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Western media are blaring headlines today about a rigged election, not in the United States or any of the other powerful nations allied with it whose elections are consistently fraudulent from top to bottom, but in the small Central American nation of Nicaragua.
A Google search brings up only news stories disparaging the Nicaragua election and its results. As flagged on Twitter by Left I on the News, CNN’s coverage of President Daniel Ortega’s victory featured a chyron with scare quotes around both the words “election” and “wins”, and a newscaster flatly stating “Ortega got 75% of the vote, results that we know are illegitimate.”
New York Times correspondent Natalie Kitroeff reported that Ortega has been “arresting all credible challengers; shutting down opposition parties; banning large campaign events; closing voting stations en masse” and that “there were no billboards or campaign posters” for the opposition, all claims that have been squarely refuted by observers reporting on the scene like Wyatt Reed, Ben Norton, Margaret Kimberly, Ahmed Kaballo, Caleb Maupin and others.
Absurd fake news from US gov't mouthpiece NY Times: Unlike this propagandist I'm actually in Nicaragua, reporting on the elections
I went to 4 different voting stations; they were all full, with a totally calm, transparent process
There are 7 options on the ballot, 6 opposition https://t.co/nI5euvrrEF pic.twitter.com/yiKuFzPNBN
— Ben Norton (@BenjaminNorton) November 7, 2021
This mass media concern trolling about Nicaragua’s elections would not be so outrageously absurd were the elections of the US and its allies anywhere remotely close to free from fraud and manipulation.
There’s a common misconception that nothing ever changes in the US political status quo because an ideological tug-of-war between two equal and opposing factions keeps things in a state of stasis where it’s impossible to advance changes which would benefit ordinary Americans. In reality those two “factions” are in complete alignment in all but the most superficial ways, the electoral contests between them are dominated by a donor class with a vested interest in protecting the status quo, the candidates who compete in them are pre-selected by a corrupt and meticulously vetted primary process to ensure the public only ever gets to cast votes for those who will preserve oligarchy and empire, and third parties are constitutionally prevented from ever becoming politically viable.
All US elections for positions of real power are fraudulent. None of them ever permit real opposition. It’s a one-party system controlled by plutocratic and military institutions fraudulently disguised as democracy, and yet people who call themselves “journalists” have the temerity to criticize the integrity of Latin American elections without ever criticizing their own.
Just once it would be great to hear widespread discussion of US election rigging in the same alarmed tone we hear mass media concern trolls talking about nations like Nicaragua, Bolivia or Venezuela. “Very alarming how third parties are forbidden from participation in the US presidential debate.” “Concerned about the way any real opposition to the US power structure is banned from mainstream media.”
https://twitter.com/leftiblog/status/1457843324946030593
Whenever I raise this point I get people saying “Well the US doesn’t imprison its political opposition leaders like other tyrannical countries!”
That’s only because the US doesn’t have any political opposition leaders. There are no politicians in America with any political purchase who oppose the ruling power structure in any meaningful way. All true opposition has been quashed; all you ever get is two virtually identical lackeys of the oligarchic empire bickering over irrelevant narrative fluff like whether or not Critical Race Theory is being taught in schools.
There is no real opposition to the US power structure in electoral politics; it has been too aggressively stomped out for generation after generation since the days when it was openly incarcerating political dissidents like Eugene Debs for “sedition”. And anyone who comes anywhere close to threatening that power structure outside electoral politics is indeed imprisoned, as we are seeing right now in cases like Julian Assange.
There is no valid reason to believe the official imperial narratives about Nicaragua or any other empire-targeted nation, both because the US is virtually always far more guilty of whatever it’s accusing its enemies of doing and because its political/media establishment lies constantly. If you believe the mainstream narrative about any US-targeted nation you will wind up on the wrong side of debates about that nation, because the US empire is the single most corrupt and murderous institution on earth and its power is held in place by lies and propaganda.
The sooner you have your “Are we the baddies?” moment, the faster you get to truth.
The US empire—by which I also mean the client states around the world who support its agendas of planetary domination—has no business criticizing governments which are far less powerful, far less destructive, and far less corrupt. Elections throughout this US-centralized power structure are consistently rigged in myriad ways to ensure the survival of the political status quo upon which it is built, and if the mainstream news media existed for the purpose of practicing journalism this is something we would all be acutely aware of.
