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The U.S.’s Hypocrisy On ‘Political Intervention’ In Elections

February 8, 2018

The U.S.’s Hypocrisy On ‘Political Intervention’ In Elections

vote

The United States government has interfered with more elections than any other government on the face of the earth.  But suddenly, the US is grandstanding and pretending it matters that other nations use the exact same tactics.

“Ah, the peddler propaganda!” says Joe Joseph with The Daily Sheeple while reading a headline declaring that Russians penetrated U.S. voter systems. “Say it ain’t so! A clandestine operation by a foreign government here in the United States? No. Couldn’t be!” he said sarcastically.

The overly biased and left-leaning media attempted to portray this “interference” as a big deal. But as always, propaganda is easy to break down.

The U.S. official in charge of protecting American elections from hacking says the Russians successfully penetrated the voter registration rolls of several U.S. states prior to the 2016 presidential election.

In an exclusive interview with NBC News, Jeanette Manfra, the head of cybersecurity at the Department of Homeland Security, said she couldn’t talk about classified information publicly, but in 2016, “We saw a targeting of 21 statesand an exceptionally small number of them were actually successfully penetrated.” –NBC News

Reading between the lines, all this means is pretty much nothing, other than the US government blatantly displaying their hypocrisy while interfering in the elections of other countries. Of course, the media is going to make a big story out of this. “We’re going to turn back the clock a little bit,” says Joseph.

“The US is no stranger to interfering in the elections of other countries. So, since we’re into this whole Russia thing and Russia’s so bad and ‘shame on you, Russia’...well, let’s take a look at all the ways that the United States has interfered.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Fossil Fuel Dollars Flow into Local Elections Threatening Development in the West

November 4, 2017

Fossil Fuel Dollars Flow into Local Elections Threatening Development in the West

A child holds a hand-drawn sign protesting fracking near his school in Colorado

In Colorado, the drilling boom that accompanied hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) is coming under increasing scrutiny, especially in the wake of several lethal accidents in frontline communities. On November 7, Broomfield, a large town between Denver and Boulder, will vote on a charter amendment that would require oil and gas development to safeguard the environment and “not adversely impact the health, safety, and welfare of Broomfield’s residents.”

The citizen-initiated charter amendment, Question 301, reiterates a Colorado Court of Appeals ruling from earlier this year, which some say changes the mandate of the state regulatory commission in charge of oil and gas. Following a lawsuit by Colorado teen Xiuhtezcatl Martinez, the court ruled in March that safeguarding public health and the environment was indeed “a condition that must be fulfilled” prior to oil and gas drilling.

This decision was a stark divergence from the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission’s long-held stance that the commission only had to “balance” health and the environment, with its mandate to facilitate fossil fuel extraction.

A campaign to defeat Broomfield’s charter amendment has received over $344,000 in contributions from the industry. The Colorado Petroleum Council — a local chapter of the American Petroleum Institute — is involved with a suite of campaign activities against it, including phone outreach, direct mailing, polling, data, digital outreach, and online advertising.

Supporters of Question 301, meanwhile, have so far raised about $7,000.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

‘Ticking a box is no longer an option’: David van Reybrouck on elections, imagination and Brexit.

November 3, 2017

‘Ticking a box is no longer an option’: David van Reybrouck on elections, imagination and Brexit.

David van Reybrouck lives in Brussels, is a pre-historic archaeologist, but works mostly as a literary writer, and as a non-fiction writer.  He’s probably best known for his book ‘Congo: the epic history of a people’, for appearing in the film ‘Tomorrow’ (‘Demain’), and for his more recent book ‘Against Elections: the case for democracy’, which is a brilliant read.  We met up via Skype, and talked imagination, Brexit, and reimagining how we make decisions together.

I wonder if you had any thoughts on in what ways the current way that we practice democracy in the West diminishes our imagination, maybe particularly in relation to our ability to imagine something other than business as usual?

You could say that the procedures we use today to do democracy have drastically narrowed down the scope of what is politically imaginable.  To me, although I’m interested in politics, it’s become quite a bit of a boring game, really.  It’s all about winning elections, trying to build a coalition, trying to run a government, or be against the government that is in power.  The bickering that is going on is not very rich.  The strategies that are being used for political gain and political loss are less interesting than watching the Tour De France on a boring day.

