Click the link below to read or download the PDF. (New to Quasar? Click here.)
• Updated December 31, 2023 •
This PDF covers the company Moderna and its (and others’) experimental new type of vaccine using mRNA, messenger RNA. It also looks at their connections and funding, DARPA among others. And a look at their corruption.
Click the link below to read or download the PDF. (New to Quasar? Click here.)
• Updated January 3, 2024 •
This PDF looks at Covid’s death count and compares it to that of other pandemics and other causes of death which are preventable and treatable. It also looks at how new special protocols for recording Covid on death certificates contributes to inflated numbers. This PDF includes the same update as noted above about The PCR Test, a preface explaining the meaninglessness of the “official” statistics.
All posts before the previous one are pre-Covid and although concerned with world affairs, they are not oriented to the machinations of the globalists. They are articles and also they are not in PDF format.
Two Definitions –
Psychopath: a person suffering from chronic mental disorder with abnormal or violent social behavior.
Psychopath; a person having an egocentric and antisocial personality marked by a lack of remorse for one’s actions, an absence of empathy for others, and often criminal tendencies.
It’s like after a mass killing or after a serial killer is identified, you always hear people who are interviewed saying, he seemed like such a nice guy, he was always so polite.
Psychopathy has many causes, but America (the United States) has a special version of psychopathy and its main cause is a kind of mass hypnosis. In America an incredible amount of people seem to accept so easily that it’s not really a big deal that the United States is committing atrocities all over the world. Because we are told it’s for the right reasons; and besides I have better things to do.
Occasionally you will hear people question whether the United States should be the world’s policeman. This illustrates the hypnosis. We are the world’s thug; not its police.
America is a hero based culture. The American psychopath lives with a kind of conviction that they are the heroes. They espouse and praise virtue and goodness. They admire integrity. Even though they are none of these things. They have been brainwashed or have brainwashed themselves into believing that because it is a dangerous world, what would be evil, if someone else was doing it, is necessary for them to do, to protect those values.
Somewhere in their brains there must be a mechanism (that they have cultivated to such a point that it itself has become subconscious) that kicks in and heads any introspection, any glimmer of gut human response, off at the pass.
The same goes for most mainstream journalists. These are people who kiss their kids goodbye in the morning, then go to work where their job is to manufacture consent; to lie to their audience and make sure the vast majority of the populace feel that there’s a pretty good reason why their taxes are going to kill people who never did anything to them or even threatened them in any way.
If you had magic glasses that could see the truth, and you put them on while you were looking at most mainstream journalists, you would see blood dripping from their hands.
Sanctions are more evidence of this psychopathy. Congress continually passes (usually with a vast majority) sanctions on countries, as of this writing on 39 countries, affecting 1/3 of the people of the world. Members of Congress know that the only purpose of these sanctions is to destroy the country, to devastate the people to such an extent that they revolt and bring about regime change to one that allows our plunder of their resources. At the very least, if Congressional members don’t acknowledge that, they do it to punish the country, which is just as psychopathic; seeing themselves as some kind of superior being somehow endowed with a supremacy that lets them decide how others (most who have never done anything or even threatened anything at all against the United States) should live.
Recently I had an ongoing email discussion with an old friend who I know down to my bones to be of the highest integrity and honesty. At one point I said I was disappointed with and had no respect for our 2 Oregon (blue liberal state) Senators, because they were 2 of the 75 Senators who signed a letter to Trump urging him not to pull out of Syria and essentially telling him to keep up the good work we’re doing there.
My friend wrote back saying that he’s glad they are our Senators.
I was thinking about it and in my head I was thinking how Ron Wyden (one of our Senators) is a psychopath. Then I imagined saying that to somebody and imagined their shock that I would use such a word to describe Ron Wyden, a good Democratic progressive Senator.
Here’s how I see it.
Imagine there was this man you knew of, didn’t know personally but knew about his ideas and beliefs and political stances and were of the opinion that he was basically a pretty good person.
One day you hear a knock at the door and it’s this man. You invite him in. He steps inside your house and shoots your brother dead. Thinking Ron Wyden is not a psychopath would be like saying about this man, “well, of course I’m opposed to what he did to my brother but on the whole he seems like a pretty regular guy.”
The only difference between that man and Ron Wyden is that the man who shot your brother only killed one person but it’s someone you know and care about as opposed to Ron Wyden being responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths, millions of refugees and a country being torn apart.
Ron Wyden has no more of a good reason to support the ongoing death and destruction in Syria than the man who shot your brother has to do what he did. They are both psychopaths; people who kill and somehow have conveniently overridden the circuitry of humanity that most people have.
The actions of Ron Wyden and our Congress both fit the definition of a psychopath being people who have an egocentric personality marked by a lack of remorse for one’s actions, an absence of empathy for others, and often criminal tendencies.
I pick on Ron Wyden because he has the power to directly wield death and destruction. But it should be made clear that Americans who are willing to go along with the Empire’s running amok around the world are also responsible.
It is the infection of the American psychopathy; the belief that we can do whatever we want to do to others that we would never in a million years allow somebody else to do to us.
This psychopathy is historically viewed as and evident in the histories of Genghis Khan, Hitler, the Roman emperors, and perhaps the British empire.
But in the United States now, it is imbedded almost in our culture. Our hero oriented culture makes it easy for the most evil players in the United States government to sell the slaughter by the military or by sanctions to its citizens. It’s a dangerous world and only our heroic efforts can keep you safe and free. And fear is the icing on the cake of the lies told to make the populace compliant. The fear coupled with the message that we must act heroically facilitates the short-circuiting of the human response.
Citizens of the Untied States should find what their country is doing repugnant. Even in a scenario where a violent response is necessary, if a situation has come to the point where we have killed, it should be occasion for remorse and deep reflection. But our conquests are heroic and the victims either evil themselves or they are the unfortunate ones (collateral damage) who must pay the price as we liberate their comrades. No remorse necessary.
Congress repeatedly passes sanctions on Russia, on Venezuela, on Iran, on Syria, on Nicaragua, and many more countries. Most of the votes on these sanctions are unanimous or nearly unanimous. And, again, most of these countries never did a thing to the United States or even threatened us in any way.
Pretty much nearly every United States Congress person is a psychopath. Where is the reflection? Where is the learning? It is now pretty much agreed that the Iraq war was a mistake. But we keep doing it. Where is the humanity?
And where is the humanity in my fellow citizens who aren’t outraged at the actions of our Presidents and our Congress?
This is the hypnosis that is the American psychopathy.
