NZ will probably not be vaccinating a single person until June!!!
The Australian reports:
Australia has banded together with three of its Five Eyes security partners to demand China respect the freedoms of Hong Kongers, in a joint statement attempting to ensure Beijing can’t single out the Morrison government for punishment.
Government sources confirmed the show of diplomatic force, made days after the arrests of 55 politicians and activists in Hong Kong, was designed to make clear that China’s aggressive actions there following the passage of a new security law were a global concern. There would be more joint statements in the months ahead when people’s freedoms and rights were under threat.
Analysts said it would enforce the message that Australia was not acting alone. Foreign ministers Marise Payne, Francois-Philippe Champagne (Canada), Dominic Raab (UK) and US secretary of State Mike Pompeo expressed their “serious concern” at the mass arrests in Hong Kong for subversion under the national security law.
Sad that NZ Govt decided not to support Australia in standing up for Hong Kong.
There have been several joint statements issued by Five Eyes countries concerning Hong Kong in recent months but in this latest rebuke New Zealand remained mute. A New Zealand Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson said the country had “serious concerns” about the situation in Hong Kong. While it would make joint comments with allies, on this occasion Foreign Minister Nanaia Mahuta responded independently last week.
The Australian understands there was a delay in issuing the joint statement following 72 hours of diplomatic exchanges between all five partners resulting in just the quadrilateral statement.
NZ deliberately decided to stay mute. This will embolden China as they will see that fear of retribution works.
The Herald reports:
Donald Trump’s former ally and Vice President Mike Pence has not ruled out invoking the 25th Amendment in the last days of Trump’s presidency, sources say.
The move would strip the President of his powers, transferring them to Pence, but CNN reports he is saving the option in case Trump “becomes more unstable”.
The report comes as disturbing new details emerge about the apparent murderous intentions of some of the pro-Trump rioters who stormed the US Capitol this week, including killing Pence and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
What happened was bad enough with five dead, including a police officer. But it could have been far worse.
A Reuters photographer recounted what rioters were discussing as they tore through the Capitol on January 6 – including hanging the Vice President from a tree for being a “traitor”.
Despite being a Republican, Pence is now loathed by a number of Trump supporters after endorsing Joe Biden’s electoral college victory.
They loathe him because Trump lied to them and told them that Pence could unilaterally ignore the results of the election and declare Trump President again. He incited a mob against his own VP.
Pence did not endorse anything. He simply did his job – oversaw the counting of the votes.
It is highly unlikely the 25th amendment will be triggered, but if it is, here is the process:
If the 25th was invoked, then Trump’s term would expire before the 21 days is up.
Personally I don’t think the 25th amendment should be used, unless Trump tries to do something like declare martial law. It is not designed to remove a bad President from office (impeachment is for that). It is designed to allow an Acting President if the President is unconscious or has had some sort of breakdown that they can’t function.
Wayne Brown writes:
Do we really care about the Spratly Islands? Do we really need to make a fuss over Uighur rights in China when we don’t do the same over US Police shooting black citizens?
Trade sanctions of the type Australia is facing are a weapon used by both USA and China.
So let’s have a debate on whether we need Five Eyes, or whether it’s time for us to trade on independently.
Brown reminds me of the “useful idiots” who used to defend the USSR by claiming it was no worse than the US and Nato etc.
Comparing the treatment of Uighurs to US police shootings of black citizens is not an argument I believe can be made in good faith. It is offensive and ridiculous.
There have been 192 blacks shot by Police in the US (and 370 whites and 12 hispanics). Of the 192 certainly some of them have been unjustified and the protests against them have (in my opinion) been justified.
That can not be compared to the treatment of Uighurs with an estimated one million sent to mass detention re-education camps. To compare the actions of the occasional rogue police officer with official Government policy to detain one million people who have committed no crimes, leaving 500,000 children without parents and force into state boarding schools.
