General

Eric Kaufmann: Canada is disintegrating.

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I wonder if it was the same in the U.S. where Biden apologized for the residential schools.’ From Eric Kaufmann’s “Canada is disintegrating“:

Though mistreatment of indigenous Canadians occurred at these schools, as they did in reserve and non-native schools, records show that native people who attended Residential Schools had significantly lower mortality rates from infectious diseases than their peers who remained on reserve. Documentary evidence reveals that children were not removed from reserves without parental consent. Aspirational native parents sought to have such schools constructed and wanted their children to attend. Many who attended spoke positively of their experience. The evidence also does not back up accusations that the schools were designed to erase the culture of First Nations people.

Contrast the following comment by Kaufmann with this column by Alexander Dugin’s “The Imperative of Russian Power“:

Kaufmann:

What happens in a country without cultural conservatism? Look no further than Canada, where the national identity is disintegrating.

Dugin

Liberalism is exhausted, though it persists out of inertia. But now, even executive technocracy is insufficient. Dealing with war, with internal enemies in the fifth and sixth columns, with destructive migration and catastrophic demographics, with traditional and non-traditional values, each must make a choice. Clear and decisive. Not whispered — aloud. And it must be upheld and followed through, possibly to the end, for we are in a time of war. Being Russian today is not just about claiming a title or identity label. Being Russian means joining the ranks of the Russian Cause, understanding oneself as part of a people, willing to sacrifice everything — even life — for the state.

Frankly, this is why many of us favor Russia in the Ukraine war. The West is exhausted and corrupt.

 

Broken Canadian maple leaf graphic

‘There is no core identity, there is no mainstream’

What happens in a country without cultural conservatism? Look no further than Canada, where the national identity is disintegrating.

In 2015, soon after taking office, the new Prime Minister Justin Trudeau gushed to a fawning New York Times that, “There is no core identity, no mainstream in Canada. There are shared values – openness, respect, compassion, willingness to work hard, to be there for each other – but there is no core identity, no mainstream in Canada.”

Along with his fellow travellers in the institutions, he set to work ripping the country’s historic identity to shreds. The three prongs of the attack involved setting fire to its past, promoting LGBTQ and critical race theory in schools and government, and unleashing an unprecedented wave of mass migration. Only now that the full impact of this cultural revolution is sinking in is the country waking up. Even the mainstream liberal left admits things have gone too far.

Journalist Omer Aziz, in the liberal establishment Globe and Mail, penned a viral piece about the betrayal of the ‘Canadian Dream’, which he characterised as on life support. He speaks of a social crisis, an immigration crisis, an economic crisis and a political crisis after the ravages of Trudeau. Former Tory cabinet minister Kevin Klein adds, ‘Today, our country’s identity is under siege, not from outside invaders but from within – by an ideology that seeks to erase what it means to be Canadian. The left’s relentless attack on our values, history, and sense of belonging is tearing at the very fabric of our democracy.’

This summer I spent five weeks in the eastern part of my country, setting foot in the only two of the country’s ten provinces I had yet to visit. What greeted me? The progress pride flag fluttered everywhere across the picturesque small towns of Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island. Food chains in these overwhelmingly British-origin provinces were staffed almost entirely by recent arrivals, the product of an unprecedented wave of temporary foreign workers encouraged by Trudeau’s Liberals. If you think Britain, with 50 percent more people than Canada, took in a lot of immigrants last year, consider that Canada admitted a staggering 1.9 million to the UK’s 1.2 million.

But perhaps the most symbolic sight was in Fredericton, New Brunswick, where woke activists had recently torched the only eighteenth century building in the city – one of only a handful outside Quebec – to the point it may have to be demolished. This ISIS-style vandalism was fired by the vogue for ‘decolonisation’ emerging in the wake of over 100 arson attacks on churches across Canada. These, which Trudeau called ‘understandable’, accompanied a wave of statue toppling of Canadian founders such as Sir John A. Macdonald (as well as Queen Victoria), and were motivated by leftist myths about the churches’ role in the country’s Residential Schools programme for indigenous First Nations people.

Though mistreatment of indigenous Canadians occurred at these schools, as they did in reserve and non-native schools, records show that native people who attended Residential Schools had significantly lower mortality rates from infectious diseases than their peers who remained on reserve. Documentary evidence reveals that children were not removed from reserves without parental consent. Aspirational native parents sought to have such schools constructed and wanted their children to attend. Many who attended spoke positively of their experience. The evidence also does not back up accusations that the schools were designed to erase the culture of First Nations people.

The charge that children were killed or placed in ‘mass graves’ by those who ran the schools has no basis in documentary or forensic records. Rather, it is based on selective oral testimony and ignores the considerable monetary and identity incentives shaping the narrative of plaintiffs, white progressive allies and well-paid lawyers. Recently, the Canadian government forked over a whopping $2.8 billion to atone for their claims. The notion that residential schools amounted to a form of ‘genocide’ is based on misinformation and an abuse of the English language, but this did not stop the entire political and media establishment endorsing the lie. Telling such truths is smeared as ‘denialism’ by woke elites, and zealots among them are trying to criminalise it.