•
In this clip, from the RT show CrossTalk, Wolf Blitzer, CNN’s “lead political anchor”, demonstrates perfectly the American psychopathy. Regarding the ongoing bombing of Yemen, causing the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, he points out that peace has a substantial downside.
Note: Since I first posted this, in light of the mass onslaught of propaganda regarding Covid, I have looked into the “climate crisis” and consequently have rethought my take on it. I am no longer convinced of the gloom and doom and it is fact that the “crisis” is being used to reorganize the world by and for the global elite. However, I believe Timmon Wallis to be good intended and don’t feel bad about having helped him with his project, which is primarily interested in banning nuclear weapons, so I have decided to leave this post here.
°
Timmon Wallis has written an extensive report called: Warheads to Windmills, How to Pay for a Green New Deal. In the book he addresses “three emergencies that threaten our existence: Climate, Nuclear weapons, Inequality and injustice”.
I had the expertise and offered to prepare an eBook of his report. Click here to download it for free. And check out his website here where you can also download the original PDF.
From the Introduction of the Report:
Our survival as a planet depends on drastically curbing greenhouse gas emissions in the very near future. Our survival also depends on completely eliminating the danger of nuclear weapons.
By fortunate coincidence, the resources (federal funding, private funding, scientific and technical expertise, jobs and infrastructure) currently being wasted on nuclear weapons can be shifted to the production of green technologies to address the climate crisis.
Unless we take swift and decisive action to reduce global carbon emissions, the consequences of climate change will be catastrophic. This is a life-threatening emergency that can only be adequately addressed in the timeframe we have available to us through a profound change in our priorities, as in a “Green New Deal.”
The existence of nuclear weapons is also a life-threatening emergency that threatens all life on this planet, and needs to be addressed with equal urgency. The world has now outlawed these weapons through the 2017 Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (or “Nuclear Ban Treaty”). It is up to the US to lead the way to their total elimination.
Paying for a Green New Deal is going to require money, skills, jobs, technological innovation and infrastructure on an unprecedented scale. It will also require working much more cooperatively with other countries. Eliminating nuclear weapons will release a huge amount of money, skills, jobs, technological innovation and infrastructure needed for a Green New Deal. And it will also help to transform our relationship with the rest of the world.
And underpinning both of these global emergencies is a third emergency of equal importance: an emergency of spiraling inequality and injustice that makes both nuclear war and uncontrolled climate change both more likely and more dangerous. Unless we simultaneously address the grotesque levels of inequality, both within and between countries, we will not be able to solve the other two global emergencies we face.
That is why the Green New Deal that has been proposed by Massachusetts Senator Markey and New York Representative Ocasio-Cortez is about creating jobs, supporting the poorest and most marginalized communities, and addressing the inequalities and injustices around us as we address climate change.
There are many, many other issues that are also of huge importance right now – and they can be solved, as long as humanity itself survives.
Since the climate and nuclear crises are such profoundly egregious examples of injustice and political corruption, it’s possible that solving them can offer renewed hope, strategies, and energy for solving the epidemic of gun violence; the systemic racism that is not just denying people opportunities but literally killing them; the cycle of terrorism and wars that just breed more terrorism; the injustices suffered because of sexual orientation and gender identification; and the broken systems of health care, immigration, and mass incarceration.
Our survival is not guaranteed. This is the choice before us as we approach the 2020 national election cycle: will the people of this country rise up and demand that we address these three life-threatening emergencies as our absolute top priority?
Nothing we have ever faced in all of human history is as important as what we do now in the face of these global life-threatening emergencies.
In the United States 2/3 of our budget is spent on the military. This is an incredible waste of money. It is a waste and furthermore it is criminal because it is not spent on defense, rather it is spent on offense.
It would be bad enough if that was the whole picture but it isn’t. Because of the United States’ track record and the fact that there is no indication that our behavior is going to change, we have forced many other countries to spend lots of money on defense; in this case, really for defense.
Take Iran, for example. Bush the 2nd named Iran as part of the “axis of evil.” By the second year of his administration the United States had overthrown the government of Afghanistan, on Iran’s eastern border, and then in short order also Iraq, one of the other two countries in the “axis”, on Iran’s western border. And when John McCain was running for president in 2008 and was asked what his policy regarding Iran would be, he smiled and said, “the old Beach Boys song, Bomb Iran.” Then sang, “bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran.” It’s not surprising Iran would feel the need to build up their military capabilities. We are told to fear Iranian aggression but truth is Iran hasn’t attacked another country in over 200 years.
Take North Korea, as another example. As the third country named as part of the “axis of evil” it is not surprising that North Korea would feel the need to build up its military. Add to that the fact that the United States talked Libya into giving up its WMDs, then overthrew their government, wasting the country in the process. Then officials in the Trump administration openly suggested using the “Libya model” on North Korea. Is it any wonder they would also feel the need to build up their military and defense; again, actually defense. In fact is should be obvious to anybody paying attention that North Korea’s nuclear build-up is also for defense, as a deterrent to US aggression.
Certainly Iran and North Korea didn’t suddenly start building up their militaries when Bush declared them to be the “axis of evil.” Those countries have long before Bush been targets of the American empire. I cite the “axis” declaration only to highlight how blatant the threat is to other countries. The United States has a nightmarish track record of overthrowing governments all over the world.
So, back to the point. For every dollar that the United States wastes on military adventurism, there is some money thrown away somewhere else in the world by a country needing legitimate defense against the United States or a neighboring country that we arm. This money all represents time and labor; effort towards an end. That is energy that could be better spent.
In a sane world, while people and countries would still have differences, the issues between nations would be the struggling with the issue of how we can manage time, labor, and resources in such a way that we can all sustainably have a decent standard of living. The quest for a comfortable life would go on but unimpeded by so much counterproductive energy. Inspiration and creativity would be towards constructive ends, rather than destructive ends. The “swords into plowshares” saying would also be about turning soldiers into men and women using their talents to create life, not take it.
Instead, money and resources are squandered increasing our standard of killing instead of standard of living. At this point in history the United States is the world’s biggest and baddest belligerent. When such a country spends so much money on war and aggression, that waste is amplified throughout the world.
The snowballing effect of the waste of labor, ideas, energy, and resources leads to impoverishing the world. Not just the moral degradation of putting so much effort into weaponry, but literally sucking money out of the hands of the people of the world.
(This post is part of my eBook, The United States Empire and its Fall)
In spite of all of the corruption and the gutting of the standard of living and quality of life in the United States it is very probable that the empire’s final collapse will be brought on for another reason. That is the fall of the dollar as the world’s currency.
Since the American people are never supposed to get the idea that we are an empire and that our government basically will do whatever it can get away with to shape the world to its liking and profit, one doesn’t hear about the leverage offered by the dollar being the global reserve currency.
