Attorney General William Barr said Tuesday the Justice Department has not uncovered evidence of widespread voter fraud that would change the outcome of the 2020 presidential election.
His comments come despite President Donald Trump’s repeated claims that the election was stolen, and his refusal to concede his loss to President-Elect Joe Biden.
In an interview with The Associated Press, Barr said U.S. Attorneys and FBI agents have been working to follow up specific complaints and information they’ve received, but they’ve uncovered no evidence that would change the outcome of the election.

Submissions that may interest you

SUBMISSION	DOMAIN
Bill Barr Just Kneecapped Trump’s Election Conspiracy Theory - Even Barr, one of Trump’s most loyal acolytes, thinks the election conspiracy stuff is insane.	vice.com
Barr says no evidence of widespread fraud in presidential election	cnn.com
No evidence of fraud that would change election outcome, Attorney General William Barr says	oregonlive.com
AG Barr Says No Evidence of Widespread Voter Fraud After Trump Suggests DOJ Involvement in Election Rigging	newsweek.com
Barr: No evidence of fraud that’d change election outcome	news.yahoo.com
Barr: DOJ yet to find widespread voter fraud that could have changed 2020 election	foxnews.com
Barr: No evidence of fraud that’d change election outcome	politico.com
Barr Says DOJ hasn’t uncovered widespread fraud in 2020 election	thehill.com
Barr: No evidence of fraud that’d change election outcome	apnews.com
Barr Says DOJ Hasn’t Uncovered Widespread Voting Fraud	bloomberg.com
Attorney General Barr: No Evidence of Widespread Fraud That’d Change Presidential Election Outcome.	wmur.com
Barr says he hasn’t seen fraud that could affect the election outcome	washingtonpost.com
Attorney General Barr: No evidence of widespread voter fraud	usatoday.com
No evidence of voter fraud that would change election outcome, AG William Barr says	ktla.com
Barr says Justice Dept. hasn’t uncovered widespread voting fraud that could have changed election outcome	bostonglobe.com
Barr Admits DOJ Found No Evidence of Voter Fraud That Would Change Election Results	thedailybeast.com
DOJ hasn't uncovered widespread fraud that would change election results: Barr	abcnews.go.com
Attorney General Bill Barr says no evidence of widespread fraud in 2020 election	fox13news.com
Barr: No Evidence Of Fraud That’d Change Election Outcome	huffpost.com
AG Barr says no evidence of fraud that’d change election outcome	wsls.com
DOJ finds no evidence of voter fraud that would change 2020 election outcome	independent.co.uk
Barr: No evidence of fraud that’d change election outcome	chicago.suntimes.com
Barr: No Evidence Of Fraud That’d Change Election Outcome	m.huffpost.com
AG Barr: No evidence of fraud that'd change election outcome	abc7chicago.com
Barr: No evidence of fraud that’d change election outcome	seattletimes.com
AG William Barr: No evidence of fraud that’d change election outcome	triblive.com
Atty General Barr said the DOJ hasn't found any evidence of widespread, results-changing voter fraud	pbs.org
Barr: No evidence of fraud that would change election outcome	dailyherald.com
Barr says DOJ has not seen evidence of fraud that would change election results	axios.com
Barr: No evidence of fraud that’d change election outcome	washingtonpost.com
Barr: No Evidence of Fraud That Would Change Election Outcome	bloomberg.com
DOJ has not found fraud that would reverse Biden win over Trump, Attorney General William Barr says	cnbc.com
Barr future in doubt after Trump campaign blast him for denying widespread election fraud	independent.co.uk
U.S. Justice Department has found no evidence of widespread voter fraud: AP	reuters.com
Barr finds no evidence of voter fraud	cbsnews.com
William Barr: no evidence of voter fraud that would change election outcome	theguardian.com
Despite Barrage Of Losses In Court, Trump Camp Plans More Long-Shot Election Appeals	wesa.fm
Barr: No evidence of fraud that’d change election outcome	seattletimes.com
US Attorney General: No fraud found that could change election	aljazeera.com
Bill Barr Appointed John Durham as Special Counsel Two Weeks Before Election Day — Here’s What He’s Authorized to Investigate	lawandcrime.com
Barr States The Obvious: No Mass Voter Fraud That Would Swing Election Results	talkingpointsmemo.com
Trump campaign hits Barr for no "semblance" of an investigation after AG says no evidence of widespread fraud	newsweek.com
Barr: DOJ Has No Evidence Of Fraud Affecting 2020 Election Outcome	npr.org
Defying Trump, Attorney General Barr says the DOJ and FBI didn't discover any evidence of widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election	businessinsider.com
Trump allies Barr, Giuliani at odds on discredited election fraud claims	reuters.com
William Barr says there is no evidence of widespread fraud in presidential election	amp.cnn.com
Barr and Giuliani clash over allegations of election fraud	politico.com
'I Guess He's the Next One to Be Fired': Even William Barr Says No Evidence of Widespread Voter Fraud	commondreams.org
AG Barr: No evidence of fraud that would change election outcome	washingtontimes.com
Disputing Trump, Barr says no widespread election fraud	apnews.com
Attorney General Barr Says DOJ Hasn't Uncovered Evidence of Voter Fraud That’d Change Outcome of 2020 Election	time.com
US Attorney-General William Barr says no widespread voter fraud has been found in the election	abc.net.au
After AG Bill Barr says no evidence of widespread fraud in 2020 election, 9 Texas Republicans decry "shocking lack of action" on allegations- U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, also called for the Supreme Court to hear one of Donald Trump's election lawsuits.	texastribune.org
Despite Trump's continued claims, Barr sees no sign of major U.S. vote fraud	reuters.com
Whistleblowers claiming USPS threw out, backdated ballots before election-New allegations as Barr claims no fraud	foxnews.com
Barr says Justice Department found no evidence of fraud that would change election outcome	msnbc.com
U.S. Attorney General William Barr said on Tuesday the Justice Department has found no evidence of widespread voter fraud in last month’s election, even as President Donald Trump kept up his flailing legal efforts to reverse his defeat.	reuters.com
Analysis: William Barr breaks with Trump's election fantasy	cnn.com
Barr splits with Trump on election; pardon controversy	thehill.com
Bill Barr bashed in right-wing media after election fraud comments: 'He is either a liar or a fool or both'	cnn.com
'Compromised': Fox News host slams Barr for rebuking Trump's election fraud claims	haaretz.com
Are Republicans like Ron Johnson fools or liars, or both? As even Bill Barr admits the election was free and fair, the GOP has entered new territory. Now everyone has to say they believe conspiracies and the truth has become irrelevant	independent.co.uk