Meanwhile, gender reassignment surgery and self-identification are the norm, the UK’s Cass Review has been dismissed and draconian human rights bills like C-16 and C-63 permit plaintiffs to haul people before kangaroo courts known as Human Rights Tribunals for subjectively-defined offences like misgendering. Trudeau’s government has majored on speech policing and authoritarianism towards the right, abusing the language of ‘hate’ and ‘misinformation’ while trafficking in both.

The downstream effects of this woke revolution include falling per capita GDP, rising crime and youth unemployment, soaring house prices and a surge in homeless encampments. As I note in my new book Taboo, the so-called ‘culture war’ is about much more than culture.

Perhaps the only silver lining to the story is that Trudeau’s dumpster fire seems to have woken people up. Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives are crushing the Liberals in the polls by nearly 20 points, on course for a clear majority of seats. Two-thirds of people want lower immigration and the issue is a top concern for voters for the first time I can remember. Meanwhile young Canadians, bucking trends elsewhere in the Anglosphere, appear to lean well to the right of their elders on some metrics.

Only time will tell if this is too little, too late.

Information Liberation: Soros Funds Sohrab Ahmari’s “Conservative” Outlet Compact Magazine

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I was unfamiliar with Chris Menahan’s work but very much liked this article and two other articles he links to at the end on Ben Shapiro and Bethany Mandel respectively. Of course, he is absolutely right that Conservatism Inc is controlled opposition, and it’s no surprise that Soros and his son are funding it. And of course Chris Rufo is a prime example, along with Ben Shapiro and Bethany Mandel

Excerpts:

Report: Soros Funds Sohrab Ahmari’s “Conservative” Outlet Compact Magazine

By Chris Menahan

…

[The article quotes Vanity Fair as follows:]

Ahmari founded Compact in 2022 with Matthew Schmitz, a fellow conservative editor, and Edwin Aponte, a Marxist who left the project due to irreconcilable political differences, Salon reported, and broke off contact with Ahmari and Schmitz. Its mission at the outset was to promote “a strong social-democratic state that defends community—local and national, familial and religious—against a libertine left and a libertarian right.” Despite the bipartisan framing, their most prominent start-up funders belonged to the right. According to Aponte, they included Thiel, the right-wing tech investor and JD Vance mentor, and chairman of the board of the Claremont Institute Thomas Klingenstein—both of whom, in Aponte’s view, “should be robbed of all of their money by a mob of poor people.” (When Salon first reported Thiel’s funding of Compact, it noted, “a source close to Thiel denied that Thiel has directly funded Compact, but couldn’t rule out the possibility that an entity Thiel funds has in turn donated to the magazine.” Klingenstein didn’t respond to a request for comment.)

It’s not weird at all: he funds controlled opposition on both sides to guide the left and right.

One day after this news came out, Chris Rufo — who works for the [Jewish vulture capitalist] Paul Singer-funded Manhattan Institute — had a column published in Compact Magazine lamenting free speech on X and the “disappearance of gatekeepers” leading to surging “anti-Semitism” on the right.

Chris Brunet, who Rufo and Conservatism Inc have been trying to cancel for criticizing Israel, blew the story up on X.

Rufo wrote in his piece, “Against Racialism, Left and Right”:

On X, many right-wing accounts espouse open anti-Semitism, often posting allegedly ironic memes about Adolf Hitler. I once posted something about critical race theory, and was told by one of these accounts, “Well, you know that critical race theory was invented by Jews.” Though this kind of right-wing conspiratorial thinking is nothing new, the fact that it has become so commonplace on online platforms like X is an alarming novelty that merits our concern. [In fact, hatred of Whites is indeed a Jewish project, beginning with “Whiteness Studies which equals CRT without the name.]

The growing distrust of mainstream institutions that is characteristic of today’s right can’t be written off completely. This sentiment—ushered in by figures like Donald Trump—swept away the broken establishment Republican consensus, yet it has failed to fill the ideological vacuum it has created. Trump tried to fill it with partisan politics but lacked an adequate intellectual framework. Those who retrofitted their ideologies to Trump attempted to create an intellectual substructure for his presidency, in some cases ushering in a kind of chaotic element. To be sure, chaos can create space for creativity. But it always comes with a downside.

This ideological vacuum is compounded with relaxed censorship policies on platforms like X, thanks to its new owner, Elon Musk. To be sure, this has allowed more space to express legitimate viewpoints and is preferable to the old censorship system. But it has also allowed conspiratorial thinking to gain traction. Worse, it has opened the door to alt-right influencers and the so-called Groypers, who have taken politics as a method of garnering attention and then monetizing it either on or off their platforms. This has all been exacerbated by the disappearance of gatekeepers and overall quality control within the post-establishmentarian right.

“The Woke Right™️ loves censorship,” Brunet commented.

…

Contrary to the above claims [that Soros is anti-Israel], George Soros was never banned from Israel and Alex Soros is the one who made the decision to invest in Compact Magazine.

