Mess with Texas via mail-in ballot? States secede from presidential vote

December 09, 2020

by Ramin Mazaheri and cross-posted with PressTV

The United States corporate-dominated media has found that the easiest way to shape news coverage on the scores of legal challenges to the 2020 presidential election is to only report on them when the cases have lost.

After all, the more newspaper inches given to objective discussions of widespread voter fraud allegations equals the more chances an average American starts to think the election was rigged. This theory presumes that the average American is so docile and programmable that they have already completely forgotten the mainstream claims which dominated the previous four years: that the election was rigged (by Vladimir Putin).

Not reporting until a court rejects an integrity challenge also allows for a superior “I-knew-it-all-along” tone, combined with open accusations of lunacy on the part of the aggrieved party.

More than a month after the vote the party (Republicans) remains tremendously aggrieved: top pollster Gallup just reported that 83% of Republicans say that reports of Biden being the president-elect are not “accurate”. Yes, it’s an oddly-worded poll, but so many US wordsmiths have been purposely opaque since election day.

It’s always been easy to roll one’s eyes at the smug tone because such condescension will drop to the ground lack a bag of bricks with just one Supreme Court loss, after all.

Yes, the widespread US belief prior to November 3, 2020, was that their elections were poorly designed, poorly funded, poorly run, poorly counted and porous in many other ways besides, but I always thought the biggest post-election day challenge would be over the exact issue which has led to the totally unprecedented situation of states suing other states over accusations of ruining the election’s integrity:

Texas – now joined by Louisiana, Missouri and Arkansas – is suing the states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, Georgia and Wisconsin over mail-in ballots.

I’ll show that the US Constitution makes it clear their case should at least be heard by the Supreme Court. The state-on-state nature already takes the case directly to the top.

The Supreme Court always had to rule on the unprecedented expansion of mail-in balloting

What’s so interesting about “democracy with US characteristics” is how the nine justices of the Supreme Court are allowed to be so very, very removed from US society. They debate in private, they grant media interviews very rarely, they don’t have to say much in court (Justice Clarence Thomas went from 2006 to 2016 without publicly asking a question), nor do they even have to give public reasons for many of the momentous decisions they make (they just rejected a key vote fraud case in Pennsylvania with one sentence, but more accurately only one word: “denied”). It’s not the Holy See of Rome, but it’s close.

But it’s not close regarding the holiness, because what this unaccountable and unelected regime of nine holds sacred is merely the 18th century US Constitution, something which is currently losing lustre worldwide by the minute.

Some, not all, of these justices are Wahhabi-like in their insistence that the document is “dead” (and perfect in its deadness), in that it must be followed both to the letter and in the spirt of the bygone (allegedly golden) age in which it was written.

Given this ideological reality doesn’t it seem clear that executive branch orders by some governors, or even just their secretaries of state, to massively and controversially flood their states with mail-in ballots violated the US Constitution – even if these actions were approved by some in the judicial branch – because they often did not get legislative branch approval? Article 1, Section 4 of the US Constitution states: “The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature …”

Texas’ lawsuit thus asserts: “The four states exploited the COVID-19 pandemic to justify ignoring federal and state election laws and unlawfully enacting last-minute changes, thus skewing the results of the 2020 General Election. The battleground states flooded their people with unlawful ballot applications and ballots while ignoring statutory requirements as to how they were received, evaluated and counted.” The suit claims the vote in Texas was tainted by the vote in Pennsylvania, etc.

People may notice that Article 1, Section 4 does not talk about “Elections for President”, but the US elects their president by an Electoral College, not direct vote. It is regularly inferred that this clause also applies to the presidential vote, but it is actually addressed in Article 2, Section 1: “The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America. He shall hold his Office during the Term of four Years, and, together with the Vice President, chosen for the same Term, be elected, as follows: Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors….” Again it’s the state legislature which decides how to decide to “appoint” (not “elect”) Electoral College “Electors”, and Article 2, Section 1 is cited in Texas’ lawsuit.

I wish I could find more good media reports on this case to better inform my opinion but – as I began – you just can’t find much objective journalistic discussion on the US voter fraud causes. No well-known anti-Trump media I saw ever even broached Article 2, Section 1 – even though it was named in the lawsuit – all they had was hysterical and completely unobjective denials that the Texas lawsuit doesn’t even attempt to make a coherent argument. And yet: the Supreme Court gave the defendant states less than 48 hours to respond to Texas’ lawsuit – by 3pm on December 10.

The suit also says the expansion made the vote insecure, but forget about all the alleged vote machine tampering, the purported “smoking gun” videos, the reported 1,000 testimonies making accusations of election malfeasance – all of that either has the evidence or it doesn’t. Maybe there was a huge conspiracy of voter fraud, or maybe there wasn’t. The nation’s top intelligence official, the Director of National Intelligence, John Ratcliffe, just said that all issues of election fraud must be investigated and only then would we see “whether there is a Biden administration”. Will they all be properly investigated? This is America, so all we can say for sure is that no matter what happens America will insist that they are the spotless beacon the world should follow.