Political journalism very often has come down to a form of sports journalism, really.  Like, who has made what manoeuvre and what will it bring to him or to her.  The political game as it is being played these days is a pretty boring one, and a pretty predictable one, yes.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Are You Ready to Die?

October 2, 2017

Are You Ready to Die?

Glenn Greenwald of The Intercept exposes the fake news put out by the US Department of Homeland Security (an euphemistic name for a Big Brother operation that spies on US citizens) that Russia hacked 21 US state elections, news that was instantly spread around the world by the presstitute media. The propagandists running Homeland Security were contradicted by the state governments, forcing Homeland Security to retract its fake news claims. https://theintercept.com/2017/09/28/yet-another-major-russia-story-falls-apart-is-skepticism-permissible-yet/

The unasked/unanswered question is why did Homeland Security put out a FAKE NEWS story?

Greenwald explains that the US media is so conditioned by the National Security State to see Russian President Putin lurking behind and masterminding attacks on America that it is “now religious dogma”—a requirement—to find Russian perfidy everywhere. The result Greenwald correctly says is that “an incredibly reckless, anything-goes climate prevails when it comes to claims about Russia. Media outlets will publish literally any official assertion as Truth without the slightest regard for evidentiary standards.”

In other words, the United States no longer has a media. It has a propaganda ministry for the military/security complex, the neoconservatives, and the Israel Lobby. And the idiot Americans sit in front of the TV and absorb the propaganda, and they read the New York Times and think that they are sophisticated and in the know.

What Greenwald doesn’t address is the effect of the massive amount of fake news on Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea. Russia knows that Washington knows that the accusations against Russia are false. So why is Washington making false accusations against Russia?

This is a serious question, not only for Russia but for the entire world. All previous false accusations from the Clinton regime criminals, the Bush/Cheney regime criminals, and the Obama regime criminals ended in miiltary attacks on the falsely demonized targets.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

‘Voice of America, Radio Liberty, CNN are tools for US to press Russia’ – State Duma MP

April 18, 2017

‘Voice of America, Radio Liberty, CNN are tools for US to press Russia’ – State Duma MP

‘Voice of America, Radio Liberty, CNN are tools for US to press Russia’ – State Duma MP
Russian State Duma plenary meeting. © Vladimir Fedorenko / Sputnik

“We are to look into the specific cases of the US attempts to influence the elections in Russia. However, I’d like to remind you, that the agencies in question are parts of a much bigger US system pressing against our country. It uses a wide range of instruments against Russia,” the head of the lower house Committee for Information Policy, Leonid Levin MP (Fair Russia), said at an extended committee meeting on Tuesday.

CNN and Voice of America representatives were invited to the meeting as well, however, they didn’t show up, according to Levin.

“It would be reasonable to not only consider the possibilities of the US meddling into Russia’s electoral process, but also into our affairs on the whole,” Levin said.

The pressure system as he described it, involves “various funds, NGOs and grants,” that should be subjected to checks, the MP said.

Levin’s idea has been echoed by the head of the Lower House Committee for Eurasian Integration and Ties with Compatriots, Konstantin Zatulin, who was actually the first one to voice it in March after US Senator Jeanne Shaheen had called for investigating RT’s “funding sources and foreign connections” and its activities as a “foreign agent.”

“If they [the US] are legally creating obstacles on our way of spreading information, despite the amendments to the Constitution, freedoms and rights they are so proud of… then we have every reason to limit their corresponding state and parastatal radio stations and TV channels,” Zatulin said.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Ron Paul: Vote All You Want, the Secret Government Won’t Change

September 10, 2016

Ron Paul: Vote All You Want, the Secret Government Won’t Change

In a recent episode of his web show, the Liberty Report, Ron Paul discussed the Department of Homeland Security’s decision last month to take a more active role in U.S. elections. Secretary Jeh Johnson said he was “considering whether elections should be classified as ‘critical infrastructure,’ affording them the same kinds of enhanced protections that the banking system and the electrical grid receive,” POLITICO reported.

The potential move came on the heels of the notorious DNC leak in July, which exposed intentions within the Democratic Party to manipulate the primary race against Senator Bernie Sanders. Politicians and the media quickly blamed the hack on Russia, failing to cite conclusive proof of their allegations yet spawning the narrative that the Kremlin and other foreign threats could compromise U.S. elections.

On his show, Paul took issue with the notion that the Department of Homeland Security, an agency riddled with incompetence and failed objectives — case in point, the TSA — is capable of securing U.S. elections.

