Month: October 2022

On Friday (September 30), the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) wrote a detailed piece in favour of voting machines, which have been the subject of controversy during the general elections in Brazil.

The article, authored by Juliana Gragnani and Jake Horton, attempted to dismiss all concerns about electronic voting machines that were raised by incumbent Brazilian President Jair Bolsanaro.

BBC accused Bolsonaro of ‘sowing doubts about the country’s voting system without evidence’ and supposedly echoing the rhetoric of former US President Donald Trump. The Brazilian President had called for public counting of votes, and printable paper ballots to safeguard the voting machines (much like India’s VVPAT system).

BBC, the national broadcaster of the United Kingdom, dismissed his concerns as conspiracy theories that are not rooted in reality. To bolster its claims, BBC relied on third-party research and testimonies of the Supreme electoral court of Brazil to build a case against Bolsanaro.

“There is no reasonable proof of fraud going on in the past, at least in big audits that have been done…The view of most of the technical community is that fraud is really hard in the current system. The system can be improved and should be, but that doesn’t mean there’s been fraud,” the BBC quoted one Professor Marcos Simplicio as saying.

Further, into the article, Juliana Gragnani and Jake Horton suggested that the voting machines in Brazil are subject to both internal and external scrutiny. “Before each election the court invites researchers and software experts to look for vulnerabilities in the voting system. This year, more than 20 experts tried to penetrate the system but failed to do so,” the article read.

BBC also accused Bolsanaro of disseminating ‘old misleading videos’ about voting machines, which have been debunked by the Supreme electoral court of Brazil. The UK’s national broadcaster sided with the country’s nodal electoral authority and rightly put the ‘burden of proof’ on Bolsanaro (who has raised concerns about the electronic voting system in the first place).

BBC cast aspersions about electronic voting in India

However, such a privilege was not extended to the Election Commission of India (ECI), the nodal election body in India. The BBC desperately tried to delegitimise it in a bid to cast aspersions about the Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) used in India.

In an article published on January 25, 2019, BBC’s India correspondent Soutik Biswas claimed that concerns about the technology used in election voting machines (EVMs) are ‘credible’ and have persisted for a long time.

From the very onset, the tone of the article was quite different from the one written about Brazil’s voting machines. In India’s case, BBC was not dismissive of the aspersions cast about its electoral process (which is, by the way, the largest democratic exercise in the world).

“There have been at least seven challenges in the courts but India’s election authorities have steadfastly defended the machines as tamper-proof,” the article read. BBC cited the claims of a conspiracy theorist named Syed Suja who claimed that PM Modi rigged the Lok Sabha elections of 2014.

Despite Syed not providing any evidence for his claims, BBC was quick to reference him in the article and sow seeds of doubt about the electoral process (something which it has now accused Jair Bolsanaro of doing in Brazil).

Instead of putting the burden of proof on the accuser, it tried to put the onus on the Election Commission to negate the claims (unlike the case in Brazil article). “India’s election authorities have steadfastly maintained that the voting machines cannot be tampered with, and physical tampering is easily detectable. From time to time, these claims have been contested,” it said.

BBC also cited experts who believe in the probability of mass-scale hacking of voting machines but have not been able to demonstrate a real-life example for the same. In fact, the Election Commission had invited hackers in 2017 to come to their office and try manipulating results on real EVMs.

Interestingly, none of the conspiracy theorists and self-proclaimed hacking experts turned up for the event. The BBC then went on to highlight stories from different countries where EVMs have been called into question. However, none of the examples suggest a successful execution of mass tampering.

The article also insinuated that transparency in India’s electoral process began only in 2013, with the Supreme Court of India calling for the introduction of paper trails in EVMs.

“…Things may be moving in the right direction in India in efforts to make elections more transparent and trustworthy. Five years ago, the Supreme Court ruled that all machines should be equipped with printers producing voter-verifiable paper audit trails,” it said.

UK broadcaster has a history of peddling misinformation

The broadcaster also quoted a computer science professor who was apprehensive of electronic voting systems. “My general opinion is that we should get as much technology out of the process as possible…Software is very hard to get right, and with an intent to have votes not be identified with voters, there is no good way to verify that things have worked as intended,” remarked one Professor Duncan Buell.

While the objective of the recent article on Brazil was to educate the readers against falling for misinformation about voting machines, this 2019 article by BBC was a clear attempt to increase distrust for use of technology in the voting process.