George Soros spent his whole life constructing elaborate stories about how his activism was motivated by high-minded ideals from Karl Popper about “open societies” and “inclusive democracies” but his idiot son Alex gave the game away in an interview with New York Times Magazine in 2018:

Alex told me that for many years, his father had not been eager to advertise his Judaism because “this was something he was almost killed for.” But he had always “identified firstly as a Jew,” and his philanthropy was ultimately an expression of his Jewish identity, in that he felt a solidarity with other minority groups and also because he recognized that a Jew could only truly be safe in a world in which all minorities were protected. Explaining his father’s motives, [This is the view of mainstream Jewish communities going back over a century.] he said, “The reason you fight for an open society is because that’s the only society that you can live in, as a Jew — unless you become a nationalist and only fight for your own rights in your own state.”

Fortunately, Alex doesn’t have anywhere near the intelligence or cunning of his predecessor.

The controlled opposition guiding the right is suffering from the same issue.

Republican Jewish Coalition attempting to get Jews to vote for Trump

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I suspect Jews will vote their usual 70+% for the Democrats, assuming that Israel will be okay with either party in power, and generally preferring Harris because it will hasten the demise of White America.

Source.

The ad from the Pro-Trump Republican Jewish Coalition Victory Fund is titled “Deli Talk” and is part of a $15 million ad buy the PAC hopes will serve as a “closing argument” to sway Jews on Philadelphia’s Main Line and beyond to vote for Trump.

“Jewish voters, some of whom have never voted for a Republican in their lives, understand the incredibly high stakes in this election,” RJC CEO Matt Brooks said in a news release. “We encourage Jewish voters to listen to their Bubbies: it’s OK to vote for Donald Trump.”

Central Park Five: Be Careful What You Sue For

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I’m not sure the Central Park Five really want a civil trial on what happened the night of April 19, 1989, but by suing Donald Trump for defamation, that’s what they’re going to get.

The alleged defamation was Trump’s typically garbled response to Kamala Harris’ lie at ABC’s presidential debate last month, about something that happened 35 years ago. She claimed that Trump had called for “the execution of five young Black and Latino boys who were innocent.”

Actually, Trump’s much-maligned ad in The New York Times never mentioned the Five, who weren’t remotely eligible for the death penalty, anyway. If everyone involved here weren’t a public figure, Harris’ accusation, as well as the Five’s legal filing, and every Times story for the past decade mentioning the ad, would all be defamatory, too.

But since they brought it up, let’s have a trial! Truth is an absolute defense to defamation, and one thing the public hasn’t gotten much of is the truth about the Central Park Five: Antron McCray, Yusef Salaam, Raymond Santana, Kevin Richardson and Korey Wise.

Here’s some testimony we’d like to see:

How did the detectives get the boys’ parents to go along with videotaping their sons as they confessed — falsely, they now claim — to the rape of the jogger, in addition to vicious attacks on bicyclists, joggers and other park-goers?

Weren’t the detectives worried that if they bullied five innocent boys into making false confessions, the jogger might suddenly emerge from her coma and be able to identify her attackers? What if she woke up and blurted out, “My boyfriend did it!”? Boy, would their faces be red.

In any event, it will be great to see those videotapes again!

As long as the detectives were making up confessions anyway, why not have the youths forthrightly admit to raping the jogger? Instead, all five readily admitted to the other crimes, but each of them minimized their role in the rape, as is typical for suspects in sex crimes cases.  They confessed — to the police, to detectives and to their friends and acquaintances — only to fondling or restraining the jogger while others raped her.

Thus, for example, when Santana was picked up by the police, he blurted out, “I had nothing to do with the rape. All I did was feel the woman’s tits.” The police didn’t know about the jogger yet. How did Santana?

Melody Jackson, sister of a friend of Wise’s, volunteered to the police that Wise told her he didn’t rape the jogger, he “only held her legs down while Kevin [Richardson] f—ked her.”

(Maybe not strictly relevant to the case at hand, but how dumb does she feel now, thinking this admission would help Wise?)

How did Wise know that — as Detective August Jonza’s contemporaneous notes show — someone he thought was named “Rudy” had stolen the jogger’s Walkman? Police had no way of knowing about the Walkman until 13 years later, when serial rapist Matias Reyes said so.

If it wasn’t the Five — and I’m assured it was not — then who really bashed ex-Marine John Loughlin in the head with a lead pipe, kicked and beat him unconscious, putting him in the hospital for two nights? Why would Loughlin identify one of the Five as his attacker in a police lineup?

Subpoenas will also have to go out to the other 30 or so youths in the park that night because so many of them implicated members of the Five in both the beatdowns and the rape — such as overhearing a couple of them laughingly say they “made a woman bleed.”

It’s always been a mystery why Salaam (New York City Council member, honored speaker at the Democratic National Convention and namesake of a gate to Central Park) confessed to the attack immediately after Detective Thomas McKenna told him, “I don’t care what you say to me. We have fingerprints on the jogger’s pants.”

Upon hearing that, Salaam said, “I was there, but I didn’t rape her.”

But why, Yusef? Why confess if you knew your fingerprints couldn’t possibly be anywhere near the jogger, of whose rape you are entirely innocent? Maybe the videotape will jog your memory.

