Jonathan, someone she felt she could risk losing. 

Danielle’s first visit was an emotional disaster. She and Jonathan fought daily, each complaining to me about the other.  I felt I was being torn in two as each sought to gain my support against the other.  Of course I allowed this by not having set any personal boundaries or negotiated any agreements for it.  As the days went by, I found myself counting the days until she went home.  As much as I loved being with her and knowing how much my heart would break as I watched her walk out of my life again as she boarded the plane in the care of a stranger, I knew I could not take many more.

Danielle’s second visit was no different.  At the end  I sat crying in the airport as I watched her plane take off and fly into the sky headed east to Kansas City, 1700 miles away from me.  Once again, I had taken her to the airport alone.  Driving home, I began to realize that my fear of marrying a man who did not love my child had been realized, and I was responsible for its manifestation.

In January, 1999, Danielle returned for her third visit.  This time I was ready to make a change.  The morning after she arrived, we went into the office and sat together at the computer to create a set of agreements.  It was easier than I thought.  As we discussed them and I typed them up, I began to see that they were much different than the rules I had used with Danielle when I was still single, and of course, which she constantly managed to forget and break.

When we were done she asked to go out and play.  I felt somewhat let down.  I had expected some big magical change to suddenly take place and yet there was nothing, just a child anxious to go and play with her friends.  Two hours later, she returned and asked to renegotiate one of the agreements.  This in itself was wonderful.  It meant that she realized that she had power but that was not what really struck me.  It was her demeanor and the tone of her voice.  In two short hours she had transformed from a clingy 5 year-old to a self-assured 10 year-old.  I couldn’t believe my eyes and ears!  Danielle had grown up!  I realized that by creating the agreements with her, I had given her back her power and a real sense of safety.  Now she felt empowered in her relationship with Jonathan and me.  Danielle now knew what was expected of her because it was written down.  No more walking on eggshells.  And she also knew that if an agreement was not working for her, that she had the power to renegotiate it.  And most of all, she knew that her power was equal to ours, that we all lived by the agreements, not just her.

Five long months went by before Danielle returned.  This was to be a month long visit and a real test of our newly created agreements.  Not only did they stand the test, but they worked their magic on the wound between Danielle and her stepfather.  They had their conflicts and one night got into a big one.  When Jonathan grilled Danielle about something she did not do, she stopped him with the agreements.  She said, “I’m not going to continue this because you’ve gotten me confused.”  And with that she walked out of the room.  I thought to myself, “Touché´!  You go little girl!”  Danielle had stood up to her step-father.

A few days later, as they were standing on the balcony watching the Fourth of July fireworks light up the city below, Danielle turned to Jonathan and said, “Dad, I want to thank you for teaching me how to stand up for myself.  I was scared at first, but I’m proud that I did it.”  Jonathan replied, “Thank you.  You did a good job Danielle.  I know it was tough, but you did it.”  With that they embraced and the wound between them healed a little more.

Watching Danielle and Jonathan begin to heal was what taught me the power and value of agreements.  As mentioned earlier, you will find more in-depth information on boundaries and agreements in Agreements, the 6th Key of Compassion.

"Mind Control Today Is Much More Sophisticated Than The Original Brainwashing Techniques"

While the descriptors of this topic are often seen as something outside of our experience, it is a dynamic that often happens in families.  This week, it also gives insight as the possible dynamic of the Boston terror attack suspect.


CLICK HERE TO READ: Brainwashing techniques vs mind control methods.

Personal Accountability – Reclaiming Our Judgments, Projections And Ourselves

CLICK HERE TO READ ARTICLE: Personal Accountability – Reclaiming Our Judgments, Projections And Ourselves

"Why Did the Affair Happen?"-Huffington Post

April 1, 2013

This is the print preview: Back to normal view »

Why Did The Affair Happen?

Posted: 04/01/2013 2:00 am

Excerpted from The New Monogamy; Redefining Your relationship After Infidelity

Often, when we discover that a partner has been cheating, the first question is an anguished "Why?" This often-unanswerable question is what drives us to ruminate on what happened, and we may force our partners to talk about the details over and over again, hoping to find the answers we are searching for.

One of the first things you will need to do to heal from an affair is to explore this question of why it happened and to be open to hearing the real, honest truth. Most people want to blame the cheating partner. And the cheating partner does have to take responsibility for pursuing the outside relationship. But no affair happens in a vacuum.

Collusion in the Affair

Collusion means "secret cooperation." The dictionary says that collusion is "secret cooperation between two people in order to do something underhanded or undesirable." Many couples, if they are honest with themselves, may find that the partner who was cheated on colluded with the infidelity even if he or she didn't participate directly in the affair. That means that on some level, there was some type of cooperation, even if unconscious, to make the affair happen.