Speaking on DHS’s decision to become more involved in the process following the DNC hack, Ron Paul offered a scathing indictment of the federal organization, arguing it will capitalize on troubling events to seize power:

“They may have false flags and they may do a lot of things, but no matter how an emergency comes up, they’re going to make use of it. And the use of it isn’t to say ‘Hey, how are we going to protect the American people?’ 

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

 

Brad Friedman: Why To Be Suspicious Of Every Election

May 29, 2016

Brad Friedman: Why To Be Suspicious Of Every Election

Electronic voting machines have opened up Pandora’s box 

Long an ‘exporter of democracy’ to the rest of the world, there is ample evidence that the United States lacks even the most rudimentary, basic protections necessary to preserve voting integrity within its own borders.

Some of the evidence is circumstantial, some is statistical, and some is pretty direct and clear-cut. Taken together, a pattern that emerges strongly suggesting that ever since voting machines, electronic voting machines were introduced in the United States, we’ve had a string of suspect election results that frankly are not consistent with a free and fair voting outcome.

This week, we’re joined by Brad Friedman, election integrity analyst to understand better the systems and practices currently in place to collect and tally votes in America. As we gear up to elect our next president, it’s clear that numerous concerns exist about the state of ‘free and fair’ voting in our country:

Trust is different than ‘verifiable’. Trust, frankly, has no place in elections. There is no reason to ever trust anybody. We need to be able to verify all of this.

There are basically two different types of electronic voting systems that are currently used today.

One is the touchscreen system that people know about. They’ve seen those votes flipping and so forth. Those machines are, in fact, 100 percent unverifiable — period. I’ve asked the companies that make the systems many times, if they have any evidence whatsoever that any vote ever cast on one of those machines during an election, for any candidate or initiative on the ballot, if any of those votes have ever been recorded as per the voter’s intent, any evidence whatsoever. They have none — they are 100 percent unverifiable. Thankfully, many states are getting rid of those and they’re moving to paper ballots.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

With Impeccable Timing, ‘Economic Miracle’ in Spain Unravels

April 24, 2016

With Impeccable Timing, ‘Economic Miracle’ in Spain Unravels

The European Union on the verge.

Since the granddaddy of all housing bubbles popped in Spain between 2008 and 2009, unleashing one of the deepest recessions in living memory, the nation’s public debt has more than doubled, from just over 40% of GDP to almost exactly 100% today. Last year, despite the fact that Spain grew faster than almost any other European economy, the government managed to rack up a deficit of 5.2%, one full percentage point above the target that it had set itself a year earlier and over three percentage points above the Eurozone average.

It’s the third-highest deficit-to-GDP ratio in the Eurozone after Greece and Portugal. That’s some claim for Europe’s supposed economic success story.

This is the eighth consecutive year that Spain has overshot its fiscal target. Originally, the Spanish government was supposed to get its deficit back below the EU’s sacred limit of 3% of GDP by 2013. When it became clear during the darkest days of the crisis that it would be impossible, the deadline was extended by a year. A year later, Madrid had made so little progress that it got a further two-year extension, to 2016.

But still there’s no sign of progress. None of which should come as a surprise. As WOLF STREET warned in October, it was plain as day that the Spanish government would fail to rein in its spending during the run-up to a tightly fought general election. Brussels was completely aware of this fact and did nothing to address it, for obvious reasons: political expedience.

Brussels along with Spain’s big banks, corporate giants, and the Troika wanted the conservative Rajoy government to win December’s do-or-die general elections. They’d do “whatever it takes” to keep the narrative intact that the Spanish economy has never been better.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Who’s Anti-American?

March 25, 2016

Who’s Anti-American? 

Maryland!
The Old Line bugle, fife, and drum,
Maryland!
She is not dead, nor deaf, nor dumb.
Huzza! She spurns the Northern scum!
She breathes! She burns! She’ll come! She’ll come!
Maryland! My Maryland!

– Maryland’s State Song

SamJ’accuse…     Illustration by James Montgomery Flagg

Guilty as Charged

BALTIMORE – Yesterday, one dear reader wrote in to say we were “cynical” and “anti-American.”

Today, we rise to defend our reputation… such as it is. Cynical? Nah… We’d need a big dose of positive thinking and earnest optimism to be cynical. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, people who are cynical are “suspicious,” “doubting,” and “skeptical.”

