Tag Archives: elections

Big Tech’s Greatest Threat, by Robert Epstein

Posted on April 4, 2021 | Leave a comment

The big tech companies, particular Google, have far more influence on politics and elections than most people realize. From Robert Epstein at gatestoneinstitute.org:

“They leave no paper trail for authorities to trace. They are the perfect weapon for changing… the outcome of elections”

  • Ephemeral experiences”: You might never have heard this phrase, but it’s a very important concept. These are brief experiences you have online in which content appears briefly and then disappears, leaving no trace. Those are the kinds of experiences we have been preserving in our election monitoring projects. You can’t see the search results that Google was showing you last month. They’re not stored anywhere, so they leave no paper trail for authorities to trace. Ephemeral experiences are, it turns out, quite a powerful tool of manipulation.
  • Are people at companies like Google aware of the power they have? Absolutely…
  • In a national study we conducted in 2013, in one demographic group — moderate Republicans — we got a shift of 80% after just one search, so some people are especially trusting of search results, and Google knows this. The company can easily manipulate undecided voters using techniques like this….
  • We have shown in controlled experiments that biased search suggestions can turn a 50‑50 split among undecided voters into a 90‑10 split, with no one having the slightest idea they have been manipulated.
  • Unfortunately, people mistakenly believe that computer output must be impartial and objective. People especially trust Google to give them accurate results…. They have no idea that they may have been driven to that web page by highly biased search results that favor the candidate Google is supporting.

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Posted in Business, Civil Liberties, Government, Media, Politics, Propaganda

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Mass Federalization: How Washington is Bailing Out Failed States, Decapitating Competitive Ones and Ending America As You Knew It, by Mark Glennon

Posted on March 23, 2021 | 3 comments

Washington is taking from competent states (mostly red) and giving to incompetent ones (mostly blue). From Mark Glennon at wirepoints.org:

An astonishingly sweeping, radical movement to level cities and states is underway, propping up the failures and pounding down those that have been successful. Most everything is being federalized. The role of cities and states as we have known them – as laboratories of democracy – is being eviscerated. It’s being financed by both the United States Treasury and the Federal Reserve bank, which are now joined at the hip in fiscal profligacy.

Much of it is proceeding under the false labels of pandemic relief and fiscal stimulus. It’s happening at such a rapid pace that the paper of record for government overreach, The Washington Post, fears that “the sheer volume of new programs threatens to swamp federal agencies.”

It’s a fundamental and historic remake of America, though its impact hasn’t yet come close to sinking in. Some of the numbers that follow seem beyond belief, but they are real. If claiming that pending legislation will destroy America as you know it seems like exaggeration, read on to see what its supporters say, because it’s their commentary that is most revealing.

The plan to federalize government is already moving and has three parts:

  • Flood every unit of local government with federal cash, irrespective of need, while prohibiting tax cuts, thereby bailing out failing states and cities.
  • Make that flood of federal money made regular and permanent.
  • Annul or override state laws that make certain states competitive, thereby eliminating their competitive advantages, and federalize elections to make it all permanent.

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Posted in Collapse, Cronyism, Economics, Economy, Governments, Politics

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US Intelligence Cartel: All The Governments We Hate Interfered In Our Election, by Caitlin Johnstone

Posted on March 17, 2021 | Leave a comment

If you wanted to write a full-length book about foreign election interference in US elections, you’d start with Israel. From Caitlin Johnstone at caitlinjohnstone.com:

A new report from the US National Intelligence Council assesses that most of the governments the US-centralized empire has targeted for destruction are guilty of seeking to interfere in the nation’s 2020 election.

Ahem.

Yeah, so, that’s the news. According to the US intelligence cartel, the nations which sought to interfere in the outcome of the US election include Russia, Iran, China, Lebanese Hizballah, Cuba, and Venezuela. Interestingly, exactly zero nations aligned geopolitically with the United States are listed as having interfered in its electoral process.

“We assess that Russian President Putin authorized, and a range of Russian government organizations conducted, influence operations aimed at denigrating President Biden’s candidacy and the Democratic Party, supporting former President Trump, undermining public confidence in the electoral process, and exacerbating sociopolitical divisions in the US,” the report informs us. “A key element of Moscow’s strategy this election cycle was its use of proxies linked to Russian intelligence to push influence narratives-including misleading or unsubstantiated allegations against President Biden-to US media organizations, US officials, and prominent US individuals, including some close to former President Trump and his administration.”

“We assess that Iran carried out a multi-pronged covert influence campaign intended to undercut former President Trump’s reelection prospects-though without directly promoting his rivals-undermine public confidence in the electoral process and US institutions, and sow division and exacerbate societal tensions in the US,” the report adds. “We assess that Supreme Leader Khamenei authorized the campaign and Iran’s military and intelligence services implemented it using overt and covert messaging and cyber operations.”