This secret cooperation may mean the betrayed partner is doing something in the relationship to collude with his or her partner's behavior, even if he or she doesn't realize it. To be unconsciously aware means that on some level, the betrayed partner had an idea that their spouse was cheating.

In a 1995 study, two groups of practicing therapists described extramarital affairs they treated or were themselves involved in. They reported that 89% of betrayed spouses in the study were consciously aware of the infidelity or, even if they did not acknowledge it, really did know about the affair. The majority of the betrayed spouses behaved as if they were in collusion with their cheating partners, even when they said they were opposed to the affairs.

Maria and Frank had been stuck in conflict over Maria's affair for over a year. Maria had cheated on Frank with a neighbor, Joe, someone they saw weekly for card games and occasional barbeques. When Frank found out that Maria had cheated with Joe, he became incensed and almost left her.

As time progressed and Maria and Frank discussed the affair, Maria shared her confusion with her husband: "I always felt that you approved of my relationship with Joe. You saw how he flirted with me, and you even encouraged me to go over there when his wife was out of town. You used to say that Joe was probably lonely and that maybe I should go over and have a drink with him. Now you are so mad at me! There's some kind of mixed message here."

Frank was furious with Maria for insinuating that he pushed her into the affair: "I never told you to cheat with him. Did I ever say, 'Go sleep with Joe; he and his wife aren't having any?"

As Frank's feelings calmed down, he tried to see things from Maria's point of view, to find some empathy for her experience: "I guess it makes sense that she would move toward Joe. Maybe I was hoping that they would cheat so I would have an excuse to leave."

Maria said, "This is not your fault. I definitely made the move to step over the line." Frank realized he had unconsciously colluded with her about the affair.

Affairs as Exits

An exit can be any behavior that a partner uses to avoid being truly present in the relationship, whether emotionally, psychologically, sexually, or even physically. Harville Hendrix, author of the best-selling self-help book Getting the Love You Want: A Guide for Couples, says smaller exits can include anything that helps you to avoid dealing with conflict or intimacy, including being on the computer, checking e-mails, texting, or staying late at work. Any behavior that is used to avoid ways to engage with your partner is considered an exit. Bigger exits include things like gambling, drinking, and taking drugs. An affair is considered one of the biggest exits and is what Hendrix called "an invisible divorce."

Affairs are only one way to exit from the relationship, but they can be a powerful and damaging way to avoid the intimacy of a monogamous partnership. However, whenever the person who is exiting traces his or her behavior back to the moment he or she exited, it often becomes clear that at that time, his or her partner was exiting as well. If the cheating partner can trace his or her behavior back to the point where the indiscretion began, it may become clear that the affair was an attempt to deal with the feelings of a partner who "exited" the relationship first.

Mike and Sheila came to therapy after Mike had an affair with a woman he met on the Internet. Every time he tried to talk to Sheila about his loneliness and feelings of disconnection, she would get defensive and accuse Mike of trying to shut down her needs professionally.

Mike said, "I never wanted her to stop working. I wanted her to be home with me. Eventually I started a relationship with this woman who advertised on adult websites. She never let me down, and whenever I was lonely, she was there for me."

Often, one or both partners may see an affair as a way to avoid conflict or intimacy, and eventually may see it as an exit from the relationship. In exploring why your partner pursued an affair, you may discover that he perceived that you exited the relationship first. This can be a difficult thing to accept, especially amid the fresh pain of a newly discovered affair.

Sometimes the "why" of an affair is not as important as what happens after, if you can create a new monogamy, together.

For more information on creating your new monogamy and a new relationship together, click here.

Dr. Tammy Nelson is a world renowned sex and relationship expert and the author ofThe New Monogamy and Getting the Sex You Want. She can be found atwww.drtammynelson.com

Follow Tammy Nelson, Ph.D. on Twitter: www.twitter.com/drtammynelson

Walmart's Death Grip on Groceries Is Making Life Worse for Millions of People (Hard Times USA) | Alternet

Walmart's growing control of our food system has been to intensify the rural and urban poverty that drives unhealthy food choices.......(Click here to read)

Private Jet as Security Write-Off? 10 Most Insane Tax Loopholes | Alternet

For corporations and the 1 percent, tax season offers plenty of ways to dodge Uncle Sam. Now THIS is reckless spending!!  And they don't even call it an "entitlement"!  Whatever has happened to the English language, and its perversion by Congress and Republicans.
Click here to read about these perversions!