Shout out to u/Misanthropia for the original post — the hive needed more updated art!
This list is current as of episode 233 (2/1/21)
Desus goes by numerous aliases on the Bodega Boys Podcast. These aliases are based on references to pop culture, sports, and hip-hop. The long and ever-changing list of aliases or "AKAs" are one of the many running gags on the show. During an interview with Method Man on Desus and Mero, Desus explained that the idea for aliases was based on the alter-egos of the rappers in the song "Wu-Gambinos" on the album Only Built 4 Cuban Linx... by Wu-Tang Clan member Raekwon. (info via Wikipedia)
Desus & Mero no longer record from Milk Studios (moved indefinitely) and have been recording the podcast remotely from home due to the pandemic. Most of the AKA’s now mention social distancing, hot takes on covid and store closures.

Desus

Desus is extremely consistent with his aliases, almost always presenting them in the exact same order and without any exclusions:
Desus Nice — In a Hot 97 interview on April 13th 2017, Desus explains that people started calling him Desus as a play on his government name, "Daniel", and "Jesus", because he worked miracles with people's computers
Young Chipotle — Desus’ original alias, he explains in one podcast that it originates from when he was broke and buying Chipotle was a genuine treat
Pockets stay fat like Terio (Pockets stay fat like 'here we go') — A reference to viral star Terio, a young, obese African American boy whose videos of him dancing launched him to very brief viral fame. Recently, Desus added the more politically correct and kid friendly “here we go”
Eli Litby — A play on Eli Whitney, inventor of the cotton gin
Boutros Boutros Gully — A play on Boutros Boutros-Ghali, former Secretary-General of the UN, “Gully” being Jamaican Patois for an impoverished area
Slobodan Might-know-ya-bitch — A play on Slobodan Milosevic, former President of Serbia and important player in the Bosnian War
Young Day Party — I believe this was adopted in the summer of 2016 after Desus recounted the story of a day party in D.C., which seemed to invigorate his love for partying during the day
Young Hot Take — He has hot takes, pretty obvious here
Desus H. Fuego — Another moniker to describe his hot (“fuego”) takes on topics
Mr. Nandos with a rando — Nandos is a portuguese chicken restaurant chain which originated in South Africa and is big in the UK and Australia. Rando is slang for random person. Having Nandos with a rando is eating chicken with a random person (credit to u/deweez)
Mr. Mil Novecientos Noventa Y Cuatro en Nueva York — In later episodes Desus rarely adds the “en Nueva York” bit, but it translates to “Mr. 1994 in New York”. "The Knicks team in 1994 made the finals and is a legendary team amongst all Knicks fans who were around at the time. That team got to game 7 of the finals against the Rockets. NYC rallied around that team hard body because that team absolutely embodied NYC to a T with guys like Ewing, Charles Oakley, Mason, Starks, and Derek Harper." (credit to u/Okieant33)
Mikhail Goin-off — derived from former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev (credit to u/GhettoFob) converged with an allusion to losing ones temper in an act of random violence.
The Jouvert Boss — “Jouvert” is a carnival held in Caribbean/West Indian culture, involving a lot of partying
MC Likkle Gungo Pea — Gungo pea is a type of peas (also known as pigeon peas) often used in Jamaican dishes. Reference to his Jamaican heritage (credit to u/hopelessromcom)
"Pullin' up from 40 with your shorty" — Desus will “pull up”, or make a pass at, your girl even when the odds are slim or unlikely, much like a 40 foot shot in basketball
"Don’t talk to me in the Uber Pool, I don’t know you" — Uber introduced a service where you can share rides with other Uber users for a discounted rate. Desus has expressed his reluctance to engage with strangers when he is using it
The original “my plus one got a plus one so don’t make a fuss son” — When Desus shows up to an event with a girl, he brings two, and he's intimating that the host shouldn’t have a problem with that
Desus Rothstein, the Jamaican Jew — Originated around when Mero began his house search in Bergen County, NJ where a number of wealthy people of Jewish descent live. Desus envisions a version of himself who would fit in there
Jermaine Avocado Toast — Desus has gotten more cultured as a result of their success, and as such he has been able to indulge in things usually enjoyed by privileged white people, a stereotypical example of that being avocado toast. This is Desus’ gentrified, hipster persona
Young PA — Possible reference to the sound of small amount of air being expelled from a loose butthole, which is an impression Mero occasionally does (credit to u/jimsternub). This is also a reference to Brooklyn rapper Young MA.
The Ghost of Mufasa — A reference to Lion King, but beyond that I have no idea why he adopted it. Still hilarious though, and the nickname that most often makes Mero laugh
Young Charcuterie without the coonery — Charcuterie is considered very hip and trendy right now, and Desus is again saying he has a taste for the finer things, but is no longer interested in “coonery”, a derogatory term used to describe stereotypical African American behavior
Chile Limon, the left handed reliever for the Yankee’s (Que lo que?) — A fictional persona that seems to be a Latino version of Dock Ellis, who famously threw a no hitter while high on Acid. Chile Limon is also a popular seasoning/flavor with the Latino community
3 Phone Jones — Desus originally adopted "2 Phone Jones" after he reluctantly bought an iPhone to go with his Samsung Galaxy. He then received a Google Pixel, making it 3 Phone Jones (credit to u/ArtSorr0w)
Desus Ex Machina — A play on the common plot device “deus ex machina”, or “god from the machine” in which an unsolvable problem is suddenly resolved by some unexpected intervention. Desus also used to have a tumblr entitled "Desus Ex Machina" (credit to u/hardcore9)