Until you are living in a nation with real political opposition and real elections, maybe shut the fuck up about places like Nicaragua.
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43 responses to “All US Elections Are Fraudulent; Shut Up About Nicaragua”
I suspect elections today are ultimately decided with a flip of the bitcoin.
Nicaragua can still enforce it’s own laws and run it’s own elections despite years of American opposition. America’s politicians have wasted millions of our tax dollars and who knows how many lives trying to take over Nicaragua and failed. Good job Nicaragua!
Is it possible to both acknowledge corruption of US elections and the suppression of real political opposition in the US, and still be concerned about open elections in Nicaragua? Just because we have a history of closing voting booths and restricting access to the ballot, does that mean it is OK for Ortega or any “small Central American country” to do the same? I’m concerned that in our condemnation of US practices and policies, we may over look abuses of revolutionary movements on the left once they achieve power. Stalin’s gulags and Mao’s abuses of power were real. David
I get your point, David, but what if Castro, for instance, had allowed free elections together with open media after his socialist revolutionary force came into power? Would not American resources have poured into the island nation to foment a color/counter revolution and saturate Cubans with capitalist propaganda? How short-lived would have been the miracle of socialism ninety miles from the American shore? That threat is, of course, ongoing and this is the context in which we must view and judge Ortega & Co.
Agree.
Good point. We should not idealize any regime, especially where the leaders have too much power for too long (as power corrupts). I must admit that Ortega’s limiting elections and jailing opponents, even if indeed they are funded by the US, does not smell good, regardless. But Caitlin is right to ask how dare the US administration even comment on Nicaragua, let alone interfere (both politically and physically). (and then, complain about the Russian interference on Facebook…).
why are you taking the New York Times’ word for it. they are a regular source for us propaganda, have been for decades.
So what facts specifically are wrong? What happened to the opponents (funded and supported by the US)?
what facts are right? where is there evidence? did you see the statements by observers on the ground? the us just spent several years freaking out about a faked russian plot to influence the election. the us attempts to undermine the nicaraguan government are very well documented, over several decades.
There is no valid reason to believe the official imperial narratives about Nicaragua or any other empire-targeted nation, both because the US is virtually always far more guilty of whatever it’s accusing its enemies of doing and because its political/media establishment lies constantly. I
I was asking specifically about the incarceration of Ortega’s opponents. Any idea? Did he or did he not incarcerate them? Any reference to a reliable source of information about this particular event?
we also have a history of subverting elections and supporting death squads and terrorists in Nicaragua. does that mean we have to go through the whole tiresome process of exposing us propaganda in this case. our invasions and slaughter are real, too. and they are still happening. Stalin and Mao are dead. for real.
i guess they keep using these scripts because it works (with their media control). same reason hollywood makes avengers 29, total crap product but people buy it because they are used to it.
If you DOUBT, question, investigate what they’re gavaging us (what we’re told, we believe), we MUST be silenced, censored, incarcerated (Assange, Donziger, Edward, Chelsea!) That’s why DNC’s so BLATANT about Autocratic duopoly. We’ve NO say!
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/11/09/covid-vaccines-pfizer-ceo-says-people-who-spread-misinformation-on-shots-are-criminals.html
Have to say that I agree completely.
Congratulations to the people who had the nerve to have an actual election in their own country, and to the winner of that election.
We are totally working on doing that here, but it’s a bit of an uphill battle, for obvious reasons.
The side and back of President Kennedy’s head turning into horrific pink mist started the 60s silencing of authentic opposition which included assassinations of Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Robert Kennedy and Pr Thomas Merton.
On top of those crimes against humanity and democracy, the police riot at the 1968 DNC in Chicago coupled with the assassination of Black Panthers and the firebombing of the entire Project Move neighborhood in Philadelphia and the disruption of the anti war and civil rights movements cemented control of the government and political discourse by the permanent war national security surveillance banking weapons corporate congressional media industrial complex.
No wonder it has been hard to generate opposition in the ensuing years.
Although protests against the Bush Cheney Rumsfeld Iraq War were monumental in 2003, the energy evaporated when the DNC nominated war hero and unabashed warrior John Kerry in 2004.
Then Bernie Sanders was cheated twice and it is structurally impossible for a third party to get any traction.
This is all the benefit of looking back after 60 years of a 70 year life so far.
I absolutely couldn’t see it on the ground before, although it was clear that a force of great malevolence was lurking.