Salaam also told detectives that one of the wilding youths said, “Let’s get a white girl.” Who said that? If Salaam made it up, I’ll be very disappointed in him.

We’ll need to hear from Wise’s acquaintance Ronald Williams, who told police that the day after the wilding, Wise said, “You heard about that woman that was beat up and raped in the park last night. That was us!”

When the case was reopened in 2002, Williams stuck by his story.

Having had 35 years to think about it, does Richardson finally have an explanation for how the crotch of his underwear got smeared with semen, grass stains and dirt that night?

The last two crucial witnesses are confirmed rapist Reyes, whose DNA was on the jogger, and then-assistant district attorney Nancy Ryan, who pushed through the Five’s “exoneration,” despite their detailed, videotaped confessions and guilty verdicts from two majority-minority juries.

Questions for Reyes: When you confessed to raping the jogger, did you know you could not be punished for it? Did you know you would instead receive a favorable prison transfer? You were in the same prison as one of the Five, Wise. Are other inmates telling the truth when they say he was threatening you unless you signed an affidavit prepared by his lawyer, claiming you acted alone?

Is your former cellmate telling the truth when he says you did not, in fact, act alone, but heard the jogger’s screams and ran over to join the fun?

For ADA Ryan: Why did you prohibit the police from interviewing Reyes?

If DNA is the only acceptable evidence in a criminal trial, how were homicides proved before the 1990s, when DNA evidence first began to be used in criminal trials? Would “videotaped confessions” figure into your answer?

Is it true that your bitter office rival was Linda Fairstein, head of the sex crimes unit, who oversaw the original cases? How much did it burn you up that she caught the case instead of you?

I have many more witnesses I’d like to put on the stand, including the jogger’s doctors, who say they distinctly saw many different handprints on the jogger’s body, and that her injuries prove that Reyes could not possibly have acted alone.

This is a wonderful opportunity to prove the truth in a court of law! They asked for it.

COPYRIGHT 2024 ANN COULTER

Peter Bernegger on Dominion Voting Machines

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Peter Bernegger describes himself as “Independent Journalist, President of Election Watch, Inc.” He has a GiveSendGo appeal for support.

If true, this is an incredibly important story. I would need more corroboration to be confident. If it is true, why would Fox pay $750 million to Dominion to settle their lawsuit? Why wouldn’t Trump and other Republicans be up in arms and try to prevent the use of Dominion voting machines?

