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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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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Google and the power to distort

Some religions are more equal than others Talk about distortion. Let’s say you are looking for information about the following topic: violence against Jews. I just discovered that even the autocomplete function on Google is biased… After you type violence against it suggests women with a few variants (ok, feminism and stuff, par for the course). Adding the letter J the suggestion turns to journalists. Typing the E brings us the surprising bit jehova witnesses …you see, it’s a major crisis, with all those attacks on Jehova Witnesses you hear about every day… (?) Finally, adding W causes Google to stop suggesting anything at all… evidently violence against jews is…

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