The School of “Heart” Knocks « Synergy Magazine / The Magazine for Mindful Living / Vancouver Island, BC, Canada

A former criminal lawyer and psychotherapist, Jeff Brown is the author of “Soulshaping: A Journey of Self-Creation,” endorsed by authors Elizabeth Lesser and  Ram Dass. It is Brown’s autobiography; an inner travelogue of his journey from archetypal male warrior to a more surrendered path.

(Read some of Jeff's story....)

(Jeff is also available on Twitter, and has websites that are an ongoing example of soul work.)

"What is heart intelligence?"

Click here to read article.....

http://www.heartmath.org/faqs/research/research-faqs.html

Educating People to Be Emotionally Intelligent - Kobus Maree, Maurice Jesse Elias - Google Books

Click here to read article: Educating People to Be Emotionally Intelligent - Kobus Maree, Maurice Jesse Elias - Google Books

State Of The Union: Republicans Praise Obama On Energy, Immigration

Despite Republican criticism of President Barack Obama's State of the Union address, some GOP lawmakers offered rare praise for some aspects of the president's speech, including his emphasis on energy independence and the need for comprehensive immigration reform.........(Click here to continue reading....)

Huge study: 5 mental disorders share genetic links ~ Salon

The largest genetic study of mental illnesses to date finds five major disorders may not look much alike but they share some gene-based risks. The surprising discovery comes in the quest to unravel what causes psychiatric disorders and how to better diagnose and treat them.......

Click here to continue reading..)

Sandy Weiner: 6 Ways to Recognize And Stop Dating A Narcissist

This article is clear-cut, and also synchronous with the emails I have recently received from readers about overlap with the 'alpha male' qualities.  There are indeed some differences, but there is great overlap.  Read this article, and see what you think!    (Click to read article)

5 Reasons the Keystone Pipeline Is Bad for the Economy ~ Alternet

Those concerned with jobs should keep in mind that the pipeline is as much a threat to our economy as it is to our planet.........(Click here to read more...)

Living a Lie | Psychology Today

Fooling yourself can have devastating consequences, especially in the domains of money, career, sexual identity and relationships. Meet four people who fought their way to an authentic life.

By Kathleen McGowan, published on January 02, 2013 - last reviewed on January 01, 2013

"Yes, you are just a little bit smarter than most people. Funnier, too. And while we’re at it, more appealing. Your strengths are writ large, and your flaws are, well, minimal. Your successes are hard-earned. Failures? Most are the result of sheer bad luck.

Almost all of us engage in self-deception, little denials or rationalizations that remove unpleasant evidence of our warts. Episodes of self-enhancement are absolutely normal. In fact, slightly overrating ourselves seems to be psychologically healthy. Self-deception......" 

(Click here to read full article)


http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/201212/living-lie

Why Are Suicides Climbing in the Military? Let's Look at the Drugs Being Prescribed | Alternet

READ ARTICLE: Why Are Suicides Climbing in the Military? Let's Look at the Drugs Being Prescribed | Alternet

Dating The Alpha Male | BettyConfidential.com

While this comes from more of a standard site, the information is clear and accurate.  The caveats within  are stunningly wise........(read the article)

"The Apha Male Synopsis" by Kate Ludeman, PhD

The Alpha Male Syndrome

Synopsis

Kate Ludeman , PhD & Eddie Erlandson , MD

Worth Ethic Corporation

http://www.worthethic.com/the-alpha-male-syndrome.html

The Alpha Male...under the flimsy raincoat!

While alpha males are initially socially seductive with their charm, choosing one as a partner can be quite regrettable. As Tricia Ellis-Christensen of wiseGEEK writes, some superficial information is well worth knowing.  Her article is at:

http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-an-alpha-male.htm

Hillary Faces Down the Angry Men | Alternet

http://www.alternet.org/gender/hillary-faces-down-angry-men

GPS Guide: Dr. Annie Kagan Gets In Touch With Her Infinite Self

The stress and strain of constantly being connected can sometimes take your life -- and your well-being -- off course. GPS For The Soul can help you find your way back to balance.

GPS Guides are our way of showing you what has relieved others' stress in the hopes that you will be able to identify solutions that work for you. We all have de-stressing "secret weapons" that we pull out in times of tension or anxiety, whether they be photos that relax us or make us smile, songs that bring us back to our heart, quotes or poems that create a feeling of harmony, or meditative exercises that help us find a sense of silence and calm. We encourage you to look at the GPS Guide below, visit our other GPS Guides here, and share with us your own personal tips for finding peace, balance and tranquility. ~ Dr. Annie Kagan ~

(continue reading)

What Is Displaced Anger? - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

(click to read...)