This is not the first time that the BBC resorted to such a narrative-building exercise. In 2017, Opindia had reported how the broadcaster deliberately shared a 2010 article about alleged EVM hacking after BJP swept Uttar Pradesh polls in 2017.

https://www.opindia.com/2022/10/india-vs-brazil-the-doublespeak-of-bbc-on-evms-and-their-reliability/

By Monica Showalter

In Brazil, radical leftists thought they had a presidential victory in the bag.

They were in for a surprise.

Although their candidate, Luiz Inacio “Lula” da Silva actually got the most votes in Sunday’s contest, it wasn’t enough for an outright victory, so now they’re headed for a runoff with incumbent conservative President Jair Bolsonaro.

The left-leaning Guardian tried to explain it out:

At the very least, they hoped for a commanding margin and a sense of momentum going into a runoff between the two. And progressives around the world were watching for an emphatic repudiation of Bolsonaro’s presidency that would signal that the forces of extremism were in retreat. But it hasn’t worked out that way.

Instead, Lula won 48% of votes, roughly in line with polls – but Bolsonaro did much better than expected, taking 43%, and his supporters also outperformed polls in state and senate races. Lula is expected to take most votes from the minor candidates who now drop out, and should be favourite to win in the second round on 30 October – but the road to victory looks rockier than it did on Sunday. The stakes could hardly be higher.

So now they’re bawling about it, and leftist pundits are characterizing the result as “disappointing,” “deflating,” and “massively dispiriting.” 

Yet their leftist candidate, Luiz Inacio “Lula” da Silva, actually got the most votes. They’re howling as if their candidate had lost. They thought Bolsonaro was a goner. They thought they were entitled to seeing that from voters. They didn’t, so now they’re blubbering.

The catharsis that Lula’s supporters had hoped for failed to materialise. “It’s massively dispiriting for the left,” said Tom. “And really surprising – not in terms of Lula’s vote, which is in line with what everyone thought, but in terms of Bolsonaro’s, which is significantly higher. The pollsters got that badly wrong. I went to Lula’s rally, and people were crying, or in a state of shock.”

That mood of disappointment for the left was heightened by victory for Bolsonaro’s allies in 19 of the 27 available Senate seats, as well as a strong showing in the lower house.

Apparently, the Bolsonaro side surprised them by its willingness to fight the leftists hard:

“It’s been pretty toxic,” [Guardian Latin American correspondent Tom Phillips] said. “I first covered an election here in 2006, and I’ve never seen this level of bitterness before. Bolsonaro treats elections as wars. A lot of people on the left have been frightened – one Lula supporter said to me on Saturday that it’s the first time in my life I’ve been scared to put a sticker on my car.”

Really? 

Apparently, it’s a committed bunch out there supporting Bolsonaro, with some willing to play very rough. That had to have been a shock because the left is used to employing those hard tactics, and up until now has expected the right to act the way it always does, which is to say that it will roll over and embrace the left’s framings and narratives, always retreating a little to keep peace in the family. So the fact that some Bolsonaro supporters have refused the old status quo has rattled the left’s system.

With Lula taking 48% of the vote, and Bolsonaro taking a surprise 43%, there’s actually a chance that Bolsonaro could win the election finale on Oct. 30 if he can rally enough of the third party voters, moderate Lula voters, and abstainers to come to the polls. The odds look tough for that, given that Latin America is in a left-wing trend right now, but there is definitely a chance it could happen. In Latin America, there are always one or two nations that defy the trends, and now that the failures of the left are getting obvious regionally — in Chile, Peru, Colombia, Argentina, Mexico, with vastly unpopular presidents, not to mention, the leftist hellholes such as Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba, it’s possible the trend could be due to reverse.

Brazil trended less with Latin America in any case than it did with the U.S. when it elected “Tropical Trump” Bolsonaro in 2018. President Trump gave Bolsonaro his hearty endorsement in this election, too. With Lula now cribbing the old Joe Biden line about “unity” and voters by this time knowing the value of that, it may be that Bolsonaro could eke out a victory if the country trends with the U.S. again.

It’s noteworthy that the expat vote tended to trend with Bolsonaro, except in a few very deep blue cities in the U.S. Even New York City narrowly went for Bolsonaro.

Bolsonaro wins the votes of Brazilians in the USA by a landslide.

Bolsonaro 55% 🔵 Lula 31% 🔴

Here's the breakdown in the largest consulates.

