Paco | Nov 26 2021 8:55 utc | 98
Whenever I despair I think of Cuba. Thanks so much Paco.
For you and all suffering under Monroe Doc.:
A tune
Play it loud! Gawd, I love Eva Grinan.

Posted by: waynorinorway | Nov 26 2021 9:26 utc | 103

waynorinorway @ 96 — These Amedikan Clowns are too easy to ridicule:
“1. Defending against authoritarianism”
First, knock off your Jan 6th bovine excretia.
“2. Addressing and fighting corruption”
Next, bring out Hunter Bidet’s computer.
“3. Promoting respect for human rights”
Then, knock off the Assange bullying.

Posted by: kiwiklown | Nov 26 2021 9:44 utc | 105

James @ 87.. says
i am sure one can turn this article into a story about how covid and democracy don’t mix!! or how the covid passport is taking away democracy.. i have never disagreed with that, but does that mean i want to yammer on about covid passports and etc. 24- 7 on every thread??
But James, your prayers c/b easily answered.. all someone need do is explain why the mandate would proceed to 100% forced coverage of every human in the world and green passports would still be issued and required, even when the magic dandelion miracle cure MDMC that works to cure within hours, is readily available. When you tell me the MDMC attacks infected covid pathology in humans, 100% clears the virus from the infected human, is 100% effective, cost less than $.05/cure and is already distributed by nature in the world wide, then and only then, will I say the discussion will continue, because all along, the discussion about Covid has never been about the biological infecting organism or the disease it causes. Its been about the power of government to make prisoners of us all.
So you see James, the discussion, the fact finding, is not about Covid, its our government allowing a private party to hide its data and to still issue a license to that private party that can genetically re engineer every living soul on earth. consider the stuff you find in this article for starters.
The mandate, the licencing of in situ gene product manipulation by mRNA vectors, as pseudo vaccines, without benefit of prior clinical trial data, without benefit of analysis and without benefit of data review by the entire worldwide scientific community because the articles which make that data available do not exist. so the scientist that both produce those journal articles and those who read the scientific journals cannot not function.
The Covid thing is on target in discussions about democracy, freedom, human rights, and private corporate tyranny conducted by and through the entire system called the nation state system. Its the first truly global use by private parties of the nation state system. All 256 nation state governments have bowed to this private party take over of national governments. Covid is not about viral pathology, or the deaths caused by the virus, its about ownership of, and control over everyone in the world by the same few that brought to the world war and death since nearly the beginning of recorded time.

Posted by: snake | Nov 26 2021 9:53 utc | 107

Posted by: md | Nov 26 2021 9:55 utc | 108
Whether a country is a democracy of not (the people rule) should be judged by OUTCOMES and not whether or not the central state representatives are directly elected.
<==having been born and lived in nation state tyranny labeled a democracy, which functions as a republic, (meaning the few rule by democratic means, the masses, but they do so w/o input fe masses), i feel outcome as a measure of democratic input is not likely to succeed.. because independently produced(domestic or foreign) propaganda that permeates most societies, masks the outcome, blocks from view of the masses, their real reality, and intercedes in the output determinating processes, with mind control technology so that the output is no longer a direct function of input and perception of those who are its satisfied victims is no longer their own. What determines good governance is citizen satisfaction. (<=and that is the point of governing by algorithms) If everyone in the governed class is satisfied with the solution government imposes then it becomes relevant to determine if democracy was the input that caused the output or if propaganda, mind control, information control, algorithmic feedback, environment control were the inputs which caused the output (in such a case people are happy because they have been programmed to be satisfied with what is given to them). Democratic societies can only exist if all things known to all persons (no private or state secrets) is made timely available to all persons, and the inputs of all persons become part of the output. Until that happens democracy is a dream made and kept in the mind of philosophers. It is interesting to note. that the elements of citizen perception and regulated top down control were dependent on the rule of law, until the digital platform came along. The digital platform made mind control, information control, algorithm management of citizens, and the like, highly efficient and the digital technology placed democratic inputs completely outside of most peoples ability.

