And, recently, from the Washington Pciast, the "shrill" Left...
The Guardian is sometimes a decent publication--just about the only one in the "western world"--and sometimes not. (They are rotten on Latin America, for instance.) But "radical leftists"? Whoa!
What happened in these elections (which include also anti-austerity wins in local German elections) was neither earth-shaking, nor radical, nor shrill. Quite simply, these elections reflect the "will of the people," which is that they oppose the rich getting richer and the poor getting looted.
Sensible votes. Basically the voters voted for Keynesian/"New Deal" economics--stimulate the economy and people will work and people will buy things. It doesn't take a rocket scientist--as Paul Krugman has time and again pointed out. It's COMMON SENSE.
The real hysterics are the corporate rulers and their oligarchic billionaires because some of their victims are, at long last, rejecting their propaganda, their brainwashing, their lies, their looting and their vast economic and human rights crimes.
These transglobal corporate rulers and their oligarchic billionaires are the ones who hit US--"we the people," there and here--with the "earthquake" of an unnecessary Great Depression, following the "earthquake" of an unnecessary and horrible corporate oil war, combined with radical right ideology aimed at destroying government itself and all of the human rights, democracy and economic gains since WW II. They've made great "progress" on this fascist program in England and parts of Europe, and they long ago trashed the U.S. on human rights, democracy and economic fairness.
The sad--nay, tragic--part of this is that, in Europe, the leaders feel obliged to respond to "the will of the people" ("The European executive" immediately "calling for a shift towards growth across the EU" in response to these elections), whereas here they don't. Hard to say what the level of EU response will be or if it will be sincere and aboveboard but at least there IS a response. The "will of the people" is taken seriously.
Here, on the other hand, with our rigged Diebold system, Scumbag Congress, scumbag, junta-rigged Supreme Court, shackled president and non-parliamentary process (scumbags locked into power), "the will of the people" cannot even be expressed, is not represented and doesn't matter to those who rule over us.
It's rather riveting what's happened in Latin America. They got trashed and looted before we did, back in the '90s and before, and roared back as democratic people demanding social justice and economic fairness, first with the election of the Chavez government in Venezuela--and after the Venezuelans inspired this awesome leftist democracy movement--leftist governments started getting elected all over South America and into Central America, and, not only that, these Leftist leaders started working together to establish Latin American sovereignty, "south-south" trade cooperation, social justice and peace.
Their secret? Hard civic work on honest, transparent elections!
When the "grass roots" know that they CAN elect good leaders, the "grass roots" gets busy and does so!
Simple as that. Latin Americans have horrible corporate media, like we do. THEY have had entrenched oligarchs and ruling elites. They, in addition, have had to deal with dreadfully destructive U.S. domination. Yet they have elected leftist governments in country after country. So what's the difference between here and there? Diebold!
Europe, too, has done its homework on real elections. We just saw the results. Propaganda, big money, and corrupt entrenched power can work only for so long. But if the votes are counted in the PUBLIC VENUE, the powermongers CAN be thrown out and the system changed.
That is WHY our powerful, entrenched political establishment and their corporate masters rushed to spread 'TRADE SECRET' voting machines all over the U.S., during the 2002 to 2004 period, which are now owned and controlled largely (80%) by ONE. FAR RIGHTWING-CONNECTED. PRIVATE. CORPORATION--ES&S, which bought out Diebold. You think they are not rigging our highly riggable elections? Get real! What do you think 'TRADE SECRET' voting counting is FOR?
I got onto this via Venezuela, which I found out has electronic voting but it is OPEN SOURCE CODE programming--anyone may review the code by which the votes are counted--and they do a whopping 55% automatic audit--comparison of ballots to electronic results--more than five times the percentage needed to detect fraud in an electronic voting system.
That's how they elected their "FDR" and got their "New Deal." Honest vote counting.
Know what the audit is in half the states in the U.S.? ZERO! And a meager, inadequate 1% in the other half.
They CAN'T detect fraud in half the states and DON'T TRY. And the other half have a pretend audit, with the same percentage number, 1%, of the people who are being benefited by the elections.
You wonder why the 1%-ers are raking in the money while the rest of us lose everything? Cuz they're only auditing 1% or ZERO percent of the votes!
That, too, is quite simple. Privatized vote counting for private gain. They've made rigging our elections EASY.
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(Note: I do think that Barack Obama was actually elected--by a greater margin than we know (5% to 10%). His margin was cut, and he was saddled with this Diebold Congress, to prevent serious reform. Unrepresentative assholes like Walker were put into power as well to promote radical fascist ideas and create the illusion that this is what people want. The problem with Obama's election is that he was also permitted to be elected, for reasons that we can guess at but can't know for sure--probably, on the whole, to start the "forgetting" of the Bush Junta's horrendous war and economic crimes, preparatory to Bush Junta II, when our corporate rulers decide that the time is ripe.)
(One other note: Of all the things that are black-holed in the so-called "news," the privatization of our vote counting system is THE most dangerous. It means we CAN'T do what the French did, and what the Greeks did, and what the Latin Americans have done. We can overcome corporate propaganda. We can overcome disorganization. We can overcome lack of money. We CANNOT overcome 'TRADE SECRET' vote counting. And THAT huge news story will never appear in the corporate press!)
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