Donald Trump is completely right about mail-in ballots
The President’s claim that postal votes are easily rigged is widely supported by historical precedent
Kit Knightly
It’s an artefact of the peculiar world in which we live that we are sometimes forced to agree with, fight alongside or even defend people with whom we would never wish to be associated.
Donald Trump is right at the top of that list. And his “feud” with twitter over tweets concerning postal votes is a perfect example.
To be clear, whatever the MAGA crowd and QAnons may wish to believe, Trump is NOT some kind of anti-establishment rebel.
Whatever small threat he posed to the status quo was stamped out shortly after the Deep State switched sides from Hillary to Trump sometime in October 2016.
From Syria to Russia to Wikileaks, most of the good parts of Trump’s “America first” or “isolationist” approach have fallen completely by the wayside. Either opposed by the Deep State to the point of total paralysis or shown to be nothing but talk in the first place.
Ever since he was elected, despite his rhetoric, Trump has been little more than a boorish Bush. Most of the time.
But sometimes, in small ways, he strikes a raw nerve with the establishment.
Like two days ago, when he tweeted out criticisms of the proposal to rely on postal votes for forthcoming elections:
Whether this was put into Trump’s mouth by his handlers to create the controversy, or whether it’s his genuine opinion, it is obviously something people are not supposed to agree with. Because twitter then took the unprecedented step of adding “fact-checking links” to his tweets.
Donald Trump is a crass, narcissistic bullshit merchant, but twitter has never done that to him before.
So why now? Why is twitter “fact-checking” Trump’s claim that postal ballots are easier to rig?
Well, it’s certainly not because he’s wrong. Because he’s actually right.
Postal ballots ARE much easier to rig than in-person voting. This is not just logically obvious, it is historically shown to be true through dozens of examples.
In 2002, a Labour councillor was convicted of voter fraud after acquiring 200 blank postal ballots, filling them in and adding them to the uncounted votes.
In 2005, when on-demand postal voting was first spreading around Britain, many councils expressed concerns that the system was vulnerable to fraud. These fears were repeated in 2010, when there was a surge in those using the system.
In 2014 the electoral commission warned that “ghost voters” could be created using mail-in ballots.
Also in 2014 Richard Mawrey QC, a UK deputy High Court judge in charge of hearing electoral fraud cases, warned that on-demand postal ballots were open to “systematic and widespread” voter fraud.
This was echoing thoughts he first expressed in 2005, after finding 6 Labour councillors guilty of postal ballot-related fraud schemes.
Mawrey repeated those concerns again in 2015, after former Tower Hamlets mayor Lutfur Rahman was convicted of election fraud using postal votes.
In Decmeber 2019 Steve Baker MP wrote that:
There is widespread abuse of postal votes, this simply cannot go on
That same month, the BBC’s political editor accidentally revealed a serious potential corruption on the postal ballot front.
Now, all of these examples are from the UK but the same frailties exist in the United States.
In fact, just two years ago, a Republican candidate was found to have committed electoral fraud in North Carolina…using absentee postal ballots.
In 2007 Teresa James and Michael Slater of Project Vote authored a report titled “Vote By Mail Doesn’t Deliver” in which they found there was evidence that:
Vote by mail is more susceptible to corruption than voting at polling places.
And:
Vote by mail is amenable to manipulation by election officials.
They cite multiple examples, including the Miami mayoral election of 1997 being overturned by the courts after a candidate was found to have committed widespread absentee ballot fraud.
As recently as March of this year, when Joe Biden repeatedly won primaries he was predicted to lose, there were reported irregularities in postal ballots in several states, including Wisconsin, New Jersey and Ohio.
So, if there are so many recent examples of fraud – and so many obvious potential vulnerabilities to the system – why is Twitter suddenly (incorrectly) fact-checking “The Donald”?
And not just Twitter, but all of the mainstream media as well. For example, CNN, the Washington Post and The New York times all have very long, very similar refutations of Trump’s anti-postal votes diatribe.
It’s interesting to note that the Wikipedia page for “Postal Voting” has already been edited to insert the same quote twice, from a New York Times article which came out today.
Their defences of the system are, frankly, sad.
The New York Times argues that, yes, postal vote rigging does happen (and even cites some of the examples I mentioned) but says doing it on a scale large enough to swing an election would be really hard, and someone would probably notice.
CNN’s is even worse. Collapsing from incompetence to unintentional hilarity, by using a report commissioned by George W. Bush in 2002 which found there was “virtually no evidence of any organized effort to skew federal elections.” (Eagled-eyed readers will note it says “virtually no evidence”, and not “no evidence”.)
Students of history will no doubt realise that this report from the Bush-era Justice Department was commissioned in direct response to allegations that the 2000 Presidential election was rigged (which it fairly obviously was).
So, apart from twitter fact-checking the POTUS for criticising postal votes, we also have all the mainstream media doing pretzel-like feats of mental and verbal gymnastics to try and refute him. Why?
Well, because postal ballots are a large part of the establishment’s agenda at the moment. They are one of the key ideas being pushed in the wake the Covid19 “crisis”.
Just three weeks ago, the New York Times had an article headlined:
We Should Never Have to Vote in Person Again
And that’s just the latest and most brazen example of the propaganda surge on this issue.
In February, well before he could use Covid19 as an excuse, the Mayor of London Sadiq Khan was campaigning for more postal votes.
In March Poland’s lower house approved a bill to conduct this year’s Presidential election by post (which was later rejected by the upper house). Australia likewise “urged” postal votes in their local elections this year.
The Independent reports that “two thirds of Americans favor postal votes”, and Joe Biden called opposing mail-in ballots “un-American”
There are many other examples of pro-postal voting stories, all over the local and national media: see here, here, here, here and here.
You could even see this whole “controversy” as part of the propaganda itself. Trump has such a lousy reputation that any thought he expresses is instantly discredited by association.
From now on anybody that doubts the postal ballot system can be said to be “agreeing with Trump”, whilst the hordes of potential voters whose only understanding of politics is “Orange Man Bad” will throw their weight behind postal ballots as if it were some kind of moral crusade. (Expect a hashtag like #ImGoingPostal in the next couple of days).
Here, in the UK, our elections are currently totally suspended. When they “lift the lockdown”, postal ballots will be pushed as a way of “saving democracy”. But that will be far from the truth.
Trump expressed it brashly, coarsely and with his trademark lack of nuance, but anybody paying attention should definitely be very wary of widespread postal voting. And worried by the large-scale media campaign to promote it.
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Nice, that’s a pretty good read.
the chaos,and economic down turn, in this election year are no coincidence, it is creating a power vacuum to be filled in by a more totalitarian regime
Excellent and thought-provoking piece.
“doing it on a scale large enough to swing an election would be really hard, and someone would probably notice.”
Like we noticed how “ballot harvesting” turned Orange County CA from hot red to hot blue in a single election?
Yeah, we noticed it. But by that time, it was too late to do anything about the results… or reversing the now-entrenched voting scam that made it possible.
Universal vote by mail will enable universal ballot harvesting. Hello, one-party Soviet.
Kit & all,
The Trumpster knows that his Cabinet includes these who are capable representatives of such not-so-dark arts and they are willing to use them against him as they have against even the Brits.
Up-Pompeo promised to administer the gauntlet against a Corbynite Labour win. When simple slander and AS lies and scare tactics don’t work to sway the electorate – CHEAT or have a COUP.
Both have happened only within 6 months.
Bolivia and the United Kindom.
I’ll post a quote of my own post from these long ago times from here (there are other examples)
” I have been banging on about postal votes & the global deepstate megacorp operation that is in charge of our postal voting system, for many moons now, including this comment a few days ago, where i got short shrift and garnered a dozen down votes so far – without much feedback
https://off-guardian.org/2019/12/09/reddit-hiring-nato-shills-to-control-narrative/#comment-105071
I’ll be back in due course with more ‘proof’. ”
…….
Where is the proof – well the British Election Survey is being very tardy with their face to face representative interviews done almost 5 months ago!
The Electoral Commission snuck out a report at the end of April – many such things are done under cover of Covid.
The Electoral Commission (a total misnomer now they are a privatised hander outer of funding to private organisations and provide cover for them they even have have a ‘business plan’!) play dumb and claim to have seen ’nuffin’ and they ‘ain’t sayin nuffin’ as they replied to a FoI request:-
‘The following questions we do not hold the information …
– Total number of postal ballots used to vote?
– How much of an increase is it from 2017?
– What are key drivers for this increase?
– What is the breakdown by party & constituency?
– Why is there no information available?
https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/postal_votes_figures_for_general
……
In the sneaked out report we don’t get the facts as they promised – instead they use YouGove to make an uneducated guess – a pollster with deep Tory and DS connections! Using their ‘panel’ of self selected opinion givers and choosing amongst these a
‘Total sample size was 5450 adults who are eligible to vote in the UK General Election 2019. Fieldwork was undertaken between 13th – 23rd December 2019. The survey was carried out online.’
https://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/sites/default/files/2020-04/General%20Election%202019_main_data%20tables%20v3.0_publishing.xlsx
They claim
28% voted by post overall.
YouGove incidentally also reports –
42% in the North East!
And also supposedly 45% by their view on Brexit ! Which was a specific question and answer choice – but it seems NOT the NHS. )
————————–
I have long pointed out that since the privatisation of the EC in the UK by the Cameron/Clegg 2010 government (another famous Rose Garden conspiracy). The machinary of postal votes was handed to a subsidiary (Idox) of a major big Data conglomerate (CGI of Canada) which works for (!) the DeepState & 3 lettered agencies and State apparatus, across DIFFERENT countries – with secrecy.
Dominic (Dr Strangelove Cummings) had his experimental grounds in the North East of UK ( Sunderland,Red Wall, Durham etc) where using these mutant hybrid Weapons of Mass Destraction – used in anger to deliver the Scottish and then Brexit referendums by postal vote fixing.
General elections are a different matter compared to a simple majority of a referendum.
But they were FORCED to after the close shave of 2017 hit and run easter election with no notice, failed to destroy Corbynite Labour – along with a winter election to minimise turnout to provide smoke for their arson.
It required a coordinated manipulation across first past the post constituencies with variable majorities, which to be effective would standout like a streakers bits – it would need full media cover.
Hence LauraKoftheCIA and her Mission Impossible team of media superheroes were deployed to provide that cover.
Not forgetting the full spectrum mainstream and alt media and their troll army echo chambers.
…….
Yup postal votes are the means of having a coup while retaining a veneer of ‘democracy’. The Donald knows that. He knows he wasn’t allowed to stop it against Corbyn or Bolivia and they are planning to use it against him, as they will use every opportunity to smear him in the run up.
His only chance is to not be deterred from having the CoupGaters arrested and tried publicly as part of his campaign.
The biggeer issue, in my view, is the manipulation of electronic voting machines. The manipulation levels in that is like 1,000 times greater than the manipulation in postal votes.
I do not support anyone who argues in favour of postal votes in connection with the authoritarian lockdowns and restrictions on public assembly.
But when governments and corporate interests (in US, India etc) continue to support and intensify electronic voting election after election, then postal votes is one small way a citizen can avoid getting his vote counted in the election results. Otherwise, in 100% electronic voting systems, the final election results are rigged.
Made an error in my post above.
“..then postal votes is one small way a citizen can avoid getting his vote counted in the election results.”
should read as
“then postal votes is one small way a citizen can avoid getting his vote MANIPULATED in the FINAL election TALLY.”
No, you were right the first time. Maybe Freud played a part in your slip, but it’s close enough to this: “postal voting is another small way of having your vote made unverifiable.”
That’s no opinion, though, that’s a real fact.
My English got messy! 🙂
But I stand by the correction!
This is not accurate. I have been invited to think tanks on this issue around the country, such as People Count in Boston, where one invited member is or was the head of micro-biology Dept. at Harvard U, and many like him, and it is not at all true that machines are de facto “100 times” more manipulable than postal ballots, as you claim. They are both totally unverifiable.
Simply put, all American voting cannot be really verified. It’s a crap shoot, faith-based, perhaps, but not real.
And CIA is the gatekeeper EVERYwhere, and a frequent, proven (incessant) bad actor when it comes to voting. Maybe the worst. So, the faith basis is the kind needed “to move mountains”.
“They are both totally unverifiable.”