The Herald reports:
A man who attacked a police officer with an axe said he planned to decapitate him and wave his head at other officers so they would shoot him.
It was one of the stunning revelations made by 25-year-old Ruairi Kern Taylor in an interview with a Corrections officer just weeks after the incident in September 2019.
The details of that discussion can now be revealed after the defendant was jailed for three years, three months before the High Court at Dunedin last month.
He got a mere 39 months for this. He could be eligible for parole after just 13 months.
“I’ve been planning to kill someone for three to four months before I did it,” he said.
“This was the first police officer I came across that was a good target.”
Doyle-Franklin, who gave evidence at a hearing in the High Court at Dunedin in July last year, attempted to have her interviewee rationalise his actions.
Why would he kill someone who had never wronged him?
“Because that’s something I could do that sits right for me … that just works for me,” Taylor said.
Doyle-Franklin said his manner was unnerving.
“His facial expression would get very animated — smirking and smiling — his eyes were really wide. It was quite clear from that he was getting enjoyment from retelling his offending,” she said.
Sounds like he’ll be safe to release!
Despite his ruling, shortly afterwards the Crown dropped the charge of attempted murder.
Taylor pleaded guilty to attempting to cause grievous bodily harm, intentional damage and assault with a weapon.
Because of the time he spent in custody awaiting resolution of the case, he will see the Parole Board this month.
Why did they drop the charge? His admission was admissible. A conviction would have been easy.
Stuff reports:
A hospitality business owner says the Government is sending mixed signals after ignoring advice about delaying the minimum wage increase and recommendations for a smaller rise after Covid-19.
The minimum wage report by the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) published in December 2020 advised delaying the increase until October, and by 25 cents, or 1.3 per cent, due to the economic uncertainty.
However, the Government ignored this advice and confirmed the minimum wage would rise by $1.10, or 5.8 per cent, to $20 an hour from April 2021, sticking to its election promise.
Auckland cafe owner Chris Monaghan said 2020 was a tough year for every hospitality business, and the 5.8 per cent increased wages would add greater pressure on the sector.
Businesses can handle increased wage costs when they have increasing revenue. But when they have declining revenue, increasing wage costs will send many under.
Alone in his office, Trump has failed. Despite everything he threw at it, the US system was resilient enough to stop his coup and the Congress of the United States has just this minute certified Joe Biden as the President-Elect and Kamala Harris as the Vice-President Elect.
The objection to Arizona was defeated 93-6 in the Senate and 303-121 in the House. The objection to Pennsylvania was defeated 92-7 in the Senate and 282-138 in the House.
He has less than 14 days left in office at which point he will lose his immunity for prosecution and the indictments will start to form up.
For those not following, pro Trump forces have broken through multiple lines of Police to storm the Capitol, disrupting the election certification.
Both the House and Senate have gone into recess and VP Pence has been taken to a secure location.
What an image. A terrible day for the US and democracy.
If a former Republican President is calling it an insurrection, then we can conclude this is not just a protest.
And a Republican Governor is calling for Trump to be removed from office.
Also in other news the GOP has lost the Senate with the Democrats having won both seats in Georgia.
Golriz Ghahraman tweeted this fake headline which is a modern version of the old Jewish blood libel.
It implies Israel is excluding the vaccine from Palestinians. It is a vicious lie designed to smear the Jewish state.
Here’s the facts:
The tweet was an offensive smear. But I doubt there will be an apology.
With almost 80% of ballots counted, the NY Times is projecting the two Senate seats to go to the Democrats by 1.8% and 1.0%. They note:
Republicans have taken a narrow lead in the tabulated vote, but the Democrats are clear favorites in both races. The overwhelming majority of remaining votes are in the Atlanta metro area, and while the race remains competitive, there’s no indication that the Republicans are poised to outperform expectations. The big Democratic vote left: the DeKalb County early vote. We expect these 170,000 votes to break for Ossoff by an 85-15 margin.