I envy the democracies of Nicaragua Venezuela and Bolivia. Even Iran and Russia have more democratic elections than the USA fer crissskes and at least China and Cuba, Vietnam and Laos are honest: the oligarchic elite picks rulers from the oligarchic elite and you have no stupid US style election to vote in.
Not only great minds, but also increasingly senile codgers think alike. Nice summary, Thomas, of all those fleeting 70-plus years. I think they also brought down Teddy and JFK Jr., not to mention those World Trade Center buildings.
And Eugene Debs? And Rosa Luxembourg? (First the came for the socialists – always! because socialism in its real sense is the biggest enemy of capitalism, the totalitarian mother of fascism). But you are right, in the 60’s with the multi-murder spree there was a major fall into totalitarianism. This trend downward moves in steps starting in the beginning of the 20th century. Another major step in the 2003 Wars of Terror.
Yes, we are guilty of the accusations we make against others. For example, who meddles in more other-country elections than the U.S.? In that – and other matters – it is our experience with our own chicanery that makes it easy for us to create narratives that misdirect attention and underestimate our incentives in pointing out what others are doing and/or to create a false narrative to alarm and propagandize the U.S. public.
As for the U.S. two-party/one party system, it has been been part and parcel of conversations and publications, by those of us in the know, for a very long time. It is why we have adopted the term ‘duopoly’ to describe that togetherness of the right and left political parties. In combination they are the second level of power in the U.S., the first being the wealthy psychopaths frequently referred to as oligarchs.
Furthermore, the U.S. Constitution actually protects the duopoly and makes in virtually impossible for any third party to rise to a position of power. That could only happen if the people are so disillusioned about one of the two, that a third supplants one of the two, which then shrinks away to virtual nothingness – leaving us, once again, after a short hiatus with, at best, a refreshed duopoly. that is a given becasue politics in the U.S. is designed to corrupt.
Were I U.S. emperor for a day, the first thing I would do would be to establish a radically new system, that combines the financial, political and social systems of the U.S. into one system that first and foremost sees to the needs of the people. Inherent in that system would be the emasculation of political parties so that they could play no significant part in elections and would lack the financial support, should they have an inkling to get involved – because I would criminalize all person campaign contributions – even self funding – where the only funding for all eligible candidates would come from a federal fund created for that purpose and in which all eligible candidates would find a level field, since all would be given the same amount of money to work with. How we would get to the ability to implant such a system is problematic. Some say i would require no less than a coup or a revolution. Others say we must firmly discuss the truth with those in the general population the disbelievers , if you will, or those who just opt to blindly pay attention only to their own lives. Where the truth lies is as yet undecided, but it is clear that in a climate-change world that will require a great many changes, if there is to be a survival of our species, there is one certainly. The current systems cannot support the populace for much longer. The only question, when the answer arrives, is whether the future will applaud our actions, or our species will fade into oblivion.
Particularly hypocritical, this one: “closing voting stations en masse.” As if that has not happened repeatedly in the USA during this present century.
As if that has not been happening in the U.S. And, yes it’s been a hundred years now, but the example of Eugene V. Debs being imprisoned for making speeches opposing WWI still sticks out like a sore thumb. That surely was a catalyst for the formation of the American Civil Liberties Union in 1920 with its primary focus on defending Americans facing prison over the anti-war positions they had publicly advocated.
Bedbugs?
Diatomaceous earth.
Cheap, effective, broad spectrum, harmless to children and animals and fish – lethal to anything with an exoskeleton.h
It works because when the exoskeleton gets cut open the bugs get dried out.
I see people are using silica gel, which is a dessicant, to do the same thing, and equally harmless.
Maybe you could combine them?
Posting from Humboldt County, in Notrthern California, where there are lots of bedbugs – many of them, two-legged.
Regards,
~richard
“Western media [failed to blare] headlines about a rigged election” – in the Iowa primary of 2020. “Western media [failed to blare] headlines about a rigged election” – where Sanders won the New Hampshire and Nevada primaries (2020), and then, somehow, lost 10 out of 14 on Super Tuesday to a candidate who was ranking 4th. “Western media [fail to blare] headlines about [any] rigged election[s]” – regardless of statistical impossibilities, where their hands can’t be cleaned (see Ohio 2004 and 100 other examples, national and worldwide).
https://seaclearly.com/2020/11/29/what-is-left-to-be-trusted
Yup, that primary “upset” of Sanders seems to have been rigged electronically, not just politically.