Consequently no mainstream news is going to talk about how any threat to the petrodollar is a threat to the United States’ ability to exert global influence to its advantage. But it is, in fact, a huge threat to the empire. And economically it is a threat to the stability (such as it is) of our lives and lifestyles in the US.
One can see evidence that the government of the United States recognizes that threat in actions it has taken to protect the petrodollar. Consider this: the following countries went off of the petrodollar (or in the case of Libya, were about to) and began selling oil in other currencies:
• Iran – an existential enemy since they threw off the dictator we had installed when we overthrew their democratic government, that was going to nationalize their oil, in 1953.
• Iraq – a country whose government we overthrew in 2003. They are back on the petrodollar now.
• Syria – a country we have been trying to overthrow for many years.
• Venezuela – a socialist country that nationalizes its oil and uses the money for its people; needless to say, an enemy of the empire.
• Russia – our archenemy because we can’t subject them. They are strong again and just won’t kowtow to us after we tried to plunder them after the Soviet Union collapsed.
• Libya – Gaddafi was organizing African countries to use a pan-African currency and to go off the petrodollar which we nipped in the bud when we attacked Libya and overthrew the country in 2011.
Yes, this is a shortlist of the United States’ most recent interventions and countries we demonize. Coincidence? I think not.
Barack Obama was an awful president responsible for a myriad horrible anti-life policies but he was attractive and one of the best public speakers ever, so when he championed American exceptionalism and the empire it was with a pretty face and mellifluous voice. Democrats were lulled to sleep.
Then comes Trump. Trump is an awful president and a despicable human being. Lacking the charisma of Obama he is crude, rude, and obnoxious but he has one silver lining. He is accelerating the fall of the empire. This is good for the world and ultimately good for the people of the United States.
Trump has been on a sanctions binge. The downside is that these sanctions, being a form of siege warfare, are incredibly destructive and deadly. The silver lining here is that his sanctions are so widespread that he has alienated so many countries that they are now just saying to hell with the United States, we are going to do business with each other; who needs you?
China and Russia and all of the countries we have been trying to overthrow are allied and closer than ever.
Furthermore, Trump has even threatened our European allies with sanctions if they don’t go along with our sanctions against other countries. The Europeans are really wimpy and just seem to have no spine when it comes to naysaying the United States but they are beginning to show signs of independence.
It won’t happen overnight but the Dollar is dead as far as being the global currency. This was the United States’ ace in the hole. It will be the final nail in the coffin of the US empire.
Refer to these articles for a more information about the birth of the petrodollar and a more complete picture of the rise and the fall of the petrodollar and the implications:
Petrodollar Warfare: The Common Thread Linking Venezuela and Iran by Kei Pritsker and Cale Holmes
Countries Worldwide Ready to DUMP America. Video: Holland Cooke hosts Michael Maloof and Peter Schiff
(This post is part of my eBook, The United States Empire and its Fall)
Foreword
This issues addressed below are directed primarily at the federal government, and while local governments are closer to being democratic, some of the points outlined below still play a compromising role throughout the system.
The United States of America is not a democracy. I see articles all the time that talk about threats to our democracy or how we might lose our democracy or what can we do to save our democracy. This is unfortunate because the first step in dealing with something is to acknowledge the reality. The United States of America is not a democracy.
So what is government anyway? Ideally, politics is just people getting together and deciding how best to get along and how best to address people’s needs, both physical and emotional. And government is simply a body of people appointed to take on this job.
Most people think of politics and government as this far away creature that is intangible. Although more complicated it is in reality just deciding who takes out the garbage and whose turn it is to do the dishes tonight.
And so what is democracy? John Judge, a political researcher and speaker gives an idea of what democracy should be that I think is well said:
“What a democracy would be, it seems to me, is that any particular social decision that affected people would have to be made by those people that are affected. And the fight for democracy or democratic rule is to constantly expand that definition to further include and more directly involve all those people.”
So let’s move on and look at how our system is fundamentally flawed and how now, in the 21st century, the state of our so called democracy is.
Table of Contents
That the Unites States was founded as a democracy is the first myth that is repeated and held high as an ideal that many, if not most, Americans feel proud of and believe it is an ideal that other countries should try and live up to.
When the United States was founded only a small percentage of the population had the right to vote. For the first 90 years of our country, black men could not vote. And for the first 150 years one half of the population (women) couldn’t vote. (And of course the native population never had a voice.) One can’t even begin to call that a democracy.
There are many people who think the electoral college is unfair because they believe a simple majority rule is more fair. And while true, there is much more damage done to the democratic process because of the electoral college.
The electoral college has made it so that presidential candidates only need to campaign in a very few pivotal states. The west coast will always go blue and the deep South will always go red. This means the candidates only need to address the issues of people in those few pivotal states. Issues that are important to people in deep red or deep blues states never even get mentioned during presidential races.
Thus we have a huge part of the population whose votes mean almost nothing. In fact in California 1/3 of the democratic voters could just not even bother to vote and it still wouldn’t be close; it wouldn’t matter.
The Supreme Court is one of the 3 major branches of our government meant to bring checks and balances to that government. It is the only one of the 3 branches where the officials are not voted on directly by the people. And what’s worse is they are appointed for life. How can this even begin to be fair. When a seat opens up, a biased group of people (the party in power) select someone to carry out their agenda and there is absolutely nothing the people can do about it for decades.
Not only is it corrupt by its very nature, degrading the interpretation of issues facing society, but the importance of each judge’s appointment perverts the entire process. Witness the Republicans refusing to vote on a Democratic president’s appointee for almost a year until the Democratic president was out and they got a Republican in the White House so they could get an appointee more to their liking.
We have the same problem for federal judges; they too serve for life. All judges should be voted on by the people and should be elected to limited terms; each and every one. No person should have legal authority over the populace if they haven’t been selected by the people they legislate for or judge.
The House of Representatives is made up of representatives, each one elected to represent the same amount of people (theoretically, at least; see gerrymandering below) across the entire country. The Senate is different.
Each state has exactly 2 Senators. That means in Montana, a state with 1 million people every 500,000 people get one vote in the Senate, while in California, with almost 40 million people, every 20 million people get one vote in the Senate.
In the map below states are grouped into chunks of states equaling the population of California. The Great West is made up of 15 states. California gets 2 votes in the Senate while the Great West gets 30 votes.
Imagine this scenario. There is a vote on a bill in the Senate needing 51 votes to pass. It is tied with just the Senators from Vermont, Wyoming, and California still to vote. California’s 2 Senators representing the will of 40 million people vote in favor of the bill. But the 4 Senators from Vermont and Wyoming, representing a total of just over 1 million people, vote against it. The bill fails. How can this in any way, shape, or form be considered democratic.