So the outcome is not certain, but things look good for the Democrats. If the GOP loses both seats, it will be due to Trump so his parting gift will be giving the Democrats control of the Senate as well as the House and the Presidency.
538 point out:
Best I can tell, Perdue and Loeffler are running slightly behind Trump in margin. We’re up to 107 counties that have reported 95 percent or more of their expected vote, and if you total up the votes in those places, Trump won them by 25.7 points in November. But Perdue is only up 25.3 points in those places and Loeffler is up 24.8 points. Plenty of votes left to count, but that’s not what the GOP wants, especially as many of these are Republican-leaning places.
The two Republicans did better than Trump in the first round but Trump’s refusal to concede appears to have motivated the Democrats to turn out more than Republicans.
Still far from over yet, so we’ll see how it goes over the next 24 hours.
Biden’s strategy of trying to ignore what Trump and the Republicans are doing and calling it a stunt us misguided. If I was Biden I would respond to what Trump and the Republicans are doing with the full force of the law. Here’s what I would do
Nothing less than that will discourage them from trying again. Turn Trump’s rally call into a reality and lock them all up.
Stuff reports:
A former inmate at Waikeria Prison has rubbished claims of poor conditions at the jail and claimed the presence of deported Australian gang members was a more likely cause for the unrest.
The prison was the scene of a five-night standoff, with prisoners lighting multiple fires which destroyed the “top jail” facility at the prison.
Family members of the protesters said their complaints about conditions at the prison were dismissed before the protest took place.
I don’t know why the media report allegations from family members without substantinating them.
They claim their complaints about conditions were dismissed. Before reporting this allegation I would ask the family members for specifics – a copy of the complaint, who was it sent to and when.
I’m pretty confident there won’t be any proof of any complaints having been made.
Not that this would justify the riot, even if true.
However, the former inmate Stuff spoke to, who wished to remain anonymous, said he believed the more likely cause of the trouble were Mongols and Comanchero gang members, five of whom were deportees from Australia.
No surprise.
“When they were deported they should have been put straight into maximum security.”
Better late than never. All those who took part should be separated out and farmed around other NZ prisons.
This is part 4 of 4 (cue a sigh of relief from the Trump skeptics). Georgia has become ground zero for 2020 Presidential election voter fraud allegations because in that state, the three types of voter fraud (retail, constitutional and industrial) are all present. Georgia adds an additional layer of fascination because the Governor (Brain Kemp) and the Secretary of State (Brad Raffensperger) are Republicans and tension over voter fraud allegations have sparked intra party tension inside the GA GOP and around the country. The Georgia State Legislature also has the distinction of holding the most hearings on voter fraud and those hearings have been official in that authorized State Senate Committee chairs have convened them under normal committee meeting rules on the premises of the State Legislature. Also, in the GA hearings, Democrat legislators have been present and have cross examined witnesses. In AZ, the hearings were not formal, were attended only by Republican legislators and were held at a hotel in Phoenix. Pennsylvania Legislature hearings had only Republican legislators present.