True, but the scale and speed at which the electronic votes can be manipulated is much large.
I don’t support postal ballots as the only option of phsycial ballots in voting if the people behind the fake-pandemic panic are proposing that.
Ideally, there should be physical ballots where people physically go to the voting booths and put their votes on physical ballot papers. All electronic/digital voting should be discarded immediately.
But the powers that be in US, India etc have so far not been amenable to doing this. I don’t rule it out forever. With enough public awakening it can happen in the near/distant future.
But, as things stand today, and as you rightly put it “simply put, all American (let me add Indian) voting cannot be really verified. It’s a crap shoot..”
So, democracy is dead, if it ever truly existed. What’s next?
You know I didn’t really know what to think of all this mail in ballot stuff, but I was certainly inclined to think it’s a bad thing, if only because the worst people seem so aggressively for it.
It seems in line with, perhaps a precursor to, the “direct democracy” stuff all those high powered NGOs and world-government types (World Economic Forum, Council on Foreign Relations, Brookings, Chatham House – that crowd) have been going on about for a while now. You can pretty much count on the fact that anything those creeps support will have the intended consequence of massively centralizing political, economic and social power into the hands of their global elite clique. That motive is pretty thinly veiled most of the time; you have only to actually read what they release and listen to their conferences. They’re pretty open about it.
This article pretty much sums up the only sensible approach to this whole mail in ballot issue IMO. Just another agenda item to fit into whatever narratives are hot right now. No way are any changes to the electoral system being shilled by the press and the political elite right now going to increase the common man and woman’s influence over their governments. Just look at what’s going on; the priority is clearly to minimize the people’s ability to reign in their rulers.
Who knows why Trump himself does what he does (I tend to think he’s either just being stovepipe’d everything he says and does or he’s in on it with the rest of them), but it definitely seems like he’s being used as a powerful propaganda tool. I mean just look at the state of mainstream politics – millions of people can be made to passionately support or oppose some issue they never thought twice about overnight just based on how the press relates it to Trump. Both the folks suffering from TDS and the Trump true believers.
even better – in the future specially developed, extremely sophisticated AI progams will deduce how we would vote based on NSA-gathered personal data. These programs will vote for us so we can be saved from that dreary task.
Ha ha, very funny. Sounds like a sequel to Blade Runner. Where is Philip K. Dick, and what have you done with him?
You laugh, but this is precisely the consequence of the proposed “National Popular Vote Interstate Compact,” whereby each member state promises to award ALL its electoral votes to whoever wins the majority popular vote among all the members. So if your state skews R, and the other states skew D, all your electoral votes go to the R. Technically, that removes pretty much any reason for you to bother to vote at all.
If they only just spoke our minds, that would be a cool tweak, the Future of Voting!
Problem is, if they are now able to Scan our thoughts, odds are they will prefer simply to transmit their own. And who would be the wiser, literally.
I know I know, how is that different from 2020.
It may not take be the Brave New Future, but I’m going to send it to our surfer dude Chris Carter for the seed of an X File reboot.
“I MADE THIS!”
Rather: “Trump [may have] expressed it brashly, coarsely and with his trademark lack of nuance, but anybody paying attention should definitely be very wary of [any kind of voting whatsoever]. And worried by the large-scale media campaign to promote [any and all party vetted canditates].”
Gore Vidal said it best:
But by all means, do cast your votes if you feel you must and believe it can make one iota of any difference.
That would be the second thing this week which Trump has accidentally – or coincidentally done right. He’s becoming a rather interesting president, although I would still never trust him further than I could throw him.
Nor should we forget that ANY kind of ballot today is easily rigged…
And by my lights that’s the unseen point behind this OffG piece: all of voting process done by digital machines (including vote by mail, scanned, or rather more corrected typo, scammed, is so entirely susceptible to rape (unsolicited intrusion of an intimate kind) that the only way to even BEGIN -for starters- to get a credible vote is by a hand count of hard copy ballots, posted publicly on the precinct premises.
However, all the other technology in the world surrounding it, is developing so explosively that even that will be a crap shoot.
We are in a tight spot, since the whole narrative is rapidly becoming a script for a charade. Courts will soon rule all video evidence inadmissible (except, arguably, videotape) because even live action video can now be photo-shopping.
The implications are somewhat unnerving. Where do we go?
Solus Deus.
Watch out: they will soon be able to create loops of our own religious experiences, by sampling brain waves, and play them back at us.
And such simulacra is a “wide open field”.
Voting is only the first “Pearl of great price”.
But it is maybe only a solar flare or two, of substance, that will slow down the unchecked runaway “progress” of the digital Empire.
Or a massive Meteor, such as made the dinosaurs kiss their, ah, tails goodbye.
In the 1850s there was just such a pale solar flare large enough to shut down all the early telegraph systems for days.
I wonder if those are taken into account by “digital epidemiologists”? If not, it should perforce be an urgent study.
Or it wouldn’t be surprising if they have become so hyper-inflated with their digitized hubris that they missed that heaven-sent memo completely……………
I mean, truly, Exhibit A for that scholarly hamartia is at arms’reach here: a simple mug shot of Professor Lockdown.
The Defense must now rest (as overwhelmed with both simultaneous laughter and tears).
£4£&$4$ ~~~ Jaw Nervin’
There’s a saying, you know, soon to be a mantra, you know: “Even a broken clock is right twice a day.”
By that metric, he’s not half bad, every blue moon our leader of the Free World is even right sometimes once a day.
Impressive. He should be an actor, he can read their script.
Wow, and here we thought we only had a Reality TV President.
As a response to comments on this thread about absentee and vote-by-mail as generally helping conservative candidates, I offered some personal and direct involvement with its state history and earlier roots in California politics from 32 years ago, and some shocking moments (most would agree):
That is how it’s reported, long-time, in U.S. as well. 30 years or so ago, absentee mail voting was a powerful tool to get out the votes from people who were being bullied into often not voting at all, specifically (you guessed it) black workers at factories or labor jobs who were given extra hours of work on election days so as to intimidate them not to get out to the polls. Their Republican or corporatist supervisors had things carefully planned to prevent them.
I was organizing the Michael Dukakis Presidential Campaign for mid-cities L.A. and one evening a volunteer came in and spoke with me, offering that he had been an Alderman in Mississippi for the Democratic Party, and as we discussed his “bona fides” he happened to mention as his contacts that he knew “every pastor of every church in South Central Los Angeles”, an area that votes about 98% a straight Democratic slate of candidates, a virtual rubber stamp. That startled me with a “carpe diem” and a light went on in my head, since I had just been discussing absentee voting registration that day, 1st time, with campaign co-manager Juan, who is Latino (I was the only non-Latino –called “Anglo” here in E.L.A. -think 80s film “Born in East L..A. ” with Cheech Marin– in the entire HQ offices of Congressman Esteban E. Torres, after whom the local High School was named in his honor for a long career that started as a HS dropout and eventually turned into a twenty-year tenure in U.S. House of Representatives – the film “Stand and Deliver” had just been a hit in the area, with Lou Diamond Phillips, and staged just blocks away from us at Garfield H.S., a heavy gang area; his co-star Esai Morales was a celeb at our rallies).
I was fairly new to some of the political dynamics and demographics of the area. But I was also in some position to make a difference, because of that. The Mississippi alderman was new to the area too, but I suggested a really hopeful opportunity, “Hey, you know it’s only about 10 days before the General Election, but I think we may have a slim chance to make a big impact here. If you could call all your pastors and have them make an announcement at this Sunday services, you can assemble the congregations then and there, register them to vote, and have them also fill out all absentee vote-by-mail applications. Problem is, they would have to hand deliver them to the ROV (Registrar of Voters) since there’s not enough time to mail them.”
He cut in, “That’s not a problem, the pastors can hold on to them for me, and I can drive by and bag them all on my rounds and deliver them to ROV myself, on Monday.”
I was sizing him up, he was a really big guy, physically, I was trying to persuade myself 98% that he was not some double agent. (I had done some volunteer work for Jesse Jackson, and had been to his victory party at Hyatt in SF in ’84, when he garnered far and away the most delegates of any black candidate ever for a Presidency, many times what Shirley Chisholm had won 12 years before him, and though I didn’t know it then, I have since met not a few black activists who swear to me, with palpable sincerity, that Jesse was a long-time double agent and FBI operative who had been embedded at MLK’s right hand at a very young age, to cooperate in the plans to assassinate him, similar to the story that Rubin & Hoffman, heads of the ’60s Yippies, were FBI infiltrators, which I strongly tend to believe, even as they both not many years later became Yuppies, and stockbrokers! How does that kind of leopard, the colorful author of “Steal This Book!” change his spots that quickly, if he wasn’t in on the fix from the start? And his equally colorful side-kick and co-rabble-rouser? No matter, both of them died of unnatural causes not many years later, Rubin was killed crossing the street in the evening on Wilshire Blvd. at UCLA, in a business 3 piece “power suit” after having delivered a lecture on investment banking, by a hit and run driver; and in the same era his militant “co-agitator” Abbie Hoffman had been found dead in his bed at his place on the East Coast, as an “apparent suicide” (as was my own father, found dead in a locked Lincoln with a gun in hand). I recall reading in one of the glossy “Mockingbird” mags that month about Abbie’s brother, who refused to believe he would “go out”of on sleeping pills as an O.D., saying he was simply “never, ever a quitter”. “Oh what a tangled web we weave…” etc. Then of course we hear forever the rumours that Louis Farrakhan was an instrumental part of Malcolm X’s assassination. As one acquaintance of mine, who knew Hoffman, said, “It all depends on who you believe” doubting Hoffman was a spy.
I say many facts agitate that he, indeed, was. I told the acquaintance that much, and he was visibly annoyed and steadfastly refused to believe it. There is just so much of that (“7 Types of) Ambiguity” (there, you are all witnesses, I have just written the 1st sentence in my life where I began the first part of a quotation within a parenthesis, and then finished outside of it…just sayin’) in the ol’ US of A that it serves to remind that we all live publicly –and ever-increasingly- in what Errol Morris called “The Fog of War” (the name of his great, great documentary about the endless machinations of JFK’s Secretary of Defense, Robert McNamara, done as an interview).
NB: It’s part of the Game Plan that that Fog continues to grow and spread, throughout the USA, and rolling across the Pond(s) both Eastward and Westward, and the High Cabal trusts that their burgeoning boondoggles of AI will be able to sort it all out, if not dispel it, for life members of the CFR and other “pay-and-play” participants.
Meanwhile, back in the tale of the ’88 Democratic Party HQ in Norwalk, California, not many miles from Downtown L.A.: I decided to go with my gut feeling and trust the Mississippi Alderman (the remarkable and riveting film “Mississippi Burning” had just come out, about the 1960s murders by Klansmen of Goodman, Schwerner, and Cheney) and he clearly trusted me that far, to implement our absentee voting strategy, a rather unfamiliar thing at the time. Also, neither of us had much to lose, tactically, by running with it. It seemed worth an effort.
He came back thru the door into our teeming office (we were so bustling that Nicholas van Hoffman, disciple of Saul Alinsky, stopped in for dinner one night, on his way to writing election coverage for the Atlantic) about a fortnight later, Monday the day before Election Day, and said he had succeeded in getting the votes of 3,000 people who had never voted before, to the ROV offices in time to be counted.
“Splendid!” I shouted. In some of our tight races that could make a decisive difference. He was a bit disconsolate, “Yeah, but if we’d had another week or two of lead time, I could have got ten times that many.” I consoled him: “No, this is huge.”
As it turned out, though his efforts were a few miles outside our district, we won the Assembly race locally by a slim margin, and Assemblyman Bob Epple turned out to be the swing vote in a narrowly divided Sacramento, swinging all California from narrowly red into narrowly blue, a trend that has grown into this day, where we have now become the People’s Republic of California. And there has been a growing movement, in times quite recently polled as a majority, of Californians who want avidly to secede from our state from that business fiction known as the United States of America, Inc.
We can always dream, and the state has stature as the world’s 5th largest economy, topping almost all of the world’s largest countries in growth, to encourage those dreams. Last I looked, Russia was 10th.
The next day, the 1st Tuesday of November, 1988, Mike Dukakis “lost” to George H. W. Bush, and, as with the aftermath of the murder of Bobby Kennedy 20 years past~the first candidate for whom I had ever worked when I had just turned 16~ there was a decisive darkening in the mood and tone of events, and gloom throughout the land.