We’re way beyond that. We’re pretty sure that the system is rigged… and rotten. Elections are exercises in solemn deceit. And the Fed’s management of the economy is a mixture of delusion and self-serving scam. We don’t have much doubt about it. That’s just the way it is.

As for “anti-American,” our accuser needs to clarify the allegation. Is he talking about the Deep State? The empire? Or is he talking about the 50 sovereign states… and the Old Republic? Or the language? The culture? Reality TV… the Kardashians… NASCAR racing… Old Faithful and the mighty Mississip’?

No one can be anti-America; America is too many things to too many people. But if he’s talking about the federales who control half our national output… tie us in knots with Obamacare, National Labor Relations Board rules, and all their other dopey programs… and stomp around the world trying to justify their trillion-dollars-a-year security budget…

…if he’s talking about Hillary, Bernie, The Donald, the Bushes, et al… and all the 535 members of the U.S. Congress… and the 2,783,000 zombies on the U.S. payroll…

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

 

Pictorial Essay: Message to the Voting Cattle

March 9, 2016

Pictorial Essay: Message to the Voting Cattle

Our own awesome ‘wip’ posted this video in another thread, and asked me to listen to it. I did, and it’s freaking fabulous. I agree with about 95% of it. It explains as well as I’ve ever heard, why I say we should all vote for Candidate Nobody.

Here is the video:

Of course, not 1 in 20 will listen to a twenty-minute video, even here. So, I transcribed it. And, added some pictures for your viewing pleasure. You should be able to read it in under ten minutes. I did this for you curs and Trump-eteers. And, to send out to my brain dead friends and family, which are Legion.

============================================

You cannot begin to imagine in how many ways the world is the opposite of what you have been taught to believe.

You see the guy who sells drugs to willing customers so he can feed his family as the scum of the earth, while you see the hypocrite who gives away stolen money in the name of government, as a saint.

TAXATION THEFT

You see the guy who tries to avoid been robbed by the federal thugs as a crook and a tax cheat, but see as virtuous the politician who gives away the same stolen loot to people whom it does not belong.

every-51-seconds-there-is-a-marijuana-arrest

You see the cop as a good guy when he drags a man away from his friends and family and throws him in prison for ten years for smoking a leaf  [every 51 seconds in Amerika]. And you see anyone who defends himself from such barbaric fascism as the lowest form of life … a cop-killer. In reality, most drug dealers are more virtuous than any government social worker, and prostitutes have far less to be ashamed of than political whores, because they trade only with what’s rightfully theirs, and only with those who want to trade with them.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

In Latest Sign Of EM Chaos, Turkey’s FX Reserves Fall Below Key Threshold Ahead Of Pivotal Elections

October 2, 2015

In Latest Sign Of EM Chaos, Turkey’s FX Reserves Fall Below Key Threshold Ahead Of Pivotal Elections

One of the key things to understand about the veritable meltdown that’s unfolded across emerging markets is that there’s more to the story than the headline risk factors.

That is, while the list of proximate causes that includes a decelerating China, collapsing commodity prices, and uncertainty over when or even if the Fed will hike goes a long way towards explaining the carnage that’s unfolded across EM, each country has its own set of unique circumstances to grapple with. Indeed, the idiosyncratic political risks playing out across emerging economies have taken center stage as Brazil attempts to navigate congressional gridlock, Malaysia struggles with the 1MDB scandal, and Turkey faces new elections in November.

While there’s no question that the political situation in Brazil is particularly troubling, it would be difficult to imagine a more precarious scenario than that which exists in Turkey, where President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has managed to subvert the democratic process by starting a civil war, and thanks to the strategic significance of Incirlik, the effort is co-sponsored by the US and NATO.

Of course extreme political uncertainty, a bloody civil war, and an unfolding proxy war just across the border do not inspire much confidence, which helps to explain the fact that Turkey’s FX reserves have now fallen below $100 billion for the first time since 2012:

And here’s an updated look at the lira which is in the midst of a rather epic decline (which threatens to destabilize inflation) thanks to everything noted above combined with a central bank that either i) doesn’t understand the gravity of the situation, or ii) is loathe to hike rates going into the election:

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Liberation Is Unprofitable

June 2, 2015

Liberation Is Unprofitable

12 examples of how liberation is not profitable and therefore it must be marginalized, outlawed, proscribed or ridiculed.