But the question of mail-in ballots – this enormous change to the US voting system which inspired seemingly thousands of complaints by Donald Trump on Twitter, as well as from many regular American citizens – this is the dispute which has the power to immediately invalidate the 2020 vote.

I say: yes, it should invalidate the vote – that is, if Americans want to follow the rules of the antiquated and fundamentally aristocratic American system.

America is not a modern democracy, nor is it accountable – don’t expect the Supreme Court to rule in favor of the outsider Trump

Yes, pro-Trumpers were wrong to wait until after the election – to see if their candidate lost – before bringing this suit, but who’s to say that elite Democrats wouldn’t have forced some of their own governors to do the same thing if Biden was the projected loser? How can judges rule on a case which was never brought before them? The bottom line is that checks and balances are what make democracy “democracy”, whether that democracy is Athenian, American, Chinese socialist or Iranian Islamic, and one person should not be able to change the fundamental nature of how elections are held, even if that person is a state governor or secretary of state, and even if a state judge says their change is ok.

Modern democracies have (at least) three branches for a reason, but it’s ok that mail-in ballots were often routed around the legislative branch?

(I often say Iranian democracy has revolutionarily created a “Supreme Leader branch”. I’d also say the massive influence of the internet/digital age gives more credence to making the unofficial “Fourth Estate” – the media – an official branch. What’s wrong with more than three branches, other than: But the bourgeois West doesn’t do it?)

The re-routing (and some state legislatures, such as Nevada, did approve a sweeping expansion to mail-in ballots) of democratic processes into the hands of one person should be seen as a continuation of what Western democracy truly is: liberal strongmanism. This process became out in the open with Dubya Bush’s phony war on Iraq and the Patriot Act, continued with the ignored anti-austerity elections in Greece, is part and parcel of Emmanuel Macron’s “rubber bullet liberalism” war on France’s Yellow Vests, and was seen in 2020 when some US governors essentially said: We want Trump out so badly that we’ll change the elections by fiat to do it.

(Corona was not a valid excuse in November, because by then 2020 had seen many nations successfully and safely hold elections.)

A coronavirus vaccine was announced just two days after Biden declared victory; after months of refusals – which have fiscally disemboweled the US lower classes – Democrats finally agreed to negotiate on their heretofore totally inflexible 2nd stimulus position as soon as the calendar turned from election November to December; Facebook, Twitter and the US mainstream media currently censor the average Republican’s election reflections as if these citizens were calling for a second Holocaust.

Those are not conspiracy theories but are listed to reveal how truly terrible and power-monging the political and cultural elite is in the United States. They overreach their power time and time again, no matter how negative the effect on their domestic public or the rest of the world.

Such persons wanted Trump out, and I’m not saying that they engaged in a massive conspiracy of election fraud to do so – I’m saying that they obviously changed the fundamental nature of the election to do so.

In the US states decide individually how elections are run, but there should have been formal legislative debate about any huge changes to the election format and not merely a gubernatorial order reflected upon in private by a judge. It was undemocratic political overreach in a nation full of people who have been conditioned to believe that the boss/CEO/president can and should be able to fire/personally enrich/sanction at will.

There are enough “strict constructionists” ,”originalists” or (as I call them) “American Salafists” currently on the Supreme Court to see the logic of Texas’ argument. However, I do not think the Supreme Court will find in favor of Texas – the power-holders in the US system are fundamentally anti-Trump, I think 2016-2020 has proven ad nauseam.

Trumpism was vindicated in a grassroots way – like it or not – on November 3rd, but there are no “Trumpist” judges in the top court. Who knows, maybe Trumpism will last long enough that one day there will be, but for now what all Supreme Court judges are is merely typical American conservatives. The idea that even though Supreme Court justices are the most untouchable persons in American society and yet they will bend over backwards to please Trump is, I think, a major (but common) fallacy.

It’s clear that the 2020 election was drastically changed (just look at how voter turnout suddenly was the highest in 120 years), and it’s clear that legislatures often did not fulfil their check and balance role, and it’s clear that “strict constructionism” was not something invented by Justice Anthonin Scalia but is an ideology which has been widely discussed since the very beginning of the American republic… all that will be thrown out to throw out Trump, I predict.

This article has not been pro-Trump or anti-Trump, it is reminding how very drastic the actions of anti-Trump power-holders in the US have been. They changed the nature of the 2020 vote, and they don’t want to admit that, and the Supreme Court is not likely to unconservatively ok a shocking, once-in-three-lifetimes reversal to the 2020 presidential vote – not because of the chaos and alienation it would cause among the 99%, but because American democracy is and has always been expressly designed to protect the elite, not the people/workers/lower classes.

By the way, the only presidential vote which ever mattered at all takes place in less than a week – the Electoral College votes on December 14th. I think this year’s general election on the presidential vote has provided a more interesting – yet legally meaningless – diversion than it normally does, don’t you?