Jay Chuckles — Revealed in episode 55 to be a reference to a now-defunct shoe store in NYC. Did Desus read this thread?
Stanley Cups — Desus' former rap alias, as revealed in episode 53.
The Human Dr. Bronner’s Label (Dilute! Dilute! Dilute!) — A reference to the concentrated soap Dr. Bronner’s Castile soap, which needs to be diluted. I didn’t quite understand how Desus applied this to himself, but it came from a joke in Episode 51 or 52 about Sean Spicer trying to defray controversy surrounding President Trump's decisions
Dionardo DiTrappio — A play on “Leonardo DiCaprio”, the actor, but referencing “trapping”, a slang for selling drugs.
Mr. 240p because I like my Pino blurry — Desus longs for the days of very low resolution pornography. 240p refers to the resolution, which is extremely low by modern standards
DJ Woolite AKA You're listening to Washed FM up next we got 24 hours of — The host of the fictional station “Washed FM”, a fictional radio station that is sometimes referenced along with “WSMK, Smack City Radio”. Woolite is a brand of fabric softener. Desus said multiple times on the podcast that now that he's single and living alone, he washes his clothes with extra fabric softener. As a kid, his clothes would get washed and be hard as nails. Again, he's got a taste for the finer things in life. (credit to u/Okieant33)
The Curried G.O.A.T. — A double reference to Desus’s Jamaican heritage, where Curried Goat is a popular culinary item, as well as referencing the phrase “G.O.A.T”, short for “greatest of all time”
Desus Spicer — A play on the former White House Press Secretary, Sean Spicer, who is often referenced on Desus & Mero as “spicing up” or “adding spice” to his takes
Jamal Hashburn — A play on Jamal Mashburn, a former NBA player, about Hash
The Bronx Celine Dion — Refers to the fact that Celine Dion is very popular in the Jamaican community, and so Desus is like Celine, but from the Bronx. (credit to u/chefboyardu) This is especially present with foreign and immigrant culture which means he is of mogul or iconic status for the Bronx (credit to u/courtofdacrimsonking)
Wray and Nephew's Nephew — A play on J. Wray and Nephew rum, which has its origins in Jamaica like Desus. Also, Desus drinks a lot, which you probably should have figured out by now. Introduced in episode 58
The Moreno you can't contain-o — A play on "moreno", a Spanish term for someone with dark skin
The Human Meme, Word to Ja — A play on Ja Rule's infamous mistake of believing that the word "meme" is pronounced "may-may"
Young Erewhon — A reference to a bourgeois health food store in LA, which makes this nickname in the vein of "Jermaine Avocado Toast", demonstrating Desus' taste for finer things now. (credit to u/a-1-since-day-1)
The Racist Provocateur — Desus flipped an angry tweet from April 28th 2017, in which someone called him a "racist provocateur" into a new alias
Henrik Bud-qvist — A play on NHL goalie Henrik Lundqvist, who currently plays for the New York Rangers
Nelson Bang-dela — An old alias resurrected in episode 65, a play on South African civil right's icon Nelson Mandela
Sergio Can't-see-me — A play on Sergio Tacchini, an Italian fashion designer and former Tennis player
Vladimir Boofin' — A play on Russian president Vladimir Putin, "boofin" being a reference to smuggling something by sticking it inside one's rectum
The Human Werther's, melting in your mouth — A reference to Werther's Originals, a brand of caramel hard candies favored by old people. Not really sure what this one means otherwise.
Mr. Becks on Deckington — The first time Desus introduced this one, he accidentally said "Mr. Becky's on Deckington" which was an incredible Freudian slip since Desus has been accused of not being into black women, and "Becky" is the stereotypical white woman name in pop culture. This is a reference to Desus always drinking Beck's, a cheap beer he favors along with Heineken. Adding "-ington" to words is New York slang, as Mero explains at some point.
Rikki-Tikki-Squad-bi — A play on Rikki-Tikki-Tavi, a character from the Jungle Book
Greg "Paaa"-povitch — A very meta play on San Antonio Spur's head coach Greg Popovich and the onomatopoeia of spreading butt cheeks apart (according to Mero)
Morris "Say it with your chest"-nut — A play on actor Morris Chestnut
Mahatma Gone-B — A play on famed pacifist Mahatma Gandi
Not Macka B but I got the cucumber — A reference to a viral video in which Reggae artist Macka B raps about healthy food in his "medical monday" series, Desus is unsurprisingly referencing his penis
The juices are pressed but your boy never is — Being "pressed" means someone is applying pressure to you, and no one would do that to Desus. The juices he is talking about are probably the morning drink he has with lemongrass and cayenne pepper that he makes reference to many times in recent episodes of the podcast.
I am the Art, dammit! — Not sure if this is a reference to anything specific or just a Kanye-esque line a crazed creative might yell out at some point
The Don Dada Ganoush — I believe this is a reference to the Meditteranean dish Baba Ganoush, "Don Dada" is Jamaican Patois slang (I believe) for “top pimp” or “big player” and a sort-of homophone for "baba"
No more Cup of Noodles — I don't know if this is a reference beyond the fact that Cup of Noodles is a struggle meal and Desus is no longer struggling
The Prince of Peckham — A reference to Peckham, a diverse neighborhood in London
The Fashion Nova Casanova — Fashion Nova is an online clothing retailer that specifically targets curvy women that Desus and Mero reference pejoratively (saying it's for bottle waitresses), Desus is saying here that he excels at seducing these kind of women ("Casanova" is a term of a man who excels at seducing women derived from the name of Italian Giacomo Casanova)