I covered the retail fraud evidence in Georgia in part 1. Changes to the manner in which the election was held in GA were likely unconstitutional in similar manner to the changes in Pennsylvania and those changes (particularly the watering down of the signature verification process as a consequence of a Consent Decree between the GA Secretary of State’s office and the GA Democratic Party) have been front and centre in the constitutional challenges about the GA elections. Much is made of all the lawsuits on election fraud that have failed. Analyzing all the cases would be a separate lengthy post in itself that I won’t attempt, suffice it to say that the mainstream media narrative is to lump all suits together as one mass of failure with little to no analysis as to why specific suits did not succeed. Standing matters, quality of evidence matters, matching the remedy to the alleged fraud matters and yes, the politics of the judges matters hugely as does a natural human reluctance to not be the one person to overturn a Presidential election. Time also matters – large fraud takes time to prove, even for law enforcement agencies who have the resources of a state or federal government to back them up. Much of the work of unearthing the fraud has been done by a small number of experts who lack resources and lawsuits have been brought in a scattergun throw-it-all-up-against-the-wall-and-see-what-sticks approach. If you want Federal judges to take your case seriously then you have to do better than that. The Trump campaign itself has filed relatively few suits and it has one already accepted by SCOTUS to be heard (the PA case on 22/1/21). In the case of Georgia, several of the failed suits were filed by Sidney Powell and Atlanta based defamation attorney Lin Wood. Powell’s suits invoke her “Kraken” which comprises allegations of the vast global network of foreign interference and control of the Dominion machines. Proving allegations like this are best left to the heads of agencies like the CIA or DNI (Director of National Intelligence) and pulling together proof of anything this grand, assuming the institutional stomach exists to even do it, would take years of costly intelligence work. It is little wonder that Powell’s suits are summarily dismissed. Wood likewise lays out the GA fraud but lards his suits with the same ‘Kraken’ stuff and then accompanies his efforts with endless and quite nasty personal attacks on judges and the very GA Republican politicians he is attempting to get courts to rule against. This is tactical stupidity and so some of the legitimate and legally correct arguments he might make in the GA situation are lost in the hot mess of the grand conspiracy stuff he traffics in. This almost begs a court to dismiss. Still other suits are brought by well meaning individuals and organisations who avoid these excesses but nonetheless don’t have sufficient standing to warrant the extreme remedy being sought. In the midst of this thicket of messy and ineffectual suits are a handful that are targeted, factual and backed by evidence brought by plaintiffs with clear standing and they are the few that are working their way through the layers of courts. Time will tell how many SCOTUS will hear.
When it comes to the allegations of industrial fraud, that of manipulation of vote totals by tabulation machines and of the introduction of fraudulent ballots on a large scale to provide the paper ballot backup to the machine manipulation, I covered in Part 3 some of the difficulties in proving this. Perhaps the most public and significant of these allegations revolve around the footage of election workers in the State Farm Arena in Atlanta, Fulton County, GA filmed on security camera on the day and evening of November 3rd as presented by the Trump campaign to members of the Georgia Legislature at the first set of GA hearings held on December 3rd. The GA Secretary of State’s office and a number of liberal fact check sites were quick out of the blocks with denials and explanations and if you are a Trump supporter or someone inclined to believe there was election fraud, the video was a slam dunk and if you are not a Trump fan and think that the election fraud claims are either false or overblown then the fact checks will mean you will say or write that this footage has been debunked. I am going to devote only this paragraph on this incident but claim, counter claim and counter-counter claims are well summarised in this then this excellent article. In reality, unless a court has time to subpoena and hear witness testimony under oath from all participants in this event with election and forensic experts pouring over the video footage, the effect of this incident will be more to provide a sense of disquiet about what actually happened that adds to other evidence that continues to come forth sufficient for the GA Legislature to order forensic examinations of the machines and for some to urge a rethink its certification of the 16 Biden electors for Georgia.
On Wednesday last week (30/12/20), at the 2nd GA State Legislature hearing, more of that evidence was forthcoming and it was more definitively compelling and sparked a response that somewhat reinforces the allegations of fraud. Perhaps the most compelling 20 minutes of testimony came from three members of the Data Integrity Group (DIG). Their testimony is found from 4:24’16” to 4:46’0”, the bulk of which was done by Justin Mealey, a former electronic warfare technician with the US Navy for 9 years, a CIA contract data analyst and programmer for the National Counterintelligence Centre and currently working for one of the big 4 accounting firms as a programmer. and David Lobue, a machine learning expert and data scientist.
They began by saying that they are data analysts, and that data are numbers and data are nonpartisan. The DIG believe they have proven fraud in GA with data by analysing 3 data sources:
1 – The New York Times/Edison Research data feed which are time series publications of votes added at different intervals county by county.