Shocking History of Dominion Voting – How Obama rigged the creation of Dominion Voting Co. 
Since 2009, Dominion Voting Systems operated from 215 Spadina Ave., Toronto, ON, M5T 2C7,Canada – an office space of the radical Tides Foundation. This building houses (or housed until a few months ago) a Toronto office of Tides Canada and a Tides’ incubation space for leftist groups. Dominion Voting Systems Corp. is the Canadian company behind the ballot switching software. Dominion was founded in 2003, with a mission to provide electronic voting systems friendly for progressives. Because of such partisanship, it languished with almost no customers for the next 5-6 years, until the Obama administration came to power. In 2010, the Obama administration confiscated electronic voting systems assets (software, intellectual property, manufacturing tools, customer base, etc.) from two established American companies, and gave them to Dominion.
At the same time, Dominion got some employees and assets from a foreign EVS company, tied to Hugo Chavez. Its software has been used by some 40% of the voters in this elections, mostly by Democrat-controlled states and election commissions. Apparently, no protections were put in place against ballot switching, deletion, or creation. According to Dominion’s own website, its software was used in “battleground” states and the largest Democrat states, including MI, GA, AZ, NV, NM, CO, AK, UT, NJ, CA, NY.
Dominion Early History
Dominion Voting System Corp., was founded in Canada in 2002-2003 with an openly progressive mission – to develop electronic voting software which would not just process ballots, but also “mobilize voters” – a popular slogan of the Left. It is not clear what products or services the company has developed. It found almost no buyers, until Obama was elected in 2008. In 2009, New York ordered a few dozens of systems from it. In 2010, Obama’s DOJ (Holder – Mueller) took the EVS unit, purchased from Diebold, away from the market leader ES&S, and gave it to Dominion. This gift included the installed base of about 30% of the US electronic voting systems (EVS) market. Within two weeks, Dominion also acquired Sequoia, which was formally spun from Smartmatic, but ties between these two companies remained. Smartmatic is a UK based EVS vendor, whose software was used by Chavez to “win” the Venezuelan referendum in 2004. Smartmatic’s unit Sequoia faced troubles in the US. Those troubles quickly ended when its assets were purchased by Dominion. Thus, the new Democratic party created a pocket pet corporation, gave it the lion share of the US electronic voting systems market. Dominion is ideologically aligned with the Democratic Party, owes it everything it has, dependent on it for most of its business, and needs it in power to avoid prosecution for corruption. Sounds like a conflict of interest.
Electronic Voting
Using electronic voting machines has always been controversial. The pros for electronic voting – saving working time of the ballot counters – are minuscule. The cons however are infinite. Because software is inherently complex, non-transparent, and volatile, there is always a risk of significant errors. There are also suspicions and doubts about election results. The complexity of software and hardware on which voting machines run has been continually increasing, aggravating these concerns. At the beginning of 2009, there were four major US EVS suppliers: ES&S, Premier (a unit of Nixdorf-Diebold), Sequoia (linked to Smartmatic), and Hart Intercivic. The market size was a few hundred million dollars a year and growing. EVS vendors competed among themselves and against traditional pen and paper voting. There were no barriers to entry for other competitors, other than government’s regulations. Electronic voting, which sounded like a good idea in the 1980s is so no more. Electronic voting machines and their vendors were under criticism for many years. In 2007-2008, this criticism materialized in the SEC, DOJ, and states lawsuits against the voting machines vendors. Diebold was catching flack for having a prominent Republican party supporter among their top executives. It spun its EVS unit as a separate company Premier, and was looking for a buyer. The existing vendors were burdened with liabilities, including DOJ investigations. This opened up an opportunity for the Obama administration.
Technical Vulnerabilities of EVS Systems
The voting software developers can easily insert code, changing numbers in favor of or against one candidate. No hacking is necessary. The malicious code can be designed to pass tests and to be triggered only at the time of a real election, automatically or manually. Both case are possible even if the machine is disconnected from the internet and has no ordinary I/O devices. The malicious code can be activated manually in real time by inserting a ballot or another paper with a pre-defined QR or image code. An audit of the source code is necessary, but not sufficient. Dominion software runs on Windows, and the malicious code can be hidden in any part of the operating system. Malicious code can be hidden in the firmware, too. If a state wants to take risks and to rely on testing and the source code audit, they should be conducted with the participation of technically competent representatives of both parties. If the system passes testing and auditing, the machine image must be securely stored. All supplied machines must have exactly the same hardware and the software as the audited system. As far as I know, thorough tests and source code audits are conducted very rarely, if at all. Further, the vendors are not required to use only the audited image, and are allowed to update the software almost at will. That means that election commissions are forced to blindly trust the vendors. Blind trust is always wrong and invites abuse. But even “trust but verify” is applicable only to trustworthy vendors. Dominion Voting is the opposite of trustworthy. The only real solution to the vulnerability of EVS is not to use them at all. Manual ballot counting has no software vulnerabilities, and is much cheaper. Virginia appears to be the only state that decided to use only manual ballots.
How Dominion went from nothing to everything in two weeks In September 2009, ES&S acquired Premier [8], without any objections from the DOJ. But in March 2010, the Obama’s DOJ (Eric Holder – Robert Mueller) forced ES&S to “sell” Premier’s assets to Dominion, but to keep its liabilities. In addition, ES&S was forced to license to Dominion some of its software, in perpetuity and free of charge. The pretext for the DOJ action was antitrust.
The “Sale”
This is how the assets transfer was structured, per DOJ [1] (March 8, 2010).