Posted by: snake | Nov 26 2021 11:38 utc | 109

(Whoops posted in error in older post meant for here)
This is not an isolated US only effort. Obviously the demented potus is in no way capable of making any decisions – Presidents hardly ever do – it is their job to deliver for the Interests who put them in situ.
Their reward is to be granted a dynasty that can have a Seat at The Table.
Any who don’t play the game are publicly executed and their dynasties destroyed equally visibly ‘pour les encourager autres’.
Thanksgiving fell near enough to the anniversary of JFK – how did the Democrats in Government commemorate that? They certainly adhere to the lesson of ‘encouragemen’ instilled in our politicians.
Getting back to b’s post – the forming the gangs for the big one – in the U.K. I see that the mistress of Brittannia Unhinged BrexShitHeads, our current Foreign Minister, Liz Truss is trying her mischievous best to invite the ASEAN countries to Liverpool as a means of weakening the SCO and save the awkward Aukus chimera. 

This is a coordinated move towards a World Wide Open Hot Conflict to try and restore some kind of Cold War by pretending that the Empire is still a Superpower!
Atlantic Council/ nato Bellends and ii are busy keeping that narrative on track. As are the flying blue monkey troll armies bombing btl boards on sites intent on keeping the propaganda Narrative on track.
Yes they really think they can halt and reverse the doomed Dominate Empire by reinvention of a new Axis/Allied set of proxies to destroy the rise of the masses against the Forever Slave Owners.
There is no left/right there is only the barely visible top and all us below with some of us raised to be the slave masters for the Owners.
The Empire is dead dead dead but refuses to go with grace and thus remains an ever more putrid zombie vampire trying to drag the poor peoples of the world into saving our sorry white self delusional arses.

Posted by: D.G. | Nov 26 2021 11:39 utc | 111

How to make polls actually work: You have to use technology.
First you need secure online identification that is anonymizable. Think of something like a hashed Social Security number (apologies to our submarine-coveting friends from Australia for being USA-centric) that is biometrically tied to an individual and that the system can use to verify one-meat-person-one-vote, but the hashed value cannot be tracked back by other users of the system to a particular individual. This prevents pathetic woke mob “cancelling” of users, individuals voting multiple times, and individuals being targeted with revenge or retribution (usually by employers) for their views back in the real (non-virtual; offline) world.
Next you need a rather simple universal social media that all citizens with the above-mentioned biometrically-linked Social Security numbers have irrevocable access to by default. The infrastructure must be publicly owned and open source so anyone can audit it for CIA backdoors and Google/Microsoft user tracking “telemetry”. While this social media platform can have narrow interest groups form in an ad-hoc manner, or even one-on-one private communication sessions, for polling purposes posts will be universally readable and all users can up-vote the posts of their choice (or withdraw their vote). Of course, only one vote per post. Each post can have an attached discussion where pros and cons are debated and modifications proposed, recursively. In this manner the poll questions are created by the demos themselves and rise in prominence to the rest of the demos based upon the interests and concerns of the demos. As the posts rise in prominence and are debated, the issues are refined and clarified. Key concerns of the people will thus naturally bubble to the top of the rankings and in the process get generalized to be broadly applicable.
From a software standpoint much of the server side of this scheme could be coded in an afternoon by a single competent programmer. Secure applications for the various devices people might use to access the system that can perform the biometric identification and hash the result for anonymity would take a little longer, but not much. From a hardware standpoint some publicly owned data farms and data networks would be needed, but Google, Amazon, and telecom corporations are about ripe for being nationalized and expropriated anyway.
Basically, if the demos demanded it (would have to be a revolution, of course… big business would not voluntarily allow people to escape their digital corrals) this could be implemented in a month. Allow another couple months to include automatic translation and a few other bells and whistles.
Naturally the biometrically-tied ID numbers would be the most difficult part and require the most careful planning to keep them secure. They would have to be a composite of multiple IDs, actually, to allow restricted discussion of specific issues. The system would have to be able to restrict discussion of issues specific to a particular city, professional organization, workplace, club, or whatever based upon an ID for that specific subset of the population that gets hashed in with the user’s individual hash. I visualize temporary forum IDs that can be issued to make particular discussions invite-only. For example, for municipal discussions the invite comes along with your municipal tax bill or something similar. This is not super complicated, but implementing it in a way that maintains the bulletproof security of each user would require some careful planning and lots of code review.
Or you could just let private corporations and the governments they have corrupted perform the polling. I cannot see how you can “fix” that system to ever be representative of the public will, though. By design western capitalist “democracy” represents the interests of those with the most capital. That is why it is called capitalism.
(Aside: What is long and hard and full of se(a)men? Come on Australians, you know you want one!)
(Aside2: Maybe I should ease up on the Australians… They seem pretty sensitive under their tough crocodile wrestler personas. Or is it just crocodile tears they shed?).