Have You Ever Wondered What Compels Your Conservative Relatives to Vote the Way They Do? | Alternet

By the time you’re reading this, the 2012 election will have been decided, and we’ll all have had our fill of the partisan rancor that’s become commonplace in politics. Perhaps you yourself have had the experience of getting lost in an argument in which you became exasperated that people on the other side couldn’t see what was so obvious, despite your best efforts to reason with them.

When caught in the stalemate of a political debate, the advice of Jonathan Haidt, author of  The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion and a social..... (Click here to continue reading)

12 Unbelievably Awful Things Fox News Did This Year | Alternet

12 Unbelievably Awful Things Fox News Did This Year | Alternet

or....why are we surprised?!

12 Biggest Right-Wing Lies About America | Alternet

A "must read" as we move into 2013!     (continue reading)

Dedicated to those who lead a life of service to the good of the whole......

This is a testament to those who stand passionately, and with strength, to the service of humanity and the planet.  It is a clarion call to those individuals on our earth who inspire and organize initiatives dedicated to that end.

A Poem of Parents

Both of my parents circulate in my blood, the one fierce, hard, and morose, the other tender, kind, and saintly.  I have carried them all my days; neither has died.

My lifelong effort is to reconcile them so that one may give me their strength, the other their tenderness to make the discord between them, which breaks out incessantly within me, turn to harmony inside their daughter's heart.

~ Nokos Kazantzakis : "Report to Greco" ~

A RESPONSE OF LIGHT TO THE TRAGEDY IN NEWTON from Steve Beckow and Julie Redstone

RESPONSE OF LIGHT

www.responseoflight.com

TRAGEDY at NEWTOWN, CT. ELEMENTARY SCHOOL

Prayer/Meditation – Friday, Dec. 14th – 8PM (EST)
Saturday, Dec. 15th – 8PM (EST)

Shooting in Newtown, CT of many children and adults at elementary school 

The details of today’s shooting are still unclear. However, as of this writing, there are 18 elementary school age children and 9 adult fatalities. Prayers are needed to help all souls who have died to ease their transition into the light. Prayers are also needed for those in shock and grief who are left behind.

Please join us in prayer/meditation tonight, (Fri. – 12/14) at 8PM EST and tomorrow night (Sat., 12/15) again at 8PM EST.

With blessings and gratitude for your help.

Julie Redstone

Horrific! Unconscionable! Disgusting! PLease sign petition if you are inclined! Thanks!

FROM THE FOLKS AT WATCHDOG NET:

When Kristen Cunnane was in middle school, she was molested by one of her male teachers. Years later, she and several other survivors managed to charge their attackers for the crime, suing California's Moraga school district for sheltering these predators.
Now Moraga’s lawyers have formed a response: Kristen Cunnane was so "careless" and "negligent" when she was 12 years old that she practically deserved to be raped.
“She was herself responsible,” the district and three other defendants’ attorneys wrote in a Oct. 24 legal filing: “Carelessness and negligence on her part proximately contributed to the happenings of the incident.”

This is a 12-year-old girl we’re talking about here. A scared little girl molested by a man she thought she could trust, now a young woman being told that this teacher’s advances were her “responsibility” to deflect.

Please, join us in writing the Moraga school district and its legal team to express your horror and disgust at their attack on Kristen Cunnane. If we can bring enough media attention to this story, we can stop this appalling victim-blaming once and for all – but if we don’t speak out, more women and girls will be shamed into silence.

PETITION TO MORAGA SCHOOL DISTRICT: Blaming pre-teen victims for the actions of their molesters is nothing short of horrific. We demand that you stop the assault on Kristen Cunnane and her fellow survivors, taking responsibility for your failure to protect them from predatory teachers

Sign this petition now.
Thanks,
-- The folks at Watchdog.net
P.S. If the other links aren't working for you, please go here to sign: http://act.watchdog.net/petitions/1848?n=4749713.3Nb9CF

---

Vandana Shiva: Why Monsanto Is Fighting Tooth and Nail Against California's Prop 37 | Alternet

One of the world's most renowned scientists and environmental activists, Vandana Shiva, is speaking out on behalf of proposition 37 -- a California effort to label genetically modified foods.....(read more)

"How the US Election Was Planned To Go, and How the Plan Came Unglued" ~ by Steve Beckow

Anonymous, Karl Rove and 2012 Election Fix

Monday, 19 November 2012 16:02 By Thom Hartmann and Sam Sacks, The Daily Take | News Analysis
http://truth-out.org/news/item/12845-anonymous-karl-rove-and-2012-election-fix

At around 11:25 pm EST on election night, Karl Rove knew something had gone terribly wrong.