Another practice in the US Congress, that is incredibly non-democratic, is the practice of putting “riders” in bills. Riders in bills are additional provisions added to the original versions of bills or resolutions. These riders often have little relationship to the subject matter of the parent bill, and are usually created as a tactic to pass a controversial provision that would not pass as its own bill. Or sometimes riders are used not to actually be passed, but merely to prevent the passage of a bill.
This is a very common practice and these riders get very little press. For example, in reviewing the voting record of your congressperson you might see that they voted yes on a bill to appropriate funds for something you agree with. But it might have had a rider allowing something you totally disagree with, which doesn’t show in the title of the bill, and won’t show in a cursory look at their record.
In a democracy, in a government that was functional, you wouldn’t have this sly trickery playing a role. It is totally unfair to force the passing or failing of legislation against the interests of a congressional member supposedly acting on behalf of their constituents. In a democracy unrelated issues would have their own bills.
It is important to be aware that the issue of the lack of transparency is not just about the lies we are told but also about omissions.
Do you remember the big TARP bailout in 2009? Because of their own failings the banks were bailed out. We were told it was necessary and to bite the bullet while taxpayers funded a $700 billion bailout. It was big news and covered extensively.
But the truth of the matter is that the TARP bailout was just a drop in the bucket. What they haven’t told you is that the bailout was much bigger. It continued for years with almost no mention. Estimates vary but many believe it was upwards of $30 Trillion. Yes, that’s trillion!
In a true democracy would the people have gone along with this? Not only was it criminal to lie through omission that this was taking place, but maybe worse is that we were made to believe that a one time, paid back $700 billion took care of the problem. Had the reality been common knowledge it might have started or furthered some kind of public discourse about how broken our capitalist system is. But we go merrily along.
How many people know that the United States has between 800 and 1000 military bases on foreign soil? Would the majority of people really support that? How many people know we invaded Syria, took over land, and currently occupy almost 1/3 of their country?
Our county’s leaders regularly demonize other countries and/or leaders to gain support for their overthrow. We are constantly lied into wars and numerous military adventures that would probably not be supported by an informed populace.
You don’t have a democracy if choices are made uninformed. And if distortions and omissions count as lies, the people are almost never informed. It goes against the self serving interests of those who are supposed to represent us to let us know what is really going on. The narrative aims public discourse away from anything that would rouse the rabble. And towards consent for their agenda.
This is how in a mock democracy a kind of totalitarian government can exist.
The 2 party system in the United States is a farce for many reasons. Both parties are completely corrupt. For one thing they are both bought and paid for. Members of Congress and presidents deliver what the big money interests want and not what the people want. It is a known fact that many bills are literally written by corporations and handed to congressional members to get it passed for them. Both parties make use of the revolving door that cycles people between major corporations and government.
And while the Republicans and Democrats put up a good show when they bicker at each other, they agree on the major issues that consumes most of the government’s budget and has the greatest impact on life in our country and in the world. Both parties are pro war, both are pro empire and both are pro wealthy elite.
To these ends they work together to make sure no other party can challenge their control. In fact, many people don’t know that the presidential debates is a private corporation; created in a pact between the Democrats and Republicans to ensure that no other party can participate. In a complete mockery of democracy, in 2012, when Jill Stein and Cheri Honkala, the Green Party’s presidential and vice presidential candidates, showed up at the debates, they were arrested, taken to a room and held for eight hours, handcuffed to chairs.
In these 2 party debates, both parties have an understanding that the most important topics, such as war and the military budget and climate change are never or almost never to be mentioned; like the lies and omissions mentioned earlier. There is no room for a dissenting voice.
Within the parties, challenging the mainstream narrative is also not allowed. The presidential primaries are a sham. Now that climate change is final being recognized to be a really big deal, and it gets a mention now and then, the Democratic party has shut down the possibility of their candidates having a debate about it. They have gone so far as to refuse to let any presidential candidate participate in the presidential debates if they engage in a climate debate on their own.
The primaries in a real democracy would give a fair picture of the people’s will as to who they would like to represent them. But the Democratic Party has 712 “superdelegates”, delegates who are not beholden to the results of the primaries, whose purpose is to make sure the party doesn’t stray too far from the status quo, should the primaries results indicate that the people want change.
It has become quite clear that the Democratic Party would rather run a weak candidate and risk losing to Trump than have a progressive candidate win who would challenge their interests.
It’s that bad.
The primaries and the election are a show.
The problem of the 2 party system is made even worse but the rules In the House and Senate. In most European parliamentary systems, the government is made up of the amount of representatives of the various parties in correlation to how many votes they received.
In the US government, the Senate and the House are controlled by the majority party. The majority party controls all committees and has a tremendous amount of power; controlling whether or not issues are voted on or even dealt with at all. This means that after every federal election, every 2 years, there is a body governing that is extremely partisan and there will be a plethora of issues of concern to the populace which, at best, may see the light of day in 2 years.
And this dysfuntionality is exacerbated by party dues. Congressional members must raise money to pay dues and more importantly, their participation in congressional committees require dues. So you think the person you voted for can now be effective in congress? Think again. If they don’t raise enough money for the party, they won’t get onto influential committees.
These Senate and House rules pervert the idea of a democracy. And of course, the lack of a viable 3rd party allows this to go on unchecked. Again, despite the bickering, the 2 parties are in agreement to never make changes to allow democratic reforms.
Electronic voting machines are vulnerable. The person in control of elections in each state is appointed by the party in power and clearly has a biased agenda. Voters are in many states purged through such practices as crosscheck or other tactics to make it difficult to register. These tactics differ by state and are too many to go into here. The curious reader can investigate to find out just how prevalent it is. And where and why. Suffice to say that the voting system is extremely corrupt and broken.
It is a really bad idea that voting is on a work day and is not a holiday. A small step towards making voting more accessible would be to make voting days a holiday. It would be a simple thing to do. Further, that day should be in the middle of the week so that it doesn’t simply create a long weekend, which would encourage people to travel or make other plans. Clearly, if the people who make our laws were interested in making it easy to vote they would do this.
Presidential elections in particular have become a big show. The candidates are in full election mode a year and a half before the election. Packaging is everything. The influence of the media and of money play a huge role in exposure and in messaging.
But what is shown to us is only a spiffy superficial candidate with little depth of history. It is rarely revealed where their money comes from, what organizations they have belonged to, what people they have associated with. Even the voting records of candidates, if looked at at all, is never scrutinized.