Lee Atwater died a few years later, still in his 30s, and he took that as a sign from God for a deathbed confession: he said the thing he most regretted in his brief life was the shockingly vicious and unprincipled campaign he had run against Dukakis, and all the preposterous Willie Horton ads, and he wanted to at least come clean about that before he died.
But, like most things such Republican operatives do, that was less of a confession than a strategic cover story, at least for all the effect it had.
I got a letter at my private P.O. Box a few weeks later, an invitation from the L.A. Democratic Party to do more work of that kind. Even in that brief interval, I had already decided to leave such activities for good. I had bumped into Governor Jerry Brown standing solo outside an L.A. Union Hall, a few weeks before, in his hiatus out of political office, and we talked about his time he had just spent volunteering at Mother Theresa’s House in Calcutta, where L.A. Times had had a picture of him in Yogi attire above the fold! “Now there’s a lady who sure has her act together” he told me, with a “Governor Moonbeam” fanciful gleam in his eye. It was in those days when he said politics had become so corrupted by 💰 money that he couldn’t navigate it any longer, and he exited the drama, stage Left, for a number of years.
I exited for good. I saw so much Mafia infiltration at close hand, I thought it made more sense to get out while I was still breathing. (And a health problem that often cut my hours in half for years.)
But more to the point, absentee ballots just in our neighborhood districts entered into our success at the polls in a big way. We had been slated to lose to Bush, but won rather commandingly. It didn’t hurt that Willie Brown, House Speaker then, rolled down 4 busloads of precinct walkers from up North.
And even more to the point: the in-house invitation to us organizers, which I never answered, offered a compelling motivation: our Party statisticians, whom we had worked with nightly sending them counts sometimes after midnight when we finally got them, discovered a shocking anomaly. If only 440,000 votes had changed in key swing States -less than a half of one percent then of the national vote- Dukakis would have won the Electoral College. And the White House.
Instead, he lost crushingly Bush’s 483 electoral votes to his 100, a shocking landslide!
Especially shocking, as he had only “lost” the (recorded) popular vote by single digits, I think 8%. Like most Americans, even many of the “experts” then, I was too “studiously” unsuspicious to understand the implications of such massive hidden fraud.
But the Collier brothers sure weren’t. They used that very stat for a book they wrote, one that now has worldwide implications (and my raison d’être for sharing this here), and pinned that stat as the epigraph on the opening page of their marvelous exposé “VoteScam: The Stealing of America” (a play on the title of a bestseller back then: “The Greening of America”).
It’s required reading, quite simply, for people now, in other countries, who are seeing these black ops and assaults on democracy in their more civil societies, crimes that are all too familiar here
Like Lee Atwater, other criminals who turn to such crimes against their fellow citizens and a destruction of civil society, have few options left after these easy treasons but some death bed confession.
And just how much are those worth, once the damage is done? Better than nothing? Sometimes?
Like CIA James Angleton’s dying confession, someone who paved the way for all “this”.
Like Lee Atwater again, or John Erlichman’s recently revealed Drug War confession, seen in the Atlantic, were all of these just limited hangout and covers for something far worse? I think that too often they were, and I have witnessed that.
They say the road to Hell is paved with good intentions, but I think the real cement is a “good” death bed confession. We’ve certainly seen enough of those….
Angleton actually died with the words on his lips that he believed he was going to Hell (see last two pages of “The Devil’s Chessboard”).
Since he knew he had facilitated SO much of this.
So at least that much from him is credible.
He must have known that there are not that many defenses that we have, since the laws are not easily enforced now – even with the will, which is too often lacking – and “dark money” is pouring in everywhere, as one direct result of these key betrayals.
With hope we are “reduced to prayer”.
Or at least I can say that much, speaking with self-awareness enough.
A small correction: Poppy Bush (yes, and they grow aplenty in Afghanistan) won 426 electoral votes, to Dukakis 111. But Dukakis only lost by 7.8% in the popular vote, 42 million to Poppy’s 49 million, so how did he carry so few States, after leading in the polls by 17% coming out of the August Democratic Convention only 10 weeks prior? This is what the late James and Kenneth Collier’s (brothers) book “VoteScam” revealingly investigates, and what a rock and roll ride it is.
Here’s the November 1988 stats:
Electoral vote 426 to 111[2]
States carried 40 to 10 + DC
Popular vote 48,886,597 — 41,809,074
Percentage 53.4% to 45.6%
I think the priority order is lies, damned lies and statistics. 30+ years later California Democrats still don’t understand reality or numbers. One strongly Democratic state had over 10% of the US population. And mafia guys collecting mail in votes ‘in person’. That’s why the popular vote totals are so close. Dukakis got 41 million votes. California alone had some 15+ million voters. So he got a lot of votes from California. That’s all. And so called Democrats forget that democracy (and the electoral college) exist specifically so that one state doesn’t rule the other 49. The Democrat candidate got a lot of votes from a state that was swinging heavily Democrat. That’s the good part of the story here. The bad part is that by ’88 the ‘solid south’ was being broken. That being the 100 year trend of southern states voting Democrat as punishment for the Republican Abe Lincoln ending slavery. A convenient omission by the OP. A few years prior, a then Democrat, KKK grand wizard name David Duke, had an unsuccessful run for Congress and woke up people to the disgrace that the solid south had been. And with a soaring economy and the cold war in it’s last days many in the south finally got with the times and voted for the guy who had been at the helm of it, rather than continuing to punish America for it’s ‘crime’ of ending slavery. It was this awakening that cost Dukakis his landslide victory. Though I can understand why California liberals would rather play statistics than admit this reality. The rest of us in the other 49 states recall this, the real version of events. To be fair GHWB was a disgrace of a person. My parents were Republicans but I myself preferred Dukakis. Until he posed for the cover of a magazine cover in an Abrams tank and completely clouded the waters about who he was and what he stood for. But in the end none of it had anything to do with mail in ballots or the efforts of one insignificant soCal pollster. It was southern Democrats waking up to reality and a disgraceful history that they had been keeping alive for 100+ years. And it took a KkK grand wizard telling him he was their destiny to beget this moment of self reflection. No it was not some feel good story of Californians working for a brighter future. It was the black heart of the Democratic Party finally joining the 20th century as the 9th hour approached. And choosing the party that led the Civil Rights movement, rather than voting for another guy whose party was mostly still pissed they couldn’t keep slaves anymore. Mississippi burning, brown v Board of Education, Rock Hill 7, etc etc. Democrats were running all those Southern states. Dukakis had the misfortune of being the candidate when all those states finally woke up and realized it was the 1980s. Republicans are still winning those states. And ironically still daily face charges of racism. But by all means believe this alternate version of reality if it makes you feel better. The historical facts are what they are.
Welcome to the 18th American Century. I did not know there was such in depth statistical analysis available to y’all.
Look, could you make it concise and to the point, please? I haven’t got the time.
I am shocked! Shocked I say!
Mail in ballots are not the only way that US elections have been rigged.
A centrally corrupt system perpetuates corruption.
The two approved central political parties that offer no real choice.
USSR had but one central party. USA has two central parties, doubleplusgood.
Promises are never kept. There are never real consequences for lying to The People.
During the 2016 “election” there were thousands of mail-in votes found in trash dumpsters in parking lots throughout the US. Greg Palast was one of the people who reported on it, as well as the now defunct Black Box Voting site. We have no path to a legal election. All the methods open to us are open to tampering and fraud. NOT “voter fraud”; ELECTION FRAUD happily done by those in charge–not the ones voting.
I agree that what we despirately need is our election to be monitored by the UN or Jimmy Carter or anyone who knows what to look for and will truthfully report on it. We must have exit polls that are done by trustworthy non-partisan committees who can report results with no outside tampering.
Our elections are a disgusting joke that go on and on, blasting us with lies and crap just about non-stop. While most countries have a 3 month or so time-range for elections, ours go on from one to the next pounding partisan jargon and nonsensical rhetoric by our MSM.. who then go on to be the referees for the “debates” where they blatently favor whoever is annointed by the masters in that particular election.
Interesting stats here:
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2020/04/24/28_million_mail-in_ballots_went_missing_in_last_four_elections_143033.html
mail-in voting is one thing but electronic voting fraud?!! Bush versus John kerry (hope I spelled this right) exits polls did not match the outcome that was very unusual, suspicionof electronic fraud
Right on the major thrust.
Nit picking, “exit” should be singular. That’s it.
Electronic machines with proprietary closed source code can never be trusted. Bill Gates’ Windows as an example of such software.
In house Stuxnet for elections. How to derail the popular vote.
In USA with the Electoral College doing the only voting that counts, the tom foolery can be limited only to a few precincts in a few States where the outcome needs more “adjustment”.
Thus they can say that there is no evidence of widespread, massive election fraud and keep a straight face (and because they are sociopaths).
If I recall correctly the Diebold machines had identical vote totals for GWB in dozens of different precincts, even when it exceeded the number of voters. It was something like 68,400. Like they were just set to return a built in default.
Elections will be rofe for fraud until we each hand deliver our hand written ballots to the US Capitol in person. Because if ANY opportunity exists for fraud both parties will exploit it. Even if only out of fear that the other guys will do it if they don’t.
Since when is blackboxvoting.org defunct????
What browser are you using? Shocked by that info, I just visited it and found it up, and even the current home page as much a fountain of voting “usual suspects” (there’s the second “Casablanca” reference on just this thread) information as ever, and ever useful, just as it was in “Hacking Democracy” as its star.
I wrote Bev four years ago when we were undergoing voting crisis after crisis at Pacifica Radio, the 1940s founder of “listener supported” media and a national treasure of truth. She wrote me back but was understandably swamped in the weeks before 11/16. I was seeking her input and help investigating the company that was handling our voting, as I recalled the name from the time about ten years prior when I was having a lot of exchanges with her circle of people, including by 🐌 snail mail (I got her close associate Vickie Karp an interview about these issues on wgdr.org in Vermont, as well as Michael Collins, who has had a big online presence in countercultural and investigative reporting of voting et al., both of them guesting there the day before Obama’s Inauguration).
I’ve forgotten the name of the company handling the Pacifica elections, but they were sending us mail in ballots, all while preferring online “secured” account voting! I remembered their name and recalled that Bev had made some pointed remarks about them 10 years before, but couldn’t find anything solid in my notes or online, and doubted they were trustworthy. I wrote Renee Penaloza numerous times in her capacity as head of Pacifica voting and never felt her responses about voting security were at all satisfactory. Just the kind of SOP you get from ROVs across This Great Land of Ours: “Trust us, it’s all good.”
Right?
And still don’t. Find her answers satisfactory, all the while with another election past, though the results favored the listener and radical base. I was asked many times to vote, as a paid member, but told them I would
abstain both times, and did.
Painful.
Pacifica is an eminently, pre-eminently, important franchise in modern American history and freedom of information. (My favorite host at their station in LA, KPFK, Roy Tuckman, who has a Wikipedia bio, was the only American journalist allowed in to interview the hostages in Teheran 1980). I’ll post my article link here, at opednews for April 4 2016, as it’s very relevant to all this, below this.
(Roy posted a personal letter of thanks to me for it, as it was published, although we have not yet met. I’ve been a listener to his show for 43 years. He’s the Studs Terkel of LA late night radio, though heard and known more by FM select left audiences. Night Owls and artists, etc…)
“CIVIL LIBERTY ALERT: LISTENER-FUNDED PACIFICA RADIO UNDER SIEGE IN N.Y. AND D.C.” (2016 OP-ED)
https://www.opednews.com/articles/Civil-Liberty-Alert-Liste-by-John-Ervin-Civil-Liberties_Civil-Liberties_Pacifica_Radio-160404-143.html
I didn’t think they were a viable site anymore since the last postings are from 2018. If I am wrong, then I am very glad to hear it!
I see your point!
I just glanced at it last night, to see that it was still up, but I am doing these things on my “smart”phone and the dates were in very small print in that format. After you pointed that out, it came back that I’d looked about or year or so ago, and now it’s coming back that I noticed the latest post was some months old, even then. I didn’t think too much of it at the time, weighed whether I should call her number in Washington, but thought I’d let her be. Now it’s on my mind, I thought then since her post was after the 2018 election that she may have needed a transgenerational hiatus, since she’s been at this with a national profile since 2003, when she fell afoul of Diebold and she said on Coast to Coast national radio that Dennis Kucinich had come to her rescue and went around their court order to permanently muzzle her website and its exposé on “rob_georgia” and he re-posted it all on his congressional website, and told her, “Let’s see them try to take that down”.