Posted by: William Gruff | Nov 26 2021 12:40 utc | 113

Despite a total blackout in the media, Robert Kennedy’s new book The Real Anthony Fauci has been the #1 best seller on Amazon for some days now. I think we are likely going to see increasingly desperate moves from the vaccinocrats, who are now losing the propaganda battle.

Posted by: lysias | Nov 26 2021 14:20 utc | 115

Posted by Robin @100

How should we interpret prime minister Sogavare’s request made to Australia for police assistance? It seems counter-intuitive at first for him to do so in the same breath as denouncing foreign influence targeting the island’s new relationship with China.
On a second look, it could be a clever way to pull the rug under UKUS narrative building ….

Indeed. Calling for help from Washington’s “deputy sheriff” for the Pacific, when you are taking fire from the Sheriff, does seem counter-intuitive.
IMHO the Solomons PM is plain clueless.
Not everyone is as honed in the nuances of geopolitics as the commentariat here.
Just like the woman who suspects her husband is having an affair, and confides deeply with her best friend, only to discover……

Posted by: Melaleuca | Nov 26 2021 14:26 utc | 117

There is an article by Artyom Lukin at RT which clearly explains why Russia did not take advantage, as it could have done, in becoming the beacon of freedom it could have been ( if it would have resulted consequential with its usual rethoric on respect for International Law ( recall here that the Nuremberg Code is part of International Law, as well as the UN Human Rights Charter….)which could have ended in a massive exodus from “The West” to Russian lands, including its usual brain drain…
Instead, they decided that the neo-feudal order, with Russian characteristics, fitted them quite well…
https://www.rt.com/russia/541280-clash-civilizations-rivalries-ideologies
At first moments of this dystopia, I was seriously considering leaving for Russia, hesitated for a time, due the handicap of the language and the need to solve so many issues, to then finding myself discarding totally the idea when, at the time of the past Putin-Biden Geneva Summit, Mayor of Moscow started applying the same dictatorial measures I would be trying to leave behind, thought that, as she says my mother, for that travel I did not need such ammount of saddlebags…
Reflecting on the origins of the Thanksgiving Day, which is not but the ethernal history of peoples looking for more freedom of conscience, and thus, more freedom in general, I found myself stopping to think that this is the first time in history when peoples have nowhere to scape to. At those times, it was the new world, America; under the unleashing of the Nazi scourge, you could for a time go a bit westward, to the land where civil rights were born and established as a social contract, France, to then, with time, have no remedy than to flew to America too…That was the odissey by Stefan Zweig…
At this point in time, I fear, we will not have other option than to fight for a dign life worth to be lived.
Even James will arrive to this conclusion, with time, at certain number of doses or complications, of course, that in case he does not feel into this like fish into water…We are having a lot of surprises, or may be not so much, in our entourages…

Posted by: Black bread | Nov 26 2021 15:32 utc | 119

This is not an isolated US only effort.
Posted by: D.G. | Nov 26 2021 11:39 utc | 111
Hear, hear! Indeed, it is hard to call it an “effort”. On line conference where junior clerks can launch taped messages (if any) in the scheduled time slots. Personally, I am most curious what “Niger delegation” will say.

