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The American states of Texas and Iowa {both have undemocratic Republicans as Governors: editor} openly stated that OSCE Election Observers will face criminal prosecution if they come anywhere near election polling locations. What hypocrisy! The country that lectures the world on “democracy” is afraid to allow international observers to view its election process. That speaks volumes and brings into question the very fundamental legitimacy of that power. The world superpower that natters to every country on earth about democracy, transparency, and the rule of law, the country which attempts to justify aggressive invasions and the assassination of leaders of countries it doesn’t care for, for one reason or the other, by throwing around the word “democracy”, whilst it launches invasions and arms terrorists to remove rightful leaders, looks absolutely absurd and hypocritical in light of the fact that it’s attempting to intimidate and bar international elections observers from observing its “democratic” presidential election process.
Once again, the USA violates another international treaty or agreement it has signed or is bound to. This isn’t unusual and is more the rule for the USA than the exception, examples includes the Geneva Conventions, the Vienna Conventions, international anti-racism agreements, agreements regarding the treatment of indigenous peoples, prisoners of war, and scores of other agreements. Other areas where the USA does as it pleases include international standards and laws regarding the declaration of war, international arrests, territorial and sovereign integrity, pollution, labour practices, extra-judicial executions, and the list goes on. This time however, the double standards and absolute hypocrisy couldn’t be clearer.
The Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) plans to deploy up to 100 elections observers all around the USA on Election Day to monitor polling and other associated processes. This comes after a warning, according to the web site thehill.com was issued to OSCE official Daan Everts earlier this month by the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights (LCCHR), the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) regarding “a coordinated political effort to disenfranchise millions of Americans, particularly traditionally disenfranchised groups like minorities”. Rather than welcoming international observers, as one would logically assume any country would do which claims to be the world leader in “democracy”, rightwing and “conservative” groups, include the supposed anti-election fraud group “True the Vote”, have come out screaming against international observers.
For those not blinded by the constant rhetoric and aware of the racist agendas of the far-right, this isn’t surprising. It’s one thing to suppress minority voters and throw up every barrier one can think of to keep them from the polls, and have them disgruntled and screaming racism, it’s yet another when that’s documented and observed by respected members of a respected and solid international inter-governmental body like the OSCE. After the election débâcle of 2000, when George W Bush’s brother Jeb Bush suppressed minority votes in Florida leading to George Bush’s winning the presidency in the Supreme Court, raised the interest of the international community as to the fairness of the American system, the OSCE was invited to observe American elections by George Bush himself in 2004, after UN observers were refused, although they’d been doing so since 2002.
The states in question, which threatened OSCE observers with arrest and imprisonment, currently include Texas and Iowa, with others likely to follow. Iowa has stated that it will arrest OSCE observers who come within 300 feet of polling locations with Texas issuing similar threats. The USA, as one of 56 OSCE members is supposedly committed, as are other member countries, to allow its elections to be observed, this has been true since 1990. Although the USA is supposed to allow observers, the OSCE agreement isn’t legally binding, and includes wording that calls for domestic laws to be followed, which allows individual US states and local authorities almost carte-blanche to do as they see fit.
According to the web site the Axis of Logic the head of the OSCE’s Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR), Ambassador Janez Lenarčič, wrote a letter to the US State Department of State and Hillary Clinton denouncing threats made against OSCE observers. He wrote, “The threat of criminal sanctions against international observers is unacceptable. The United States, like all countries in the OSCE, has an obligation to invite observers to observe its elections. Our observers are requested to remain strictly impartial and not to intervene in the voting process in any way. They are in the USA to observe the elections, not to interfere in them”. The USA has a lot to hide when it comes to elections, much more than most of the international community realises. The fact that domestic American human rights organisations have requested international observers should be triggering alarm bells worldwide.
The problems with the American election process are many. Starting with the actual voting process, the USA has shown that there are problems with electronic voting machines, such as the Diebold machines, which caused widespread scandals during the Bush elections, including counting votes for Bush, when the other candidate was selected, which are known to be easily manipulated. Then, there’s the fact that there are locations where there are no paper ballots and, hence, no reliable way to verify votes. Another problem is that observers aren’t allowed in many polling stations in many locations where there are paper ballots; to observe that the actual ballots are placed in the boxes and that they’re sealed and not tampered with. There are scores of other suppression and illegal tactics taking place in the steps leading up to the actual voting booth. Amongst these are limiting who’s allowed to vote, and actions taken by right-wing “conservative” racist groups to keep segments of the population away from the polls, as a rule, black and minority voters, along with the poor and the elderly, that is, voters who generally vote for Democratic or third party candidates.