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Posted in Foreign Policy, Geopolitics, Governments, History, Politics

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Afghanistan’s Victory Over the United States, by Jim Bovard

Posted on March 3, 2021 | Leave a comment

Afghanistan’s elections are just as crooked as the US’s. The US has succeeded in making Afghanistan not safe for democracy but for the Taliban. From Jim Bovard at libertarianinstitute.org:

Acrimony and recriminations continue to swirl around the 2020 presidential election. Three out of four Republicans believe that there was “widespread fraud” in the election, while Democrats have sought to turn criticisms of the election into a “Big Lie” heresy against democracy. Senior congressional Democrats are pressuring the nation’s largest cable providers to cease carrying conservative networks such as Fox News that raised too many questions about Biden’s victory.

What could possibly go wrong with sweeping the 2020 election controversies under the rug? Clues can be found in a recent report, “Elections: Lessons from the U.S. Experience in Afghanistan,” produced by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR). That report contains more wisdom than will be found in President Trump’s idiotic tweet in December: “A young military man working in Afghanistan told me that elections in Afghanistan are far more secure and much better run than the USA’s 2020 Election.”

Actually, “Afghan democracy” is one of the most brazen shams of U.S. foreign policy in this century. Since the U.S. invasion in 2001, the federal government has spent more than $600 million to support elections and democratic procedures in Afghanistan (part of the $143 billion the U.S. spent there for relief and reconstruction there). Hamid Karzai, the smooth operator who the Bush administration installed to rule Afghanistan after 9/11, won a rigged 2004 presidential election. President George W. Bush boasted during his reelection campaign, “Afghanistan has now got a constitution which talks about freedom of religion and talks about women’s rights…. Democracy is flourishing.” A few years later, Karzai won support from fundamentalist voters by approving a law entitling a husband to starve his wife to death if she refused his sexual demands.

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Posted in Civil Liberties, Foreign Policy, Geopolitics, Governments, History, Politics, Propaganda

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The U.S. Inability To Count Votes is a National Disgrace. And Dangerous. By Glenn Greenwald

Posted on November 5, 2020 | Leave a comment

There are any number of ways to conduct fair elections. Propose any of them and those that object the loudest are those who want to cheat. It’s no coincidence that it’s been the Democrats who have opposed virtually every measure that would make elections less subject to fraud. From Glenn Greenwald at greenwald.substack.com:

Nations far poorer and less technologically advanced have no problem holding quick, efficient elections. Distrust in U.S. outcomes is dangerous but rational.

The richest and most powerful country on earth — whether due to ineptitude, choice or some combination of both — has no ability to perform the simple task of counting votes in a minimally efficient or confidence-inspiring manner. As a result, the credibility of the voting process is severely impaired, and any residual authority the U.S. claims to “spread” democracy to lucky recipients of its benevolence around the world is close to obliterated.

At 7:30 a.m. ET on Wednesday, the day after the 2020 presidential elections, the results of the presidential race, as well as control of the Senate, are very much in doubt and in chaos. Watched by rest of the world — deeply affected by who rules the still-imperialist superpower — the U.S. struggles and stumbles and staggers to engage in a simple task mastered by countless other less powerful and poorer countries: counting votes. Some states are not expected to finished their vote-counting until the end of this week or beyond.

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Why the World Needs a Google Detox, by Joseph Mercola

Posted on November 18, 2019 | Leave a comment

The strong minds that read SLL have nothing to worry about, but Google is trying to brainwash the weak-minded. From Joseph Mercola at lewrockwell.com:

In this interview, Google whistleblower Zach Vorhies, who worked as a senior software engineer at Google and YouTube for over eight years, shares his inside knowledge of this global monopoly, revealing why Google is not a reliable source of information anymore.

Google’s monopoly over search is matched by a continued reassurance that it is an unbiased search platform.  Google is actively suppressing and censoring information, proving it is anything but unbiased.

While some of the information revealed is related to politics, you can read about my views about the two-party U.S. federal government here.

The point of sharing this information is that Google is manipulating search results to reflect its views, and to influence our social behavior while denying this is happening.

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Forget the Russians: It’s the Federal Reserve Seeking to Meddle in Our Elections, by Ron Paul

Posted on September 3, 2019 | Leave a comment

Since its inception in 1913, the Federal Reserve has been far more of a threat to the safety and wellbeing of Americans than either the Soviet Union or Russia. From Ron Paul at ronpaulinstitute.org:

The US Constitution never granted the federal government authority to create a central bank. The Founders, having lived through hyperinflation themselves, understood that government should never have a printing press at its disposal. But from the very beginning of America’s founding, the desire for a crony central bank was strong.

In fact, two attempts were made at creating a permanent central bank in America prior to the creation of the Fed. Fortunately, the charter for The First Bank was allowed to expire in 1811, and President Andrew Jackson closed down the Second Bank in 1833.