*************************************************************

Results are in: Americans lose, duopoly wins, Trumpism not merely a cult (1/2) – November 5, 2020

Results are in: Americans lose, duopoly wins, Trumpism not merely a cult (2/2) – November 6, 2020

4 years of anti-Trumpism shaping MSM vote coverage, but expect long fight – November 7, 2020

US partitioned by 2 presidents: worst-case election scenario realized – November 9, 2020

A 2nd term is his if he really wants it, but how deep is Trump’s ‘Trumpism’? – November 10, 2020

CNN’s Jake Tapper: The overseer keeping all journalists in line (1/2) – November 13, 2020

‘Bidenism’ domestically: no free press, no lawyer, one-party state? (2/2) – November 15, 2020

Where’s Donald? When 40% of voters cry ‘fraud’ you’ve got a big problem – November 17, 2020

The 4-year (neoliberal) radicalisation of US media & Bidenites’ ‘unradical radicalism’ – November 22, 2020

80% of US partisan losers think the last 2 elections were stolen – December 3, 2020

Trump declares civil war for voter integrity in breaking (or broken) USA – December 5, 2020

Ramin Mazaheri is currently covering the US elections. He is the chief correspondent in Paris for Press TV and has lived in France since 2009. He has been a daily newspaper reporter in the US, and has reported from Iran, Cuba, Egypt, Tunisia, South Korea and elsewhere. He is the author of ‘Socialism’s Ignored Success: Iranian Islamic Socialism’ as well as ‘I’ll Ruin Everything You Are: Ending Western Propaganda on Red China’, which is also available in simplified and traditional Chinese.

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Donald Trump: “This may be the most important speech I’ve ever made….”

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The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Blog!

Mayor Rudy Giuliani: The Michigan attorney general doesn’t care if Democrats steal an election

 

 

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Where’s Donald? When 40% of voters cry ‘fraud’ you’ve got a big problem

Ramin Mazaheri is currently covering the US elections. He is the chief correspondent in Paris for Press TV and has lived in France since 2009. He has been a daily newspaper reporter in the US, and has reported from Iran, Cuba, Egypt, Tunisia, South Korea and elsewhere. He is the author of ‘Socialism’s Ignored Success: Iranian Islamic Socialism’ as well as ‘I’ll Ruin Everything You Are: Ending Western Propaganda on Red China’, which is also available in simplified and traditional Chinese.

November 17, 2020

by Ramin Mazaheri for the Saker Blog

I think everybody would like 2020 to be over, and that we’d all like the US election to be over, but journalists shouldn’t stop accurately reporting just because the news is unpleasant.

“Breaking news: Plane lands safely!”

It just doesn’t work that way in life or journalism. We can’t give out participation medals and say it doesn’t really matter who won the US election.

Neither should Bidenites be calling for blacklisting both journalists and Republican public officials or successfully trying to deny Donald Trump a lawyer in Pennsylvania, but that’s another story.

A poll 227 pages long from The Economist – which will likely sink like a stone in the US Mainstream Media because it’s so very damning – reveals total US division and the devastation of its electoral integrity: 9 out of 10 Trump voters say Biden “did not legitimately win the election”, and 9 out of 10 Trump voters say, “mail ballots are being manipulated to favor Joe Biden”.

In good news, only 7 out of 10 Trump voters say that we will,” never know the real outcome of this election.” Is this the new, “Who killed JFK?” (Never getting a clear answer there surely increased political alienation among many Americans.)

Even though I relayed the findings in a manner which stresses political partisanship, this is definitely not a partisan issue: the percentages of Americans who hold the views described above are 45%, 42%, and 41%.

Take out the partisan labels (and the poll had not just Republican/Democrat but male/female, White/Black, age 18-29/65+, income level, College Grad/Non-College Grad, blah/blah, blah/blah, and blah/blah): the poll shockingly finds that 40% of Americans answered, “Enough to influence the outcome,” to the question, “How much voter fraud do you think occurred in this election?”

Again, it’s only a partisan issue to people who have been so distorted by fake-leftist identity politics that they can’t see the nation for the tribes. This Western tribalism is, of course, a fundamentally imperialist worldview, and also the view incessantly foisted on others by Westerners. But America doesn’t have something like a Supreme Leader whose primary job is to constantly remind about the good of the nation – that revolutionary Iranian institution has successfully gotten the nation through tough times, which is precisely why it is so despised and falsely slandered in places like London, Washington DC, Tel Aviv and Paris. But in the United States, there is not this governmental branch which exists almost solely to smooth out partisan issues, and the concept of putting the national good above tribal politics is only heard once every four years: in the victory speech of the winning candidate.

In case you were not convinced that this is not a Democrat/Republican issue: 84% of Americans answered, “Yes,” when asked, “Would you say that you are angry about the results of the 2020 presidential election?” That’s hard to explain, but it certainly does not indicate happiness with how the 2020 vote was conducted.

Regardless, when 40% of the country – 130 million people – say there was enough fraud to influence the outcome of the election, that’s a huge problem.

For those highly-tribal Americans who obsessively and emotionally insist on viewing this solely in a partisan manner, fine: 60 million voters who are crying electoral fraud is still a huge, huge problem. They can be drowned out by crying louder, and they can be ignored, but they simply can’t go away any more than the Vietcong had somewhere else to go.