"William H. 5 Cent, 10 Cent, Dolla... Forget the small change, give me the the big money wine" — A reference to Soca Boys song "Dollar Wine (one cent, five cent, ten cent, dollar)" which apparently was super popular in the West Indies. "William H Holla is something Jay-Z used to call himself back in his hey day. It comes from the fact that Bill Gates' full name is William Henry Gates. Jay-Z used to give himself nicknames back in the day. J-Hova caught on but he used the term William H Holla because Jay-Z also coined the phrase "Holla At Me" and "Holla Back" and just shortened it to "Holla". So put the two together and you have William H Holla. He first said it on the song "Stick to the Script" off the Dynasty album. So Desus took it and made it his own." (credit to u/Okieant33)
The only anthem I salute is Dipset — A reference to the ongoing national anthem protests in the NFL, Desus is saying the only anthem he salutes is "Dipset Anthem" by Harlem rap legends The Diplomats
Mister Sauga, Catch me at Square One Top Left. Mans is marved. (Dont cheese me bro) — Finally a Canadian-centric reference, which makes sense given that the Bodega Boys have performed there multiple times. This is a reference to the Square One Shopping Center in Mississauga, Canada (where Desus alleges his mysterious wife and kids live), and "top left" is Greater Toronto Area slang for "truthful" or "seriously". "Mans is marved", means "I'm hungry" in Toronto slang (credit to u/Fortehlulz33)
Trill Rizzuto, holy cow! — A reference to former Yankees player Phil Rizzuto who would later go on to be a commentator, where his trademark expression was "holy cow!"
Mister Soft Palms because all I do is count checks and jerk off — I don't know if this is a reference to anything except Desus bragging about his lifestyle
"We got OJ, uh purple stuff, soda, and it's me! Sunny D!" — A reference to an old Sunny D commercial (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQE3jWYuGiw), and a play on the fact that people likely used to called Desus by the nickname "D", so "it's me! Sunny D" would be like saying "it's me, Desus!". Also kind of ironic since Desus is not a particularly sunny person (cue Dark Desus).
David Yerp-man — A play on David Yurman, an expensive jewelry company, and NYC slang exclamation "yerp"
Desus-expensive, Desus-Red Bottoms, Desus-bloody shoes — A play on a lyric from fellow Bronx native Cardi B taken from her song "Bodak Yellow"
Smo-a-kim Noah — A play on NBA player Joaquim Noah who played for the Knicks
Andrew Coooooool-nanan — A reference to serial killer (most notable for killing Gianni Versace) Andrew Cunanan
The Junior Energy God, come sit down 'pon me charger — Originally just the "Energy God" until Desus realized that that was fellow Jamaican Elephant Man's aliases. I thiiiink this is referring to the phrase "bring the same energy", the idea that if one is saying something behind someone's back, when confronted by the individual they should stick to their original statements. This alias started after the infamous Desus & Mero visit to the Breakfast Club, in which DJ Envy accosted the boys about a joke they made about his wife. Desus & Mero didn't punk out and therefore "brought the same energy". Someone tell me if I'm reaching here.
Call me PetCo cause I got your bitch-on-freeze — A play on words for the dog breed Bichon Frise
The Topic of Gossip in Syosset (Shout out to 11791 ah ah ah) — Syosset (zip code 11791) is a town in Long Island, NY. it's real bougie and suburban so Desus is saying basically he's got reach and is known not just in the hood but in the wealthy burbs too (credit to u/terminal-chillness)
Grandpa Joe, When you see Charlie you see me don't touch that golden ticket — A direct reference to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (Grandpa Joe) and Desus's cats name (Charlie)
Dead Eye Desus (Mornin’ Sherrif) — Dead Eye Desus refers to the 2018 video game Red Dead Redemption 2. The game features a gameplay mechanic called "Dead Eye" that allows the player to slow time to achieve easy head shots and kills. The game is also set in the late 1800's, early 1900's in the old West, which is why Desus typically references a Sheriff after saying Dead Eye Desus. (credit to u/biggak)
Mr. Shopping at StreetEasy with a bad breezy like I'm Yeezy, please believe me — Another one of Desus' tongue twisters, this one is in reference to shopping at StreetEasy, a NYC real estate website with an attractive woman like Kanye West might do
The Black Asiatic who will crack your back like an automatic craftmatic — Added in episode 54 after Desus' continuing gag about "big Black Asiatic men" (often referencing their penises). Here Desus is implying that sex with him (a Black Asiatic man) is very vigorous by saying he will change your posture like a Craftmatic mattress, which is a brand of mattress whose shape and orientation can be controlled electronically
Mr. La Marina in a mesh Merina with a fresh misdemeanor and a cold demeanor — This one is a doozy, but was adopted after Desus mentioned his frequent trips to La Marina (a bar on the water in Manhattan) in episodes released in the summer of 2016. A mesh Merina is a a mesh tank top (I think). The other two parts are self explanatory. Not sure how he always gets this one right without mixing up the words.
The Sheet-Mask Killer (No one could be iller) — ??
The Black Zack Morris of Port Morris — A take on Zack Morris for his problematic schemes on Saved by the Bell. (credit to u/justic3bon3r) Port Morris is a neighborhood in the Bronx (credit to u/m9rockstar) home of The Bronx Brewery and Bodega Boys Beer
Young KPI — Desus recites lyrics by Depeche Mode “Personal Jesus” (1989) More than likely this is a play off his main alias (Personal Desus)
The Pelé of Peleton — Pelé (Edson Arantes do Nascimento) was a former Brazilian soccer player and considered one of the greats. Desus is an avid Peleton user so much he deems himself the greatest of all time
Your problematic bae — Desus occasionally says problematic things, but you still love him, hence him being your “bae”. He always ends with this one, followed by an exaggerated kissing sound.
*After Desus's last aka he gives some sort of problematic advice sometimes followed by explosions*