“WASHINGTON — The Department of Justice announced today that it will require Election Systems & Software (ES&S) to divest voting equipment systems assets it purchased in September 2009 from Premier Election Solutions Inc. in order to restore competition. The assets to be divested include the means to produce all versions of Premier’s hardware, software and firmware used to record, tabulate, transmit or report votes, including the Assure 1.2 system, and a license to better serve disabled voters. The department said that today’s settlement will restore competition in voting equipment systems in the United States… “
“In order to restore competition” sounds funny, because the same document also required ES&S to not compete against the buyer (with exceptions). “… the acquisition substantially reduced competition as it combined the two largest providers of systems used to tally votes in federal, state and local elections in the United States. ES&S’s acquisition of Premier made ES&S the provider of more than 70 percent of the voting equipment systems in the United States. The department said that because the cash value of the deal between ES&S and Premier was $5 million, far below the mandatory reporting threshold for mergers under the Hart-Scott-Rodino Antitrust Improvements Act of 1976, the department’s investigation of the transaction did not begin until the companies had combined their assets and dismantled many of Premier’s operating divisions.” Sounds like a poor pretext.
The DOJ has been investigating these companies even before the merger, and was aware of it. Further, the DOJ does not allege that the merger has not been reported. Even so, why not simply demand unrolling the merger? The DOJ provides a poor excuse to demand divestiture rather than a normal unrolling. “Under the terms of the settlement, ES&S must divest all of the intellectual property associated with all versions –past, present and in development –of the Premier voting equipment systems to another company. ES&S also must divest all Premier tooling and fixed assets, as well as inventory of parts and components. In order to allow the divestiture buyer to better serve disabled voters, ES&S must also grant a fully paid-up, irrevocable, perpetual license to use the AutoMARK, ES&S’s ballot marking device for which Premier had a limited license prior to the acquisition. The buyer of the divestiture assets will have the right to modify and improve both Premier products and the AutoMARK.”
Thus, the Obama’s DOJ stripped ES&S not only acquired Premier assets, but also coerced it to license rights to its pre-merger product. “ES&S must sell the divestiture assets to a buyer approved by the department.” This is not selling. This is confiscation multiplied by corruption. “The settlement prohibits ES&S from bidding on new voting equipment system contracts using the Premier equipment. [transferred to Dominion]”
Wait, didn’t they say that the purpose was to increase the competition? “The department also required that ES&S grant the divestiture buyer an opportunity to compete to provide services to Premier customers currently under contract with ES&S, giving customers the option to switch to the divestiture buyer or to remain with ES&S … ES&S also must provide access to knowledgeable Premier employees and agree to offer a supply agreement to allow the divestiture buyer time to establish its own manufacturing of voting equipment systems.” The approved divestiture buyer, Dominion Voting, is not mentioned in this press release. But this quote shows that the DOJ has already determined the “approved buyer,” and knew that it had no manufacturing base.
After the “Sale” Dominion announced the acquisition of the Diebold products on May 19, 2010 [2] and the acquisition of Sequoia Voting assets on June 4, 2010 [3]. Dominion also hired much of its personnel, probably retaining ties to extremely sketchy Smartmatic. Sequoia/Smartmatic systems had been used in the Venezuela 2004 referendum, which Hugo Chavez “won”. Smartmatic is a British company with Hugo Chavez ties, headed by “Lord” Malloch-Brown (former UN Deputy Secretary-General, UNDP, UNHCR, VP of Soros’ Quantum Fund, and Vice Chair of Soros’ Open Society Foundation) [7], and linked to electoral scandals all over the world [5]. In August 2009 (corrected), the rough breakdown of the EVS market in the US was (per Brad Friedman):
40% ES&S,
30% Diebold/Premier, 20% Sequoia/Smartmatic,
10% Hart Intercivic
0% Dominion Voting.
Less than a year later, after the “antitrust” actions of Obama’s DOJ, it became:
50% Dominion
40% ES&S (restricted in competing against Dominion)
10% Hart Intercivic
Thus, the DOJ’s actions did the exact opposite of its words. An elections system vendor should be non-partisan, in a demonstrable way. Dominion is not just partisan, but hyper-partisan in favor of the Democrat party, or even its pocket vendor. Dominion has many more ties to the Democrat party and its prominent supporters in the US and abroad, which are not covered in this article. Software Development in Serbia Dominion develops much of its software in Belgrade, Serbia. Russia is a close friend to Serbia, if not its only one. If anybody sincerely thought that Putin wanted to hack American elections, their first location of interest would be the offices of Dominion Voting in Belgrade, rather than the Trump Tower in New York.
By the way, Serbian and Russian languages use the Cyrillic alphabet. Most letters have the same Unicode encoding in Serbian and Russian (the Basic Multilingual Plane, range 0410-04FF). If any election officials found Cyrillic text on a Dominion voting machine in 2016, it was probably left by its developers in Serbia. Remarks This is the Agreement between Michigan & Dominion, including specs of many Dominion products (PDF, 161 pages). Wi-Fi connection and even a dial up modem are offered as an option. Some of the companies referenced here as foreign-based or foreign-originating re-registered in the US.
Dominion Voting Systems Series Part I Part II (this) Part III [the above explains why Dominion is protected, in effect their are an arm of the federal government; John Populous, along with Obama The Foreigner, must be one of the first arrested and prosecuted]
Some References
[1] Justice Department Requires Key Divestiture in Election Systems & Software/Premier Election Solutions Merger, justice.gov, March 8, 2010
[2] Dominion Voting Systems, Inc. Acquires Premier Election Solutions Assets From ES&S, press release, May 19
[3] Dominion Voting Systems Corporation Acquires Assets of Sequoia Voting Systems, press release, June 4, 2010 [3b] On Heels of Diebold/Premier Purchase, Canadian Firm Also Acquires Sequoia, Lies About Chavez-Ties in Announcement – contemporary commentary
[4] Marcos warns of ‘another Smartmatic situation’ – Smartmatic was accused of election fraud in the 2016 elections in Philippines
[5] Smartmatic in Wikipedia, November 9, 2020 (not verified)
[6] Sequoia Voting Systems in Wikipedia, November 9, 2020 (not verified)
[7] “Lord” Malloch Brown in Wikipedia, November 8, 2010 (not verified)
[8] Diebold Sells U.S. Elections Systems Business to ES&S, press release, September 3, 2009
[9] Dominion Voting Systems Corp – discussion of Dominion’s ideology and highly partisan offers
[10] Dominion Voting Systems’ profile in Bloomberg