2 – Scytl data source which bifurcates the same data to Edison and the GA Secretary of State and his office’s certification of GA was off that data source.
3 – GA Secretary of State’s own data as a third check.
On this data they applied vigorous and thoroughly tested standard fraud detection processes and machine learning algorithms used to routinely detect fraud in many real world fraud settings. The data sources are freely available to the public and the DIG processes, codes and research is public so it can be replicated. Their research in GA alone unearthed 40 negative vote instances (by that they mean that incremental time sequential vote totals for Trump went backwards) and vote switching events totaling 200,000 votes.
In Fulton County (incorporating metropolitan Atlanta), they found that Biden garnered the following statistically impossible vote percentages in the following precincts:
90 to 93% in 28 precincts
94% in 51 precincts
95% in 36 precincts
96 to 100% in 36 precincts
So, in 150 + in Fulton County precincts, Biden ‘won’ over 90% of the vote and got a total of 152,000 votes. In Dekalb County, Biden got 90% or more of the vote in a staggering 94 precincts. Both counties voting patterns are, to experienced data analysts, major markers for fraud. Note that Biden’s current margin in GA is only 11,779 votes. They discovered vote count switching in 3 counties: Dodge, Putnam and Dougherty. Please note that with ongoing reporting of vote counts, incremental vote totals can only be additive.
The final attempt in the Trump coup will come on January 6 (7 in NZ) when Trump acolytes will try and overturn the result of the Electoral College electing Biden.
It is worth noting there are two sources of law for what happens at the counting of the vote – the Constitution and the Electoral Count Act.
The provisions of the Electoral Count Act are subservient to the constitution. Nothing in that Act can be used to undermine the actual constitution. So if (for example) Mike Pence (as Trump wants him to) declared Trump elected, a court would rapidly reverse it.
So what does the constitution say:
The Electors shall meet in their respective states and vote by ballot for President and Vice-President, one of whom, at least, shall not be an inhabitant of the same state with themselves; they shall name in their ballots the person voted for as President, and in distinct ballots the person voted for as Vice-President, and they shall make distinct lists of all persons voted for as President, and of all persons voted for as Vice-President, and of the number of votes for each, which lists they shall sign and certify, and transmit sealed to the seat of the government of the United States, directed to the President of the Senate; — The President of the Senate shall, in the presence of the Senate and House of Representatives, open all the certificates and the votes shall then be counted
So the constitution says the job is to count the votes. That’s it.
Now the Electoral Count Act 1881 has further provisions, but again remember these provisions do not override the constitution. They say:
Upon such reading of any such certificate or paper, the President of the Senate shall call for objections, if any. Every objection shall be made in writing, and shall state clearly and concisely, and without argument, the ground thereof, and shall be signed by at least one Senator and one Member of the House of Representatives before the same shall be received. When all objections so made to any vote or paper from a State shall have been received and read, the Senate shall thereupon withdraw, and such objections shall be submitted to the Senate for its decision; and the Speaker of the House of Representatives shall, in like manner, submit such objections to the House of Representatives for its decision; and no electoral vote or votes from any State which shall have been regularly given by electors whose appointment has been lawfully certified to according to section 6 of this title from which but one return has been received shall be rejected, but the two Houses concurrently may reject the vote or votes when they agree that such vote or votes have not been so regularly given by electors whose appointment has been so certified.
Under the ECA, a state’s electoral votes can be rejected if both the House and Senate decide they are improper. This won’t happen as the Democrats have a majority in the House. But even if say the GOP had a majority in the House and Senate and they voted to reject a state’s votes to try and steal the election, there is no way it would survive court action. Because nothing in the ECA can over-ride the constitution and the constitution does not give Congress the power to decide who won the election. Their constitutional job is only to count the vote.
What will be of real interest on the 6th is how the Repuplicans representatives and senators vote. Will they vote to appease Trump (as not doing so may generate a primary challenge) or will they vote to uphold democracy?