Mero

Mero (u/THE_KID_MERO) is far less consistent with his aliases. Depending upon how smacked he is, he will often exclude or repeat some of his aliases. He also adds them far less frequently than Desus.
The Kid Mero — In a Hot 97 interview on April 13th 2017, Mero explained that this alias comes from the fact that his father and uncle wanted to name him "Ramiro", but his mother vetoed it and named him "Joel". His father and uncle continued to call him "Ramiro", which was shortened to "Miro" as a nickname. When Mero started tagging, he changed Miro to Mero because he found E to be a nicer letter to write (credit to u/atorMMM) as well as he just didn't like how the "i" looked. Also tagging the name "Ramiro" that long would get you arrested
The Human Durag Flap — Mero’s original nickname, and a reference to how hood he is and his uncircumcised status, something that gets referenced very often (credit u/ZeddyG2 and u/chandlersokay)
Curve Gotti — A play on “Irv Gotti”, former boss of Murder, Inc. records
Donovan Mcdabb — A play on former NFL player Donovan Mcnabb, in reference to dabbing, which could have two meanings (smoking THC oil or the dance move created by the Migos)
Trizz Khalifa — A play on “Wiz Khalifa”, but substituting the first part of the name with the slang “Trizz”. Usually said in a fake patois, imitating Popcaan's cry of "Fuck Wiz Khalifa!" at a Mixpak event
SKKRRRT Loder — A play on “Kurt Loder” former host on MTV News and editor at Rolling Stone
James St. Fatdick, I'll Ghost on you shorty — Originated right around the premiere of season 4 of Starz hit show "Power", here referencing the main character James St. Patrick, whose street alias is "Ghost"
Tiger Backwoods — A reference to pro golfer Tiger Woods and Mero’s love for smoking backwoods
“I no fucking baby, I fucking man!” — A reference to the viral video that sent friend of the brand Pioladitingancia to fame
“Check the guest list again because my name is definitely on it, and no I’m not stepping to the side while you check! ” — Not so much a nickname but something Mero might have said back in the day when he was broke and had to lie about being on guest lists to get into clubs
CC Dab-bathia — A play on Yankees Starting Pitchers name, CC Sabathia (and close friend of the brand)
Goldman Shm-achs — A variation of the phrase made popular by Bobby Shmurda and a reference to Goldman Sachs.
Mensch Montana — An alias borrowed from French Montana (who is from South Bronx) and popular artist with the Bodega Boys. They have mentioned his classic Mac and Cheese mixtapes numerous times on the podcast. Also this is a nod to his Jewish family connection; Mensch is Yiddish for "good guy." (credit to u/chefboyardu)
The Da-da-da Dad of the year — A play on a lyric from ScHoolboy Qs song "Man of The Year" (credit u/ZeddyG2). Mero already has three Mero Jr’s and the bodega princess, and as far as we can tell is an awesome dad, thus earning such a title. Confirmed to be a ScHoolboy Q reference in episode 56
Been-Smacked Biyombo — A play on “Bismack Biyombo”, a professional basketball player on the Charlotte Hornets
Di-Yayo Maradona — Reference to Argentinean soccer legend Diego Maradona and slang for coke (credit to u/terminal-chillness)
Dick-in-ya-bae Mutombo — A play on Dikembe Mutombo, former NBA player. Mero now respects the woman’s agency and asks for permission first before entering
Barlos Santana — A play on famed guitarist Carlos Santana and Xanax bars
The Dominican Don Dada — Jamaican Patois slang (I believe) for “top pimp” or “big player”, and as we know Mero is of Dominican descent, hence “Dominican Don Dada”. The phrase "Jamaican Don Dada" is used by the character Lennox in the movie "Belly", which is a classic in hip hop culture (credit to u/a-1-since-day-1) He follows this up with "catch me at Locksmith throwing up on myself". Locksmith is a bar on 192nd & Broadway in Inwood, which is a REALLY Dominican NYC neighborhood (credit to u/terminal-chillness)
Some variation of "swipe my card again, put the bag over it, there's definitely money on it!" — A reference to a familiar experience for anyone who has been broke, in which you lie and act like it's the store's fault when your card gets declined
Romeo Xantos — A reference to famed Bachata artist and Xanax, Bachata being a dance and music style originating in the Dominican Republic. Also the added "Sooo xanny, lemme black out" is a play on Romeo's adlib "sooo nasty, lemme find out" (credit to u/terminal-chillness)
Light-an-L Dutchie "Hello? Is it weed you're looking for?" — Another weed double entendre referencing Lionel Richie and his famous song "Hello"
Papa Sushi, The Dyckman Don — A reference to often-referenced MamaSushi, a fusion sushi restaurant on Dyckman Street in Manhattan
Tom Brazy, your girl got my balls deflated — A boastful play on the Deflategate controversy surrounding Tom Brady and the New England Patriots after the 2014-2015 AFL Championship game
Feel-da-ass Tyson (CONSENSUALLY WITH YOUR PERMISSION) — A play on “Neil DeGrasse Tyson”, a well known physicist
Lil’ Snoozie Vert— A play on the name Lil Uzi Vert. This is also in reference for when Mero actually ‘tapped out’ on Instagram Live
Fry-an-L Messi — A play on Lionel Messi, a famous Argentinian soccer player of Italian descent, and smoking an "L", slang for blunt