I had to laugh out loud because I was hearing that in my van near my Mom’s place, south of L.A., and had given Kucinich a ride home one blizzardy night 3 years before from Cleveland Airport to his ancient brownstone nearby, and we sat with the heater/motor running outside and talked about classical music, as he knew a lot of the people I performed with. He entertained me with a long but delightful lecture on how he modeled his speech writing on what he knew of symphonic structure, like music.
So he was her first defender.
The fact that her site is up but comatose, or not updated, is a little disturbing. You would think she would post some notice about its status. She has run a lot of risky stuff in the past, and locked horns with some scary enough corporate types.
We’ll need to follow up and find out what the story is.
Truth be told, a number of key people in the voting reform movement have got pretty dismayed by the lack of traction we’ve got in years of fighting. My hat is off to people who keep at it, but as I began writing years ago, 2005, the landscape is so bleak and outgunned, I pitched in a lot but didn’t see a way to make it my life’s work. But more importantly, the ground beneath voting is dreadfully compromised and controlled, so the deeper you dig, the worse it gets.
I realized, frankly, that the cure did not dwell in voting process, that it made more sense to look elsewhere, since really they have voting pretty much locked down. I started my own putative intelligence agency, “Native Intelligence Agency”, since the only thing that makes sense is to have the prolos of the world slowly reclaim what has become totally occulted and privatized Intel. Sounds like a psyop, I know, but it’s all I can see. My motto is a reversal of Field of Dreams and its baseball ghosts of yesteryear, directed inversely at Spooks: “If you build it, they will leave.” (Think James Earl Jones delivering that line, for audio.)
Even though enough credible people told me that they killed people for such things, and I nearly have been whacked before, with one in my face death threat, that was then palmed off as a joke. And other scrapes. But to address that issue, somehow, is all that makes sense!
I’m still here, but I bet my file at Langley is substantial. Oh yeah.
To coin a phrase!
Basically, in strategic terms, the whole voting thing is a “dog and pony show”.
A lot of people here know that, going in, which is obvious. That’s what draws them here.
What to do? The Bible preaches patience, early and often.
Insoluble problems can often resolve without even our awareness of the cure. This problem has become far and away the biggest in human history. The dinosaurs had the Meteor. We have CIA and “Co.”
For one thing, we know that kleptomania and all addictions catch up with the perps.
I wrote Bob Ney in 2004 and 2005 that his crimes would bring him down. As the head of HAVA in Congress he was the gatekeeper, and like that pitiful corporate shill, Mitch McConnell, blocked every single ever-lovin’ decent effort we made.
A couple years later the floor of his career gave way beneath him in the Abramoff scandals, and he crashed and burned like Hastert, like most of them of their ilk. Lots.
He made a tearful apology that he was a longtime hardcore alcoholic and the bad boys made him do it. But the damage was done.
There was a great window of op to get reform in the years after Florida 2000, but Ney made sure it was slammed shut, over and over and over…
We had that chance, as Bev Harris knew then, when she wrote me in 2006 to say she’d posted “some of your catchy phrases in my Slogan Hall of Fame”:
“Fake reform. Fake news about fake reform. Fake Voting.”
Well, she was very kind. But I lived to fight another day, and see the Trumpistas brand the “fake news” meme as their own.
I’m sure nobody holds the patent to that, it’s so patently obvious.
But “catchy”!
Hope she’s all right. We parted paths a bit in 2007 or so when she was backing participation in the movement by Gilchrist and the Minutemen as collaborators in voting reform.
WHAT?
She’s so savvy, I just drew a blank. Hell, Jim Gilchrist is practically a next door neighbor in our part of OC and he has been a militant agitator of apartheid against Mexican immigrants, people who survived the 1920 CRISTERO WAR slaughters, not to mention with family throughout the Californian for 10,000 years!
Her explanation of having Minutemen as allies drew me a big blank, and I told her so, at group forums.
Her explanations seemed innocent enough, that voting needed to be universally inclusive, and they would behave, or whatever.
But bitter experience told me otherwise. I respected her, but couldn’t see myself in an alliance with Minutemen any more than the David Dukes, or Nazis. Or Contras.
It seemed counter-intuitive, and we went back and forth a bit about it. I certainly don’t like members only movements, but we have our limits.
Even if Mussolini wants to join the March of freedom fighters for fair voting, I ain’t going to be marching alongside him.
OR in front. OR in back.
So that’s when our connection cooled. And it was posted innocently enough at group talks. I didn’t bid adieux, I was a minor character, relatively, I just visited less and less frequently.
Just about everything else I’ve seen from her group has been great.
She’s an extremely charming force of nature, and I hope she’s OK.
No matter how hard I try with spell check it subverts me, and even my best efforts to turn it off, but what I wrote should have printed/posted as this: “people who survived the late 1920s Cristero War slaughters of Mexican Catholics and who have families throughout the Californias for 10,000 years…” My apologies. I am a reluctant user of tech, anyway, hoping to find alternatives and ween myself!
https://youtu.be/vRr3-whDHzI
Trump terminates relationship with WHO
Good riddance. BigPharma will be annoyed.
like window lickers
or idiots definitely both ALL think a lone pasty story of WHO or bill gates fault
cumming fergy
bad advice yer
RIFE WITH CORRUPTION
Elections are rigged way before the first ballot is cast in either a voting booth or via a mail-in ballot. A corrupt political duopoly monopolizes all US elections. An Independent Third Party has no chance of winning a presidential election. That being said, if sellout Bernie and all other faux progressives had left the Democratic Party in 2016 it’s very possible they could’ve formed a powerful Third Party. This was especially the case, when Jill Stein asked Bernie Sanders to run as the Green Party’s presidential nominee in 2016, but Bernie never responded. A powerful Third Party in 2016 might not have won, but it would’ve had a lot of leverage in establishing a progressive agenda within the duopoly.
Be that as it may, Bernie preferred to support warmonger Hillary and four years later mentally deficient Joe Biden. Both corrupt political parties will spend billions during the 2020 presidential campaigns. That in itself shows the criminal nature of presidential elections. Multinational corporations, and oligarchs don’t back politicians unless they know something is in it for them. Moreover, all candidates are carefully vetted. No one sits in the Oval Office unless they can be trusted by the ruling class.
In the case of Trump, he might’ve had some thoughts about rapprochement with Russia or even exiting troops from the Middle East, but that notion was quickly squashed by the security state when they deployed the mainstream media news to promote Russiagate and then Ukraine-gate.
Getting back to the subject of the elections, once the two nominees are selected by the corrupt political duopoly (RNC and DNC) it really doesn’t matter to the ruling class who wins inasmuch both stooge nominees will do as they’re told. Trump is troublesome because he’s crude and not an elegant representative of the Empire. However, mentally deficient gaffe ridden Biden is hardly the Obamaesque politician the security state admires. Unfortunately, half-dead Joe lacks Obama’s talent at bullshitting the public.
The results of the upcoming election is anyone’s guess since the process is always rigged. Voting machines are easily hacked and manipulated, ballots are discarded, and hundreds of thousands of voter registrations are mysteriously eliminated. Tim Conover, had a taste of this corruption in 2016 and 2018 when he ran against Debbie Wasserman Schultz: “Tim Canova, a Nova Southeastern University law professor ran against Wasserman Schultz in 2016 and then challenged her again in 2018 as an independent. He said Scott (the Governor at the time) should suspend Snipes for destroying the paper ballots while his lawsuit was ongoing. Snipes has said it was a mistake and has noted her office made
copies of the ballots.But federal election law and state public records laws clearly show the paper ballots should have been preserved by the office. The elections supervisor in Florida’s second-most populous county broke state and federal law by unlawfully destroying ballots cast in Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s 2016 Democratic primary.”
And of course we all remember the famous 2000 Presidential election where Al Gore lost by less than 500 votes and the Supreme Court ended the recount in Florida. Al Gore’s loss cost the world dearly since it allowed the PNAC cabal to carry-out its neoconservative agenda of invading Iraq and Afghanistan under the guise of 9/11.
Journalist Greg Palast has meticulously investigated election fraud. He claims that during the California Primary more than 500,000 votes cast for Bernie Sanders were discarded. Interesting, how Palast is the one complaining about this criminal activity and not Bernie…. In any event, from the primaries to the November election the entire process is rife with corruption. It wouldn’t be a bad idea for US elections to be supervised by a UN raconteur.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-26NiTLxu_Y&t=8s
A ‘UN raconteur’? Peter Ustinov is still dead, I fear.
Well, Biden is more dead than alive….
We also have a Supreme Court Justice who is in the same Schrodinger’s box.
So was Reagan, in his second term
Reagan, was politically dead way before that. His policies advanced neoliberalism resulting in extreme wealth and income inequality. In addition, his imperialist policies in Latin America caused thousands of deaths.
Reagan, financially propped up the contra war against the
Sandinista regime. The US sent financial aid to the death squad regimes in El Salvador and Guatemala, resulting in mass killings, torture and imprisonment of opposition forces. Reagan was a staunch supporter of the apartheid South African regime.
A broken clock would have made a worthier Prez than Ronnie RayGun and his inane 8 year pResidency.
Yet many in California here worship him like a total icon, still. I mean, millions in a mostly deepening Blue State who would die in pitched battle in his name.
It’s evidence against their apparently assisted lobotomies.
MKULTRA?
I agree, he laid the groundwork for the mess we’re in today.
Well, “Ron Headrest” –as Doonesbury called him out– was the sleepy Chief Architect of note, but many accomplice masons added on.
And what about Ike, he was the national soporific, out to lunch shingle on the Oval Office portal, much like Dubya, while MKULTRA infested everything, with tentacles now locking down the world.
Poor guy, after WW II he may have caught PTSD as a contact high from all the butchered under his command… he may have needed the R&R. I caught it and I do. My only uncle died during Ike’s term, a vet officer in Iwo Jima, whom his sister ( my mom ) said changed him “when he brought home all his boys in body bags”. There was a price to be paid, and though Ike watched it all from the ship, I don’t begin to judge him. But Ron Ron doesn’t have that excuse, only a refugee front a B movie studio lot. Ike was at least there, calling the shots, and all that suggests.
He woke up just in time from his 8 year nap as pResident to give us a last black and white boob tube valedictory, warning us about the military industrial complex (c’mon Ike, can you just say 4th Reich, let in the backdoor on your watch?!)
And he walked away, left JFK holding that unenviable bag of snakes, and bullets. I heard a YouTube interview with Jackie, First Lady, given after Jack’s murder, and she was asked, “What did your husband think of Eisenhower.” Her breathy reply wax a classic from that era: “Not much.”
Nota Bene: ALL the real architects of their country’s demise were Republicans. All, all. (Clinton was their trailer park stooge, so he doesn’t count. LBJ was a psychopath in sheep’s, or donkey’s, garb, so scratch him too.)
Not being partisan, just perceptive..
And just saying.
£4£&$4$–
Well said. I’m apolitical and a big part of the reason is what happened first to Ron Paul in ’08 and then to Bernie in ’16. Both parties are playing the same game. No matter what or who you want, you will lose. I don’t even buy the Trump mystique. A guy with no political experience sure has done some very, very predictable things he said he’d never do. Our politics are completely captured and few even seem to notice. They’re too busy waiting with baited breath for their preferred news outlets to provide them the next narrative to mindlessly bleat.
The duopoly is really a monopoly….
My “good friend” Michael Collins (haven’t talked to him in years, but he called me that when he posted a piece of mine on his well-versed”liked” page/archives at Smirking Chimp) publishes much of his writing under the rubric:
“THE MONEY PARTY”
That says most of what needs to be said. Putin called our leadership “Swine” and all our satellite partners in crime whatever the Russian word is for “swinelets” telling us all in the West that all our putative “leaders” oink in unison.
“Honk if you like Trump, Oink if you love MONEY!”