And in the end, even with all of these limitations, we are just voting for the chief executive. It is a major flaw in what we expect from candidates that they never tell us who is going to make up their team. We vote for one person who has not told us who is going to manage the military, commerce, agriculture; who is going to be the Attorney General.
The Obama administration is the perfect example of this flaw in our system. Obama swept to victory with dreams of hope and change in the eyes of the voters. But how many of those voters would have had that passion if they had know that he was going to keep on Bush’s Secretary of Defense and the entire Bush defense team? Or if they had known he was going to fill the agriculture department with Monsanto lobbyists and many other Monsanto related people? Or if they had known that he would appoint Eric Holder as Attorney General who had been working for a company whose job it was, was to protect bankers from prosecution? No wonder not a single banker was jailed because of the mortgage scandal during Obama’s presidency.
And these are just the tip of an iceberg of conservative mainstream corporate appointments that he made, who were not part of the product’s packaging. An ingredients list should be required. For the process to be democratic voters must know what the team is that they are voting for. Of course, who the players are can’t be an absolute certainty ahead of time, but at least the candidates should be expected to go on record having outlined the team members they expect to appoint.
The system intentionally breeds apathy. All of the things mentioned above contribute to voter disenfranchisement. People don’t vote because it doesn’t make any or much difference. It is often the case in the United States that only half of the eligible voters are even registered to vote. Then only half of them vote. That would be around 25% voter turnout. So in a close race the winner’s mandate is only from around 13% of the possible voters. That is hardly a good representation of the people’s will.
Also there is the disenfranchisement of criminals and prisoners. In a culture whose legal system promotes the idea that people who commit crimes need to be punished instead of reformed, it might seem logical that felons don’t get to vote. The problem with that kind of thinking is that they are still part of our society and must also have their say. In fact it is a basic fascist technique that the people in power can decide what behavior is penalized, creating a group of people who are both penalized and not allowed to have influence to ever change the laws. Drugs are a good example of this. The horror of alcohol goes merrily on while people who take or sell other drugs are punished and separated from the process of deciding whether or not drugs should be legal.
Disagreeing with the standards that society sets (breaking a law) should not exclude people from taking part in the discussion of those standards; playing a role in the making of laws based on those standards.
Gerrymandering is the redrawing of the lines defining congressional districts to favor one party or the other. Ideal congressional districts would be divided so that in any particular geographical area the will of the majority of the voters would be manifested.
But what happens with gerrymandering is that districts are divided up (by the party in power) to lump all of one bloc of voters (those expected to vote for the other party) together so that although that bloc’s candidate will win in that district, they will be so diluted in all other districts that they won’t win in any of them.
And once gerrymandered by the party in power, they have a huge advantage to help them stay in power, locking in the corrupt system, empowering those in power and weakening the influence of those not in power (as mentioned about criminals and prisoners above).
See how gerrymandering works and its effect in the diagram and the chart below.
In the diagram below, representing 4 congressional districts, green outnumbers purple by 36 to 28. In the lower left corner the districts are drawn by evenly dividing it into 4 square areas and green wins all of them. In the upper left the concentration of purple gets a district they will win. In the upper right each party wins 2 districts. In the lower right, green wins only 25% of the districts although they account for 56% of the population.
In the chart below the diagram you can see, because of gerrymandering’s effect in the 2012 election, how many more voters it took to elect Democrats than Republicans to the House in a number of states.
Clearly this is not fair and has no place in a democracy.
The lack of ranked choice voting is a major undemocratic feature of our elections. Many of the electoral issues mentioned above can be solved with a very simple system. This is called Ranked Choice Voting or sometimes Instant Runoff. It is a simple and elegant system that is never talked about because it would spell the almost instant demise of the 2 party system.
It is an absolute necessity for a democracy. It would be the biggest single simple step towards democracy we could take. What is it? How does it work?
A ranked-choice voting system is an electoral system in which voters rank candidates by preference on their ballots. If a candidate wins a majority of first-preference votes, he or she is declared the winner. If no candidate wins a majority of first-preference votes, the candidate with the fewest first-preference votes is eliminated. First-preference votes cast for the failed candidate are eliminated, lifting the second-preference choices indicated on those ballots. A new tally is conducted to determine whether any candidate has won a majority of the adjusted votes. The process is repeated until a candidate wins an outright majority.
This would completely eliminate the spoiler effect. It would eliminate the need to ever vote against someone rather than what your heart really desires. It would bring disenchanted voters back into the process. It would open the country up to a multiparty system. And I think it would reveal how many Americans don’t want to vote for either of the 2 major parties.
This has been adopted for some local elections but it doesn’t get much press. No wonder.
See a good 1 minute video that clearly demonstrates ranked choice voting by clicking here.
It’s hard to know where to begin to talk about the corrupting influence of money in politics. It is simply a fact that money buys access to politicians. The wealthy elite get laws that help them and keep the government from passing laws that would punish them or limit their escapades.
Executive of corporations are rarely prosecuted for crime that are far far worse than the crimes that send common citizens to jail for lengthy sentences.
When is the last time any of the members of Congress raised a stink about the subsidies handed out to huge corporations? While there are people struggling to get by billions of tax payer dollars are handed over to some of the world’s richest people.
Another problem with money in politics is how much money it takes to get elected. It takes a lot of money to get elected and a lot of money to stay in office. A byproduct of this is that Congress is made up of wealthy people, whose interests are rarely a reflection of the people they represent.
A functional, open, and questioning media is a necessary element of a democracy. The mainstream media in the United States have become stenographers for the narrative the government wants to put forth. While we have the illusion of having a myriad sources of news, in reality almost all of the mainstream media is owned by 6 giant corporations.
They share the same agenda as the 2 parties. Pro empire, pro war, and pro wealthy elite. Many of the “experts” that are brought on to give analysis about critical issues have, in fact, ties with corporations who stand to make a lot of money if they can convince you of their viewpoint. An example would be an admiral, brought on as an expert on CBS news, who urges military action against Iran who sits on the on the board of directors of Raytheon.
One of the biggest illusions that people have, I believe, is that you can turn on your TV and find out what the news is today. Skeptics may watch with questioning minds but the truth is that fake or false news is nowhere near the worst crime of corporate media.
It’s what they don’t tell you that is the biggest lie. The corporate media propagates the narrative that they want you to hear. There are many many important issues you won’t even hear about at all because they don’t even want a debate.
An example would be the forever regime change conflicts that keep appearing in the news every few years. These crises seem to just come out of nowhere; suddenly some “dictator” has gone too far. Something must be done. These things don’t come out of nowhere; you are just never told the history. And you are certainly not told, as is so often the case, about all the things that our government has been doing to cause in the first place and/or to exacerbate the situation. It’s why Americans seem to have no sense of history.