Minutes earlier, Fox News called the key battleground state of Ohio for President Obama, sealing his re-election. But as the network took live shots of jubilant Obama supporters celebrating their victory camped outside the Obama re-election headquarters in Chicago, Karl Rove began building a case against the call his employer network had just made.

Rove explained that when Fox called Ohio, only 74% of the vote was in showing President Obama with a lead of roughly 30,000 votes. But, as Rove contended, with 77% reporting according to the Ohio Secretary of State office, the President’s lead had been slashed to just 991 votes.

“We gotta be careful about calling the thing,” Rove said, “I’d be very cautious about intruding in on this process.”

Rove was supremely confident that the numbers coming in from Ohio throughout the night that favored President Obama weren’t indicative of who would win Ohio when all the votes were ultimately tabulated by the state’s computers. With a quarter of the vote still out there, Rove was anticipating a shift to the Right just after 11 pm, which, coincidentally, is exactly what happened in 2004.

That year, John Kerry and the entire nation were watching Ohio just after the 11pm hour. Florida had just been called for George W. Bush and according to the Electoral College math whoever won Ohio would win the election. And considering that exit polls from the state showed John Kerry with a substantial lead, there were a lot of tense moments for Karl Rove and the Republicans that night.

Then the clock struck 11:14pm, and the servers counting the votes in Ohio crashed. Election officials had planned for this sort of thing to happen and already contracted with a company in Chattanooga, Tennessee called SMARTech to be the failsafe should the servers in Ohio go down.

As journalist Craig Unger lays bare in his book, Boss Rove, SMARTech was drenched in Republican politics. One of the early founders of the company was Mercer Reynolds who used to the finance chairman of the Republican Party. SMARTech’s top client was none other than the Bush-Cheney campaign itself and SMARTech also did work for Jeb Bush and the Republican National Committee. And it was Ohio’s Republican Secretary of State, Ken Blackwell, who ensured that SMARTech received the contract to count votes on election night should the servers go down, which they did at exactly 11:14pm.

Sixty long seconds later the servers came back up in Ohio, but now with vote rerouted through SMARTech in Chattanooga.  And, coincidentally, Bush’s prospects for re-election were suddenly a lot brighter. The vote totals that poured into the system from SmartTECH’s computer in Chattanooga were flipping the exit polls on their head. The lead Kerry had in the exit polls had magically reversed by more than 6%, something unheard of in any other nation in the developed world, giving Bush the win in Ohio and the presidency for another four years.

Unger further explains in his book that the only independent analysis of what happened in Ohio was done by Richard Hayes Phillips and published in the book, Witness to a Crime. Phillips and his team analyzed more than 120,000 ballots, 127 polls books, and 141 signature books from Ohio’s 2004 election.

Phillips found zero irregularities in vote totals from all the counties that reported results before the servers crashed at 11:14pm. But of the fourteen counties that came in after the crash connected Ohio’s election computers to SmartTECH’s computers in Chattanooga, every single one of them showed voter irregularities – that all favored George W. Bush.

For example, consider Cleveland’s Fourth Ward. In 2000, Al Gore won 95% of that ward’s vote. But in 2004, the county reported its results after the 11:14 pm crash, and it showed that Kerry had only won 59% of the vote – a 35% drop without any explanation. There were several other abnormalities across Ohio’s post-server crash that delivered the state to Bush.

John Kerry never protested the election and to this day, these 2004 voter abnormalities have never been addressed.

So the question is: on election night this year, when Karl Rove was protesting the call his network had just made in Ohio, was Rove anticipating a wave of unpredicted vote totals to swing the election back to Mitt Romney after a statewide server crash, just as had happened in 2004?

Perhaps. He did make the point that the race was about to drastically narrow according to the Secretary of State’s office. And as The Free Press reports, a number of odd similarities with 2004 began occurring in Ohio this year just after the 11pm hour once again:

“Curiously, the Ohio Secretary of State’s vote tabulation website went down at 11:13pm, as reported by Free Press election protection website monitors, and mentioned by Rove on the news. This was one minute earlier than the time on election night 2004 — when Ohio votes were outsourced to Chattanooga, Tennessee — and then the vote flipped for Bush…This time, the Cuyahoga County (Cleveland) vote tabulation site went down as on election night as well. In his rant on Fox, Rove argued that Fox News should not confirm Ohio for Obama until votes came in from the southwest Ohio GOP strongholds of Delaware, Butler and Warren counties and suburban Cincinnati. It was after the crash of the secretary of state’s site in 2004 that improbable vote totals came in from Republican counties in southwest Ohio – particularly Butler, Clermont, and Warren counties. These three counties provided more than Bush’s entire Ohio victory margin of 119,000.”