If we had to summarize the sickness of our economy and society, we could start by noting that liberation is unprofitable, and whatever is not profitable to vested interests is marginalized, outlawed, proscribed or ridiculed. Examples of this abound.

Liberation from debt is not profitable. Only the wealthy can afford to buy a vehicle without debt, a home without debt or a university education without debt. For everyone else, liberation from debt is not an option, because debt is highly profitable to our financial Overlords and the politicos they buy/own.Liberation from digital communication servitude is not profitable. Don’t have a smart phone on 18 hours a day, every day? Loser! Luddite! Liberation from digital communication servitude is not profitable, therefore it is ridiculed.

This Is How Little It Cost Goldman To Bribe America’s Senators (Zero Hedge)

Liberation from political elites is not profitable. Dependence on the state for monthly payments binds the recipients to the political elites that control the money and payments, and to the financial elites who control the political elites.

Liberation from the staged, soap-opera political drama of elections is not profitable. Election advertising generates staggering profits for media companies, and the ceaseless nurturing of fear, resentment and indignation fuels acceptance of centralized power and control.

Vote all you want. The secret government won’t change.

Liberation from the consumerist mindset is not profitable. Aspirational purchases in the pursuit of appearances are the most profitable of all spending; re-use, repair and informal peer-to-peer sharing are all intrinsically unprofitable.

Narcissistic Consumerism and Self-Destruction (October 20, 2012)

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

 

Democracy Or Oligarchy – You Decide

May 27, 2015

Democracy Or Oligarchy – You Decide

In the interests of clarifying what it is that America has become, we offer this…

 

 

So which one sounds more accurate?

 

Elections: What Are They Good For?

May 15, 2015

Elections: What Are They Good For?

Sanders or Webb, Does It Make any Difference?

Before the 1960 Presidential Election, Arthur Schlesinger Jr., the historian who would become John Kennedy’s court intellectual, published a short book called Kennedy or Nixon: Does It Make Any Difference?

His answer was that it made a big difference because Nixon was a feckless scoundrel while JFK was God’s gift to America and the world. Even at the time, it was far from obvious that he was more than half right.

With the primary season now just a little more than half a year away, a similar question arises about two contenders for the Democratic Party’s nomination for the Presidency: Jim Webb and Bernie Sanders (or Elizabeth Warren or anyone else who runs against Hillary Clinton from the left). Webb has not yet declared his candidacy; Sanders has. Warren has maintained consistently that she is not running so, at this point, she need not be taken into account.

Schlesinger’s book would have been a bestseller even had the Kennedy forces not actively promoted it; the question it posed was on every voter’s mind.

Webb and Sanders are on hardly anyone’s mind. Few people know who Sanders is; fewer still know anything about Webb.

Also, at this point, the smart money has it that the question is moot because the chances of stopping the Clinton juggernaut are nil.

Nevertheless, there is no timelier question in American electoral politics today.

With few exceptions, people, especially “progressive” people, don’t realize this –first, because they don’t have a sound purchase on what elections these days are good for; and, second, because most of them have never taken the full measure of the harm that the Clintons have done to progressive causes, and therefore don’t appreciate what is at stake in getting that wretched family out of public life.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

 

Canada’s truthiest election campaign begins: Don Pittis

April 25, 2015

Canada’s truthiest election campaign begins: Don Pittis

True or not, politicians defend their promises with passion and confidence

The Harper Conservatives are the balanced-budget party. You might as well get that into your head now, because you are going to be hearing it repeated till election day.

This is also the economic stewardship party, the spending-on-transit party and the party fighting for the poor and middle class. Yesterday, Finance Minister Joe Oliver even implied they were the fight-against-climate-change party.

An independent analyst might dispute those statements. In fact, independent analysts in newspapers and columns across the country have been doing just that this week following Oliver’s federal budget. But in what is shaping up to be Canada’s “truthiest” election campaign, scientific evidence doesn’t strictly matter.

Truthiness, as coined by U.S. comedian Stephen Colbert, is something expressed as a truth because it is a feeling from the heart without evidence or logic.

After reading a wonderful piece by Oxford economist John Kay called “How beliefs became truths for the political establishment,” it struck me that this is exactly what we are seeing in our own Canadian (pre-) election campaign.

As well as claiming a balanced budget, Oliver promised spending on transit and other infrastructure and tax breaks that would stimulate the economy. But there may be less substance to these boasts than appear.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

 

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