It would be bad enough for a democracy if the media was just bad. But when it is a mouthpiece for the perpetration of government lies, for the wealthy, and for the warmongers a functioning democracy is impossible.
There are several groups that exert a tremendous amount of influence on the government of the United States and on the media. Perhaps the big 3 would be the Council on Foreign Relations, the Trilateral Commission and the Bilderberg Group. These are groups who meet and formulate political and monetary agendas that they promote; agendas beneficial to their ideas of how the world should work. And they influence the narrative by their widespread influence in government and in the media.
Focusing on the Council on Foreign Relations, it is an organization that is incredibly influential in United States politics; to the point where any notion that we have a democracy can be tossed out the window. The following paragraph is from an article on the Global Research website by Joachim Hagopian.
“Since 1940 every Secretary of State but one has been on the CFR and/or Trilateral Commission, and a majority of Secretaries of Treasury as well. Multiple CIA directors have been in the CFR. For eight decades nearly every key National Security and Foreign Policy Advisor are/were members. And of course a significant number of US presidents and VP’s have been CFR members. Regardless of what party happens to occupy the White House, an intransigent fixture operating at the highest echelons of power in Washington over the last century has been strategically assigned CFR plants. The CFR’s interlocking marriage between the private corporate sector and the public government sector is largely responsible for today’s lopsided world of harsh gross disparities.”
Further, they have tremendous influence over the media. The following paragraph is from Matt Agorist of The Free Thought Project on the Transcend Media Service website, regarding information made available through WikiLeaks.
“Top journalists and executives from all major media companies are integrated into the CFR. As the chart below illustrates, the CFR has even more control in the mainstream media than even the nefarious Bilderberg Group and the Trilateral Commission.”
Click on the image to view it full size so it’s readable. Click Here to read the article, WikiLeaks Exposes How Council on Foreign Relations Controls Most All Mainstream Media
One other group that deserves attention is the Federalist Society. The Federalist Society is a right wing group with an extremely conservative philosophy that promotes federal and Supreme Court judges. They have been for several decades instrumental in having a tremendous amount of judges appointed to promote their conservative agenda. Their goal is a conservative and libertarian government with minimal impedance of corporations; not an inclusive participatory democracy. Currently 5 of the 9 Supreme Court judges are Federalist Society members.
Check out this article for more information: Inside Trump’s Judicial Takeover
We in the United States have all grown up with a system of plunder by large corporations of our natural resources for so long that it is never even questioned. When is the last time you’ve heard a topic of political debate be whether we should nationalize our natural resources?
It seems that in this huge resource rich land it should be a no brainer that the resources belong to the people. But in the United States powerful rich corporations get access to our trees, petroleum, and minerals and have exclusive rights to plunder those resources. And in doing so destroy the land because we have given them free reign and they really don’t give a shit.
Would people in a real democracy choose to hand over the management of public resources to private companies to make a fortune off of as they sell it back to us at inflated prices? In a functional democracy the industries would be managed by the government at no profit. With petroleum, for example, the workers who extract the oil and work throughout the process would get paid fairly for their hard work. And in the end there would be uniform priced gas stations. As an example, in Venezuela, where the oil is nationalized, gas costs 17¢/gallon.
There are many polls showing that a majority and often a vast majority of people want to have certain legislation passed or want something in society dealt with in a certain way but their wishes are never realized. In some ways that’s about all you need to know to recognize that we do not have a democracy. Even if you know nothing about how the system works, if the will of the people isn’t being served, the system has failed. If, in a representative governmental system, the will of the people and the will of the people representing them don’t align, the system is no longer democratic.
People want stricter gun laws. People want the government to do more to address climate change. But it doesn’t happen. Around 90% of Americans are in favor of net neutrality but it was taken away.
The lack of fair universally accessible public health care is maybe the best example of the people not getting what they want being evidence that the United States is not a democracy. Privatized health care would never exist in a democracy.
Think for a minute about the fire department. How would it work in a town without a public fire department. Everybody would have to own their own fire truck. Or it could be privatized and the firemen would show up and have you pay up front before they’d put the fire out. Ridiculous, right? Now think about our healthcare system. Imagine a group of people getting together with the idea of pooling their money to be made available for those who need it when medical situations arise; much like we do with the fire department, police, and sanitation. Now imagine that group of people, instead of making it a public service, deciding to make a rule that the money must be spent getting health care from private companies who will charge hugely inflated prices for their services. Crazy, but that’s what our representatives do with the money we entrust to them.
The United States is the most corrupt country on the planet. I don’t think many people would consider this to be true, but certainly it is.
When most people think of corruption they think of some Middle East or 3rd world country where ostensibly public money is given to the leader’s brother or something like that.
This kind of corruption pales compared to the institutional corruption in the United States. In the United States, 2/3 of the public’s tax money goes to the military. The United States military’s chief purpose is domination of the planet; not defense. War and building up for war is good for business.
When 2/3 of the public’s money is used to further enrich the rich, this is corruption of the highest order.
Unfortunately the theft of the money is not the worst of it. The United States is in a state of constant war. The citizens, whether they like it or not, are paying for death and destruction with their taxes. Aside from the devastation on foreign soil, the worst damage of this is to the soul of America, both what we are responsible for abroad and the decay of the quality of life at home.
No country with this level of corruption can be considered to be even remotely democratic.
Conclusion
The reason for this critique is not just to complain but, as suggested in the book’s foreword, is an appeal to get past the myths that we live in a democracy. Only then can we expect it to change.
Unfortunately some of the issues such as lifetime appointments to the Supreme Court and federal courts are enshrined in our ancient holy document, the Constitution, so they would not be easy to change.
But other things, such as Ranked Choice Voting, can become a reality if enough people push for it. It’s starting to happen locally and it should be strongly promoted. But don’t expect either of our 2 parties to get behind it.
The pervasive issue of money is a tough one. It’s how it all goes on. Money gets power. Money keeps power. Money despises democracy.
One bright light in all of this negativity is that in the age of the internet there is great journalism to be had. This is one of the most hopeful things there is. Stories, issues that were never before told are now being reported on.
One must, however, first wean themselves from the mainstream media and do a little digital legwork to find journalist who resonate with your ideals.
Journalists and Websites with Integrity
Following is a short personal list of journalists and websites with the most interesting, revealing news done honestly and with integrity. There are more; these are just my favorites I have discovered.