Such tactics include varied and widespread voter purges which have been manipulated all over the USA, including those supposedly purging felons, voter ID laws that target the poor and elderly, and an array of activities designed to intimidate and otherwise keep minorities, the poor, and the elderly away from the voting booth. For example, there are reports in areas with large concentrations of Spanish speaking voters of leaflets distributed by rightwing groups with the wrong date of voting printed on them. There are also widespread reports of billboard campaigns stating that improper voting or mistakes in the voting booth may be felony offenses, a clever move to frighten people into thinking if they make some little mistake then they may go to prison. There are also rightwing groups deploying millions of “observers” who may intimidate “selected” voters by making them provide proof of their identities before allowing them into polling stations.
According to the site CNSNEWS.com, “The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and others urged OSCE observers to deploy in states where they allege there is ‘a coordinated political effort to disenfranchise millions of Americans’, especially minorities and low-income groups”. Of all of the problems there are also complaints about the arcane and archaic Electoral College system, the re-zoning of electoral districts in many states such as Texas, where votes are taken away from minority and poor areas and moved to “white” areas, and even claims that there are only 32 counties in the US that’ll decide the vote, and 41 out of 50 states are being ignored because they are either red “Republican” or blue “Democratic”.
Another problem in the USA is access to the media, only available to candidates with millions, if not billions of dollars, effectively making it impossible for third party candidates to compete. Then, there’s the entire presidential debate process, which is decided by private corporations, and third party candidates are effectively banned from participation. Unfortunately, these aren’t the only problems. There are also a slew of problems making it almost impossible for many third party candidates to get on the ballots in many states. Add to that, unfair federal funding practises and impossible thresholds that are supposed to be met, and you have a system that only benefits the wealthy and is completely controlled by those who are already in power.
Perhaps, the USA could take lessons from Russia on democracy and running fair elections? Russia, for example, has web cameras in the polling stations allowing anyone to observe, transparent voting boxes with an observable secure process from start to finish, hundreds of thousands of observers, nine parties, all with equal television air-time, inclusive debates, and the right of every citizen to vote. That’s unlikely, the USA has a fine-tuned system to keep the wealthy white class in power and keep everyone else as subjects. “Everyone else” includes all “minorities” (who are, in fact, not minorities in many states), American Indians, the poor, the disabled, the young, students, migrant workers, displaced people, the elderly, and everyone else not fitting the wealthy white ideal.
Lastly, the USA has become a country controlled by corporations and big money, they control the government and the political processes, this is a fact few would argue with. The system is designed to suppress a huge segment of the population on racist and other lines. According to any dictionary, by definition, the USA has slipped into a state of Fascism, or neo-Fascism, if you prefer. Of course, such a system wouldn’t welcome election observers. They can’t allow the “secret” to get out of the bag.
6 November 2012 (MSK)
John Robles
Voice of Russia World Service
http://english.ruvr.ru/2012_11_06/US-bans-OSCE-observers-What-are-they-trying-to-hide/
Editor’s Note:
Most real ethnic Orthodox are Democrats, as the Republican bosses treated them badly (and cheated them horribly) when they came to this country. Quite often, this persists even if they become affluent, as they remember the base cruelty, greed, and racism of most Republicans.
The konvertsy are mostly Hard Right anti-government loon Republicans. They have nothing in common with us socially or politically. They’ve made common cause with the remnants of the Hard Right anti-commie loons in the ROCOR… for now. You see, the ROCOR anti-commies will come around to reason… their ethnos/narod will trump their politics. Then, the konvertsy will stand alone…
Be patient, God IS sorting things out…
BMD
Should We Liken Trump to a Little Hobbit?