Only this time, when the servers came back up, the votes never flipped. President Obama’s lead held and he went on to win, while Karl Rove – and Mitt Romney – watched in slack-jawed amazement.

We know there was a parade of Conservative talking heads in the days before the election predicting a landslide victory for Mitt Romney. Is it because they lived in a bubble, lacking pollster Nate Silver’s facts and arithmetic that actually showed the President winning in a landslide? Could it be that Rove’s election night freak-out was just a result of this same Election Day ignorance held by all Republicans? Or was Rove genuinely shocked by what he was seeing because he knew the fix was in, just like in 2004, and there was no way President Obama was going to win re-election?

And if that’s the case, why did the plan to steal the election not work?

Here’s where the story gets really interesting.

Just a few weeks before Election Day, the hacktivist group Anonymous issued a video statement against Karl Rove. Anonymous is notorious for numerous cyber actions against the Justice Department, the Pentagon, the Recording Industry of America, the Motion Picture Association of America, and even the Church of Scientology.

In the video released prior to Election Day, Anonymous warns Karl Rove that he’s being watched. “We know that you will attempt to attempt to rig the election of Mitt Romney to your favor,” a black-robed figure in a Guy Fawkes mask says in the video. “We will watch as your merry band of conspirators try to achieve this overthrow of the United States government.”

The figure then warns Rove that Anonymous is “watching and monitoring all your servers,” and goes on to say, “We want you to know that we are watching you, waiting for you to make this mistake of thinking you can rig this election to your favor…If we catch you we will turn over all of this data to the appropriate officials in the hopes that you will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”

Then, just two days after Election Day, as the Republican Party was in full-blown despair and Karl Rove was trying to figure out what went wrong, Anonymous released a press statement claiming it did indeed prevent an attempt by Rove to steal the election for Mitt Romney.

The statement reads, “We began following the digital traffic of one Karl Rove…After a rather short time, we identified the digital structure of Karl’s operation and even that of his ORCA. This was an easy task in that barn doors were left open and the wind swept us inside.”The “ORCA” that Anonymous is referring to in the press release is a massive, high-tech get-out-the-vote system created by the Romney campaign this year that will keep tabs on potential voters and coordinate with operatives to target who has and hasn’t voted yet on Election Day.

Romney’s Communications Director Gail Gitcho bragged about how sophisticated ORCA is saying, “At 5 o’clock when the exit polls come out, we won’t pay attention to that. We will have had much more scientific information based on the political operation we have set up.” In other words, ORCA will know who won Ohio better than any exit polls.

But, according to Anonymous, ORCA had nothing to do with getting out the vote and everything to do with rigging the vote.

“We coded and created, what we call The Great Oz. A targeted password protected firewall that we tested and refined over the past weeks. We placed this code on more than one of the digital tunnels and their destination that Karl’s not so smart worker bees planned to use on election night.”

Anonymous alleges these “digital tunnels” were leading to servers in three different states. The release goes on to detail what happened on election night as Rove’s operatives attempted to access these tunnels. “We watched as Karl’s weak corrupters repeatedly tried to penetrate The Great Oz.  These children of his were at a loss-how many times and how many passwords did they try-exactly 105.”

“Karl’s speared ORCA whale was breached, rotting with a strong stench across his playground, unable to be resuscitated,” claims Anonymous.

So might this have really been the reason for Karl Rove’s shock on election night? Under the guise of sophisticated get out the vote operation, had Rove and the Republican Party actually built up a massive system to steal the Ohio election, just like in 2004, only to have it thwarted at the last minute by a group of computer hackers?

If this is true, then the implications are enormous and could take down the entire Republican Party and finally wake Americans up to the fact that our privatized vote system is shockingly flawed and insecure.

In their press release, Anonymous concludes, “We have a warning for Karl – sail again at your own peril. We may just put all the evidence into a tidy little package and give it to a painfully bored nemesis hanging out in a certain embassy in London.”

In an era of internet lulz and digital false flags, we must demand proof for these sort of claims made by Anonymous. But given Karl Rove’s history with elections in Ohio and the known vulnerabilities with our corporate owned electronic voting machines, there may be both smoke and fire with these election night allegations.

That’s why it’s vitally important for Anonymous to release any information or evidence it has about this plot to not just Julian Assange, but to law enforcement authorities as well. Otherwise, the alleged democracy-saving actions of the hacktivist group will instead be regarded as useless internet antics, relegated to the dustbins of history.

This piece was reprinted by Truthout with permission or license.

http://truth-out.org/news/item/12845-anonymous-karl-rove-and-2012-election-fix

At around 11:25 pm EST on election night, Karl Rove knew something had gone terribly wrong.