Miami 73% 🔵 16% 🔴
NYC 45% 🔵 42% 🔴
D.C. 41% 🔵 45% 🔴
San Francisco 33% 🔵 53% 🔴
Houston: 54% 🔵 28% 🔴
Chicago: 33% 🔵 50% 🔴

— Daniel Di Martino 🇺🇸🇻🇪 (@DanielDiMartino) October 3, 2022

Which rather looks like what the U.S. election map may look like if current trends continue in the U.S. and a red wave hits come November. In other words, based on their voting patterns, Brazilians are a lot like U.S. voters. That’s one reason to think that Brazil may trend with the U.S. rather than the rest of Latin America.

All the same, we had those hopes in Colombia and Chile when the runoff times came and in both cases, the rabid leftists ran away with it. In Colombia and Chile at least, there’s a legislature that holds a lot of opposition power there to try to brake the worst excesses of the ruling leftists, and all signs are there that the pattern may hold in Brazil as well, with many conservatives now winning seats in the states and legislative bodies. One can only hope for the best in Brazil as the odds seem to favor Lula retaking power.

But as the Guardian notes in its exaggerated hyperbole, “the far right is absolutely here to stay.” That’s good, because they had dismissed Bolsonaro as a goner. It signals the emergence of a real political pendulum instead of the sorry excuses for ‘conservative’ that have existed up until Bolsonaro’s victory in 2018. Let’s hope Bolsonaro can keep it going, and in the meantime, water the entire rainforest with all the liberal tears.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/10/leftist_tears_brazils_left_bawls_about_countrys_election_result.html

The father of Alessia Piperno, an Italian woman who has been detained in Iran, has said the family are extremely worried about her plight.
    Iran has launched a massive wave of arrests following the outbreak of street protests related to the death in custody of 22-year-old Kurdish woman Mahsa Amini after she was held by ‘morality police’ for allegedly breaching the Islamic republic’s dress code.
    “We are very worried. Unfortunately, the situation is not good,” Alberto Piperno told ANSA.
    “We are in contact with the foreign ministry’s crisis unit, which has activated all the relevant procedures”.
    Piperno said that he had had a telephone call from his daughter from a Tehran prison on Sunday.
    “After Alessia’s phone call from prison yesterday we haven’t had any news, we haven’t heard from her,” Alberto Piperno said.
    In a Facebook post that was subsequently deleted, Alberto Piperno said that, until Sunday’s call, the family had not had news from the woman for four days, since her 30th birthday on September 28.
    The father said his daughter was a “solo traveler who goes around the world to discover the habits and customs of (different) peoples.
    “She has always respected the traditions and, in certain cases, the obligations of each country she visited,” he said.
    In a recent Instagram post, Alessia Piperno had said leaving Iran would have the the “wisest” thing for her to do, but said he was unable to leave “in part because I am part of all this”.
    On her birthday, however, she said he had decided to go to Pakistan.

https://www.ansa.it/english/news/2022/10/03/italian-woman-detained-in-iran-family-very-worried_272cca39-4502-41e9-8230-ef25836fd48b.html

By Brian C. Joondeph

Italy has spoken. And the White House and the media don’t like it.

Politico White House bureau chief Jonathan Lemire claimed that the election of “far-right” Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni was met with “deep, if private, worry within President Joe Biden’s administration.”

Going further in Politico, Lemire wrote that despite the White House’s acceptance of Meloni’s win, they view her recent victory as part of a “concerning trend” of “right-wing wins” in Europe. Concern for the White House means jubilation for most of the rest of us.

It’s so bad that the media is invoking the F-word. Not the usual one but “fascism.” 

Another Politico article refers to Meloni and her fellow political supporters as, “Meloni and her ‘post-fascist’ Brothers of Italy.” The mainstream media has been voicing angst over Meloni’s election, concern which has included comparisons of the new government to the fascist Mussolini regime.

Is she an Italian MAGA politician?

AP’s headline invoked the F-word, “How a party of neo-fascist roots won big in Italy.”  The Guardian went further in their headline with some misogyny, “The election of Italy’s fascist-adjacent Giorgia Meloni is a public reminder that women can be just as awful as men.” When the media tires of “fascist” they can trot out “far right nationalist,” forgetting that the prominent fascists in history were leftists and socialists.

For the left, including the Democrat party and the media, fascism is more of the same name calling that in recent years was “racism” or any of the many “phobias” used, in Alinsky fashion, “Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, polarize it.”

If you don’t like mass shootings or bombings carried out in the name of Jihad, you are “Islamophobic.” If you believe boys and girls should compete in sports separately, you are a “transphobe.”

The Atlantic bemoaned, “The return of fascism in Italy.” Does the left even understand what fascism is? I doubt it.