Joe Hookah "I dare you! To smoke with me! At MamaSushi!" — A reference to rapper Black Rob's song "I Dare You" that features Joe Hooker on the hook. MamaSushi is a high-end restaurant chain located in New York
Ben Barson my hands are gifted — During the 2016 election cycle, famed neurosurgeon Ben Carson engaged in a brief campaign for the Republican nomination. Mero took to doing impressions of him, exaggerating Carson’s urban upbringing by saying he was “Ben Barson”, in which the “C” was replaced with a “B”, as a Blood gang member would. Unlike Desus, who almost never fumbles his nicknames, Mero has maybe said this one correctly one time
Xaniel Bedingfield — A play on Daniel Bedingfield followed by Mero playing "I Gotta Get Through This" a popular song by the artist Daniel Bedingfield with lyrics that are about Xanax (credit to u/KTTeal)
Some variation of “I’ll open your medicine cabinet and take all of your Benzos” — This is self-referential in two ways: 1. The earlier reference here is to when Mero admitted to Desus that he will unashamedly go through people’s medicine cabinets in order to snoop on their lives and 2. After the boat party story in which Mero got drunk and took some Xanax’s, he added “I’ll take all of your benzos” bit to express how much he enjoys the feeling Benzodiazepines create
The Xandman — This is a play on the musical artist “Scatman John” who was most known for his song “Scatman’s World”, the chorus of which Mero imitates with this name and the accompanying vocalization
Rico Sabroso — Spanish for “Rich Tasty”, but I’m not sure what the reference here is beyond that
Baby Newport — I assume a reference to Newport brand cigarettes, stereotypically popular in urban areas
Niño Brown — A reference to the main character of the film “New Jack City”, in which Wesley Snipes plays a crack dealer named Nino Brown, but pronounced like the Spanish word for "kid", giving it some Latino flavor (credit to u/Okieant33)
The East Tremont Stevie B — East Tremont is a predominately Hispanic area of the Bronx, while Stevie B was a recording artist from the 80’s with some incredible Jheri Curls. Sometimes sings "I want to be the one your Titi is fucking" after
I met Mike Francesca im never gon’ fail — A direct reference from when the Bodega Boys actually met Mike on the last episode on Desus & Mero on Viceland. In translation, this means after finally meeting with the iconic Sports Pope this makes him unstoppable. This is also a reference to Kanye West's song 'Ultralight Beam' where Chance the Rapper says "I met Kanye West, I'm never gonna fail" (credit to u/RemyDWD)
The Plantain Supernova in the Sky — A reference to the Oasis hit “Champagne Supernova”, but changed to reflect Mero’s Dominican heritage, which often uses plantains in its cuisine. Occasionally he will sing an extended version, which goes “One day you will find me, smoking weed on Tremont/in the Plantain Supernova in the sky”. How does he hit these melodies so perfectly every time?
Tom Petty and the Ball Breakers — A play on the rock band name ‘Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers’. Mero sings the chorus from Tom Petty’s solo project “Free Fallin’” as “Free Ballin’” suggesting that he feels free doing his Zoom calls without pants
Barmelo Xanthony — An incredible play on the Bodega Boy’s favorite NBA player, Carmelo Xanthony, and Mero’s beloved Xanax’s. (credit to u/terminal-chillness) Most recently, Mero has changed his references to him making sound financial decisions and balancing his portfolio since the interview with Carmelo himself on Desus & Mero on Showtime
Some variation of “If you see me in Target approach me like a bear” — Originates from Mero’s love of getting really high and hanging out in Target. Being high sometimes makes him paranoid, so he doesn’t like people just running up on him. Desus suggested people “approach him diagonally, like you would a bear”. Mero interchanges “bear”, “Ursine Mammal”, and “Oso” (Spanish for “bear”) at random
Benzo the Clown — A problematic clown for kids that ruins birthday parties and not refunding your $50 deposit. Originated on Episode 96, Desus starts talking about rolling up to Mero Jr’s bar mitzvah smacked. (credit to u/outtaspite) Benzo’s antics are normally cut short by Mr. Fun Fun (voiced by Desus) normally ending with the problematic light
I sold fake Lean to your favorite SoundCloud rapper — Not sure this is a specific reference other than the fact that Lean is pretty much a guaranteed accessory for any SoundCloud rapper and Actavis discontinued their codeine/promethazine cough syrup in 2014 due to abuse, so a lot of people are drinking fake Lean.
"Llego el hijo de Tito y Fifa papi"/"The son of Tito and Fifa has arrived, papi — In later episodes, Mero began to include some Spanish phrases at the end of his list of aliases, usually beginning with this phrase and building off of it. When Mero does this he also says "Hassan tira me lo pita" which is slang for "Hassan drop me a beat". Mero is making pretend that he's a DJ on NY's Spanish Radio Station 97.9 La Mega. Mero from here goes on to talk all kinds of shit about how hard and gangster he is. (credit to u/bobbuddha and u/Okieant33)
Please correct me if you have ideas or see mistakes!
​
Discontinued aliases:
Desus