Sanders was doing so well in Iowa that the electronic caucus reporting system went down. The results weren’t reported for days, thus lessening their impact.
I usually ascribe such occurrences to stupidity or incompetence, rather than to some nefarious plan. But, was it a happy accident for the DNC Dems or was there a plan to fail? Caucus leaders were given no training on the reporting system. In addition, although the caucus has traditionally run smoothly according to the procedures when the instructions in the caucus guide are followed exactly as prescribed in the caucus leaders”s booklet, the reporting feature did not work in 2020.
It could have been a screw up. Or it could have been designed to delay reporting after the beating the Clintons took in 2016, essentially ending up in a tie with Sanders. (Anyone saying Clinton won Iowa in 2016 must also acknowledge that she reportedly got more delegates by games of chance in sharply divided caucuses.)
Anyway, the caucus reporting SNAFU took Sanders’ showing, and Biden’s poor showing int he 2020 caucuses out of the news as the media simply reported the problems rather than the results. And Biden became the second Democratic nominee since the McGovern-Fraser Commission (recommendations first implemented for 1972) to have finished worse than 3rd in the Iowa Caucuses. Bill Clinton was the first in 1992. That caucus featured a different kind of possible skullduggery.
To recap. In the run-up to the 1992 nomination contest, DNC’s anointed candidate, Bill Clinton, was polling poorly in Iowa. It looked like he would get his metaphorical ass kicked and that might doom their hopes of having a Republican-lite candidate.
Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA) jumped into the race. As perhaps the most popular Iowa Democrat, he was assured of winning the caucuses. So when he came in first with 77% of the delegates, it was not much of a story when Clinton finished fourth behind Harkin, Uncommitted and Paul Tsongas, with just 2% support. Clinton then finished second in New Hampshire, declared himself the Comeback Kid, and went on to secure the nomination with the full-throated approval of the corporate Dems.
Had Harkin not played along to become the spoiler in Iowa, 1992 could very well have turned out differently. But he was. And, of course, the Dems encouraged H.Ross Perot in his independent bid for the presidency, correctly figuring that he would peel away more Republican votes than Democratic in the general election. How else would an independent candidate be invited to the ultra-serious event such as the televised presidential “debates?”
Lots of shenanigans to see. And that is just 1992.
hear hear!
The US doesn’t “imprison” its real political opposition — it assassinates them. Die faster, empire. And take your mockingbird media with you.
‘What if they held a war and nobody came’ could be rejigged
to ‘What if they held an election and Truth won’
(Just a fantasy I know).
Nicaragua of course has OIL – wherever there is OIL – well – there are ZIO/US sponsored terrorists !
Nicaragua has no proven crude oil reserves according to sources available through my DuckDuckGo search. Zero, nothing.
Somehow previous attempts to post this message have failed. Perhaps it is because I linked three sources. I will try it now with only one link: https://www.indexmundi.com/energy/?country=ni&product=oil&graph=reserves
What they do have is a fairly popular administration run by the party of the people who overthrew a U.S. puppet regime 40 years ago. That is sufficient to maintain U.S. enmity unless and until a new Nicaraguan administration is successful in re-instating its vassal state status.
We haven’t taken over for the Nazis. They sent folks over to study how our oligarchy enforced Jim Crow; how our propaganda normalized hiring half our working class to subjugate, rob and indenture “minorities,” our master’s created. Hitler was financed by US autocrats like Prescott Bush, Ford and those who preceded Dixiecrats. Nobody’s voting here. We’re told which criminal kleptocrats we’re allowed to sign-off on; cravenly servile suck-ups, still awaiting our trickle down?
https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2021/11/8/us-consumers-expect-inflation-and-their-finances-to-worsen
https://truthout.org/articles/right-wing-democrats-tout-wealthy-tax-cut-while-waffling-on-reconciliation-vote/
https://prospect.org/infrastructure/building-back-america/whats-next-for-the-infrastructure-program/
https://www.moonofalabama.org/2021/11/a-look-back-at-russiagate.html
This style of reporting is especially aggrevating since the difference in reporting over Nicaragua, as opposed to Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador was explicitly one example that Hermann and Chomsky used in “Manufacturing Consent”
Anyone who ever read that book should have all alarm bells sounding when hearin/reading this.