If they vote for Trump they are less likely to have a primary challenge but more likely to lose in the general election (unless in a very safe seat).
First off, this will not be a post about lawyer Sidney Powell and her fellow attorney Lin Wood’s allegations about Dominion Voting Systems (DVS). Whilst the allegations they make are interesting and could end up being correct, it is not possible to prove such grand and sweeping statements with anything remotely close to what a court needs to overturn an election result. Their various lawsuits have been chock full of foreign interference allegations and her various proof documents require a computer science degree to decipher. In the tight timeframes and high burden of proof that is required to prove election fraud in 2020, they are both indulging in wishful thinking however well intentioned. Lin Wood has complicated matters with his recent inflammatory and bordering on crazy tweets.
That said, there are clearly issues with the Dominion voting machines but filing affidavits with a 12 year old story from a former Venezuelan army intelligence officer is not ever going to persuade a court to overturn election results or even get an order to examine machines. A good number of the thrown out lawsuits on election fraud have sourced from Powell and Wood and it doesn’t take a law degree to figure out why. There is a reason why the Trump campaign’s lawyers (Rudy Giuliani and Jenna Ellis) early on in the litigation process made a public statement distancing themselves them Powell and Wood and one only has to read the court filings from the different ‘camps’ and compare their quality to see why.
There is no denying that a series of unusual statistical anomalies occurred with the vote counts mostly of absentee ballots early in the morning of November 4th in the 6 key states where Trump either led substantially after the polls closed (PA, MI, WI and GA), was expected to lead based on historical vote counting patterns (AZ) and was in with a chance to overcome a Biden lead (NV). The same could be said for Minnesota, Virginia and New Mexico. This is a short summary of three of these anomalies that have no precedent either in prior elections or can be found in other battleground states such as Florida, Ohio, Iowa and North Carolina (all states that Obama won easily, Trump won in 2016 and easily won re-election in 2020):
1 – Virginia: when you view the raw data feed (graph 2/3rds down the article) sent to the pool media outlets from the county recorders’ offices via Edison Research (the nominated aggregator of real time election counting data), a series of 37 consecutive absentee ballot counting dumps from 8.02 am EST on 4/11/20 to 9.30pm EST on 6/11/20, all reported an almost identical winning margin for Biden (54/45). It is hard to draw any other conclusion than there was some kind of electronic manipulation of the data.
2 – Pennsylvania: The absentee ballot vote counts reported through the night of 3 November and into the following days, when you examine the Biden/Trump split of absentee ballots by county (see graph 2/3rds through the article), Biden leads Trump by 40% evenly in every county in PA regardless of where and yet the split on election day was more pro Biden in the big cities and more pro Trump in the smaller towns and rural counties, a pattern that is the norm. The same regional variation in party strength was evident in the absentee ballot count in PA in 2016 and in other states in 2020 that were not part of the disputed 6. Such a bizarre statistical anomaly again can only be explained by something preprogrammed into the machine doing the counting of the absentee ballots.
3 – Georgia: I will cover what happened in GA in a separate post tomorrow.
4 – Michigan: Analysis of precinct by precinct candidate vote splits (begins at 34’ 37”) in Macomb County revealed similar odd results that defy statistical and historical norms. In the historically strongest Democrat precincts in the county, the Biden/Trump split appears to be normal but if you plot each precinct by its historical party voting strength in a continuum with strongest Democrat on the left to strongest Republican on the right and plot them in descending order of GOP strength from left to right, in the traditional GOP precincts, the stronger the traditional GOP vote, the wider the margin of victory for Biden! This trend continues in a clean direct linear line and against all the norms of voting behaviour (i.e., the stronger the precinct has been for the Republican party, the bigger the margin of Trump’s victory – a trend that is obvious in other states not in the fraud firing line). The only logical explanation is the possibility of a vote switching algorithm designed to skim Trump votes to Biden in even but small incremental steps based on the core Trump vote.
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