Pope Francis has the Jesuitical cajones to say as much, several years ago he manned up to us saying: “What we have mostly in the West is simply worship of the Golden Calf”. It, words to that effect. I first used that Golden Calf analogy in a piece 15 years ago, so I’ll have to sue the Holy Father for infringement. And that cagey Jesuit mind will say that there is no copyright on prophecy, and the holy Spirit.
But only money ~~ 💰 ~~ is the metric of our mainstream.
Hence, the considerable crassness.
And hence, whatever their select foibles, Putin and Pope, why I love both those guys.
I’m feeling a lotta Love here!
Let me focus on those positives, all my Tovarisches!
(Hey, I’m a devoté of Russian music and poetry, what can I say?)
All that is true.
Unfortunately democracy died decades ago.
193 governments have signed the UN Charter and all are effectively “steered” by the UN.
UN representatives are appointed and not elected. So it doesn’t matter what government we vote for the new governments policies will still be “guided” by those unelected UN Council members.
It is only a matter of time before the UN replaces our governments. We will be easy to control through track and trace apps, social distancing measures and vaccination passports to limit our movements…. All they need is a Global emergency…….. Ah, now I see the reason for this simulated Pandemic……It’s the new normal….
‘Our Government’? You’re a rich oligarch, then, I take it.
Haha, Sarc-asm. “Our” is in this instance means belonging or relating to us, us being the citizens.
And you raise me sarcasm, squared. You win.
Makes sense for humans to cooperate rather than destroy themselves.
Unless a force is interfering with the humans’ choices, then total annihilation and/or complete submission can become a popular choice.
For humans, yes-for the capitalist psychopaths, NO.
It makes sense for independent countries to work together. Each independent country varies in strength, the strong can assist the weak through difficult times. However when one organisation dominates most countries every crisis is global. In every crisis it’s the poor who pay the price. This is no exception. The price is not those who are dying now (the numbers dying are questionble) it’s those who will die this winter because of the measures taken to overcome what is essentially a particularly bad Corona virus.
What we need to bear in mind is the only disease in humans that we’ve ever eradicated is smallpox. We’ve eliminated polio from many areas of the world and the only cases that are around are vaccine-related cases. A vaccine may never be found for this Corona virus (Sars-Cov 2) but what will be put in place is tagging and tracing of all people and routine compulsory vaccination of all people. A blueprint of the type of global society we will end up with is already up and running in China. Is this what we really want?
Don’t vote – it just encourages the buggers.
Insanity Is Doing the Same Thing Over and Over Again and Expecting Different Results
Well, I maintain that Sanity is doing the same thing over and over expecting different results.
“Houston, we have a problem.”
Aaaaaarrrrrrggggghhhhhh
A. Descartes was pleased to say, “I think, therefore I am.”
B. Nationalist philosophers of the last 100 years, or so, are proud to maintain, “We brag, therefore I am.”
C. Echkart Tolle took a 3rd way, “I breathe, therefore I am.’
I choose C.
I breathe, therefore I am. True. George Floyd couldn’t breath, and therefore is no longer.
Re: Why now?
Qanon has been addressing this question for several weeks, but the following is a post which links to a recent tweet by Nancy Pelosi.
—
https://qmap.pub/read/4328
4328:
It’s All about the Election; The Virus Is Just the Ruse to Push for Fraudulent Vote-by-Mail
Q – 27 May 2020 – 4:52:06 PM
https://twitter.com/SpeakerPelosi/status/1265633731068518407
Was this ever about the health and well-being of people?
Was this ever about the virus?
Or, was this ALWAYS ABOUT THE ELECTION?
Q
—
BTW:
Q = Michael Flynn and associated team of military intelligence
Q+ = Trump
The Storm = an existential war between the Trump deep state and the CIA deep state.
Everything else is merely theatre and sideshow.
Interesting speculation, much evidence to support this is all a pea and thimble to forge election results.
Or three card monte. Con artists. Swindlers.
Trillions have been looted through manufactured crises since 9/11/2001. It did not start that day. Endemic corruption.
Michael Flynn’s 4th of July message:
https://off-guardian.org/2020/07/06/notorious-fourth-independence-day-in-the-land-of-the-captive-the-home-of-the-cowed/#comment-200854
Alternative sites:
https://qalerts.app/
https://qanon.pub/
Mail in voting would be an unmitigated disaster to a democracy or republic. This is different from absentee or even provisional ballots which are verified and are not really counted unless there is a discrepancy at the actual polls.
Even the polls aren’t safe here in the “Land of the Free Fire Zone” since some states don’t even verify if the person voting is who they say they are or even eligible to vote in a Federal Election.
Here in Kalifornication we not only vote at the polls but by mail as well and according to Judicial Watch in the last Presidential election we had over 145% of eligible voters “voting”. Some of us figured it must have been the Forrest Lawn vote and that the dead and undead alike overwhelmingly supported Hillary.
Regarding twitter. Jackass Dorsey once made the derisible comment that twitter was the “free speech wing of the free speech party” who has since been proven to be a hypocritical lying sack of shit and nothing but a tweet burning Nazi who would have made Goebbels proud.
“Free speech wing of the free speech party”? Yeah right and Porky got his pilot’s license.
Absentee voting is by mail.
Wait for voting via smartphone app.
Stop the press! “Transmission of the virus is far lower outdoors so we can confidently allow more interaction outside,” says Boris Johnson. When did that happen? Has “da science” known this from the start?
UK Column’s out! In his latest address to a supine nation, Boris Johnson’s hair is out of focus, the camera predictably fixing on the chevrons around the Stay Alert logo. What he said.. outside is safer. But you can’t go there just yet. It’s “da science”.
Banks resist extending mortgage holiday, insist on means testing, keeps their staff busy — Lockdown still needed to keep the NHS empty and underemployed — Thankfully they’ll all be able to watch Premier League as footballers play in a 2 meter no-contact zone.
Excess mortality is 50% due to the lockdown not Covid and that’s the government numbers — SAGE continues to obsess about testing capacity even as infection rate falls — Second Peak Covid Theory is still being pushed without evidence.
Chinese tracking system is being copied. If your phone pops up a warning that you met an infected person, you have to go into quarantine immediately. Even though Covid risk is non-existent for the vast majority.
They don’t need evidence to push anything. They just have to say it and it becomes the truth. 1. There are weapons of mass destruction that will kill us in 45 minutes 2. Babies were ripped from incubators, boo, hoo, hoo, hoo (daddy ambassador looks on impassively) 3. This dicator is killing his own people with barrel bombs, we must save them! 4. This dictator’s army went berserk on Viagra and raped and genocided their own people, we must save them! . . . and so on and so on . . .
As I was posting a comment on Moneycircus post of “Hacking Democracy” that was very pertinent, this happened:
~~~~~~£4£&$4$
Fascinating -in one sense, colossally boring, in another!- I had just finished posting one of the more relevant things I’ve ever written, in the last 20 years- ending it with a telling encounter I had with Neal Kelly, the ROV in The OC here (Orange County, just south of L.A.) since 2004, the comment started out short but became increasingly relevant and useful- when the WHOLE box dropped down, and vanished, not to be found. Just before I was going to finish edit and post.
“They’d” seen enough!
That used to be fairly frequent occurrence, in my heyday on these issues 12 years ago, but the Feds haven’t hacked me like that recently.
Whole thing, snip, snip, instantly vanished in a hithero unseen way, and was gone for good.
Sometimes it hides for a few minutes, til you regroup, but I can attest that this was hacked for sure. Haven’t seen that kind of tweak in years, but familiar enough…. and the evidence was instantly clear.
A barometer of relevance!
It’s amazing, but they really let you know when you’re getting too touchy about their “touchy-feeliness” such as the Oregon system, which was the first here in the U.S. in the early 2000s to really tout the wonders of vote-by-mail. A big favorite of those up there living in what Joe Bageant called “ideological cupcake world” where all we need is “the right man in office” to save the day!
Suckers.
I’m starting to reprogram myself to start all comments in email, and anything there will not be inhaled by the Deep State but saved at least into drafts. I still forget, when intended short comments start slowly to expand. The trick is to catch yourself, as the bloom begins to blossom, and copy it first off-thread. Memo to myself.
No worries, just their crimes and their timing teaches me enough, even worth the price of the “fine”, and points the way.
“It’s all good in the ‘Hood!”
Fascinating the Fascism. LOL
I also write straight into Off-G but try to remember to copy paste into Notepad or Text Edit because it does happen. Especially when I notice the typing is very laggy and it doesn’t improve with a restart. Rather than keyloggers I think there is a ‘man in the middle’ that scoops up data entry in real time. Or it’s just the bloody browser )
Any relatively effective American citizen is going to become gradually aware of someone “breathing down your neck”.
Now, they do it from the inside!
With or without the tinfoil hat. LOL
Back in 1989-1990 I became involved in the Nicaraguan solidarity movement while living in a remote rural home in Michigan’s upper peninsula. Immediately upon engaging in some organizing and community outreach there were “clicks” and other odd sounds whenever I was on the phone, our mail came to us quite obviously having already been opened, and an interesting couple of “peace activists” who were “formerly” in the military appeared.
This “peace activist” couple asked if we could make a trip across the span of the U.P. (a solid 5 hour drive) to give one of our community slide-talk presentations critiquing the U.S. counter-insurgency Contra-war against Nicaragua. Since we were doing such community talks whenever and where ever we were invited, we agreed in spite of our gut-level suspicions about this couple. The only person who showed up for our slide-lecture talk five hours from home was one of the two organizers, who interestingly and inexplicably had apparently done zero in the way of local publicity for the talk.
The next step was a phone call from said “organizer” when we returned home, in which he explained that he thought “violence” was the only way we’d ever change U.S. foreign policy. I only wish he could have seen me trying to suppress a smile as I explained to him quite clearly that the only people I’d could ever imagine who would actually say such a thing aloud over the phone were clearly under-cover agent provocateurs for the government – duh. I never heard from him or his “activist” mate again needless to say.
Sadly such “provocateur” behavior continues to be standard operating procedure here in “the land of the free” – where quite literally any and all social justice & anti-war organizing is considered “subversive” activity.
It took a long time, but I eventually realised that pretty much all voting is rigged, and that almost none of our system is left to chance. As a kid, I was already cynical, but bought into what seemd to be the more ‘harmless’ constructs of our society. This was down to the insideous brainwashing of the entertainment side of mainstream media.
Puppets, like Trump and the last Bush (not his daddy), are *clueless* idiots- so what they say is naive and pretty much without inside information.
If I were Trump, I’d assume the system would use its rigged nature to operate against me too. But while postal votes are certainly rigged, Trump is getting a second term if their is a ‘normal’ presidential vote. As an ‘ordinary’ war time prez, he is now completely reprogrammed and good to go.
*But* these are not normal times. We now live in Hellworld. The SARS2 false flag is reactivated bigtime just as soon as the Summer is over. And wave 2 of SARS2 is *not* stage 2 of the horrific plan. Something truly massive is coming- is almost here. Just as the SARS2 changed all the rules for the sheeple, this massive event will end ‘ordinary’ politics.
The long planned massive french, british and american strikes on Iran (using the new class of ‘small’ nuclear warheads) isn’t now big enough for them. This should still happen, but only to lead into the much bigger event planned. Some think this is going to be massive ‘pre-emptive’ nuclear strikes all across China. It is going to be something on this scale- but I now think it is going to be an event no-one is predicting- something out of left-field for maximum effect.
Rigged postal votes might have been worth talking about 5 years ago. Now they seem like the most trivial insignificance. As I said *if* a ‘normal’ election happens, Biden is selected to hard fail. A common pattern in the USA with second term elections, where the opposition is magically hopeless to ensure the incumbent wins.
In Hellworld, the opinion of the sheeple is whatever the mass media says it is, and anyone who disagrees is a tinfoil hate wearing incel conspiracy theory believing alt-right anti-semite, etc, etc.
It would be good to see an article about the suppression of unions, and the resulting impoverishment of the working population in the US & UK, or the importance of our democracy and how to protect it’s institutions. But not in your remit is it, because you are especially alt-right and anti-democracy.
Please, enough with the labels. Besides misreading/misconstruing the situation here, they are the slavemaster’s terms, which try to prevent the slaves from organizing.
https://pixabay.com/vectors/organization-teamwork-fish-organize-152809/
So there are people who proudly call themselves the alt-right and they talk about the same things.