So there’s really only one way to solve this perhaps fatal gutting of national integrity: a judicial review of the election.

It’s not true that the US already tried this in 2000 – there was not a thorough judicial review of the vote but a judicial decision by the Supreme Court to stop counting votes. That’s why it was indeed a partisan mess. So the US did not get the full judicial review to which I am referring, and which is the only solution other than drawing up an entirely new system.

PressTV seems to be one of the few English-language media which is actually reporting on the widespread election fraud allegations, rather than just dismissing the idea as nonsense and calling for blacklists. All I can say is: In 2009 the US did not respect the laws and judges of Iran’s electoral system – they meddled instantly and with total self-interest, and did seemingly all they could to fuel deadly violence. That was totally wrong, and I personally think that it is not for foreign media to do anything but to respect the will of the American people and the system they created.

They want to change their system? Please do.

But until they do how can we be faulted for respecting their electoral system, judges, and laws? And how can we not report that 60 million voters still openly cry voter fraud two weeks after the election?

But who cares about PressTV and Iran? I agree, and that’s entirely my point – this is an American issue, and we are objectively reporting what’s happening over here: claims of voter fraud are going unreported; not just CNN anchorpeople but actual elected officials are calling for blacklists; lawyers are being intimidated into not representing Donald Trump’s electoral grievances; and that Americans have apparently held a vote but seem to disagree on the system to properly process that vote.

What on earth is the point of a vote without also following the vetting system? The US seems to be taking a vote simply to take a vote? We better understand why they have such enormous abstention problems!

But the poll continues: Only 26% of Americans somewhat agree with the idea that “No matter who wins an election, things do not change very much.”

Elections do matter to Americans.

But elections which lack public confidence from nearly a majority are problematic, to put it mildly.

So where’s Trump?

Public servants follow both laws and public opinion, right?

All of this criticism of journalists who haven’t fallen at Biden’s (allegedly) president-elect’s feet has me questioning the most basic ideas, these days.

However, the path forward seems simple:

Question: Do you think Donald Trump should contest the results of the election in court?

Answer: 46% of America, “Yes”.

This poll is just a poll, sure, but it only says what every person on the ground says. Those in the MSM newsroom bubbles maybe can’t see that, but the nice thing about TV journalism is that you actually still have to report from the street – in modern internet “written” journalism, not so much anymore.

For the tribal-obsessed: Nine out of 10 of those who identify as Republicans said, “Yes”, but also 1 out of 10 Democrats. That great mass which is totally ignored by the all-strangling US duopoly – those who identify as “Independents” – reported that 53% of them also said, “Yes”.

It’s not a partisan issue, it’s a systemic issue. So where’s Trump?

Trump is doing the worst thing possible: He has not conceded, nor has he held a press conference to openly say that he will resolutely press forward to verify the vote – he has remained silent for two weeks. Slinking in the background and issuing a few tweets is by far the worst thing he could do. I can report that many Americans expect him to continue doing only that, but we can only wait.

Trump does have a right (to contest his grievance in court, as top Republican leaders reminded days ago) to take time to make up his mind. Pressing for a judicial review would get him crucified worldwide (even the Pope has prematurely declared Biden the victor, even though I thought the West was so very objectively secular?), and it would be the 1973 televised Watergate hearings times ten, but Trump undoubtedly has “democracy with American characteristics” – with its emphasis on minority/states/individualistic rights – on his side.

At 46% he very nearly has a democratic majority.

That’s really narrow? Maybe the poll was slightly miscounted? Don’t worry – I won’t ask The Economist if part of this poll was conducted via mail-in ballots.

*************************************************************

Results are in: Americans lose, duopoly wins, Trumpism not merely a cult (1/2) – November 5, 2020

Results are in: Americans lose, duopoly wins, Trumpism not merely a cult (2/2) – November 6, 2020

4 years of anti-Trumpism shaping MSM vote coverage, but expect long fight – November 7, 2020

US partitioned by 2 presidents: worst-case election scenario realized – November 9, 2020

A 2nd term is his if he really wants it, but how deep is Trump’s ‘Trumpism’? – November 10, 2020

CNN’s Jake Tapper: The overseer keeping all journalists in line (1/2) – November 13, 2020

‘Bidenism’ domestically: no free press, no lawyer, one-party state? (2/2) – November 15, 2020

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The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Blog!

A 2nd term is his if he really wants it, but how deep is Trump’s ‘Trumpism’?

 Wednesday, 11 November 2020 8:10 AM  [ Last Update: Wednesday, 11 November 2020 8:18 AM ]

US President Donald Trump (File photo)

By Ramin Mazaheri

Ramin Mazaheri is currently covering the US elections. He is the chief correspondent in Paris for Press TV and has lived in France since 2009. He has been a daily newspaper reporter in the US, and has reported from Iran, Cuba, Egypt, Tunisia, South Korea and elsewhere. He is the author of ‘Socialism’s Ignored Success: Iranian Islamic Socialism’ as well as ‘I’ll Ruin Everything You Are: Ending Western Propaganda on Red China’, which is also available in simplified and traditional Chinese.