The left loosely defines “fascist” as anyone they disagree with, from parents attending a local school board meeting, to Donald Trump’s voters. Also included are those questioning the science behind COVID and vaccines, or climate change, gender pronouns, or any other issue dear to the left.

The globalist and left-leaning Council for Foreign Relations (CFR) offers a definition:

Many experts agree that fascism is a mass political movement that emphasizes extreme nationalism, militarism, and the supremacy of both the nation and the single, powerful leader over the individual citizen. This model of government stands in contrast to liberal democracies, which support individual rights, competitive elections, and political dissent.

The nationalism and militarism bits may sound like MAGA but the reality is that all governments should be nationalistic in terms of looking out for the interests of their country and citizens. What sane country doesn’t want a strong military in what can be a dangerous world? Meloni is a “MIGI” leader – Make Italy Great Again. Compare that to most other western world leaders who seem to be deliberately destroying their countries and cultures.

How ironic that they define “liberal democracies” as supporting individual rights, honest elections, political dissent. These rights sound more right than left on the modern political spectrum.

The current leftist U.S. administrative state quashed these rights and continues to do so. Individual liberties went out the window with COVID mandates and restrictions. Honest elections are a myth in America, with involvement of social media, the FBI, sketchy voting procedures, social media billionaires, and hackable machines influencing electoral outcomes. Political dissent is fine for BLM and Antifa rioters but not for January 6 protesters or parents attending school board meetings, who are now labeled as domestic terrorists and threats to democracy.

The CFR also noted, “In many ways, fascist regimes are revolutionary because they advocate the overthrow of existing systems of government and the persecution of political enemies.” Which party wants to abolish the Constitution and Bill of Rights? Which party weaponized the FBI and DOJ to harass, intimidate, and even arrest its political enemies? Is there any doubt that fascism is aligned with the political left rather than the right?

Two famous fascists serve as examples from a century ago. Benito Mussolini was “originally a revolutionary socialist,” editing several socialist newspapers, before pivoting to fascism and national power in Italy. Adolf Hitler presided over the Nazi party, the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, and was clearly both a socialist and fascist. Fascism is a movement from the political left, not the right.

But it’s Giorgia Meloni who is the fascist. Rather than Joe Biden, who on his September 1 speech at Philadelphia’s Independence Hall, with a blood red background and two Marines in the background, proclaimed in Mussolini fashion, “Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic.”

Merriam-Webster’s definition of fascism includes, “A centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition.” That describes Biden and his enforcers quite accurately.

What has the new Italian prime minister said that was so horrifying?

Yes to the natural family, no to LGBT lobbies! Yes to sexual identity, no to gender ideology!

I am Giorgia. I’m a woman, I’m a mother, I’m Italian, I’m Christian.

Our main enemy today is the globalist drift of those who view identity and all its forms to be an evil to overcome. And constantly ask to shift real power away from the people to supernational entities headed by supposedly enlightened elites.

Let us be clear in our mind, because we did not fight against and defeat communism in order to replace it with a new international regime, but to permit independent nation states once again to defend the freedom, identity and sovereignty of their peoples.

It means that whether the false democrats like it or not, national conservatives in every latitude are actually the only real Democrats. Because it is only by defending the nation states, that we defend the political sovereignty that belongs to the citizens of that state.

This sounds more like a MAGA speech than Biden’s dark and threatening diatribe delivered from ironically the birthplace of America. Yet the media praised Biden’s speech while after Meloni’s speech, the media was petrified over a world leader promoting freedom and liberty. The Washington Post warned, “Danger lurks after Italy’s shocking election.”

A true fascist would not praise religion or Christian values. Mussolini, a true fascist said, “God does not exist—religion in science is an absurdity, in practice an immorality and in men a disease.”

Meloni is far from a fascist but instead is more of a MAGA Republican, much to the dismay of the corporate and global left which views her as an existential threat. So they call her names. When everyone is a (fill in the blank – fascist, Nazi, racist, etc) then no one is a (fill in the same blank). Leftist name calling has become hackneyed and is losing its effect.

Simply calling one’s political opponents names like ‘fascist’ is projection, attributing one’s own feelings or deficiencies to others. The MAGA revolution is alive and well, in America and around the world, in different forms but with common themes, leaving American NeverTrumpers and the ruling class to cry “mamma mia”!

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2022/10/mamma_mia_maga.html

Last week’s statement by the Spanish Minister for Equality Irene Montero (privately, the life partner of Pablo Iglesias, a leader of the neo-Marxist Podemos party) is still echoing throughout the country. The leftist politician, while defending the rights of young girls to have an abortion without their parents’ consent during a parliamentary commission, said:

“Every boy, every girl, every trans child in this country has the right to know their own body, to know that no adult can touch their body if they don’t want them to, and that if they do, then that is a form of violence.