• Young Green Room
• Desus Vice
• Vice-K Matsuzaka
• Kristap Por-sling-dick
• The Human Jerry Curl

Mero

• Blem de la blem
• Young Pap Smear
• Metro Bloomin' Onion (credit to u/raybegleiter)
• Fry-an-L Messi (Mero at one point said this instead of "Light-an-L Messi", he'll probably go back and forth)
• Papi Shampoo
• Lucious Lyon-ass nigga
• David Trizz-Dale

Previous Post Here
Rock the vote! Power to the people! Get out and vote. Every vote counts. And the beat goes on. And on. And on. And on. And we buy it. Hook. Line. And sinker. Don't we? But, we live in a democracy! Yep. Sure do. We vote and then they do whatever they have planned. Seriously. Guantanamo Bay? Still there. Rich getting richer? Still happening. Gain of function testing on viruses? Still happening. Nafta? Who actually voted? No. One. Big bank bailouts? No choice. Get it? The illusion of choice is all it takes to pacify the masses. That's it. Our votes are the placebo effect.
Do some of us notice? Yes. A few. For all the good that does us. So why are they able to get away with it? Surely at some point we would have noticed. Well we did notice, and they adjusted, and we're still living with the consequences. When did we notice?
The Vietnam War.
All the pictures of body bags and all the reports of the horrors of war were too much. We questioned why? The answer wasn't good enough. An economic system. Sure they tried to convince us back then that it was because human rights and liberty. Ok. Then we fast forward to present day and we trade with Vietnam. But nobody says, HEY! AREN'T THEY EVIL COMMUNISTS! No. One. Why? Because those in charge learned. All the images of war changed. Now we only see video game targets on screen. Now we only hear of all the amazing technology making war so advanced! War has become a Walt Disney production. Sanitized for the masses.
How did they do it? How? Simple. They know in advance what stimulus will have the greatest effect on us, and what effect that stimulus will be. How? Simulations. And it's been going on for a very long time.

Simulations and Scenarios

In this scenario, we don’t want to marginalize the more extreme candidates, but make them more ‘Pied Piper’ candidates who actually represent the mainstream of the Republican Party,” read the memo. “Pied Piper candidates include, but aren’t limited to: • Ted Cruz. • Donald Trump. • Ben Carson. We need to be elevating the Pied Piper candidates so that they are leaders of the pack and tell the press to [take] them seriously."

Oh. Ok. So Crooked Hillary's team wanted to pump up Trump. Let me say that again, Pump Up Trump (sounds like a new sex toy, doesn't it? I'll get my people to call your people and lets make this happen. It'll be huge and people will love getting screwed by it!). And then it gets worse.

“Just like everybody, I thought this was a Bush against a Clinton, that’s all it was going to be,” said former Wisconsin Governor Jim Doyle. “When I saw the first set of debates, I would turn them on in an entertainment mode to see what Donald’s going to say today. It was funny." Source Here

Trump is funny. Ha. Ha. Ha. Let's get in some of that new Reality TV show called The Political Apprentice. Right.
So is Trump a part of something nefarious? Or is he fighting the Deep State? But what if the answer is more complicated than that? What if all the peices are moved, including President's, on purpose, and with a plan?
Crazy? Surely that's just plain nonsense and there's no way that could happen, right?
Well, let me show you some additional things before the Internet of Things is in everything and we can't do anything.

They Pick, You Vote, Don't Matter. They Already Know.

What? Preposterous you say? Let's travel back to JFK and the People Machine.

Consider the strange trajectory of the Simulmatics Corporation, founded in New York City in 1959. (Simulmatics, a mash-up of ‘simulation’ and ‘automatic’, meant then what ‘artificial intelligence (AI)’ means now.) Its controversial work included simulating elections — just like that allegedly ‘pioneered’ by the now-defunct UK firm Cambridge Analytica on behalf of UK Brexit campaigners in 2015 and during Donald Trump’s US presidential election campaign in 2016. Journalists accused Trump’s fixers of using a “weaponized AI propaganda machine” capable of “nearly impenetrable voter manipulation”. New? Hardly. Simulmatics invented that in 1959. They called it the People Machine. As an American historian with an interest in politics, law and technology, I came across the story of the Simulmatics Corporation five years ago when researching an article about the polling industry. Polling was, and remains, in disarray. Now, it’s being supplanted by data science: why bother telephoning someone to ask her opinion when you can find out by tracking her online? Wondering where this began took me to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, to the unpublished papers of political scientist Ithiel de Sola Pool. Simulmatics, hired first by the US Democratic Party’s National Committee in 1959 and then by the John F. Kennedy campaign in 1960, pioneered the use of computer simulation, pattern detection and prediction in American political campaigning. The company gathered opinion-poll data from the archives of pollsters George Gallup and Elmo Roper to create a model of the US electorate.