The United States repeatedly has the worst elections of all the Western core democracies.

That’s not “Iranian meddling” but Harvard and their 2019 Electoral Integrity Index. They ranked US elections just 57th in the world.

One wonders how much further they will fall in this year’s ranking?

If we honestly ask if American elections have integrity I think everyone has the same answer, and it’s as serious as a heart-attack:

You don’t want to go there. American elections cannot withstand serious scrutiny.

So if President Donald Trump actually wants a second term, it’s likely there for the taking. He’ll have to ride out weeks of personal stress even worse than the televised Watergate hearings in 1973, but he won’t come out like Richard Nixon just for insisting that American elections finally get looked at honestly. 

I don’t think that Trump has engaged in vote fraud, but I must report that half of the US still believes that Democrats did. Mail-in balloting has unnecessarily stressed an already corruption-filled system, per Harvard. In a democracy it does not matter if perceptions of voter fraud run on partisan lines – if such perceptions are widespread they simply must be resolved satisfactorily.

Nobody has tested the integrity of US elections in recent memory. Not in even in 2000, when they rushed to install George W. Bush 37 days after the election. We later found that an unforgivable 14% of African-American votes had been questionably rejected in they key state of Florida.

Americans shouldn’t forget things like that, and many don’t. Many just permanently stay away from elections and encourage others to do the same.

Democrats want to pin all the blame for the current election mistrust on Trump, but such a view acts as if the world began in 2016.

This is an election system which could not stand serious scrutiny, and now it is cracking at the end of this year of unprecedented pressures.

Half the country is begging Trump: stress it further.

His supporters are asking Trump to be a martyr and refuse to concede

This is an absolutely history-making moment in time, and this hard-news journalist never resorts to such hyperbole: This is the moment when Donald Trump can choose between going down in history likely portrayed as a buffoon, or he can take on the establishment “Swamp” by forcing it to investigate allegations of structural corruption by elites.

It’s a stunning idea, and unthinkable to half the country here, who is being swamped with the insistence that Joe Biden is the president-elect even though the votes counting is still ongoing, even though he leads by a mere average of 21,000 votes over four states, and in an election which has been tainted by corruption accusations for months.

What they are applying as pressure is the cynical power of “inevitability”. Maybe Trump really did get fewer votes, so why put the nation through stress?

That common view should be rejected in favor of the martyrs who came before, such as the disenfranchised Black Floridians of 2000. And how long can honest reckonings be put off without destroying faith in the system? Destroyed faith in society has a price, and America has a problem with honest talk, but this is truly la chance for redemption.

That’s why Joe Biden’s early declaration was so reckless, self-interested and – in the worst sense of the word – Trumpian. Biden’s promised redemption is already false – he did not have faith in allowing the US system to play out.

It seems like a difficult task, but I contend that Trump has everything going for him – he has the one thing nobody really has, which is time. All Trump has to do is let the process play out: if he lost fairly, he will garner much credit for standing up for the common voter; if he wins the presidency, he’s a hero who reversed the tide.

Trump’s Achilles’ heel is that he cannot do this with dignity, but when every other election this century has been disputed, one person’s foolish behavior isn’t the main issue for American society anymore. 

There really is no rush: a new president doesn’t take over until January 20. But imperialists abhor a vacuum. They don’t know who is in charge and, thus who to follow, and thus who to plot to destroy. Imperialist cultures are exceptional and distorted like this in ways smaller countries can’t imagine.

This, “We’re the slave-master,” pride is also why a small country can take their time and get an election right, but the US is rushing to judgement no matter how many it disenfranchises. They know they have to constantly project total strength: every day they do not is another day the colonized will question the slave-master’s true power and abilities.

What is this 21st century “Trumpism” really? We are about to finally find out.

‘Trumpism’ isn’t the name of a proper political party – will one be found or is it over already?

Certainly, like the Yellow Vests in France, it was immediately and falsely slammed as xenophobic. That’s now a pathetic, false and boring argument: Trump won a greater percentage of minority votes than any Republican in 60 years. So we don’t really know what it is, due to this propaganda.

The reality is that their opposition to 1%-benefiting globalization, their demand for patriotic sovereignty and their opposition to 1%-benefiting “universal values” are the reasons for the corporate-mainstream vilification of both.

If Trump gives up the adjective of “Trumpian” Republican will no longer be necessary because the world’s oldest duopoly sucks the revolutionary spirit out of every third-party movement. I doubt you have heard of the “Bull Moose Party”, even though Teddy Roosevelt is on Mount Rushmore?

If Trump really stands his ground right “Trumpian” could shed its perceptions of xenophobia and be associated with a spirit of rigor and democratic egalitarianism. It would be a coup against the 1%’s efforts, and to win that Trump has to get absolutely crucified in the next three months.

We’ve never known just how serious about politics Trump is, no?

