zaterdag 8 februari 2020

Corruption of Democratic Party Elite

Jimmy Dore Calls Out Trump/Pelosi On Tucker Carlson

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gyub6M8Qfqs



Iowa a Mortal Threat to Democracy

OPINIONTD ORIGINALS


The Iowa Caucuses Are a Mortal Threat to Democracy



Hand holding a cell phone showing the Iowa Democratic Party's caucus reporting application
A precinct captain in Des Moines, Iowa, displays the Iowa Democratic Party caucus reporting app on his phone. (Nati Harnik / AP)
The undemocratic and incompetently run Iowa caucuses remind me of a vampire — hard, if not impossible, to kill. While the process is unrepresentative and undemocratic, national political reporters and Iowa businesspeople will never let it die.
The first contest in the campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination ended in confusion. The messy result cast a shadow of mistrust over the nominating contests that will follow.
Chance didn’t bring us to this point. Pack journalism combined with the booster attitudes and greed of Iowa entrepreneurs is responsible. Because of them, the questions raised by the Iowa caucus failures extend far beyond the boundaries of that small Midwestern state.
Among the questions: Can we trust the vote counters in the many state contests ahead? Will fake posts on the internet, combined with the Iowa failure, add to the suspicion and mistrust now endemic to American politics? And, will each contest offer President Donald Trump a chance to portray as a fake every result not to his liking?
These developments could not have occurred to anyone when I first covered the Iowa caucuses in 1976. The caucuses had captured media attention four years before when Sen. George McGovern’s second-place finish there helped propel him to the Democratic presidential nomination. Four years later, the little-known Georgia governor, Jimmy Carter, having observed McGovern’s accomplishment, concentrated on winning the Iowa caucuses, succeeded, and won the nomination and the presidency.


That campaign cemented the unhealthy relationship between the national political reporting corps, who fell in love with Iowa, and the Iowa businesspeople, enamored with the reporters’ expense accounts and the publicity they gave the state.
In 1976, while working for the Los Angeles Times, I found a colorful change of scene in Iowa, and the flat geography made for easy travel — except when it snowed. Like other national reporters, I ate and drank well on the company’s tab and bunked at the best hotels. Iowans were friendly to us journalists. We were putting their state on the map and money in their pockets. It was, I observed, one of the few places in the country where people actually seemed to like to talk to reporters.
By 2008, I had retired from the Times and was covering the caucuses for Truthdig. No longer part of the mainstream journalism pack, I viewed the caucuses as an outsider, which permitted me to see the events for what they were.
“The caucuses are a travesty of the American political system,” I wrote in a 2007 column several days before the election. “They are … undemocratic, unfair, unrepresentative and overly complicated.” A few days later, with the caucuses fast approaching, I urged the media “to try to shed light on the process instead of helping Iowa keep this promotional device alive. Unmask the wizard, journalists, and set America free from the shackles of the Iowa caucuses.”
Of course, no one listened. The lure of the state’s rural geography, small towns, and eager-to-please Iowans was irresistible to the press corps. So was the possibility of good assignments and promotions that often followed completion of an Iowa assignment the bosses liked.
So the media followed its usual pattern, trailing candidates from school auditoriums to coffee shops, interviewing prospective voters (whose answers seemed increasingly canned) and following the polls as if they were the Daily Racing Form.
Apparently, only a few of the most tech-minded paid attention to the most boring — and most important part — of an election, how the votes were counted.
Even more complications were added this year to the incomprehensible process I chronicled in 2008. A barely tested app was handed out to caucus chairs, purportedly to speed reporting of each caucus result. It proved difficult to download for the incompletely trained volunteers who run the caucuses. The app’s reporting capabilities were problematical. Days passed with no final results.
This has thrown the press into unknown territory. The scenario of a winner being crowned in Iowa, then heading into New Hampshire and other contests, has been shattered. Utter media confusion reigned Monday night through Wednesday.
More important than the inconvenience Iowa caused the press, however, is what the state means to public perception of the many U.S. primary elections, not to mention the big one in November, when the nation selects a president.
I live and vote in the most populous county in the nation, Los Angeles, which has more than 10 million residents. The county has long been afflicted with slow vote counts due to its size and to snafus by the vote tallying equipment installed by one of the few companies that do such work.
For this election, the county has created its own system, with voters given two options: voting by mail or going to a polling place and marking computer screens or hand-marking paper ballots. And, instead of using familiar local polling places, people who vote in person must travel to centralized voting centers.
The Los Angeles registrar-recorder, Dean Logan, and his staff have been working hard to make the new system work. But Libby Denkmann, who has been tracking the system, reported on LAist that “the county must meet a stack of requirements before primary election voters get their hands on the machines Feb. 22.”
I have watched enough elections and used computers long enough to know that, more likely than not, something will go wrong. The same is true for the other primary elections coming up around the country.
So let’s drive a stake into the heart of the Iowa caucuses. Let them die.
But reporters and their editors should not forget the real lesson of Iowa. The story of the 2020 election may end up being found in the back offices of voting officials and among the techies who create their voting systems. Reporting on them is tedious and complex. But it is the kind of journalism that is more important and necessary than chasing candidates around Iowa.
Democracy is at stake. More elections such as the one in Iowa will further erode the faith many Americans have in democratic institutions. If nobody believes election results, democracy, which is under assault every day, will wither and die.