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From Emil Kirkegaard’s “Sometimes you should speak up with an unpopular view”

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“Sometimes you should speak up with an unpopular view”

…

It was therefore a pleasure when I remembered that I should read Hrishikesh Joshi’s 2021 book Why It’s OK to Speak Your Mind, because it is one of those short (196 pages) and to-the-point books that remind me why books are still the best for some topics. While one could write a 200 page blogpost, or split it up, a book can package everything you need to know into a single coherent whole.

The topic of the book appeals to me given the current situation with the Guardian/Spiegel/Hate not Hope spy that infiltrated my research institute. The Guardian has been triumphantly posting articles about this, as has their German counterparts (though the institute has nothing to do with Germany). The main lesson from this is that we were not sufficiently cautious against such evil people. Mainly, I think, because our small time operation was hardly of interest to many people. The lackluster attention that the Guardian’s articles have gathered so far seems to confirm this take. While the journalists thought this was super exciting, thinking of themselves as running a modern James Bond, the readers saw this as kinda meh. After all, the entire revelation was that: 10-15 nerds regularly meet to talk about science in private. Not much different from weekly lab meetings at a university.

However, on a personal level, this experience made it very clear to me that there are costs to speaking your mind on some topics. Yet, that is precisely what Joshi tries to convince the reader to do. Helpfully, he provides a synopsis in the introduction, but which is still too long, so I fed it into GPT4o, which gave me this:

The “epistemic commons” refers to the shared pool of knowledge and ideas within a community, which is vital for collective understanding. Social pressure, however, can distort this commons by suppressing certain evidence or perspectives, as seen in events like the Chernobyl disaster. In democracies as well, social pressure can create blind spots, leading to skewed perceptions. Individuals have a duty to resist such pressure and contribute to the epistemic commons by speaking their minds, especially when withholding evidence can harm collective understanding.

Speaking out also serves personal development, as reasoning is fundamentally social. Following thinkers like Aristotle and Socrates, the text argues that living a good life involves actively exercising reason and integrity by expressing one’s views. Philosophers like Mill and Nietzsche, who valued independence and nonconformity, remind us that such expression is crucial to resisting cultural pressures and fostering both individual and societal growth. Ultimately, contributing to the epistemic commons is not only about benefiting society but also about living a meaningful and independent life.

…

From this perspective, the way a society figures out what is true and what is false is by having many different actors play each other in a kind of epistemic game. Loosely speaking, you get points when you say things that are true and get vindicated. You lose points for the opposite. The efficiency of this truth-finding system depends upon certain features of it, including its members. One such property is whether people with uncommon or unpopular views will speak up or stay quiet. Sometimes an idea that is currently unpopular is actually true. Anyone who reads history will eventually learn that people in the past thought things that we now consider false and even crazy (e.g. bloodletting). Why then should anyone think our current collective worldview — the current most popular belief on each question — is entirely right? That’s the historical argument for epistemic humility. Are all of our currently common behaviors morally optimal? No one could believe this after reading a bit of history. The only way to figure out what things currently believed are in fact false is to tentatively challenge the popular opinion. That is to say, to speak up. So someone must speak up for the benefit of all of us. Joshi thinks we should do more of this.

However, speaking up has personal costs, so the situation is a kind of tragedy of the (epistemic) commons. By voicing an unpopular opinion, you might be merely considered eccentric, but other times you might be considered evil, or even punished by the state (UK and Germany are infamous for illiberally arresting and jailing people for saying trivial things on Facebook). Most free speech debates concern the state’s ability to punish people (“hate speech” laws, first amendment in USA), but Joshi points out that this is usually a minor part of the cost for a given person. The costs are mostly social. You might not get invited to the next family dinner, or your uncle will ask your mom questions about your beliefs.

…

When people justify censorship laws or practices, they almost always do this in terms of the social costs of people believing such things. The exact terms used fluctuate over time, but the idea is always the same: some speech is either directly harmful or leads to harms and should therefore be limited or prevented with fines or other harassment for those who dare say it. It’s a utilitarian argument for censorship. The main issue with these kinds of arguments is that the promoters almost never try to actually justify their claims of harm …

…

The arguments for censorship come up frequently regarding research into into genetics, intelligence, race, and especially their combination. What good can come out of this work? Eric Turkheimer famously wrote:

If it is ever documented conclusively, the genetic inferiority of a race on a trait as important as intelligence will rank with the atomic bomb as the most destructive scientific discovery in human history.

But what evidence did Turkheimer supply for this claim? Nothing. Presumably, it was obvious to him. What evidence did people who said similar things about Arthur Jensen’s 1969 article present? Nothing. Steelmanning the position, the best evidence one can present is that occasionally, some crazy person with very racist views who referred to such research goes out shooting members of the race they don’t like (e.g. Breivik, Christchurch). By extrapolation, then, it is presumed that if such research was more popular or more widely disseminated, many more such shootings would occur. Maybe there would be another ethnic cleansing or genocide, holocaust being the go-to example of course (many of the censorship advocates are Jews who often have some ancestor who was killed by the Nazis). I don’t think the historical record bears this out. People have been killing each other for all sorts of reasons since before history began. Genocides and population replacement is common in history and clearly did not need scientific justification. The contribution of a few lone wolf shooters is tiny compared to ordinary citizens killing each other for mundane reasons (money, love/jealousy, offense etc.). But even if one accepts some increased deaths due to lunatics, there may be other outcomes that are even worse if one tries to build a society based on lies. Jensen himself wrote presciently on this in the 1970s, and I won’t go into detail again here. …

It’s Not Your Father’s Pot Anymore

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It’s Not Your Father’s Pot Anymore

Remember all those great ideas George Soros had about crime and open borders? Guess what the spawn of Satan, whose every idea is designed to increase human misery, is pushing now? Legal weed.