Labels are tiresome and shallow I’ll give you that but they’re convenient when faced with an obviously biased media outlet like this one.
If it walks like a duck… well you know how the saying goes.
By the way the moderators here are censoring my other email account LOL. So much for free speech!
If it is “a boxing match” Jimmi wants he may wish to consider a gym. Oh wait, they are all closed, courtesy of the corporate fascist oligarchical MASK NAZIS and HAZMAT SUIT FOLK.
Sorry Jimmi there will be no bout today, at least from me. You know Jimmi it is difficult to organize when one is locked in a room, wearing a mask and one can be no closer than six feet to the nearest person.
No one forces Jimmi to come to this site. Also Jimmi, Off-Guardian is not shutting down because Jimmi does not like it. Have a nice day, Jimmi.
PS Don’t buy into the corporate fascist “Propaganda Fear Porn Pandemic Big Lie.” Take off that mask and go outside. Sunshine and fresh air will do one a world of good.
https://www.globalresearch.ca/us-2020-wealth-transfer-heist/5714438
”Please, enough with the labels”
pathetic.
You’re talking about symptoms, the people here by and large know enough not to give aspirin to a cancer patient, as it’s visibly too late for that. A waste of time. Even Trolls know basic things like that!
Re: It would be good to see an article about the suppression of unions, and the resulting impoverishment of the working population in the US & UK, or the importance of our democracy and how to protect it’s institutions.
I would have upvoted if you had left it at that. However, I downvoted after the “but” statement tagged on the end.
Bingo!
Regarding the “suppression of unions” I’ll add the following. The greater problem originates with the hijacking of unions for the purpose of political agendas. This reached a peak in the 1970s and was instrumental in the subsequent reactionary rise of Thatcherite neoliberalism.
A similar situation is happening now in that unions and other social institutions have been hijacked by wokeness and globalism. Much of the organised “alt-right” is also controlled, but the popular sentiment which it exploits is largely a reaction to the absurdities pushed by the left.
In summary, I agree with your general point in that the area does require considered and lengthy discussion.
You can get all that at the WSWS
I used to be a regular reader of WSWS. But a few months ago, before the covid bollocks, it started publishing pro-vaccine articles which were effectively propaganda statements for big pharma.
Trotsky all of a sudden became Karl Brandt. Go figure.
The sad thing about it all is that the false narrative of the corporate fascists shows them out to be, unequivocally, the monsters and threat to humanity which they are. All other evils are able to be acted upon from that initial BIG LIE.
There is something quite amiss with SEP
It’s quite sad really:
British Trotskyists issue call for working class action against pandemic
Statement of the Socialist Equality Party (UK)
27 May 2020
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/05/27/ukbu-m27.html
There are two comments and a grand total of seven upvotes. Maybe the revolution will have to wait a bit longer.
They do not have many members, in Britain or elsewhere. They are something of an Internet phenomenon but you need warm bodies, not megabytes, to make a revolution. I wonder if their peculiar response to the virus is partly because they live on the Web so much – lockdowns don’t affect you so much if your political and social lives are mostly about palely loitering in front of a screen and a keyboard, indoors of course. At least if you have enough food stocked up, the sheer f”””ing fascism of lockdowns will just pass you by, even if you damn the police in the abstract, as WSWS does.
I often read it but missed the Big Pharma stuff. A strange bunch.
Samoa was used in December 2019 as a test run for forced vaccination; and WSWS when full fascist:
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2019/12/03/samo-d03.html
—
This is an alternative perspective at Sherri Tenpenny’s site:
https://vaxxter.com/crisis-in-samoa-interview-with-an-aussie-activist/
When Cyril Smith was MP for Rochdale, he used to collect hundreds of postal ballots from a handful of local Asian clan chieftains.
He took them home and burnt any that had voted against him in his fireplace.
Electronic voting machines are controlled by Israel.
You can’t beat a pencil and a piece of paper.
Millions of illegal immigrants voted in the 2016 US election. The number of illegal immigrants in the US probably exceeds 40 million by a wide margin. The Democrats cant win enough support from Americans so they state quite openly they want to import a new electorate.
Ah, Rochdale! Now there’s a frickin, walking talking phenomenon. Home of fraud. Which way would you like it, sir? http://www.rochdale.gov.uk/council-tax-benefits-and-money/housing-ben-and-local-ct-support/fraud
Actually a rubber (eraser) can beat a pencil and a piece of paper.
Make sure you take your own pen and don’t use their pencil.
The pencil in British elections seems to be darker than HB and it is hard to erase so it looks like there was nothing there before, but it is worth remembering that many countries use pens for voting, not pencils.
Millions of illegal immigrants in america wow remissness about how american came to be.
whilst american immgarets to every part of the world in it regime change piolciy using white black mexcio whoe evr to fight it nonsense wars.
Stockholm syndrome
immigration poor welfare and disabled fear of crime is used by the parasites elites on it masses usually the dumb down comsted votters who think they slightly educated that there vote counts bad memory from food or just hypnotized or both
i recall u.k when paddys where all IRA and Irish lads where set up by white old bill
welsh where called taffy and stole the white English mans jobs we was told and sold they tried it was lies.
paki
no blacks no irish
i recal;l Glastonbury had no hippies allowed signs in window now it welcomes all fairy crystal gazer types ching ching
My friends at the time recalls immgrating to Germany to work 100.000 of english back in 70/80/90 built Germany being paid top bangers
even made a tv series about it Paul
i recall vegetarians being called animal libs having special branch trying to recreate young venerable people and they did anti establishment types being called swampy a socialst dirty hippie for smoking puff.
what i recall the most is the memory and not to be hypnotized by the dazzle bazzle of bullshit spun by the latest so called idiot on the scene
there was 100’s of TR all of them smelt of special branch and WAS we called them out!
they still do the same tactic now
worse now they want to be politicians
Burning ballots is almost benevolent compared to his other transgressions.
Smith’s electoral support depended heavily on tactical voting by Conservatives, and Smith catered to that by projecting a more right-wing image than most Liberals. This, plus Smith’s populist larger-than-life Mr Rochdale persona, was more important than anything he did to postal ballots. Since posthumous revelations about Smith, the Lib Dem vote has collapsed and Rochdale is a safe-ish Labour seat.
And a kiddie-fiddler as well!
Elections in the US have been rigged for a very long time. Some have claimed from the very beginning.
In the early US in many areas only “white” men with property could vote. Taking into account Jim Crow it took until the 1960’s for full enfranchisement of “non-whites” and women to have the vote. Recent arrivals (immigrants) and prisoners and those convicted of a crime still do not have the vote, even though in principle they probably need it the most.
Besides the issues of voter fraud, miscounts and the “graveyard vote”, there also are the issues of voter registration, money in politics, political advertising, patronage and term limits (which I think is a good idea).
Some make it sound like universal mail in voting or online voting are steps in the right direction to a “greater democracy.” But I think they basically are the beginning of the death knell of the electoral process. But seeing that the political process in the US is a sham anyway, is this any great loss?
One is reminded of a quote from Emma Goldman, “If voting changed anything, they’d make it illegal.”
That is not even taking into account Malcolm X’s 1964 “The Ballot or the Bullet” speech.
I think what is going to be happening in the next few years is going to be revolutionary. Let us hope the results will be good ones.
https://www.deviantart.com/redamerican1945/art/Eugene-V-Debs-Republican-Democratic-Party-674343047
Postal voting appeals to lazy slobs who always chose the “easy way”- because to them voting (the democratic process) is inconvenient and hard work – excusing their lethargy with a variety of lame excuses. Make voting compulsory and restrict postal voting to those unfortunate people incapable of crawling to the voting booths.
That makes perfect sense. The residents’ vote counts. That’s not, however, what they have in store for us. Inevitably it will be remote voting. The issue is whether we insist on something that is hard for them to fiddle or a cinch.
This is garbage engendered by lazy-thinking.
People vote by post for a variety of reasons and you have no right to assume they are invalid reasons. Many old people vote by post simply because they are not mobile enough to walk to the polling station, which isn’t necessarily near, they don’t or can’t drive, and can’t necessarily rely on getting lifts on the day.
And your use of the word “crawling” is deliberately insulting – insulting to many older people who have worked harder in their long lives than probably you ever have, ever will, or ever could.
I imagine you will get old one day, and perhaps then you will become immobile, and not able to walk long distances. I hope these ignorant, ill-thought-out, ill-considered words of yours then come back to haunt you.
I remember one Conservative politician in an election night interview commenting on old people gamely soldiering their way to polling stations with the help of Zimmer frames. But postal voting should make such heroic efforts unnecessary and there are legitimate uses for postal voting.
Well Mike I am 75 years old and never missed a days work … but perhaps I am guilty of judging other people by my own standards (which would include crawling to the polling station if in the highly unlikely event of being unable to find a lift. Postal voting can easily be abused by criminals, fat people and other unproductive members of society who can´t be arsed.
On the subject of loss of “mobility”… We should all take greater responsibility for our health and it is important that as people grow older they continue exercising (walking). This prevents them getting fat and placing even more strain on our NHS via contributory negligence of alcohol, sugar, nicotine, et cetera addiction.
Love Maria (age 75)
Maria’s ideal human being. And he’s physically fit…
Thanks for taking the trouble to post the video clip … no doubt you mean well, but I am at a loss to understand its relevance to this thread … Don´t explain.
I’ve never bought into twitting although I’ve often been called one. I’ve never seen the point of going public on of the cuff matters.
Social shaming like social engineering has never been a thing for me, but I understand the implications.
What really makes me mad is the belief that the state knows best and therefor I need nannying.
Now I’ll come on to Cummings who lied to the British public and those who thought he offered a way out for them. Except he didn’t.
So take back control meant what exactly? The deep state and their black arts being released? Well it certainly looks like it.
I was never a remainer I’ve always been against the control of individual freedoms by bureaucratic and unaccountable technocrats. But hey why then has not Cummings [who is a technocrat] resigned and more over why has Johnson [taking back control] not sacked him? If any vote was meaningful why are we being led into this totalitarian state by the people who promised freedom and “taking back control”?
We have been lied to and, shafted hook line and sinker. Forget the Brexit sham the British people were squarely lied to by the people who now have them under house arrest.
Time to take back control…time to blow out the spineless parasites who see a way to further enrich themselves at your expense.
The New Normal? No – the new MADNESS. this is how you can drink in pubs in u.k nice advertisement for whats to come (hope not)
Expletives aside … most sane people would agree with you 100%
Trouble is we are being controlled by a group of INSANE people determined to restrict and regulate our lives for their own ends. The whole thing is a hoax, but these people realize that a public which can be conned into worshiping Nelson Mandela, salivating over the death of a neurotic princess and swallowing the 9/11 bull shxt … can be sold anything!
Our countries are more far right, in the west, then they have ever been in our history and you point to the left as the problem? really
Overwhelmed with holiday pay, workers rights and the power of our unions are you? is that what has crippled the country ? I don’t think so.
In Britain the Conservatives have traditionally been seen as better at organising the postal vote, so their elderly supporters who have trouble going to the polling station are still able to vote. Sometimes it has been enough to affect the result in marginals.
Awfully sorry Dolly but … I fail to see how the content of your post relates to mine which made no reference to either the “left” or the “right” – or the other matters you raise.
I am aware that some people use the label “right” to catalog opinions which do not kowtow to their own “left” opinion. I prefer to judge all opinions on merit, regardless of of their position in the political spectrum. This is sometimes described as being “broad minded” – which I am sure you are!
Love Maria
Endless theories about who ,what, why , where and when. Finger pointing and misinformation everywhere
Only those who are fully aware of the total agenda know the beginning , middle and end to all of this.
Leave off with Nelson Mandela. He went through more than most of us could have, even though ANC has turned out to be a large disappointment from what it could have been. Besides it makes you sound like some hooded Klansperson. You are not that are you? I hope not.
Mandela sold out, Big Time. South Africans were better off under apartheid than under neo-liberal capitalism. And don’t get me onto Tutu.
Formerly one of the richest countries in the southern hemisphere rapidly becoming the poorest … and the most violent. I have a good friend who served in the S.A. Army both before and after apartheid was dismantled. He does give some credit to Mandela for helping prevent a black/white blood bath – but he remains cynical about the aura of sainthood built around him.
But it is never fashionable to question a Saint!