Mossad and Waffen SS


Twee Terroristische Organisaties die geen grenzen en concurrenten accepteren en daar trots op zijn.



Syrian Army Liberates Villages in Aleppo Countryside

Syrian army liberates Zitan, Barna, Huwait al-Ees, and Abad villages in Aleppo countryside



Aleppo, SANA – Syrian Arab Army units on Friday expanded their control in the southern countryside of Aleppo after intensive operations that resulted in the liberation of of Zitan, Barnah Huwait al-Ees, and Abad villages from terrorism.
SANA reporter said that the army units continued their operations in southern Aleppo and after heavy preliminary fire and violent clashes with “Jabhat al-Nusra” terrorists, establishing control over Zitan and Barna villages in the direction of the newly-liberated Khalsa village.
The reporter said that the army’s operations in the far southern countryside of Aleppo also resulted in liberating the villages of Huwait al-Ees and Abad, as well as al-Tabariz hill following violent clashes with terrorists which inflicted heavy losses upon them.
The reporter added that the army units continued their operations against terrorists’ gatherings and movements at the outskirts of Aleppo- Hama international highway.
Earlier, the reporter said that the army units targeted with rocket barrage and artillery fire the directions of movement and positions of terrorist organizations holed up western Aleppo. The army targeted terrorists’ gatherings in al-Rashideen 4, Kafar Naha, Khan al-Asal, and the vicinity of the scientific research where groups of “Jabhat al-Nusra” terrorists and its affiliated and allied organizations are holed up.
The army strikes resulted in the destruction of several fortified positions, the killing of a number of them, the injury of others, and the destruction of weapons and ammunition in their possession.
In southwestern Aleppo, the army units responded to a terrorist attack by Jabhat al-Nusra on the direction of Khalsa-Zitan, inflicting great losses upon them and forcing the rest to flee.
Terrorists’ gatherings in al-Zarba and its vicinity were also targeted by the army where a number of them were killed and injured.
Gh.A.Hassoun / Hazem Sabbagh

Iowa Caucus Scandal

2020 Is Going To Get Much Crazier. Prioritize Your Mental Health


By Caitlin Johnstone

February 07, 2020 "Information Clearing House" -  The outrage over the Iowa caucus scandal has continued to burn white hot as more and more establishment manipulations against the Bernie Sanders campaign come into view.
At the beginning of a CNN town hall with Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg last night, immediately following the network’s town hall with Sanders, the event’s host Chris Cuomo announced that 100 percent of the caucus results were now in and the former South Bend mayor had narrowly won the contest. These results had been announced by the Iowa Democratic Party moments before Buttigieg’s town hall appearance.
There is no reason for anyone, let alone a major news outlet, to believe these results are legitimate. They are full of easily demonstrable errors and discrepancies which have been highlighted by both the Sanders campaign and The New York Times, and they have yet to be addressed. Furthermore, Sanders has a perfectly legitimate claim to the win given the undisputed fact that he received thousands more votes. This is without even getting into all the other extremely shady shenanigans with the now-infamous Shadow app whose crash has given the media days to sing Buttigeig’s praise, which has in turn given him a major polling bump for New Hampshire.
But Chris Cuomo (who is the brother of a Democratic New York governor and the son of another Democratic New York governor) declared Buttigieg (who because of his establishment grooming and alt-centrist ideology is beloved by billionaires and spooks) the winner anyway. In front of millions of people. While Buttigieg was standing right there in the spotlight. Immediately after the “results” were released.



We’re watching a major US election being rigged in real time, right in front of our eyes, and it’s intense. And it’s only just getting started.