Posted by: Piotr Berman | Nov 26 2021 16:35 utc | 121

May I suggest to have a look at the “Democracy perception index 2021”,
“the world’s largest
annual study on how people perceive democracy, conduc ted
by Latana in collaboration with the Alliance of Democracies.”
https://f.hubspotusercontent00.net/hubfs/7049607/The%20Democracy%20Perception%20Index%202021.pdf
Page 10: The desire for more democracy is the lowest in
1. Southe Korea
2. Taiwan
3. China
4. Vietnam
5. Philippines
Page 13 The belief of people that their government mainly acts in the interest of a minority is the lowest (between 10 nd 25%)in
1. Vietnam
2. China
3. Singapore
4. Saudi Arabia
5. Denmark
In the US 59% agree to the staement.
Looks like press freedom, religious freedom and freedom of speech doesn’t feed you nor does it provide for a roof over your head.
Economic Inequality is viewed as the biggest threat to democracy worldwide and the US is viewed as a bigger threat to democracy than either China or Russia.
This poll has been conducted for:
The Alliance of Democracies Foundation, which is a non-profit organization founded in 2017 by Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the former NATO Gensec.
I wonder, whether the poll will get any attention at the Democracy Circus.

Posted by: venice12 | Nov 26 2021 16:55 utc | 123

“..Reflecting on the origins of the Thanksgiving Day, which is not but the eternal history of peoples looking for more freedom of conscience, and thus, more freedom in general, I found myself stopping to think that this is the first time in history when peoples have nowhere to scape to. At those times, it was the new world..”
Black bread@119
The Puritans were not interested in ‘freedom of conscience” but in forming a government where no ideas but theirs were tolerated. There is nothing mysterious about the history of New England in the C17th.
As to ‘freedom in general’ the only practitioners of anything approaching freedom were the aboriginal peoples who were the objects of -biblically inspired- genocide.

Posted by: bevin | Nov 26 2021 17:31 utc | 125

@Posted by: venice12 | Nov 26 2021 16:55 utc | 123
The problem with that poll is that we in “The West” now are not only championing lack of freedom of conscience, freedom of speech, right to information ( which in case you had no idea is another human right…), of personal and bodily sovereignty with reagrd experimental meds, but also suffering the higuest rates of economic inequality and deterioration of standards of living and public services, no wonder they had no but to impose a totalitarian regime on us so that we are not able to rise to change that situation.
Meanwhile financial capitalists and the richest 1% made the season of their lives through these two years of “pandemic” and keep going….until we stop them…

Posted by: Black bread | Nov 26 2021 18:06 utc | 127

Posted by: m | Nov 26 2021 18:11 utc | 128
you just showed every intelligent MoA reader/lurker/commenter that you have never bothered to study the elections in Venezuela and Russia🤷‍♂️ and that you are only driven by emotions not your mind.
Iran elections/election laws and observers i have not studied so i will not comment on it bc i do not know😜

Posted by: Per/Norway | Nov 26 2021 18:19 utc | 129

Maybe Libya should be invited. Israel was invited, but not Venezuela. The U.S. protectorate of Micronesia was invited, of course.

Posted by: Edward | Nov 26 2021 18:23 utc | 131

@Posted by: bevin | Nov 26 2021 17:31 utc | 125
Well, may be you are right, what I know, just heard a relate on this celebration by a journalist which I am finding ver yseasoned, eventhough at first sight, on the oposite ideological aisle, at least from those ideologies we still held before “the pandemic”…
That the Founding Fathers, once become rich, changed minds and started what is today in the origins of our current world wide opression is a fact…

Posted by: Black bread | Nov 26 2021 18:31 utc | 133

@Black bread | Nov 26 2021 18:23 utc | 130
Thank you for responding

Read the Op-ed by Artyom Lukin, Putin just saw that the international environment favoured his wet dream of reisntating the tsarist system, with whatever new characteristics he goes improvising to continue in power with such a system which never favored the Russian masses.

I read that article, but it didn’t really provide many answers to me. As for “wet dreams” of a new “tsarist system”, that is not my impression, after 20 years of successful rebuilding. The wet dreams of authoritarianism is most of all a current feature of western “leaders” as I experience it, and projecting their intentions on Russia is an ugly aspect of it.

Posted by: Norwegian | Nov 26 2021 18:52 utc | 135

james @68, 74, 87:
100%
Thank You
And thank you for pleading for stoppage of propaganda in an otherwise great forum of opinions.