Switching out Americans for third worlders and releasing violent predators from prison gave him kicks for a while. But way too many Americans had not yet become McDonald’s-fattened, glassy-eyed deadbeats who spend most of their time sprawled across a filthy couch ordering DoorDash pizza, playing video games and not looking for work.

Legalizing marijuana is the last step, the silver bullet to the heart of what’s left of our country. Tantalize the public with a drug that will turn them into low-IQ losers, crashing cars, committing suicide and rushing to emergency rooms with their cannabis-induced scromiting (uncontrollable screaming and vomiting at the same time — one of the many charming side-effects of widely available pot).

That’s not even the best part. The cherry on top is that a very, very, very small number of corporate magnates with absolutely no conscience stand to make billions. Big Pot will make Big Tobacco and Big Pharma look like your family doctor.

With that kind of money at stake, the pot-legalizers are spending hundreds of millions of dollars on pot initiatives this year in Arkansas, Florida, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oregon and South Dakota so they can start profiting off ruined lives in six more states. According to Open Secrets, the group pushing the Florida pot initiative, “Smart & Safe Florida” — or, more accurately: “Lose 8 Points of Your IQ & Murder Your Wife Florida” — had raised more money than for any other ballot initiative this year, on any issue, in the entire country.

(About my alternative name: One of the first legal pot consumers in America was Colorado’s Richard Kirk, who ate a marijuana edible, started hallucinating, held a gun to his wife’s head and shot her dead.)

That kind of spending could persuade voters to support cannibalism. Which, come to think of it, they might be: Remember Rudy Eugene, the Miami face-eater believed to be high on bath salts? The toxicology report identified only one drug in his system: marijuana.

Soros has so much money sloshing around that he got Newt Gingrich to campaign for Prop. 47, the initiative that put thousands of violent criminals on California streets — also promoted by the renowned tough-on-crime attorney general Kamala Harris.

This column will attempt to provide an eyedropper of truth about pot, against the tidal wave of lies — even, no doubt, from people like Gingrich.

Today’s marijuana is nothing like what it was 20 years ago. Although polls seem to show that younger voters are the most in favor of pot legalization, my experience is the opposite: Older voters who have absolutely no idea what’s in today’s pot are the most susceptible to legalization pitches.

The oldsters think marijuana is still about 2% to 3% THC. Maybe when they were listening to the Beatles’ “White Album” in their dorm rooms, but currently, pot averages about 15% to 25% THC and can be 99.9% pure. That’s a completely different drug.

The National Institute on Drug Abuse reports that about 30% of cannabis users will become addicted, especially those who start before the age of 18. Brain scans of regular users are consistent with the brain circuitry of an addict.

The corporate interests behind legalization are pushing a fairy tale about how legalization will swell a state’s tax coffers. Marijuana’s been legalized in 24 states (and another 17 for “medicinal purposes” — a total fraud). Are they rolling in tax revenue?

Quite the opposite. For every dollar in marijuana taxes a state collects, it spends about $10 on increased hospital admissions, police to clean up after all the car crashes and psychosis-induced crimes, and mental health therapists to deal with suicide ideation, depression and anxiety caused by increased cannabis use.

In Colorado, the first state to legalize recreational marijuana, crime soared to 11 times the national average. Not only did marijuana-only DUIs increase, but 40% of the stoned drivers were under the age of 18. Increased hospital admissions due to pot alone (and the always enjoyable “scromiting”) are estimated to cost the state hundreds of thousands of dollars.

The corporate interests pushing pot claim it works wonders on veterans with PTSD. Yes, if you consider suicide a cure. Two studies have shown that cannabis use by veterans was associated with “PTSD severity, depressive symptom severity, and suicidality.”

As one psychiatrist said, “You can’t trust the people who sell the drugs to be upfront with the risk.”

The main upshot of legalizing pot will be to accelerate our nation’s galloping descent into mass retardation, laziness and the inability to engage in a normal adult conversation.

It’s basically impossible to increase IQ permanently — as Charles Murray has been pointing out forever. But Soros has found a way to decrease IQ permanently.

The 2012 Dunedin Study compared the IQ of more than a thousand participants at age 13 and then again at age 38, with their pot usage assessed at ages 18, 21, 26, 32 and 38.

Result: The more pot they consumed, the more IQ points they lost. Heavy, frequent or longtime users lost an average of six points, and early-onset users lost an average of eight points. Mental impairment was evident across all four Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale IV components: working memory, processing speed, perceptual reasoning and verbal comprehension. The cognitive loss was even greater compared to non-users, whose IQ actually increased from childhood.

No other factors could explain it — the researchers controlled for alcohol, education level, other drugs or still being high. It was just the marijuana. And quitting didn’t reverse the decline, especially for users who started young. Once the IQ points are gone, they’re gone. You can’t Uber down to the IQ dispensary and buy some more.

Eight points isn’t a gigantic cognitive deficit. It’s only about the IQ difference between Connecticut and Mississippi, or the U.S. and Chile. But why would any country adopt policies that reduce the national IQ by even a few points?

I don’t know. A$k Newt why he campaigned to relea$e thou$and$ of violent criminal$ from pri$on.

     COPYRIGHT 2024 ANN COULTER