In the 2016 race between Sanders and Hillary Clinton, the Iowa caucuses saw some suspicious activity and there was some controversy over improbable coin toss results, but nothing like the furor we’ve been seeing over Iowa for the last several days. It wasn’t until the Nevada caucus that things really started to get crazy in the 2016 race, and we’re still a couple of weeks out from that.
So we’re way ahead of schedule in terms of emotional intensity tied to this presidential primary race, and possibly at a more heated point after the very first 2020 primary contest than at any point in the 2016 race between Sanders and Clinton. And it’s only going to get crazier from here.
And that’s just looking at the US Democratic presidential primary. Later this month we’ve got the beginning of Julian Assange’s extradition trial, we’ve got the OPCW narrative managing its own scandal by smearing the whistleblowers who revealed that the US, UK and France almost certainly bombed Syria in 2018 under false pretenses, we’ve got continuing revelations that pretty much everything the Trump administration told the world to justify the assassination of Qassem Soleimani was a lie, we’ve got an escalating new cold war between the US and Russia, increasing establishment attempts to censor the internet, an increasing propaganda war against China, the general militaristic belligerence of the US-centralized empire, and God knows what else.
As I said back in November, things are going to get weirder and weirder throughout the foreseeable future. We’re coming to a point in history where the only reliable pattern is the disintegration of patterns, and 2020 has come storming out of its corner swinging for the fences working to establish this pattern with extreme aggression. We’re not going to hit a point of stability or normality this year, we’re going to see things get crazier and crazier and crazier. I don’t know what’s going to happen, but I know it’s going to be nuts.

What Does a Nuclear Bomb Explosion Feel Like?



What Does a Nuclear Bomb Explosion Feel Like?

We met British atomic veterans to find out what it’s like to experience a nuclear bomb explosion up close.

https://www.facebook.com/vicenews/videos/343446469628067/UzpfSTE0OTIyMTI5NjU6Vks6MjcwMTYwNDk1NjYyNzcxMA/?comment_id=2706091536179052&reply_comment_id=2706592989462240&notif_id=1581185052135543&notif_t=group_highlights


The Making of Trans Children



The Making of Trans Children

Campaigners, doctors and teachers have 

turned a fringe idea into a worrying reality.

By Joanna Williams
Spiked
February 8, 2020

Should schools have gender-neutral uniforms? Should tampons be available in the boys’ toilets for pupils who were born female but now identify as male? Which changing room should transgender pupils use after PE lessons? Should parents be informed if their daughter asks to be treated as a boy at school? Should transgender children be prescribed hormones to delay the onset of puberty?
Discussion about the treatment of transgender people often focuses on the experiences of children. In part, this is because it is down to adults to determine what is in a child’s best interests, and what is best for transgender children is fiercely contested. But it is also because transgender activists make children the focus of campaigns, television programmes and teaching materials.
Children serve as a useful moral shield for transgender activists, deflecting questions and criticism. The very existence of trans children lends support to their claim that people are born with a sense of gender identity, that sometimes a male brain develops in a female body and vice versa. The figure of the trans child, now ingrained in the popular imagination, makes it seem as if transgender people have always existed. This, in turn, lends further weight to the argument that being transgender is an innate characteristic. Inventing Transgender Children and Young People, a new book edited by Michele Moore and Heather Brunskell-Evans, shatters each of the convenient myths that have built up around the transgender child.
Inventing the transgender child
Inventing Transgender Children includes contributions from academics, psychiatrists and parents, as well as young adults who transitioned as children but are now questioning the process they underwent. Together, they show that far from being an ever-present biological reality, transgenderism is an entirely invented concept with no basis in neuroscience, psychology or psychiatry. They argue that there is little evidence to support claims that brains are sexed, and no evidence whatsoever to suggest that some fetuses develop with mismatched brains and bodies. In fact, they note, ‘The idea that transgenderism is an internal, pre-social phenomenon that has existed throughout history is not an evidenced fact, but a proposition’. And far from being a long-standing proposition, it was only around five years ago that the existence of the transgender child became widely accepted.
One contributor locates the invention of transgenderism within the medical profession: ‘It became possible to conceptualise “gender identity” as dislocated from biological sex when new medical technologies for the first time made it possible for doctors to change the bodies of those born with indeterminate genitals and to assign them to a sex.’ In this way, he argues, ‘the availability of the treatment appears to have essentially created the demand’.
When it comes to children, Brunskell-Evans traces the formation of two distinct transgender identities over a 30-year period. The first, she suggests, ‘is that of the unfortunate victim “born in the wrong body”‘, while ‘the second is that of the revolutionary adolescent who bravely sensitises the older generation, including trained clinicians, to the subtleties, complexities and politics of gender’. These two distinct identities, victim and revolutionary, increasingly merge to form ‘the transgender child’, promoted by charities, present on YouTube and taught as part of the school curriculum.
Hiding behind children, especially children who are both victims and revolutionaries, may be useful for transgender activists intent on promoting their own ideology. But, as the contributors to Inventing Transgender Children make clear, it has devastating consequences for children, who are not only exploited by activists, but also by some teachers, doctors, social workers and psychiatrists – the very people meant to protect them from harm.


Peter Flik en Chuck Berry-Promised Land

mijn unieke collega Peter Flik, die de vrijzinnig protestantse radio omroep de VPRO maakte is niet meer. ik koester duizenden herinneringen ...