Sane Journalists with Integrity (listed alphabetically)
Aaron Maté
Abby Martin
Andre Vltchek
Anya Parampal
Ben Norton
Caitlin Johnstone
Chris Hedges
Dan Cohen
Dan Kovalik
Eleanor Goldfield
Glen Ford
Glenn Greenwald
Jeremy Scahill
Jimmy Dore
Kevin Gosztola
Matt Taibbi
Max Blumenthal
Michelle Greenstein
Mike Papantonio
Naomi Klein
Patrick Henningsen
Rania Khalek
Rick Sanchez
Tony Cartalucci
News Outlets with Integrity
The Real News Network
Popular Resistance.org
Black Agenda Report
21st Century Wire
Consortium News
Global Research
The Grayzone
Truthdig
RT America Great Journalism Shows:
The News with Rick Sanchez
On Contact
Renegade Inc
America’s Lawyer
(This post is part of my eBook, The United States Empire and its Fall)
The United States Government is the most sophisticated and most dangerous criminal organization the world has ever known. It is, by far, the most violent brutal organization on the planet; responsible for the most, by far, death, destruction, misery, and mayhem.
The United States Government is the greatest evil on Earth.
This is not hyperbole. This is not a metaphor.
The United States Government is the greatest evil on Earth.
One step further: The United States Government is the essence of pure evil.
What is evil if it’s not actively, intentionally denying people the liberty to live a decent life; to live as healthy a life and as fulfilling a life as possible.
The United States Government actively and intentionally carries out activities which negatively impact the life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness and health of an incredible amount of people all over the planet.
Needless to say, the most overt evil, that is, the evil that deprives people of the liberty to live their potential, is war, which the United States Government regularly imposes for world domination and in order to plunder resources.
But aside from the horrors of war, the US carries out less overt (covert) activities that involve collusion with others with whom deals are made, meddling with the finances of peoples, both directly and applying pressure indirectly. The US foments dissent, pits people against each other, and starves people; all to destabilize countries and regions.
When people hear others taking issue with actions of the government, you often hear the words “conspiracy theory”. What’s wrong with that expression is that in most cases it’s not theory. A conspiracy doesn’t have to be some deep dark cabal whose members have delineated an intricate plan which will be carried out. While this can be true, more often than not it is simply a bunch of people who all stand to gain from the same thing and are all on board with whatever it takes to accomplish this; in this case, subverting peoples and plundering resources.
United States Government Influence
The United States Government has tremendous influence around the world and in every corner of the world.
The US has a military the size of the next 10 biggest militaries put together. (In 2018 the US increased its military budget by an amount equal to the total Russian military budget.)
The US has over 800 military bases around the world. (All the rest of the countries in the world put together have about 40 foreign military bases.)
The US sells more weapons than any other country.
The US carries out special ops military actions in around 150 countries around the world.
The US overthrows more governments than any other country. (More on this below.)
The US plays a role in installing dictators in more countries than any other country.
The US is one of only 5 permanent members of the United Nations Security Council.
The US use the dollar’s clout as the primary world currency.
The US exerts tremendous financial influence around the world.
And what does the US do with this influence? Almost nothing for the benefit of average people. There are certainly some small agencies of the government that do spend time, money and effort towards helping people.
But for the most part the US uses its military and influence to manipulate a world at the expense of most people. Whoever is killed, injured, impoverished, and left struggling is of no concern to the behemoth that is the United States Government.
For example, in order to protect the bottom line of corporations the United States Government has at the United Nations sought to remove language asserting the legal right for developing countries to override drug industry patents and license low-cost versions of otherwise expensive Tuberculosis medicines. The Obama administration repeatedly fought nongovernmental organizations over access to affordable drugs in the developing world, advocating for higher prices and pressuring poorer countries to stop creating generics.
Overthrowing Foreign Governments
Henry Kissinger said it all when speaking of an upcoming election in Chile, “This election is much too important to be left up the Chilean people.” The US would go on to overthrow the government in 1973, installing a brutal dictator.
The United States Government overthrows foreign governments on a regular basis. Just since WW2 the United States Government has attempted to overthrow over 50 foreign governments, around 40 of them being successful. That’s more than once every 2 years since WW2. And most of these overthrown governments were democracies.
In fact the United States Government has an infamous school in Georgia, the School of the Americas (now renamed), where the United States recruited men from all over Latin America to be trained to torture, trained to be dictators, trained to carry out coups, and other sundry brutality, all aimed at shaping Latin America to serve the United States’ imperial needs.
In fact, as this paper is being written, the US is involved in a coup attempt in Venezuela. After imposing brutal sanctions on the country for years and working with the wealthy elite in Venezuela to cause shortages, the United States Government decries the leader and the deplorable conditions and then declares that now we must overthrow the government for the good of the people.
It’s what the United States Government does.
Sanctions
Part of the playbook for regime change are sanctions. Sanctions are another form of warfare and another example of the evil that is the United States Government. The United States Government regularly imposes sanctions on countries in order to make the people so miserable that either the people will rise up against their government or that the United States Government can cry, “something must be done,” which is the US intervening. Furthermore, using the United States’ economic clout, other countries, including our allies, are threatened to honor our sanctions or else. Sanctions used intentionally for these reasons are, in essence, a form of siege warfare.
Madeleine Albright, who served as Secretary of State under President Bill Clinton, famously told a 60 Minutes journalist, Lesley Stahl, that killing half a million Iraqi children through punishing sanctions was, indeed, “worth it” to achieve US foreign policy goals.
Lesley Stahl (of CBS News): “We have heard that half a million children have died. I mean, that’s more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?”
Madeleine Albright: “I think this is a very hard choice, but the price—we think the price is worth it.”
Talking at Stanford with Condoleezza Rice, Rex Tillerson spoke about North Korean “ghost ships” washing ashore in Japan, most of their crews dead after desperately going fishing without enough fuel for the return trip.
Rex Tillerson: “The fishermen are being sent in the wintertime to fish because there are food shortages. And they are being sent out to fish with inadequate fuel to get back. So we are getting a lot of evidence that these sanctions are really starting to hurt.”
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told a BBC journalist that Iranian “leadership has to make a decision that they want their people to eat,” dropping all pretense of caring about Iranians as he touted the latest harsh sanctions.
Evil Perpetrated on Home Soil
And at home it’s not much better. Probably the best example of the evil that the United States Government engages in at home, because I think it illustrates the wanton disregard for humanity to serve the wealthy corporate state, is the health care system.
The United States Government actively and intentionally keeps the health care system under the control of private companies whose intent is to make as much money as possible. People are sick. People are in pain. People are dying before they should. All because the government intentionally makes health care and access to drugs expensive and difficult. The United States Government is packed full of people who knowingly support this criminal system. This is pure evil.