Posted by: Oriental Voice | Nov 26 2021 19:10 utc | 137

RT frequently puts out click-bait opinion pieces with very little substance. Best to pass over them.

Posted by: norb | Nov 26 2021 19:36 utc | 139

In his review of the recent book by Robert F. Kennedy Jr.,( not for nothing subtitled “Bill Gates, Big Pharma and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health”, which in a sentence proves the total connection of the pandemic events with the current state of our “democracies”…) Pepe Escobar extracts this excerpt from the “Lockstep Exercise” which took place in 2010, and which developed a scenario funded by the Rockefeller Foundation:

During the pandemic, national leaders around the world flexed their authority and imposed airtight rules and restrictions, from the mandatory wearing of face masks to body-temperature checks at the entries to communal spaces like train stations and supermarkets. Even after the pandemic faded, this more authoritarian control and oversight of citizens and their activities stuck and even intensified. In order to protect themselves from the spread of increasingly global problems – from pandemics and transnational terrorism to environmental crises and rising poverty – leaders around the world took a firmer grip on power.

Notice that rising poverty is their main worry, what says to us that this degenerating situation of our standards of living is here to stay, if not about to turn worse.
With regard the other two worries mentioned we all know here these are not but tools to precisely “took a firmer grip of power” once “the Pandemic” escenario terminated or exhausted…
At this point, I hope it has got clear, that our lives and health simply are not one of their worries.
But even in the case they would be anytime worried, at pure selfish level, for example, by climate change, Nancy Pelosi would not have acquired a mansion valued in a hundred million dollars ( which she seems to have earned by investment made under privileged insider information …)just at the seaside…..
BTW, the book by RFK Jr. is out for sale at a very low price so that it can be spread worlwide.
You may want to read Pepe´s review at his Vk account…also at other websites already.

Posted by: Black bread | Nov 26 2021 19:43 utc | 141

Pepe Escobar’s review of the Kennedy book at https://www.unz.com/pescobar/fauci-as-darth-vader-of-the-covid-wars/ .

Posted by: lysias | Nov 26 2021 20:07 utc | 143

re: I wonder if someone could do a study rating countries on how well their policies match their citizens’ desires
Unfortunately there is no established method of determining citizens’ desires. Other countries have referendums, some states have them, …
Posted by: Don Bacon | Nov 26 2021 3:22 utc | 79
Actually, reliable methods do exist. E.g. take a taxi ride and chat with the driver. Certain Thomas Friedman perfected this method, and he applied it in numerous countries. In cases when ordinary driver knows only few phrases, like “very far” and “300 rupees” (this is if you are few blocks away from your target in Chennai), you should use a limousine with a properly educated driver. Alternatively, use a social function to chat with locals with proper education and wide horizons.
Nevertheless, this is a wrong question. In the absence of vk, I should illuminate you about the scientific wisdom of marxism. There is a cardinal distinction between a class in itself and a class for itself. The former is not aware of its true interests, and the latter is. Neo-liberals as former marxists (mostly, Trotskiite deviants, but still) know it well. Consequently, the correct question is what people SHOULD desire. This is a proper, SCIENTIFIC question, and you can find answers in publications of IMF, Brookings Institute and other reputable sources.
In turn, a well functioning democracy functions well because it fulfills the desires that people should have.

Posted by: Piotr Berman | Nov 26 2021 22:37 utc | 145

Never mind that UN Charter stipulation that “The Organization is based on the principle of the sovereign equality of all its Members” — some are apparently are considered by some more equal than others.
from Taipei Times….
German mention of ‘Taiwan’ lauded

‘UNPRECEDENTED’: Taiwan’s envoy said that official wording framing Taiwan-China issues as not about unification or independence counters the narrative Beijing wants.
Use of the phrase “democratic Taiwan” by Germany’s new coalition government in official document shows that Taiwan-China issues are not about “independence” against “unification,” but about democracy against authoritarianism, Representative to Germany Shieh Jhy-wey said yesterday. . .here

Posted by: Don Bacon | Nov 27 2021 0:00 utc | 147

John PIlger

There are times when one tragedy, one crime tells us how a whole system works behind its democratic facade and helps us to understand how much of the world is run for the benefit of the powerful and how governments lie. To understand the catastrophe of Iraq, and all the other Iraq’s along imperial history’s trail of blood and tears, one need look no further than Diego Garcia.