But, unfortunately, a third attempt was successful and the Federal Reserve was unconstitutionally created by Congress in 1913. Americans have been living under a corrupt and immoral monetary system ever since. The Federal Reserve is the printing press that has financed the creation of the largest government to ever exist. Endless welfare and endless military spending are both made possible by the Federal Reserve. The Fed can just print the money for whatever the US establishment wants, so those of us who long for a Constitutional and limited government have few tools at our disposal.

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Posted in Banking, Civil Liberties, Government, Politics

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Politics and Algorithms, by Raúl Ilargi Meijer

Posted on July 26, 2019 | Leave a comment

New political alignments, parties, and electioneering technologies will be the end of some of the existing parties in the US and Great Britain. From Raúl Ilargi Meijer at theautomaticearth.com:

It’s a development that has long been evident in continental Europe, and that has now arrived on the shores of the US and UK. It is the somewhat slow but very certain dissolution of long-existing political parties, organizations and groups. That’s what I was seeing during the Robert Mueller clown horror show on Wednesday.

Mueller was not just the Democratic Party’s last hope, he was their identity. He was the anti-Trump. Well, he no longer is, he is not fit to play that role anymore. And there is nobody to take it over who is not going to be highly contested by at least some parts of the party. In other words: it’s falling apart.

And that’s not necessarily a bad thing, it’s a natural process, parties change as conditions do and if they don’t do it fast enough they disappear. Look at the candidates the Dems have. Can anyone imagine the party, post-Mueller, uniting behind Joe Biden or Bernie Sanders or Kamala Harris? And then for one of them to beat Donald Trump in 2020?

I was just watching a little clip from Sean Hannity, doing what Trump did last week, which is going after the Squad. Who he said are anti-Israel socialists and, most importantly, the de facto leaders of the party, not Nancy Pelosi. That is a follow-up consequence of Mueller’s tragic defeat, the right can now go on the chase. The Squad is the face of the Dems because Trump and Hannity have made them that.

The upcoming Horowitz and Durham reports on their respective probes into “meddling into the meddling” will target many people in the Democratic Party, US intelligence services, and the media. In that order. Can the Dems survive such a thing? It’s hard to see.

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How the US Spent Billions to Change the Outcome of Elections Around the World, by Danny Haiphong

Posted on January 8, 2019 | 1 comment

A blockbuster book details the many countries and elections in which the US government meddled. From Danny Haiphong at theantimedia.org:

The U.S. military state overthrows democratically-elected governments that it deems to be a threat to corporate interests.

“There is plenty of evidence that the United States is the most depraved and dangerous “meddler” in the affairs of other nations that history has ever known.”

Dan Kovalik is a labor and human rights lawyer, but most of all he is an anti-imperialist and an author of three books. Kovalik’s first two books tackled the specific US war drives against Russia and Iran. His third installment, The Plot to Control the World: How the US Spent Billions to Change the Outcome of Elections Around the World, addresses the broad scope of US election meddling abroad. The book provides much needed political and ideological life support to an anti-war movement in the U.S that has been rendered nearly invisible to the naked eye.

The Plot to Control the World is as detailed in its critique of U.S. imperialism as it is concise. In just over 160 pages, Kovalik manages to analyze the various ways that the U.S. political and military apparatus interferes in the affairs of nations abroad to achieve global hegemony. He wastes no time in exposing the devastating lie that is American exceptionalism, beginning appropriately with the U.S. imperialist occupations of Haiti and the Philippines at the end of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th. The U.S. would murder millions of Filipinos and send both nations into a spiral of violence, instability, and poverty that continues to this day. As Kovalik explains regarding Haiti, “While the specific, claimed justifications for [U.S.] intervention changed over time- e.g., opposing the end of slavery, enforcing the Monroe Doctrine, fighting Communism, fighting drugs, restoring law and order — the fact is that the interventions never stopped and the results for the Haitian people have been invariably disastrous.”

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Posted in Civil Liberties, Crime, Cronyism, Foreign Policy, Geopolitics, Governments, History, Imperialism, Intelligence, Military, Politics, War

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This Election Mattered, by Eric Peters

Posted on November 22, 2018 | 1 comment

The government is going to force us into its vehicles of choice whether we like or not, and with the Democrats taking control of the House of Representatives, there’s not much we can do about it. From Eric Peters at ericpetersautos.com:

If you don’t think elections matter, wait about five years.

Then go shopping for a new car.

You will have your choice of a small hybrid car – or an electric car. Because by 2025, all new cars will be required by federal fatwa to average almost 50 miles-per-gallon – nearly twice the current fatwa-mandated average.

And the only cars capable of doing so are small hybrids like the Toyota Prius, Hyundai Ioniq and Kio Niro.

And, of course, electric cars – which burn no gas at all. Well, not directly.

There may still be a few other, non-hybrid cars (and possibly even trucks) but these will have become very artificially expensive – so you probably will not be able to afford one.

Because the Democrats won control of the House.

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Posted in Business, Civil Liberties, Economy, Environment, Government, Law, Politics

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