He used to be a reality-show star, but he has certainly put in a lot of work for four years. Key senators have said that Trump is within his rights to demand recounts and transparency. Now we will find out how fighting he is willing to do – he still has a ton of power.

Trump been vilified for four years, and revolutionaries are made, not born. Surely he is aware of the problems which those without power cannot possibly stand up to? He who is more aware is necessarily more responsible.

But how deep is Trump’s Trumpism?

It’s very easy to cynically say that Trump will only ever be a tool of the pro-Zionist camp, or that he is only in this to make money, or that all he seeks is fame or even infamy. Maybe all this is quite true, and he’s gone further than he ever imagined or even wanted to?

It doesn’t matter to me: The better point to make is that Trumpism is very real to its supporters. Like the Yellow Vests they actually do have genuine virtues. They see corruption and they want it out, but all they have is one vote each – they are not the president. 

Right now is the time if Trump shows he has learned how to be a public servant after four years, or if perhaps many are right to conclude that “democracy with American characteristics” is incapable of producing humble, selfless public servants, and only corrupt, self-interested ones. 

If Americans cannot have a transparent election they cannot possibly achieve even moderate progress: This is country which has opposed revolutionary tactics for 200+ years – everyone here is committed to reformism of the American system. If Trump does not make a stand here – if he bows to the forces of cynical inevitability – Trumpism remains half a personality cult, half a brand name and certainly half-finished at best. Trumpism will have made a point, but not a real impact.

The average American should not be punished – they have a right to free and transparent elections, and the whole world knows that they don’t get them. 2020 is yet another recent example. It seems unfortunate that it is up to Donald Trump to help him and her, but it is too early to judge: he may yet get added onto Mount Rushmore, as he hopes.

What is certain one week after their initial vote is that the US has had a vote, and a winner (two of them) – there is only one logical conclusion: concession/inauguration.

Until that happens it will be a steadily-increasing drip of chaotic news. That is not a bad thing for the world, nor one to be feared by Americans, but it is intensely feared by their 1%.

(The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of Press TV.)

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With 2 presidents US election as chaotic as feared

 Monday, 09 November 2020 3:29 PM  [ Last Update: Monday, 09 November 2020 3:29 PM ]

Video here

Ramin Mazaheri 
Press TV, Chicago 

The United States has not been so divided in recent memory, as there are two people claiming to be president.

The mainstream media rushed to accept Joe Biden’s declaration of victory, even though he has an average lead of only 32,000 votes in three states in a vote which is not even finished counting yet. Donald Trump has also claimed victory prematurely.

It appears half the country believes Biden is the president-elect while the other half believes Trump is the president-elect. No one knows what will happen next, and many fear tensions could elevate into violence. 

But mail-in ballots were used in unprecedentedly massive numbers, and the vote’s legality has been openly disputed for many months. It seems certain the courts will ultimately decide the legality of the vote, and maybe even who won, as in the year 2000, which caused massive political alienation, cultural division and mistrust.

The lack of trust is also because the US election process is considered the worst of any of the core Western democracies. That’s according to the Harvard-based Electoral Integrity Project, whose 2019 index ranked US elections just 57th in the world. 

Pro-Biden corporate media is seemingly acting as if there is no dispute at all, while skeptical pro-Trump outlets insist this unique election must be vetted by the courts and that Trump must not concede before that process is finished.

Both sides appear to be bewildered by the stance of the other side and both sides are certain of their own righteousness. With two presidents many say the US election could not have turned out worse, and the worst seems yet to come. 

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Press TV’s website can also be accessed at the following alternate addresses:

www.presstv.ir

www.presstv.co.uk

www.presstv.tv

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Did President Trump Just Launch the Largest Sting Operations in US History Against the Corrupt Swamp of the Democratic Party?

November 07, 2020

by Peter Koenig for the Saker Blog

Remember when Donald Trump said before the 2016 Elections, he wanted to be President to clean up the swamp in Washington? Well, he may be just doing that. President Trump may have just launched a massive sting operation against the rotten flagrant corruption of the “Democrats”. He knew they were planning a massive election fraud, when they insisted on mail-in votes, similar to the absentee votes, and asked that the mail-in votes would be counted at the end.

Pretext for the mail-in votes was “covid” – social distancing, not getting near each other standing in line for voting. A perfect excuse, transformed into a massive voter fraud.

Between 3:30 AM and 4:30 AM, they “found” 140,000 mail-in ballots for Biden in Wisconsin;
Between 3:30 AM and 5:00 AM, they “found” 200,000 mail-in ballots for Biden in Michigan;
Between 2:00 AM and 4:00 AM, they found a million (1,000,000) mail-in ballots in Pennsylvania

All mail-in ballots “received” in the morning hours of November 4, way beyond the voting deadline. All for Biden, none for Trump
Reference video https://www.bitchute.com/video/KWGj0NtpPgsH/?list=notifications&randomize=false about minute 1’45”.

Republicans were not allowed to be near the ballot counting as observers, as is the common rule in election vote counting, that the opposition is present, to observe the counting process. Example given in Pennsylvania by former Mayor of New York, Rudy Giuliani, who denounces “fraud and corruption” in Philadelphia, his home town; see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9898bDivIl0&feature=youtu.be

And fraud and corruption has been going on in at least two more States, Wisconsin and Michigan, and possibly also in Georgia – and maybe others.