Minutes earlier, Fox News called the key battleground state of Ohio for President Obama, sealing his re-election. But as the network took live shots of jubilant Obama supporters celebrating their victory camped outside the Obama re-election headquarters in Chicago, Karl Rove began building a case against the call his employer network had just made.

Rove explained that when Fox called Ohio, only 74% of the vote was in showing President Obama with a lead of roughly 30,000 votes. But, as Rove contended, with 77% reporting according to the Ohio Secretary of State office, the President’s lead had been slashed to just 991 votes.

“We gotta be careful about calling the thing,” Rove said, “I’d be very cautious about intruding in on this process.”

Rove was supremely confident that the numbers coming in from Ohio throughout the night that favored President Obama weren’t indicative of who would win Ohio when all the votes were ultimately tabulated by the state’s computers. With a quarter of the vote still out there, Rove was anticipating a shift to the Right just after 11 pm, which, coincidentally, is exactly what happened in 2004.

That year, John Kerry and the entire nation were watching Ohio just after the 11pm hour. Florida had just been called for George W. Bush and according to the Electoral College math whoever won Ohio would win the election. And considering that exit polls from the state showed John Kerry with a substantial lead, there were a lot of tense moments for Karl Rove and the Republicans that night.

Then the clock struck 11:14pm, and the servers counting the votes in Ohio crashed. Election officials had planned for this sort of thing to happen and already contracted with a company in Chattanooga, Tennessee called SMARTech to be the failsafe should the servers in Ohio go down.

As journalist Craig Unger lays bare in his book, Boss Rove, SMARTech was drenched in Republican politics. One of the early founders of the company was Mercer Reynolds who used to the finance chairman of the Republican Party. SMARTech’s top client was none other than the Bush-Cheney campaign itself and SMARTech also did work for Jeb Bush and the Republican National Committee. And it was Ohio’s Republican Secretary of State, Ken Blackwell, who ensured that SMARTech received the contract to count votes on election night should the servers go down, which they did at exactly 11:14pm.

Sixty long seconds later the servers came back up in Ohio, but now with vote rerouted through SMARTech in Chattanooga.  And, coincidentally, Bush’s prospects for re-election were suddenly a lot brighter. The vote totals that poured into the system from SmartTECH’s computer in Chattanooga were flipping the exit polls on their head. The lead Kerry had in the exit polls had magically reversed by more than 6%, something unheard of in any other nation in the developed world, giving Bush the win in Ohio and the presidency for another four years.

Unger further explains in his book that the only independent analysis of what happened in Ohio was done by Richard Hayes Phillips and published in the book, Witness to a Crime. Phillips and his team analyzed more than 120,000 ballots, 127 polls books, and 141 signature books from Ohio’s 2004 election.

Phillips found zero irregularities in vote totals from all the counties that reported results before the servers crashed at 11:14pm. But of the fourteen counties that came in after the crash connected Ohio’s election computers to SmartTECH’s computers in Chattanooga, every single one of them showed voter irregularities – that all favored George W. Bush.

For example, consider Cleveland’s Fourth Ward. In 2000, Al Gore won 95% of that ward’s vote. But in 2004, the county reported its results after the 11:14 pm crash, and it showed that Kerry had only won 59% of the vote – a 35% drop without any explanation. There were several other abnormalities across Ohio’s post-server crash that delivered the state to Bush.

John Kerry never protested the election and to this day, these 2004 voter abnormalities have never been addressed.

So the question is: on election night this year, when Karl Rove was protesting the call his network had just made in Ohio, was Rove anticipating a wave of unpredicted vote totals to swing the election back to Mitt Romney after a statewide server crash, just as had happened in 2004?

Perhaps. He did make the point that the race was about to drastically narrow according to the Secretary of State’s office. And as The Free Press reports, a number of odd similarities with 2004 began occurring in Ohio this year just after the 11pm hour once again:

“Curiously, the Ohio Secretary of State’s vote tabulation website went down at 11:13pm, as reported by Free Press election protection website monitors, and mentioned by Rove on the news. This was one minute earlier than the time on election night 2004 — when Ohio votes were outsourced to Chattanooga, Tennessee — and then the vote flipped for Bush…This time, the Cuyahoga County (Cleveland) vote tabulation site went down as on election night as well. In his rant on Fox, Rove argued that Fox News should not confirm Ohio for Obama until votes came in from the southwest Ohio GOP strongholds of Delaware, Butler and Warren counties and suburban Cincinnati. It was after the crash of the secretary of state’s site in 2004 that improbable vote totals came in from Republican counties in southwest Ohio – particularly Butler, Clermont, and Warren counties. These three counties provided more than Bush’s entire Ohio victory margin of 119,000.”