Do u know How many lies Pilger counted in that Diego Garcia scam ?
Lie 1

There aint no inhabitans , only seagulls and monkeys.

LIe 2

Dear folks, this is a temporary measure, once we finish our biz, you can come back to your homes.

Lie 3

oops !
Too bad buddies, you cant come back.
We just discover the island is sinking .
you’ve to stay put where u are, for your own good,

Due to the exiled islanders decades old petition, the high court finally passed a verdict

return the island to the people you sobs

Here comes the clincher,
Lie 4

No way my lord,
the island has been converted into a marine nature reserve, outta bound to human intruders, a vital part of our cop26 scam, er green initiative.
We are just doing our part in saving the world from those rapacious humans u know ?

By then,
The gringo squatters were ROTFLMAOing

So we’r now a Marine nature reserve ?
Those gawd damned pommy !@#$%^%!
What’ll they think of next ?

FUKUS skulduggery are the legend, but they had gone too far with this Diego Garcia farce.
Even the normally comatose UN felt obliged to intervene,

Give the gawd damned island back to the Chagosians pronto you mofo

By then even the master of deceit had run out of excuse.
When all else fails, they always show their true color..One finger salute.

Come and get us , sucker !

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2021/02/09/chag-f09.html

Posted by: denk | Nov 27 2021 3:25 utc | 149

Stonebird #104

Surely there have been problems between Malaita and Honiara for a long time. So are the US/AUS now going to forment trouble between the islands?

Whatever the Aus is up to it will include the continued theft of the magnificent forests that once were in all of the Solomon Islands.

Posted by: uncle tungsten | Nov 27 2021 4:10 utc | 151

RE: Posted by b on November 25, 2021 at 17:59 UTC | Permalink
“The system has become so weak that it sees a need to assure itself. “
The system has always been weak and needed to reassure itself almost constantly from inception hence “ We the people hold these truths to be self-evident” and “In god we trust” (not anyone else).
A cult of fear which always viewed its sustainability as being dependent on the coercion of all others who were/are not “I” in attempts to preclude a culture of “we”.

Posted by: MagdaTam | Nov 27 2021 8:11 utc | 153

Confrontation will result in world war – nuclear Armageddon. The warnings of history need to be heeded.
https://www.ghostsofhistory.wordpress.com/

Posted by: peter mcloughlin | Nov 27 2021 10:47 utc | 155

This revolution wasnt televised..
The ousting of pro China Timor leader Alkatiri by FUKUSA.
iF India is the USA of South Asia.
Surely Oz qualify as FUS of South Pacific.

On 28 April last, a section of the East Timorese army mutinied, ostensibly over pay. An eyewitness, Australian radio reporter Maryann Keady, disclosed that American and Australian officials were involved

JOhn Pilger
The coup that the world missed….
http://johnpilger.com/articles/east-timor-the-coup-the-world-missed

Posted by: denk | Nov 27 2021 17:03 utc | 157

As for “wet dreams” of a new “tsarist system”, that is not my impression, after 20 years of successful rebuilding. The wet dreams of authoritarianism is most of all a current feature of western “leaders” as I experience it, and projecting their intentions on Russia is an ugly aspect of it.
Posted by: Norwegian | Nov 26 2021 18:52 utc | 135
There are two types of that “wet dream”. In both versions we have of a horde of demonic opponents faced by a plucky group of heroes (that includes the dreamer). Version 1 has the self-styled Tsar and the leader of the horde, Version 2 has a plucky group of heroes with unswerving and total loyalty to the Tsar. RT link is obviously to Version 2.

Posted by: Piotr Berman | Nov 28 2021 16:13 utc | 159

Serbia is invited hahahaha…Dear mother of God 😀

Posted by: Vladimir Molan | Dec 3 2021 22:32 utc | 161