Incredible electoral systems: Usa vs. Sweden

Swedish ballots in full display, forcing people to vote openly

Voting procedures, a race to the bottom: Fascist Regime Style vs. Banana Republic Quirks. This article contains the ultimate argument in favor of Voter ID laws in the US. Please sit back and enjoy the ride; alternatively you can skim it, relax and skip entire chapters. I’m not used to being surprised anymore. But I was floored by the revelation that international observers, called to oversee the Swedish election for the first time due to fears for a victory for the party of xenophobes, found an unbelievable flaw in the system. One that is obviously favoring the establishment. A hideous ulcer hiding in plain sight. This is as good an occasion…

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The birth of Fake News

Have you ever wondered how the expression originated? I mean, in a wider sense the dissemination of fabricated stories, mostly for propaganda reasons, dates back at least to Ancient Greece, and that’s just because we have limited data from earlier civilizations. But why the sudden alarm for the spread of fake news? Not all TED conferences are created equal. Some even contain inconvenient truths. Sharyl Attkisson is a tough cookie: a investigative journalist who worked in the mainstream media, a respectable voice that can’t be silenced by pretending she comes from the unwashed fringe. Although of course she left CBS when her tough stance and pointed critique of Obama’s administration…

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Why so much fake outrage? Why siding with criminals?

Time cover, Donald Trump looking down on crying child (fair use: critique)

The quest for the evil roots of the Left: our first step is observing the apologists of illegal immigration.   Scene 1, Honduras: a well off family, at least for the standards of developing countries; the husband has a good job, the wife drives a car nicer than mine. They have 4 children. Scene 2, USA-Mexico border: the woman from scene 1 decides to leave the country taking the youngest daughter with her, not even bothering to say goodbye to her husband and her 3 other children. She wants to seek her fortune in the United States, even if she’d already been deported in 2013. She gives 6000 dollars to a criminal…

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Medium sucks

Soviet propaganda stamp from 1968

Medium is a neutrality-agnostic platform. They push in one direction, even against their interests. Discussing the bazillionth propaganda-infested email I received from Medium, the most successful blogging platform of the moment. In their imagination the titles of the promoted articles would entice me to click, read and possibly become a premium member, paying for the privilege of being served tons of one-sided articles, plus (thanks God) quite a few dealing instead with matters unrelated to politics. In the email I received there were 2 articles in the Politics section. One is just the usual tripe about the dangers of Fascism today, as expressed through the point of view of a hallucinated author…

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On Trump, crowd counting & lies. Look what I found!

How big was the crowd at Trump’s Inauguration? Bear with me. I wasted waaay too much time on this study. But the results are significant.   This is a teachable moment. What happens when literally everybody is lying, and the matter is quite difficult to verify to begin with? Ideally, you’d expect people to notice and demand better standards from politicians and journalists, but no. The two sides just choose the narrative they like, then run with it. Eventually the public moves on. But I’m not. I waited a few days to see if someone came up with a decent article on the subject, in vain. See, the topic itself isn’t…

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The Trump Train vs. the station moving backwards

Donald vs. Francis There are 2 main “current events” subjects I want to cover in this blog: the US Presidency and the Vatican. Turns out I’m hardly writing about the Pope, and (based on the number of articles) people may think I’m fixating on Trump. The thing is, not only Trump represents a positive development, while the Catholic Church is depressingly close to its nadir point. The two realities move very differently. While “progressive” bishops are hard at work to destroy their Church from the interior, reflexively reacting in a predictable and passive manner, always manipulated or outmaneuvered by smarter players and pushing for ideas that were fashionable 50 years ago, the Trump…

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The US Media Circus & Trump, as seen from abroad

People attending Trump's Presidential Inauguration

Since I kept a close eye on the US Presidential Election, especially for an Italian, but I didn’t report of the events unfolding from the actual election itself on November 9 to yesterday’s Presidential Inauguration, many fellow foreigners may now ask: what happened during this transition? The short answer is “not much”.     The Trump team was busy putting together a cabinet that seems quite solid and trying to keep the promise of bringing a new approach to politics. Case in point, Trump nominated Scott Pruitt as head of the Environmental Protection Agency, and this move was widely criticized because Pruitt himself previously sued the EPA (alongside many other…

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Trump is the answer to Obama

Barack Obama looking out of the window at the White House; the shiny figure of Donald Trump emerging

Today is the last day in office for President Obama. It’s been more than 2 months since the election, and yet his supporters are still moping and complaining because Trump won.   In many ways, Donald Trump is the exact opposite of Barack Obama: a reaction if you will. In other aspects, though, he’s a natural successor: another pop icon, the type of personality that could win after Obama paved the way for this new approach to politics and popularity.   Here’s some quick points to raise about their similarities and differences.         New media and the young vote. Barack was able to prevail over a decrepit adversary like…

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Thanking Fidel Castro for his biggest achievement

Oh, the ingratitude of the masses! People often fail to properly recognize your achievements. Face it: Fidel Castro, the Cuban dictator that recently passed away, has done something extraordinary for us. He survived, living 90 full years. Ok, you may object that dying of old age is not exactly a big deal or something that you do (well, he didn’t die in one of the numerous assassination attempts… this requires a certain degree of paranoia, commendable preparedness and effective opposition squelching).   History should give him credit.   In fact, had he been executed by a firing squad in 1975, as a , you’d probably read about him only in…

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Clinton email scandals? Much ado about everything

Democratic Party Election Strategy in 8 years increments

And so we got to Election Day. Americans have been served useful distractions by a complacent media machine. Anyone who wanted to, had the opportunity to catch wind of the multiple Clinton scandals, granted; but the details are often too intricate for the average person’s attention span. Confusion→ uncertainty→ irrelevance. And if you lean Democrat, journalists give you plenty of excuses to banish the uncomfortable thought.   The idea was to sell a stripped down message: Hillary is a woman (!) and is supposed to be about all the usual Democratic Party policies. That’s it. And they pushed the narrative that her opponent was allegedly vulgar, racist, sexist and dangerous,…

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Here’s why I bet on Trump. In 2015.

Donald Trump, the President Americans deserve

As I said yesterday, Donald Trump will win the Presidency. This article is still about letting you come to terms with such reality. I put money where my mouth was. Ok, I’m not a US citizen so I cannot vote for Donald Trump. Next best thing, I bet money on his victory! It was in July 2015: 16 months ago. I caught wind of the fact that Trump, a man I barely knew something about, had launched his campaign for the Presidency. Up to that point I considered him a minor nuisance, one of those vapid tv celebrities slash narcissistic yet funny looking guy slash megalomaniac entrepreneur. I saw him…

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