President Trump did not agree in principle with the mail-in vote from citizens withing the US, because that is usually not done. Absentee votes yes, from military and Americans living abroad, but not from US citizens living in the US. He finally agreed, but said these mail-in votes must have been received before the voting deadline – 3 November – and must be counted first.

However, the Democratic National Committee (DNC) decided differently, namely that the mail-in votes would be counted last. This leaves room for fraud, as these latter votes will most likely not be matched against votes already cast, nor will they be scrutinized with the rigor of validity the way the ballots cast at the polls are checked, so duplicate votes maybe possible. There have indeed been reports of “dead” people voting.

Trump had sizable leads in the key swing states Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan, and also in Georgia – until the mail-in ballots arrived and were counted – see above. That’s when the pendulum swung to the other side, giving Biden the win.

Today, 7 November, it was announced that Joe Biden had “won” the elections with 290 electoral votes (270 needed), against 214 of Donald Trump.

The Trump Team must have suspected that fraud may be part of the “Democrats” strategy. They have planned a sting operation, assisted by the CIA. Each valid ballot distributed to the eligible voters has a small almost unrecognizable water mark. 

https://twitter.com/MediaRival/status/1324490206326738946?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1324515784924811264%7Ctwgr%5Eshare_3&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Ftruthbarrier.com%2Fsteve-pieczenik-in-bombshell-clip-pours-gasoline-on-watermark-hopes-patriots-divided-could-it-be-true%2F

Law suits are already under way in the three key swing states and more may follow. Recounts will be requested. On the basis of the recounts and the watermarks on the valid ballots, the level of fraud may be determined.

So, the election is far from over, and may end up like in 2000 in the Supreme Court for a final decision. But we are not there yet.

There are other dangers too.

Already now, street riots take place. Protests for or against Woke, the Blacks, the police… you name it. They are funded by disruptive forces, like the Soros Open Society Foundation and others, with similar objectives. More of such riots may ensue, the longer the final decision is postponed. Wouldn’t such social upheavals be a good reason to declare officially a state of emergency – merging into Martial Law?

That would be the ultimate example for the world to see a totally defunct and dystopian “Democracy”.

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Peter Koenig is an economist and geopolitical analyst. He is also a water resources and environmental specialist. He worked for over 30 years with the World Bank and the World Health Organization around the world in the fields of environment and water. He lectures at universities in the US, Europe and South America. He writes regularly for online journals such as Global Research; ICH; New Eastern Outlook (NEO) and more. He is the author of Implosion – An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed – fiction based on facts and on 30 years of World Bank experience around the globe. He is also a co-author of The World Order and Revolution! – Essays from the Resistance.
Peter Koenig is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization.

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Banana Follies: The Mother of All Color Revolutions

 November 06, 2020

by Pepe Escobar and cross-posted with Asia Times

A gaming exercise of the perfect, indigenous color revolution, code-named Blue, was leaked from a major think tank established in the imperial lands that first designed the color revolution concept.

Not all the information disclosed here about the gaming of Blue has been declassified. That may well elicit a harsh response from the Deep State, even as a similar scenario was gamed by an outfit called Transition Integrity Project.

Both scenarios should qualify as predictive programming – with the Deep State preparing the general public, in advance, for exactly how things will play out.

The standard color revolution playbook rules they usually start in the capital city of nation-state X, during an election cycle, with freedom fighting “rebels” enjoying full national and international media support.

Blue concerns a presidential election in the Hegemon. In the gaming exercise, the incumbent president, codenamed Buffon, was painted Red. The challenger, codenamed Corpse, was painted Blue.

Blue – the exercise – went up a notch because, compared to its predecessors, the starting point was not a mere insurgency, but a pandemic. Not any pandemic, but a really serious, bad to the bone global pandemic with an explosive infection fatality rate of less than 1%.

By a fortunate coincidence, the lethal pandemic allowed Blue operators to promote mail-in ballots as the safest, socially distant voting procedure.

That connected with a rash of polls predicting an all but inevitable Blue win in the election – even a Blue Wave.

The premise is simple: take down the economy and deflate a sitting president whose stated mission is to drive a booming economy. In tandem, convince public opinion that actually getting to the polls is a health hazard.

The Blue production committee takes no chances, publicly announcing they would contest any result that contradicts the prepackaged outcome: Blue’s final victory in a quirky, anachronistic, anti-direct democracy body called the “electoral college”.

If Red somehow wins, Blue would wait until every vote is counted and duly litigated to every jurisdiction level. Relying on massive media support and social media marketing propelled to saturation levels, Blue proclaims that “under no scenario” Red would be allowed to declare victory.

Countdown to magic voting

Election Day comes. Vote counting is running smoothly – mail-in count, election day count, up to the minute tallies – but mostly favoring Red, especially in three states always essential for capturing the presidency. Red is also leading in what is characterized as “swing states”.