People start throwing things!
What leads you to believe that apartheid was not neo-liberal capitalism. “Satan takes many shapes and has many guises.”
Have read many books about Nelson Mandella including his book – “The Long Walk to Freedom” and FW de Klerk´s – “The Last Trek” and I am far from convinced that he deserves his popular image. As de Klerk writes. “apartheid would have been discarded at least two years earlier if not for Mandella´s involvement with (and manipulation by) the S.A. Communist Party.”
In my opinion Mandela (not an entirely pleasant man) was manufactured and I prefer my heroes to come without a marketing programme devised and promoted for political, social and financial interests – that he happens to be black is entirely unconnected and has no relevance to my post.
Incidentally Mandela and de Klerk were JOINTLY awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for their part in dismantling apartheid… but then nobody promoted de Klerk!
Happily this is a free country and we can still chose (or reject) our heroes.
Was seeking clarification and you gave it. Thank you.
Aware of what he was. The reason I asked was did want it to appear that Off-Guardian was a branch of the KKK. Which it isn’t, far from it.
Yes, people have feet of clay. In many cases some have even more than clay feet. The public perception of an individual differs widely from their private persona. Yet Mandela, warts and all, was far from the worst. The key thing was the end of the evil that was Apartheid. Just as the key thing was the end of the evil that was Jim Crow. Just as the key thing is/will be the end of the evil that is Zionism.
The Nobel Peace Prize is bollocks. War criminal “useless eater” Kissinger is a case in point.
PS. Do not have any personal heros. But do see some people as having admiral traits. Fighting for a just and noble cause, one can do far worse than that… and many do.
Oh hullo Breitbart fancy meeting you here!
The Republicans with their gerrymandering and voter suppression tactics know that the easier it is to vote the harder it will be for them to remain in power.
Now I’m no Democrat but that’s the truth. Most working class people need to work. Many don’t have access to polling stations. They can’t get off work because they’re living on a shoestring. It’s not hard to understand this, but muh global conspiracy.
There are over a dozen links in this article all pointing to the fact that postal ballots are easier to rig than other forms of voting.
Are you claiming these facts should not be stated because they dovetail with something Trump said?
Suppose Barack Obama or Clinton were to say the same thing and cite the sources – would it be true then and worth reporting?
Are you happy being this much of a Left/Right besotted idiot?
Because there is no extensive coverage of voting machine fixing it does not mean it isn’t happening, or that it isn’r widespread, perhaps the MSM don’t want to cover machine rigging for obvious reasons. do we always need to wait for the FT to cover a story before it becomes real?
If the point of the article was that voting machines are great you would be saying something relevant.
By the way, you are posting under
twothree different names. We don’t encourage that. Please pick one and stick with it.I thought they were all Jack/Jim’s aliases 🙂
Ha ha ha ha, a man of many parts. Pity, though, I used to like his presence but then he went postal.
The same different person can vote on this site 20 times?
When this place is invaded with trolls from either side of politics they will make a lot of your members look bad using the same name. Someone supports Trump and they will copy that users name and post far right or nazi propaganda for example to mess this good place up. You really need to look at this.
The little money I did contribute I did so people could share ideas and not be trolled with the same username as oneself?
Voting is limited by email and IP address.
You misunderstand. Your story is about fraud The gist of my reply is how trolls can come here, use the same name as someone 20 times and be a fraud.
What makes you think I support Obama or Clinton? They’re just as bad as Trump! At least with Trump you get what you see.
But the fact remains that I don’t respect what you have to say because you’re either blinded by your hatred for The Guardian and their associates or have sold out to whoever’s pulling your strings.
Truly, despots and criminals hate those who can’t be swayed by appealing to our base emotions and fears. I’m not immune, but I can see through the bias, and the gaslighting doesn’t help. But you do you.
Putin wakes up in the morning, looks out the window and says: “the sky is blue.” I wake up in the morning, look out the window and observe: “the sky is blue.”
Presto-changeo! In miraculous and completely logic-free fashion, I – and anyone else so daring as to observe that “the sky is blue” – has now been transformed into another dreaded “Putin Puppet.”
It is amazing how literal stupidity, and a complete lack of critical thinking skills, have been effectively “weaponized” by our governments and MSM in order to push their propaganda lines.
Or just plain lazy and cannot be bothered to participate in the democratic proceeds.
Offering to spoon feed these people would not be good enough for them!
Absolutely nothing to do with real “working class”people who are far more likely to go out and vote – come rain or shine!
It’s lazy to assume all of these people are just lazy or don’t care when polling stations are designed to be open during peak hours.
They can’t get off work to stand in line for hours to vote. These little details might not matter to you but they do for others. Not that you care to do a little digging for yourself!
Fortunately I live in a country where voting at a “polling station” is made easy and painless … and elections are ALWAYS held on a Sunday (fewer people working) and organised in such a way that there is rarely any queuing – straight in and out.
Many people take polling day as an opportunity to socialist (with people of all political persuasions) encouraging voters to take part in the “democratic system” in an almost carnival atmosphere with no animosity . It saddens me to learn that in some countries the democratic system is becoming corrupted by vote rigging and even the threat of violence. Skulking at home relying on postal voting would not occur to us – going out to vote is fun for everyone!
Political party activists sometimes apply for postal votes so that on polling day they do not have to take time off to go and vote personally. They can concentrate on getting other people to the polling station, “knocking up” etc. I certainly remember this being the case in the 1990s. I don’t know if this is a British election practice more recently.
Yes, I’m pretty sure that happens. That’s one example of many possible valid reasons to vote by post. Everyone should have the right to do so, if they wish.
I don’t deny that there is a possibility that postal voting is more easily rigged than in-person voting, but then it’s up to the people who design and organise the system to put in place measures to make this less likely. Surely it should not be beyond the wit of man to devise such safeguards?
Well some jurisdictions, like mine in California, have been mail-in only with some exceptions for years. This is more convenient for the voters, but actually makes counting ballots more cumbersome and time consuming as officials, to their credit, check each ballot against registration records comparing the signatures.
If Jimmi believes that by generating useless chatter Jimmi is going to up their pay grade, Jimmi is in for a shock. Take a hike creep.
Trump takes his orders from the MEGA crowd not MAGA
Very, very, very true.
Twitter and the other cos. should be nationalized and then sold off in parts. They’ve hijacked the commons.
It is fascinating to read this comments thread. No matter how “fairly” or “unfairly” our ballots are tabulated in America’s next election – the following remains true.
Our “choice” for the face of our uber-corrupt crumbling empire of idiocy is between – (A): ‘a pathologically dishonest, amoral, malignant narcissist, sexual predator’ and (B): ‘a pathologically dishonest, amoral, demented, sexual predator’ – both of whom of course support “American exceptionalism” – (read “America’s completely illegal and immoral flouting of all international law and our own treaty obligations).
So golly, I just can’t wait to see who “wins” – and of course I sure do hope the votes are tabulated “fairly.”
All your pointless insults aside …. The “choice” is between a person who has improved the lives of millions of Americans – or a person who is quite clearly incapable of doing so.
Personalities are irrelevant – it´s results which count!
Nothing new about this . Landslide Lyndon Johnson and his machinations in Texas come to mind . Not to dwell on JFKs alliance with the mafia and mayor Daily in Chicago all those years ago ? The US election process was created unequal and has only gotten less so as time has passed. Both Nixon and Reagan made treasonous deals with our enemies to ensure their elections and were never prosecuted.The Clintons took bags of money from the Chinese for business favors ,and Obomber immunized and rehired most of the criminals who gave us the disastrous Afghan/Iraqi war against the will of the voters. Bush 2 himself was never actually elected but gamed the process , first in Fla. and then in Ohio.
That´s “democracy” for you … or rather that´s the intelligence of the people who are handed “democracy” as a form of government and then proceed to vote for a bunch of crooks and clowns.
Why don’ you drop the “retired” bit…you are clearly not an independent thinker and clearly on the payroll given your support for an utterly corrupt and failed system
I am 75 years old and retired last year! And after 55 years of constant work I have no plans to return.. You (and anyone else) is incapable of ascertaining a persons independence of thought … Actions yes. Thought no. Most systems of government could be labelled “corrupt and failed” including democracy. This may be explained by reason that they are often conducted by “corrupt and failed” people.
I believe that democracy is a freedom which us humans continually exploit.
My feeling exactly: why would anyone proceed to vote at all if all of the candidates are crooks and clowns?
(For a minute, there, I thought you were suggesting that the people actually had a choice between, on the hand, crooks and clowns, and, on the other hand, honest and talented individuals. “Democracy,” eh?)
Share Guardian articles without giving them clicks or advertising. Just insert the word ‘dump’ before ‘theguardian’ like this:
https://www.dumptheguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/may/29/britain-shame-coronavirus-deaths-economic-collapse
Yes, it’s a sign of the times. I have found that over the past two months my political leanings have moved to the right a little.
I too agree with Trump on this and having been further censored by twitter over comments he made during the rioting/protests in Minneapolis he has now signed an executive order to prevent them from censoring content. Some think it could signal the end for twitter. We will see, but any prevention of online censorship is a good thing in my book.
I now feel that it’s no longer a battle between Left and Right, but between Liberty and Conformity. And I’m very much in the libertarian camp these days. I think I’ve always have a rebellious streak, but in a “free” country that’s not always obvious.
Today in the supermarket I was again intimidated by ghouls wearing masks. I find it very disturbing, not least because it is so unnecessary. Even one of the people on tills was wearing one, though the checkout assistant on my lane was very understanding while I had my say about masks, the low risks and the scandalous neglect of cancer patients such as my father.
My main obsession these days seems to be with freedom of speech and I say that despite the fact that some liberal opinion – especially virtue signalling and identity politicking – I find very hard to stomach. And one or two people on here I find annoying at times, but their right to free expression trumps my distaste for their views.
And I’m sure there are one or two who dislike what I say from time to time. I can deal with that. I hope sometimes I make a valuable contribution to the debate on here, but I don’t pretend to make sense all of the time!
The only thing I can see that the Left got wrong is believing that covid-19 is like the influenza of 1918. Of course identity politics is not a Left issue, since the Left covers all identities under the umbrella of the worker. So where did you move to the right, John Pretty?
show me a executive order that benefited the people…
this whole show is theater the the less informed and the endorsement for the hypnotized
Perhaps. You may be right.
U.S Presidents don’t care a hoot for the people. People are just dollars and votes. What’s really hard to believe, ame, is that the people both know this and forget(?) this every election my entire life. It’s bizarre.
Stockholm Syndrome, I guess
It’s more in terms of whose views I am receptive to. I don’t have a twitter account, but I read some pages. I no longer read George Galloway or Caitlin Johnstone, but instead read James Delingpole and Toby Young.
I don’t identify as “left” or “right” and don’t belong to any political party. So it’s just a general comment really.
Okay, John:) Galloway and Johnstone, I know. But I never heard of the other two.
The other two were, in the antediluvian past, what we’d call right-wing nutters to be avoided at all costs. They are now fighters for human liberty. Funny old world.
Really? Now I am going to look them up.
Well it was a mistake (not only theirs) to take at face value what they knew, thought they knew, or had read about the “influenza” of 1918.
It was such bad judgement that I believe the Left will be looked at as untrustworthy to the worker for decades to come, Mike.
I disagree with your stuff on Craig Murray, which I find to be offensive and personal, rather than ideological. But I tend to agree with most of the other stuff you post John.
Its interesting how in the I think official human rights charter or something after the war (1948?), democracy has been reduced to be equivalent to universal suffrage…
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EZDAjF1U8AAzNDR?format=jpg&name=medium
I commend this documentary, Hacking Democracy (2006). It is an excellent overview of the real-world opportunities for electoral fraud.
Remember that the far right like to discredit our democracy, without voting what do we have? nothing.
There are ways to improve voting and expand democracy massively. Why do we stay in the past?. The block chain revolution offers new levels of security that, combined with the Internet, makes real-time voting possible.
There are loads of public-spirited individuals who have already created ways to vote, at many levels, from parish or county to district or state up to federal… all directly instructing our servants or feeding them our preferences in real time.