“They have the right to know that they can love and have sexual relations with anyone that they want, based on mutual consent. These are recognized rights,” she added.

Spain’s Minister of Equality Irene Montero: “Childrenx” have the right to consent to sexual relations with adults pic.twitter.com/eZ5BauvD3Q

— Jorge Bonilla (@BonillaJL) September 24, 2022

The words, that children can have sexual intercourse with anyone they want, by many commentators, were deemed as the next step in the normalization of pedophilia.

Spanish writer Juan Manuel Prada pointed out the consequences of Montero’s views.

“If she decides that small children can choose their own sexual identity and decide about mutilation of their body through a ‘sex change,’ then why shouldn’t they have the right to decide with who they want to have sexual intercourse?” he asked.

Italian priest Fortunato Di Noto, known as a “pedophile hunter” engaged in fighting such practice for a few decades, noted that Montero uses the same language as the pedophile lobby. She preaches the “right to sex” and emphasizes not the adult’s intent, but the child’s consent. Pedophile circles have been saying the same thing as the Spanish minister for years, that children have the right to sex and no one has the right to forbid it, if they consent.

Speaking of minors’ right to have sex, Montero blurs the distinction between children and adults. The same goes for the concept of free consent, and in the case of under-aged individuals, most victims must prove the activity engaged in amounted to abuse. Child psychologists know very well, how easy it is to manipulate children, who are emotionally and intellectually immature, in order to force the supposed “consent.” Actually, pedophiles excel at such games with the underaged, even knowing how to induce guilt in their victims.

Following a wave of criticism, Montero started to complain that she was a victim of “far-right” harassment. Commentators condemning her statement are right. If we make children conscious entities in sex life who are capable of maintaining intimate relations with others, then why would we forbid them to have intercourse with adults?

Activists of the pedophile lobby have asked for a long time that if relations between two under-aged persons are something normal, then why should relations between an adult and a child be treated any differently? According to them, such contacts are even more beneficial for children, who are introduced to the world of sexual relations by someone more experienced.

So, if we hear those two postulates with regard to children: “The right to sex” and “free consent,” a red warning lamp should turn on instantly: Warning! The path to pedophilia! Just as in the case of the statement by the Spanish equality minister. One would like to ask: equality, but for whom?

https://rmx.news/poland/spanish-equality-minister-is-on-the-way-to-normalizing-pedophilia/

Pedophiles are jubilant as the capital is to get the first gay and lesbian day care center in Germany. Children up to five years old should be taught there what it’s like to be gay.

“In itself, our concept is the same as that of other daycare centers. The LGBTI* way of life should simply be a little more visible,” said the manager of the planned facility. The German Bild newspaper reported that 60 of the maximum 93 places had already been booked.

In concrete terms, there should be more books in education in which homosexual couples are the protagonists. It should be easier for daycare children to come out as gay, they maintain. Educators must either be part of the LGBT community or present very good knowledge of it. “A couple of parents got in touch whose son likes to wear a dress and hair clips for his birthday,” reported the managing director enthusiastically.

According to the tabloid’s information, the association’s board of directors includes a well-known pedophile sympathizer who in the past has called for the abolition of criminal liability for sex with children and is said to be close to the Greens. In 1994 he published the book Die Lust am Kind. [Lusting after children, ed.] with the subtitle: “Portrait of a Pedophile”, which many considered shocking.

The daycare provider pointed out that the pederast allegedly had nothing to do with the day-to-day business of the daycare center since that would be somewhat “problematic”.

Rüdiger Lautmann is considered a supporter of the legalization of pedophilia: April 1979, Lautmann played a key role in a motion at the Congress of German Sociologists in Berlin that called for Paragraph 176, which criminalized sexual acts on children under the age of 14, to be removed from criminal law.

Lautmann has been named, along with Helmut Kentler and Reinhart Wolff , as a university teacher who, in connection with pedophilia, “unhinderedly conveys pro-perpetrator positions to students and the public“.

According to the taz journalist Nina Apin, he is a member of the pedophile lobby organization Working Group Humane Sexuality. In a position paper from 1988 (updated 1998/99), they advocated for the legalization of sexual contact between adults and children. According to a research project at the University of Göttingen, Lautmann was even a member of the board of trustees taking the position that pederast contacts could be “amicable”.

https://freewestmedia.com/2022/10/03/berlin-gets-its-first-gay-and-lesbian-day-care-center/