But then, just as a TV network prematurely calls a supposedly assured Red state for Blue, all vote-counting stops before midnight in major urban areas in key swing states under Blue governors, with Red in the lead.

Blue operators stop counting to check whether their scenario towards a Blue victory can roll out without bringing in mail-in ballots. Their preferred mechanism is to manufacture the “will of the people” by keeping up an illusion of fairness.

Yet they can always rely, as Plan B, on urban mail-in ballots on tap, hot and cold, until Blue squeaks by in two particularly key swing states that Red had bagged in a previous election.

That’s what happens. Starting at 2 am, and later into the night, enter a batch of “magic” votes in these two key states. The sudden, vertical upward “adjustment” includes the case of a batch of 130k+ pro-Blue votes cast in a county alongside not a single pro-Red vote – a statistical miracle of Holy Ghost proportions.

Stuffing the ballot box is a typical scam applied in Banana Republic declinations of color revolution. Blue operators use the tried and tested method applied to the gold futures market, when a sudden drop of naked shorts drives down gold price, thus protecting the US dollar.

Blue operators bet the compliant mainstream media/Big Tech alliance will not question that, well, out of the blue, the vote would swing towards Blue in a 2 to 3 or 3 to 4 margin.

They bet no questions will be asked on how a 2% to 5% positive ballot trend in Red’s favor in a few states turned into a 0.5% to 1.4% trend in favor of Blue by around 4am.

And that this discrepancy happens in two swing states almost simultaneously.

And that some precincts turn more presidential votes than they have registered voters.

And that in swing states, the number of extra mysterious votes for Blue far exceeds votes cast for the Senate candidates in these states, when the record shows that down ticket totals are traditionally close.

And that turnout in one of these states would be 89.25%.

The day after Election Day there are vague explanations that one of the possible vote-dumps was just a “clerical error”, while in another disputed state there is no justification for accepting ballots with no postmark.

Blue operators relax because the mainstream media/Big Tech alliance squashes each and every complaint as “conspiracy theories”.

The Red counter-revolution

The two presidential candidates do not exactly help their own cases.

Codename Corpse, in a Freudian slip, had revealed his party had set up the most extensive and “diverse” fraud scheme ever.

Not only Corpse is about to be investigated for a shady computer-related scheme. He is a stage 2 dementia patient with a rapidly unraveling profile – kept barely functional by drugs, which can’t prevent his mind slowly shutting down.

Codename Buffoon, true to his instincts, goes pre-emptive, declaring the whole election a fraud but without offering a smoking gun. He is duly debunked by the mainstream media/Big Tech alliance for spreading “false claims”.

All this is happening as a wily, old, bitter operator not only had declared that the only admissible scenario was a Blue victory; she had already positioned herself for a top security job.

Blue also games that Red would immediately embark on a single-minded path ahead: regiment an army of lawyers demanding access to every registration roll to scrub, review and verify each and every mail-in ballot, a process of de facto forensic analysis.

Yet Blue cannot foresee how many fake ballots will be unveiled during recounts.

As Corpse is set to declare victory, Buffon eyes the long game, set to take the whole thing all the way to the Supreme Court.

The Red machine had already gamed it – as it was fully aware of how operation Blue would be played.

The Red counter-revolution does carry the potential of strategically checkmating Blue.

It is a three-pronged attack – with Red using the Judiciary Committee, the Senate and the Attorney General, all under the authority of codename Buffoon until Inauguration Day. The end game after a vicious legal battle is to overthrow Blue.

Red’s top operators have the option of setting up a Senate commission, or a Special Counsel, at the request of the Judiciary Committee, to be appointed by the Department of Justice to investigate Corpse.

In the meantime, two electoral college votes, one-month apart, are required to certify the presidential winner.

These votes will happen in the middle of one and perhaps two investigations focused on Corpse. Any state represented at the electoral college may object to approving an investigated Corpse; in this case, it’s illegal for that state to allow its electors to certify the state’s presidential results.

Corpse may even be impeached by his own party, under the 25^th Amendment, due to his irreversible mental decline.

The resulting chaos would have to be resolved by the Red-leaning Supreme Court. Not exactly the outcome favored by Blue.

The House always wins

The heart of the matter is that this think tank gaming transcends both Red and Blue. It’s all about the Deep State’s end game.

There’s nothing like a massive psy ops embedded in a WWE-themed theater under the sign of Divide and Rule to pit mob vs. mob, with half of the mob rebelling against what it perceives as an illegitimate government. The 0.00001% comfortably surveys the not only metaphorical carnage from above.

Even as the Deep State, using its Blue minions, would never have allowed codename Buffoon to prevail, again, domestic Divide and Rule might be seen as the least disastrous outcome for the world at large.

A civil war context in theory distracts the Deep State from bombing more Global South latitudes into the dystopian “democracy” charade it is now enacting.

And yet a domestic Empire of Chaos gridlock may well encourage more foreign adventures as a necessary diversion to tie the room together.

And that’s the beauty of the Blue gaming exercise: the House wins, one way or another.

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