First Past The Post is totally obsolete. Even the Alternative Vote system is surpassed nowadays. No.. I disagree. It’s not a matter of “without voting what do we have? nothing”. We have the opportunity for much more. We are being kept in the dark. The fact that we are discussing fraud should spur us to leap to the next technology. Instead, we’re looking for new ways to tie our shoelaces.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Best_Democracy_Money_Can_Buy
Could you just agree, without inoculating yourself with a half dozen ‘Trash Trump’ paragraphs?
You people are moving as far to the right as your feet can take you. Stunning.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/27/app-politics-section/donald-trump-mail-in-voter-fraud-fact-check/index.html
Louis you’re quoting CNN which has an agenda. The article isn’t pro-Trump. Yes, there are a lot of right-wingers/anti-vaxers on this site since the covid-19 outbreak but…..no one has been more right wing than yourself in your unquestioning support of Sunni headchoppers, terrorist mercenaries and the Turkish Sultan.
So Louis perhaps you would care to enlighten us all and explain to us what the proper left-wing position is on postal voting?
“Fact check”. You’re cracking me up, Loo. Where the fuck are Saddam’s WMD that he was going to deploy and reduce Western capitals to rubble in the space of 45 minutes?
Also, why are you hanging around like an maladorous pustule? I thought you’d said you were never coming back. So that was a lie too?
I see you fancy yourself as the sites thug and bully boy, why don’t you get lost.
Whatever.
Just look at their sources, all american alt-right, this is just an arm of the GCHQ surveillance operation. If you are lucky enough to read an angry moderator comment, you’ll see they are uneducated bigoted thugs, with the air of failed police about them. It’s a honey pot run by the alt right, which means US deep state agencies.
Hi “dolly”, who has never posted here before.
The links on this article include Wikipedia, the Independent, the NYT and the Nation. Can you tell us when these became “alt right” as I had no idea this had happened.
As to Sam and me being ‘uneducated bigoted thugs’ – I’m a 5’5″ female would-be writer and book nerd, and Sam is a musician/actor. Both Left wing. Neither of us has ever been called a thug in real life, so this is a first.
Reader donations are the site’s only income and that barely covers running costs. And of course our comments are free –
and all so that people like you can pop up and insult us at will.
Isn’t that good to know.
Have a nice day
bigoted thug 1 (aka Sophie Green)
You’re jack(jim)!
Fact checking from the people who brought us the Iraq Incubator Babies, the Iraq WMD, the Iran WMD, Gaddafi’s Viagra Fuelled Black Africans, Skripal, the White Helmets, the Syria Gas Hoaxes, and much else in a similar vein.
Could you believe these people if they said it was snowing at the North Pole?
It’s raining, not snowing, at the North Pole these days.
CNN ‘fact check’. Proyectile has found its niche.
You’re so hilarious Louis. You brighten our lives with your pithiness. May I suggest you do Stand Up Comedy. You’d be a hoot.
Meantime, I’m going back to watching more Jimmy Dore.
Craig Murray has posted a strong take-down of those who ridiculed his observation that Barnard Castle is not simply a beauty spot but also a major GlaxoSmithKline factory. https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2020/05/why-barnard-castle/
The history of this post is illustrative of what Craig calls the “puerile nature of debate on the internet… There appears to be organised pushback stating that this article is only speculation. Of course it is. It states a number of facts not generally known, and wonders if there is a connection.” I recall one post ridiculing him for ‘merely connecting dots’. Another observed that Barnard Castle is “not the corporate HQ and therefore no deal could have been done there”.
Doubtless these included corporate trolls paid to cover the company’s tracks. Militrolls keen to take down Cummings while shooing away the likelihood that the government was indeed in talks with the vaccine maker given that a major deal appeared two days later. Others piling in were the teenage know-it-alls the Internet attracts like flies to a pair of jeans so dirty they stand up on their own. Appealing to authority while basking, like a bully, in the shadow of big brother. And that favourite of mine, the so-called skeptic, who doesn’t have a skeptical bone in his body.
The British State is currently prosecuting Craig for reporting on the Alex Salmond case (and likely as retaliation for his reporting on Julian Assange’s show trial) – in which a gaggle of anonymous Scottish party hacks made sex abuse allegations against a political opponent. Though thrown out of court, the hacks are back, claiming Craig identified them – when there was far more effective identification in the pages of the establishment press. https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2020/05/craig-murray-documents-abuse-of-process-aka-kangaroo-court-via-butchered-indictment.html
What is the relevance of this to the current article?
Operation Mockingbird, Cynthia Chung, OffG April 2020:
“Its function was to have the CIA write reports that would be used by a network of cooperating “credible” reporters. By these “credible” reporters spreading the CIA dictated narrative, it would be parroted by unwitting reporters (mockingbirds) and a successful echo chamber would be created across the world.”
I don’t want to talk about Murray at length. I’ve already stated my feelings about him on other threads, so I will try to keep this brief.
Murray is a political activist who desires the destruction of the United Kingdom. You cannot expect him to present a balanced view on these matters. He seems to have retained some links in the diplomatic service and has made a useful contribution to the debate on Syria and Douma. However, I don’t like him and I don’t trust him.
Murray cleverly and sometimes abusively engages with his readership and seems to have built up something of a cult following. I think Murray and his moderation team make use of the principles utilised by the CIA in Operation Mockingbird to garner publicity for their cause by manipulating and controlling the people who comment on his site and using them to unwittingly give him publicity in the way that the CIA used reporters to unwittingly spread the deep state message.
It is noteable that many of his readers come here, but they are all over the alternative media. like mockingbirds, they give Murray publicity. People don’t like being used, so I would expect people to resist what I’m saying. Disagree if you wish.
Craig Murray I read for what he says, I don’t bother with the comments. With Off-G it’s the comments that are more interesting. Murray has stature, he must be a rallying point for true Scots ‘Leavers’. I had no idea the SNP had been turned. (into non-leavers). Craig’s coverage of the Alex Salmond trial and subsequent Contempt of Court summons brought home how the ballot box is bypassed, not by fraud but by gaining control of the leadership. Like with New Labour and Blair. Craig Murray seems a genuine threat to this. More power to his elbow!
Same in Austfailia. Half the ALP ‘Right’ in the Federal Parliament were identified as ‘protected sources’ of the USA in Wikileaks revelations, then a cabal of the leaders were responsible for overthrowing Rudd in 2010 after he upset the Zionist regime in Occupied Palestine, and the USA, the latter for not getting on-board with the anti-China Crusade just beginning. Rudd was replaced by the hapless Gillard, a devotee of Hillary Clinton, doe-eyed admirer of Obama, and Imperial stooge par excrescence. Leading local Zionist grandees keep ALP heavyweights as pets-Hawke was controlled by Peter Abeles, Shorten by Pratt, several by the Lowys etc.
Hard to forget Rudd blubbing when they told him he couldn’t play any more, hardly the Wild Colonial Boy. Interesting about Hawke et al having their own Baruch, I guess it comes with the Rhodes Scholarship. Sometimes I think these guys actually try and keep Australia out of it, just pay minimum dues. With exceptions, John Howard. Henry Reynolds sort of says that in ‘Unnecessary Wars’. These guys are well read. I’m dual national, very glad to be in wa. Naïve as they come. Thanks Richard.
You left out the crucial word FALSE, in your ‘…Scottish party hacks made (FALSE)sex abuse allegations..’. The knowing fraudulence of the conspirators was established at trial, but these feminazi maenads will face NO repercussions, while Murray is persecuted.
I find the trump executive order to expose social media to legal liability, if they continue to censor content on their platforms, the most interesting news of the day.
Currently social media are not liable if, I or you write something defamatory on their platforms, so have no legal incentive to remove content, but they mark content as false and censor anyway. Trump’s executive order will require any platform that censors to loose it’s neutral status and become liable for the content they are monitoring and censoring. So if you censor, you become liable, but if you don’t censor, you’re not liable for the content.
The narrative says that; Trump has arrived at this point through hatred of social media, who moderate his tweets with ‘fake news’ advisories and not for any love of free speech.
This is another episode which paints the far-right as heroes, they are the lovers of freedom in the covid operation, and lovers of free speech in the twitter operation.
In this alternative universe, American’s live in, they are asked to believe that the mega Corporations who own the media and social media and who are the main beneficiaries of the ‘Trump revolution’ and often act as arms of the security state are the ‘Left-wing’ in this ‘political’ debate, and are stopping free speech due to their dictatorial stalinist rages, which is a plot worthy of the twilight zone and just as precisely scripted.
More importantly it gives the right the freedom to let-rip and rally the mob with more anti-‘left’, racist & xenophobic rhetoric, in the run up to the 2020 election without hinderance.
I don’t know about you but I find there is nothing natural or normal about US politics, it is so scripted, fall of Psyop’s, lies, propaganda and charlatans, it is easy to get lost in the whirl, But just remember the main aim of American politics is to keep the power and the wealth out of the hands of the majority of the population, as it is the aim of American Empire around the world, and in the hands of a small political, economic, military elite in Washington.
We can see here the reason for Trump’s proposals:
“…several online platforms are profiting from and promoting the aggression and disinformation spread by foreign governments like China. One United States company, for example, created a search engine for the Chinese Communist Party that would have blacklisted searches for “human rights,” hid data unfavorable to the Chinese Communist Party, and tracked users determined appropriate for surveillance. It also established research partnerships in China that provide direct benefits to the Chinese military. Other companies have accepted advertisements paid for by the Chinese government that spread false information about China’s mass imprisonment of religious minorities, thereby enabling these abuses of human rights. They have also amplified China’s propaganda abroad, including by allowing Chinese government officials to use their platforms to spread misinformation regarding the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic, and to undermine pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong.”
This is from the full text, as published by FRN. It’s all about China for the Trump regime;)
sharon marlowe
The only people who will agree with that nonsense are the CIA. are you serious?
It is nonsense, and the CIA would agree with it. I never said I supported that propaganda, I was pointing out that the Trump regime’s motive for what he’s proposing is right there.
China is the Western Chosen People’s (take your pick-Jews, Anglo-Saxons, Exceptionalists etc)great nightmare. A civilization, State and system so far superior to the aggressive, genocidal, plutocratic, kakistocratic, dystopian, sewer, that is the neo-liberal and neo-feudal Free World, that it seems ‘ not of this world’. The West CANNOT allow China to rise to economic supremacy, and will do ANYTHING ie launch bio-warfare, lie, subvert, abuse, sanction and, inevitably, attack China to prevent it. And the vicious and thoroughly racist brainwashing of the proles NEVER ceases, not for an instant. Just check out the sheer, vicious, racism of the Comments on the Guardian today, race hatred that seemingly does not broach Guardian ‘Community Standards’.
Yes, and Trump’s breakaway from WHO is all about China as well. He says these things yet people who should know better think he wants to fight for the people against the neoliberals who run Twitter and WHO. It’s ridiculous.
Please define ‘far-right’ and also provide some examples of how this ‘episode’ is painting anyone as heroes.
Throughout Trumps election campaign one of the biggest stumbling blocks was the restrictions that were being imposed on Trump supporters and conservatives in general. By willfully following such a policy these platforms went from mere publishers to editors.
That policy has now reached such proportions that conservative voices are routinely shut on social media. These aren’t the elusive ‘far-right’ but ordinary Trump supporters. You may not agree with them but if the tech giants are going to become the arbiters of what ‘speech’ is acceptable than that should come with responsibilities.
Trump is attempting to address the censoring of conservative voices, which you appear to support under the guise that they are not conservative but are the mythical ‘far-right’.
Trump is attempting to address the censoring of anti-China rhetoric, IANA;)
This is funny since anti-China articles are par for the course on western media outlets and have been for many years!
Pretty soon they’ll get their wish as the populace are chomping at the bit for a war with the evil Chinese
True, the regime wants war with China, and they don’t want social media platforms to get away from that script.
Same old, same old. The people will be told to look at those demonic Asiatics while their own lives have been screwed by the vermin who rule them.
Australia has been full of the most vicious Sinophobes during most of its history-and they’re back, and in charge.
I have NEVER seen an article concerning China in the local MSM that was NOT negative. And for ten years or so they have been increasingly racist and hate-crazed, and crudely mendacious and dishonest. Nazi propaganda against the Jews was nothing on this shite.
Trump is fomenting race hatred against China for political advantage. In a race with Biden, who is doing the same. Democracy.
The Right= hatred of others. The Left=fellow feeling for others.