As shown in the statistics in the section “Decline of an Empire” one can see how the American society is devolving; to a great extent either because of direct political action on the part of the government or by intentionally aligning almost all legislation towards the betterment of the wealthy. The rare legislation that benefits the populace is usually done just enough to keep the masses from storming the palace.
Conclusion
In conclusion, there are certainly other governments that are evil; other countries’ governments who commit atrocities. There are many leaders who mistreat their populace.
But there is no other country that even comes close to the extent and reach of the brutality carried out and propagated but the United States Government.
At this time in the history of the world, we, as humans, have come a long way. Many common practices of our past are now abhorred by most people. Dungeons are no longer common. Torture is no longer common. Slavery is minimal and not as blatant as it once was. Through modern transportation and communication, people all over the world are realizing that we are all just trying to live.
This is a threat to the privileged elite. And in this context, the United States Government will not allow the world to come together. The United States’ wealthy elite will not go down without a fight.
The idea that the United States Government is the greatest evil on the planet must be looked at as much more than the isolated abuses that are carried out.
Right now on planet Earth, the United States Government is the biggest drag on the potential of humanity. It is the biggest drag on freedom. It is the biggest drag on justice. It is the biggest drag on dealing with the climate crisis.
The United States Government is the greatest evil on Earth.
(This post is part of my eBook, The United States Empire and its Fall)
No claim is made as to the absolute accuracy of the numbers below.
The rankings were compiled around 2015, at various times and from many different sources.
If the reader is skeptical, then please do your own investigation.
In any case, whether 100% accurate or not, you get the picture.
A society out of balance and in decay.
| 1 | Military Spending • As big as the next 10 militaries together. In 2019 the US increased its military spending by more than Russia’s entire defense budget. |
| 1 | Most Foreign Military Bases • 800 – 1000. All other countries together have about 40. |
| 1 | Greatest Threat to World Peace • 68 countries polled. The US by a huge margin. |
| 1 | Disparity Between Rich and Poor Among the 20 Richest Countries |
| 1 | Share of the Labor Force Working as Security or Guard Labor |
| 27 | Wealthiest Middle Class |
| 1 | Health Care Spending as % GDP |
| 37 | Health Care Service |
| 50 | Life Expectancy |
| 23 | Most Passenger Miles by Train (total, not per person) • Netherlanders travel twice as many miles as Americans by train. Japanese, 27 times. |
| 10 | Most Carbon Emissions per Capita • #2 among large countries. Over three times as much as China. |
| 1 | Gun Ownership |
| 10 | Gun Related Deaths per Population |
| 1 | Most Juveniles in Prison |
| 1 | Percent of Population in Prison • 5 times higher than Europe. The US has 5 % of the world’s population, yet 25 % of the world’s prisoners. |
| 1 | Most Prisoners in Solitary Confinement in a Democratic Nation • Estimates are 80,000 people in solitary. |
| 142 | Not Using the Death Penalty • 141 countries ban or haven’t used the death penalty in 10 years. The US is among 50+ still using it. (China, India, Muslim world) |
| 5 | Most Executions in 2011 • After China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Iraq. |
| 175 | Having the Death Penalty for Drug-Related Crimes • The US is one of only 23 countries. |
| 1 | Child Abuse Deaths Among Industrialized Nations |
| 2 | Highest Child Poverty Among 35 Richest Countries |
| 47 | World Press Freedom Index 2012 (Reporters Without Borders) |
| Last | Vacation Time by Law • 0, None. |
| 191 | Paid Leave for New Mothers by Law • 0, None. Along with only 3 other countries: Liberia, Papua New Guinea, and Swaziland. |
| 79 | Conditions for Workers • On a scale of 1 to 5 with 5 being the worst, the US is rated 4. |
| 39 | Maternal Mortality • The highest of any industrialized nation. The rate has gotten twice as bad in the last 20 years, the US being one of only 4 countries where it’s getting worse instead of better. |
| 8,18 | Obesity • Men rank 8, women 18. 7 of the countries with more obese women are the Polynesians. |
| 1 | Consumption of Pain Pills. • The US consumes 80% of the world’s opioid pain medications and 90% of the hydrocodone. The mg. per person use increased 400% from 74mg. to 369mg., between 1997 and 2007. |
| 94 | Women in Parliament or Congress • 17%, the average is 19.5% |
| Last | Public Media Funding • Last among industrialized nations. $1.43/person. The US spends more, about $2.40/person, for foreign radio. |
| 27 | College Students with Degrees in Science or Engineering • 27th out of 29 wealthy countries. |
| 48 | Quality of Math and Science Instruction • 48th out of 133 developed and developing nations. (World Economic Forum) |
| 70/day | Sexual assaults in the military. |
| 18/day | Suicides in the military. (this doesn’t count veterans) |
| 35/day | Murders. |
| 1 of 5 | Women who will be raped in college. |
| 5,000 | Amount of Americans killed by police in the 10 years of the Iraq war; more than were killed in the war. |
| 11,766 | The number of American women who were murdered by current or ex male partners during 10 years of the Iraq war. |
| 1,800 | Stop and Frisks per day in New York City for many years. |
| 50,000/year | Swat raids have increased since 1980 from 3,000/year to 50,000/year. |
The number shown on the left is the number of countries voting yes for a UN resolution or treaty.
| 172 | Voting to Establish a Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zone in the Middle East • Only the US and Israel voted against it. |
| 166 | Agreeing to Not Militarize Space • Only the US and Israel voted against it. |
| 187 | Voting to End the Embargo Against Cuba • Only the US, Israel and Brazil voted against a UN resolution calling for an end to the economic, commercial and financial embargo imposed by the United States against Cuba. |
| 128 | Voting to Condemn US’s Decision to Recognize Jerusalem as the Capital of Israel • The US voted against the condemnation, joined by only Israel, Guatemala, Honduras, Micronesia, Nauru, Togo and Tonga, Palau, the Marshall Islands. |
| 158 | Voting to Implement Recommendations in the Secretary-General Report on the Causes of Conflict and the Promotion of Durable Peace and Sustainable Development in Africa • The US was the only country to vote against it. |
| 196 | Signatories to the Convention on the Rights of the Child • The US is the only country that has refused to embrace the world’s most-ratified human rights agreement. Bill Clinton signed the UN convention in 1995, but the US Congress has never ratified it. |
| 162 | Signatories of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities • Intended to protect the rights and dignity of persons with disabilities, the US is the only country that has signed it but not ratified it. |
| 189 | Have Ratified or Acceded to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women • 5 countries have not signed the convention and the US and Palau have signed but not ratified it. |
Really helpful summaries of what is going on, thank you so much!
Thank you for all of your meticulous work!
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