Tags: 2016 US Presidential election, Bush, Donald Trump, Election, elections, Hillary Clinton, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Iran, Jeb Bush, neocon, neoconservatism, oligarchs, political commentary, politics, United States, US elections, USA
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What do journalists, the Clinton machine, Democrats and the Republicans have in common? Trump defeated all of them. However, some are proclaiming him to not be their president. Will the civil disobedience spread? On the other hand, will he be able to drain Mordor’s swamp?
The sounds echoed through the hallways, allowing everyone to hear her and know she was there way before they saw her. The sound was a deep breathing sound, almost as if something was stuck deep in her chest. The first time someone saw her, the focus was immediately on the eyes. A blue colour, but not the colour of Elton John’s song, nor the colour of a beautiful summer sky, no, these were the eyes of a dead fish. There was life, but they weren’t alive. As she moved to about, she would scream out for anyone to hear… Precious! Where is Precious? Of course, because she had changed her accent and speaking pattern over the years, pandering to whomever she was speaking with, or more likely at, and because of her health problems, it sounded more like… Power! Who has the Power?
She realised that she once had it, but in one of her greater battles, she’d lost it, and now she was doomed to search for it forever. Furthermore, search for it she did. In fact, there’s a legend that on certain nights, she could be seen wandering the halls of the DNC headquarters, crying out crying out at night-time… Precious! Who has my Precious? Now, if this sounds like a modern-day retelling of The Hobbit, you’d almost be right. You could easily cast Hillary Clinton as Gollum, Bill Clinton could be Saruman, Donald Trump could be one of the funny-looking little hobbits with red hairy feet, and Mordor would be Washington DC. What about Sauron? Who knows… maybe, it’d be a toss-up between or a mix of John Podesta and Huma Abedin, or maybe even Paul Ryan. This is, after all, a modern-day retelling, no need for a strict canonical interpretation.
Now, if you haven’t been paying attention this week, Donald Trump shocked the entire world when won election as the next President of the United States. For better or worse, he’ll take the helm in January. To hear some tell the story of president-elect Trump’s rise, it all began back in 2011. In fact, the New Statesman just ran a story that suggested:
According to a number of articles on the web, Trump was a joke, but he had money, so politicians were friendly with him. The NYT, in a background piece wrote:
In fact, when describing a negotiation between Romney and Trump, the article at the NYT went on to quote Ryan Williams, a former spokesman for the Romney campaign, as saying:
Yup, according to him, Trump got the raw end of the deal. That’s right. A spokesman for Mitt Romney, the guy who was best known for his single handily destroying companies and putting tens of thousands of working Americans out of work, hiding his hundreds of millions of blood-money offshore, and oh, who hasn’t been seen since Obama kicked his butt back in 2012, suggested that Trump was the idiot.
Speaking of idiots, its left many in the press wondering what just happened. Continuously pointing to polls, coordinating talking points and talking the Trump camp down, they’re now left holding the bag with a collective wailing and gnashing of teeth. Was it because, as VOX reported:
Or, was it because, as CBS wrote:
The press biased? No, say it ain’t so, Joe. That article continued by noting:
Just remember that dear citizen… the press knows better than you, so shut up and think what you are told! Speaking of thinking what they are told, or rather, not, in this case, Rush Limbaugh pointed out an interesting fact recently when he said:
Talking about the minority dictating to the majority, Fox News just reported that:
Matt Maloney, Co-Founder of Grubhub, specifically wrote:
Because, you see, tolerance is just a buzzword and we’ll ruthlessly punish anyone with a different opinion. Or, fired, in this case. As the new normal sets in, many people wonder what the future will bring. Will President Trump, as strange as that sounds, be able to make America great again? Or will he, as many have proclaimed, leave the country bankrupt, as he has many of his companies? What of those that say that Trump doesn’t represent them… that continue to riot in the streets? Will the discontent grow? Although we can’t know the fate that the future holds for us, we do know that Trump not only took on the media, but also the most powerful 16 Republicans, and won, he also crushed the vaunted Clinton political machine and destroyed the Democrats. To quote Trump in a speech days before the New Hampshire primary:
So, what do you think… should we liken Trump to a little hobbit?
11 November 2016
Jay Johnson
Sputnik International
https://sputniknews.com/radio_connecting_the_pieces/201611111047341633-should-trump-be-likened-to-little-hobbit/