Only this time, when the servers came back up, the votes never flipped. President Obama’s lead held and he went on to win, while Karl Rove – and Mitt Romney – watched in slack-jawed amazement.

We know there was a parade of Conservative talking heads in the days before the election predicting a landslide victory for Mitt Romney. Is it because they lived in a bubble, lacking pollster Nate Silver’s facts and arithmetic that actually showed the President winning in a landslide? Could it be that Rove’s election night freak-out was just a result of this same Election Day ignorance held by all Republicans? Or was Rove genuinely shocked by what he was seeing because he knew the fix was in, just like in 2004, and there was no way President Obama was going to win re-election?

And if that’s the case, why did the plan to steal the election not work?

Here’s where the story gets really interesting.

Just a few weeks before Election Day, the hacktivist group Anonymous issued a video statement against Karl Rove. Anonymous is notorious for numerous cyber actions against the Justice Department, the Pentagon, the Recording Industry of America, the Motion Picture Association of America, and even the Church of Scientology.

In the video released prior to Election Day, Anonymous warns Karl Rove that he’s being watched. “We know that you will attempt to attempt to rig the election of Mitt Romney to your favor,” a black-robed figure in a Guy Fawkes mask says in the video. “We will watch as your merry band of conspirators try to achieve this overthrow of the United States government.”

The figure then warns Rove that Anonymous is “watching and monitoring all your servers,” and goes on to say, “We want you to know that we are watching you, waiting for you to make this mistake of thinking you can rig this election to your favor…If we catch you we will turn over all of this data to the appropriate officials in the hopes that you will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”

Then, just two days after Election Day, as the Republican Party was in full-blown despair and Karl Rove was trying to figure out what went wrong, Anonymous released a press statement claiming it did indeed prevent an attempt by Rove to steal the election for Mitt Romney.

The statement reads, “We began following the digital traffic of one Karl Rove…After a rather short time, we identified the digital structure of Karl’s operation and even that of his ORCA. This was an easy task in that barn doors were left open and the wind swept us inside.”The “ORCA” that Anonymous is referring to in the press release is a massive, high-tech get-out-the-vote system created by the Romney campaign this year that will keep tabs on potential voters and coordinate with operatives to target who has and hasn’t voted yet on Election Day.

Romney’s Communications Director Gail Gitcho bragged about how sophisticated ORCA is saying, “At 5 o’clock when the exit polls come out, we won’t pay attention to that. We will have had much more scientific information based on the political operation we have set up.” In other words, ORCA will know who won Ohio better than any exit polls.

But, according to Anonymous, ORCA had nothing to do with getting out the vote and everything to do with rigging the vote.

“We coded and created, what we call The Great Oz. A targeted password protected firewall that we tested and refined over the past weeks. We placed this code on more than one of the digital tunnels and their destination that Karl’s not so smart worker bees planned to use on election night.”

Anonymous alleges these “digital tunnels” were leading to servers in three different states. The release goes on to detail what happened on election night as Rove’s operatives attempted to access these tunnels. “We watched as Karl’s weak corrupters repeatedly tried to penetrate The Great Oz.  These children of his were at a loss-how many times and how many passwords did they try-exactly 105.”

“Karl’s speared ORCA whale was breached, rotting with a strong stench across his playground, unable to be resuscitated,” claims Anonymous.

So might this have really been the reason for Karl Rove’s shock on election night? Under the guise of sophisticated get out the vote operation, had Rove and the Republican Party actually built up a massive system to steal the Ohio election, just like in 2004, only to have it thwarted at the last minute by a group of computer hackers?

If this is true, then the implications are enormous and could take down the entire Republican Party and finally wake Americans up to the fact that our privatized vote system is shockingly flawed and insecure.

In their press release, Anonymous concludes, “We have a warning for Karl – sail again at your own peril. We may just put all the evidence into a tidy little package and give it to a painfully bored nemesis hanging out in a certain embassy in London.”

In an era of internet lulz and digital false flags, we must demand proof for these sort of claims made by Anonymous. But given Karl Rove’s history with elections in Ohio and the known vulnerabilities with our corporate owned electronic voting machines, there may be both smoke and fire with these election night allegations.

That’s why it’s vitally important for Anonymous to release any information or evidence it has about this plot to not just Julian Assange, but to law enforcement authorities as well. Otherwise, the alleged democracy-saving actions of the hacktivist group will instead be regarded as useless internet antics, relegated to the dustbins of history.

This piece was reprinted by Truthout with permission or license.

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