Anyone who never read that book should not be working in journalism.
I have just finished rewatching Patricio Guzman’s 1975 documentary, The Battle Of Chile. I had forgotten that the film’s first part deals with the election that returned the Popular Unity government with a clear majority. Before that, the bourgeoisie had been out in the street prematurely celebrating a false claim to victory. The fact that Allende’s legitimacy was dethroned in such an outstandingly violent and overt way has disguised the now obvious fact that the ‘Rules-based’ democratic free world has always worked violently against those who question its raison-d’etre.
Just yesterday, I was thinking about how much Americans need to have their ‘Are we the baddies?’ moment. They need to fucking wake up already. Thanks again for being the voice of reason in an insane world, Caitlin!
Yes, Peter, but the question is phrased in a way that inhibits its sinking in with the vast majority of the American people. They, like the citizens of many other nations, naturally love their country are are proud of the good things it has done in the past (while, of course, being forgetful or in denial about all the evil things it has done). THAT is the human condition, whether we like it or not, and it is THAT with which we must work. Thus blanket condemnations of current American atrocities as merely the continuing actions of a country evil to the core, will largely fall on deaf ears, and the more heated the condemnations, the more they will be ignored. I love Caitlin’s work, for example, but how many average Americans, do you suppose, follow it, even if they happen to give it an initial read? As my Boomer friend always tells me about “the left”: “I’ve had it with all this America-bashing. Look at what we did for Europe after WWII, look at all we’ve done for so many immigrants (often our own parents), look at how we fought a civil war to free the slaves, etc. etc. etc.” Does my friend have any point at all in his reactionary stance? And if he does, how do we appeal to the best in his heart and mind (and he is a very decent fellow in so many ways) so that he can more fully open his eyes? For years, I’ve been working on this and actually helped get him to vote for Bernie is the last primary, despite his having been a prior fan of Bill O’Reilly. The tack I took was to lambast the current American government and its recent actions, NOT the American people or American history as a whole. As Caitlin indicates, this small step is merely the voting for a candidate pre-screened by the corrupt PTB, who decided not to let him win that primary anyway. But are such small steps not worth our time and effort at this juncture, WHEN A BIG STEP SEEMS TOTALLY OUT OF REACH?
Hard to understand what happened to dissent in general in the US
Same in Oz really, we have the Labour Party, the Liberal Party and the Nationals (smaller), all bicker at each other like school kids with no difference between them and reply “How High” when the US says jump.
Didn’t the exposure of Australian SAS atrocities in Afghanistan have any effect?
What exposure of atrocities by Australian SAS in Afghanistan ? Nothing to see here, move on.
The War Crimes Commission has just been turned into a giant defamation case by one accused, funded by some of the more ugly characters in the Australian Ruling Class.
Caitlin, All your observations are spot-on as usual, but perhaps tangentally, let me share the following:
I live in an intentional community in Eugene, Oregon. As a middle finger to Trump, we began hosting “asylum seekers” from Central America. We now have six people here – all of whom were in ICE detention two months to two years ago. They are ALL Nicaraguan. They range from 20’s to 50’s.
This is particularly aggravating for me because in 1988 I spent six weeks building house for poor families in Nicaragua – all in support of the Sandinistas. But it seems that Daniel Ortega has gone from being a hero of the people to a repressive fucker.
It’s so frustrating to see a man who was once a hero get completely corrupted by power and money. I return time & again to the reality that human consciousness has GOT to fundamentally transform for real and meaningful change to flourish on Earth.
Robert, why should we believe ex-detainees who were allowed to leave the ICE prisons and live in the US? It sis likely that if they were Sandinista they would not get out alive, or would stay there forever, or be turned back to Mexico. Could you tel us more specifically, who they would have voted for and why, and what kind of tyrannic behavior had they felt back in Nicaragua? And what kind of things did they do back then?
The vast majority of countries now have Corporatocracy, meaning all Parliamentary functions are carried out within a corporate entity (usually registered in a foreign place) or by nationally registered corporations and business units under their own commercial laws. This can usually easily be proven if you look hard enough.
Despite the Pantomime or theatre of public elections the ‘elected’ actually are appointed as corporate employees, and what were public servants are now business employees, including police and judiciary.
They may appear to act as the role they are handling as it was once. Please go look and you will be shocked.