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California Drops Diebold, Palast on Purging Minority Ballots
Colorado's Weapons of Mass Destruction: The Rocky Flats Nuclear
Weapons Plant
Grand Jury Accuses Justice Department of Rocky Flats Nuclear
Cover-Up
Recycling Plutonium: How the EPA Plans to Disburse Toxic
Waste From the Lowry Landfill to the Sewage System and into
CO Farmlands
California Drops Diebold, Palast on Purging Minority
Ballots
We take a look at California State Secretary Kevin Shelley's
decision to ban Diebold electronic voting machines in four
counties and we speak with investigative reporter Greg Palast
about disenfranchisement and the presidential election.
California Secretary of State Kevin Shelley banned the use
of Diebold's new touchscreen electronic voting machines from
the November election in four counties this past Friday due
to security concerns and lack of voter confidence. Shelley
also called on the attorney general's office to investigate
whether the Diebold committed fraud.
California had been one of the first states to react to problems
with Florida's punch-card voting system in the 2000 presidential
election by moving entirely to electronic balloting in 14
of 58 counties. Shelley's order brought that movement to a
standstill and prompted some counties to ponder legal options.
In 2000, tens of thousands of African American voters were
illegally purged from the voting rolls in Florida. Three years
later Bush signed the 3.9 billion dollar Help America Vote
Act - or HAVA, which allocates millions for purchase of new
electronic machines. BBC investigative reporter Greg Palast
finds that HAVA will in fact worsen the racial bias of the
uncounted vote through computerization.
- Greg
Palast, investigative reporter with the BBC and author
of the books 'The Best Democracy Money Can Buy' and 'Democracy
and Regulation.'
- Avi Rubin,
professor at Johns Hopkins University and co-author of the
report "Analysis of an Electronic Voting System"
the initial study of security flaws in voting machine software.
He served as a judge in the Baltimore County primary election
in March 2004.
Colorado's Weapons of Mass Destruction: The Rocky
Flats Nuclear Weapons Plant
We speak with Colorado University professor Len Ackland
about the former plutonium-processing Rocky Flats nuclear
bomb making plant. Ackland is author of the book Making A
Real Killing: Rocky Flats and the Nuclear West that examines
the four-decade history of Rocky Flats.
Democracy Now! is broadcasting today from the studios of
Free Speech TV in Boulder, Colorado. Just eight miles south
of here lies the former plutonium-processing Rocky Flats nuclear
weapons plant, next to that is The Rocky Mountain Arsenal
- a former chemical weapons plant where deadly sarin, mustard
gas and napalm were manufactured. Not far from there lies
a sprawling 480-acre toxic waste site known as the Lowry landfill.
Over the last half century, Colorado has been the center
of the U.S. nuclear weapons programs - within the state alone
there are 49 active underground missile silos each. Today
we will look at the history of this area in relation to the
military industrial complex and its impact on the future.
Rocky Flats was built in the early 1950s to produce plutonium
warhead triggers for nuclear weapons. It closed four decades
later when the FBI raided the plant in 1989 to investigate
allegations of environmental crimes. But Rocky Flats reentered
the news recently with the publication of a new book called
"The Ambushed Grand Jury."
This was no ordinary account. It was an inside look by a
Colorado rancher named Wes McKinley who has spent a dozen
years serving on a grand jury investigation of a nuclear cover-up
at the site that involved the Justice Department.
Meanwhile there is growing concern over plans to reuse sites
like Rocky Flats and to recycle water and sludge from a landfill
that some say is contaminated with radioactivity.
We begin with taking a look at the history of Rocky Flats.
- Len Ackland, professor of journalism at the University
of Colorado at Boulder and the author of the book Making
A Real Killing: Rocky Flats and the Nuclear West.
Grand Jury Accuses Justice Department of Rocky Flats
Nuclear Cover-Up
We speak with Wes McKinley, a Colorado rancher and the foreman
of a grand jury that investigated activity at Rocky Flats
about the charges he makes in his new book The Ambushed Grand
Jury: How the Justice Department Covered Up Government Nuclear
Crimes and How We Caught Them Red Handed.
- Wes McKinley, a Colorado rancher and the foreman of a
grand jury that investigated activity at Rocky Flats. He
is co-author of Ambushed Grand Jury: How the Justce Department
Covered Up Government Nuclear Crimes And How We Caught Them
Red Handed
Recycling Plutonium: How the EPA Plans to Disburse
Toxic Waste From the Lowry Landfill to the Sewage System and
into CO Farmlands
We speak with Colorado University Environmental Studies
professor Adrienne Anderson about the Lowry Landfill. Citizen
groups claim the landfill is widely contaminated with highly
radioactive plutonium and other deadly wastes. The EPA now
wants to treat the contaminated groundwater at the landfill
and discharge it into the Denver metro sewage system.
- Adrienne Anderson, professor of Environmental & Ethnic
Studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder. In 1997
Anderson filed a federal whistleblower case on a plan to
mix plutonium waste with sewer sludge, process it into fertilizer
and then use on American farms. She currently works with
farmers and unions to stop practices like this taking place
around the country today.
For a copy of today’s program, call 1 (800) 881 2359.
Our website is www.democracynow.org.
Our email address is mail@democracynow.org.
Democracy Now! is produced by Mike Burke, Sharif Abdel Kouddous,
Ana Nogueira, Elizabeth Press, Jeremy Scahill and Parvez Sharma.
Mike Di Filippo is our engineer.
Thanks also to Uri Galed, Angela Alston, Orlando Richards,
Simba Russeau, Johnny Sender, Rich Kim, Joe Murgio, John Randolph,
Chris Zucker, Karen Ranucci, Denis Moynihan, Eric Rweyemamu,
Jenny Filipazzo and Isis Phillips.
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