Lasswell, whose research on communication purported to explain how ideas get into people’s heads: in short, who says what, in which channel, to whom, with what effect? During the Second World War, Lasswell studied the Nazis’ use of propaganda and psychological warfare. When those terms became unpalatable after the war ended, the field got a new name — mass-communications research. Same wine, new bottle. Like Silicon Valley itself, Simulmatics was an artefact of the cold war. It was an age obsessed with prediction, as historian Jenny Andersson showed in her brilliant 2018 book, The Future of the World. At MIT, Pool also proposed and headed Project ComCom (short for Communist Communications), funded by the US Department of Defense’s Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA). Its aim, in modern terms, was to try to detect Russian hacking — “to know how leaks, rumors, and intentional disclosures spread” as Pool described it.

Isn't that odd? Computers making predictions back in 1960. Computers analyzing human behavior in order to predict human behaviours and control the election outcome. And the scientist who it all started with came from MIT. And we wonder how all that Jeffrey Epstein money was spent.

The press called Simulmatics scientists the “What-If Men”, because their work — programming an IBM 704 — was based on endless what-if simulations. The IBM 704 was billed as the first mass-produced computer capable of doing complex mathematics. Today, this kind of work is much vaunted and lavishly funded. The 2018 Encyclopedia of Database Systems describes ‘what-if analysis’ as “a data-intensive simulation”. It refers to it as “a relatively recent discipline”. Not so. Buoyed by the buzz of Kennedy’s election, Simulmatics began an advertising blitz. Its 1961 initial stock offering set out how the company would turn prediction into profit — by gathering massive data, constructing mathematical models of behavioural processes, and using them to simulate “probable group behaviour”.

Do you really think these What-If Men are done and gone, set out to pasture like the cattle they manipulate? Really? Seriously. No. Obviously not. Or there wouldn't be such a fuss about Facebook and Cambridge Analytica. Same Crap. Different Flies. Only know there are more flies and the crap pile is bigger.

In 1963, on behalf of the Kennedy administration, Simulmatics simulated the entire economy of Venezuela, with an eye to halting the advance of socialism and communism. A larger project to undertake such work throughout Latin America, mostly designed by Pool and known as Project Camelot (Project Camelot, where have I heard that before?), became so controversial that the next president, Lyndon B. Johnson, dismantled it (sure he did). After 1965, Simulmatics conducted psychological research in Vietnam as part of a bigger project to use computers to predict revolutions. Much of this work built on earlier research by Lasswell and Pool, identifying and counting keywords, such as ‘nationalism’, in foreign-language newspapers that might indicate the likelihood of coups. Such topic-spotting is the precursor to Google Trends. Before his early death in 1984, Pool was also a key force behind the founding of the most direct descendant of Simulmatics, the MIT Media Lab. Pool’s work underlies the rules — or lack of them — that prevail on the Internet. Pool also founded the study of “social networks” (a term he coined); without it, there would be no Facebook. Pool’s experiences with student unrest at MIT — and especially with the protests against Simulmatics — informed his views on technological change and ethics. Look forward. Never look back. Source Here

Unrest and protest at MIT against Simulmatics. I guess you could call it Rage Against the Machine. Maybe we should ask Jeffery Epstein if that's a good name? He did invest a lot of money into the MIT Media lab, after all. Surely he has an opinion on it. Too bad he killed himself. Snicker.
Look forward. Never back. That sounds suspiciously like a No Regrets policy, doesn't it? The ends justify the means. Let's hurry up and get those vaccines out. We can test for them along the way. It's all good.

Decades before Facebook and Google and Cambridge Analytica and every app on your phone, Simulmatics’ founders thought of it all: they had the idea that, if they could collect enough data about enough people and write enough good code, everything, one day, might be predicted—every human mind simulated and then directed by targeted messages as unerring as missiles. For its first mission, Simulmatics aimed to win the White House back for the Democratic Party. The University of California political theorist Eugene Burdick had worked for Greenfield in 1956, but decided not to join Simulmatics. Instead, he wrote a novel about it. In “The 480,” a political thriller published in 1964, a barely disguised “Simulations Enterprises” meddles with a U.S. Presidential election. “This may or may not result in evil,” Burdick warned. “Certainly it will result in the end of politics as Americans have known it.” That same year, in “Simulacron-3,” a science-fiction novel set in the year 2034, specialists in the field of “simulectronics” build a People Machine—“a total environment simulator”—only to discover that they themselves don’t exist and are, instead, merely the ethereal, Escherian inventions of yet another People Machine. After that, Simulmatics lived on in fiction and film, an anonymous avatar. In 1973, the German filmmaker Rainer Werner Fassbinder adapted “Simulacron-3” into “World on a Wire,” a forerunner of the 1999 film “The Matrix,” in which all of humanity lives in a simulation, trapped, deluded, and dehumanized.

The Matrix? A people machine. A Total Environment Simulator. Yikes. That sounds extremely far fetched, doesn't it. Trapped. Deluded. And. Drumroll please. Dehumanized.

In 1967 and 1968, at home, Simulmatics attempted to build a race-riot-prediction machine. In 1969, after antiwar demonstrators called Pool a war criminal, the People Machine crashed; in 1970, the company filed for bankruptcy. (Most of its records were destroyed; I stumbled across what remains, in Pool’s papers, at M.I.T.) Source Here

A race riot machine that apparently failed? And look what happened nine months ago? Coincidence? Foreign power information warfare? AI training wheels? Kinda scary, ain't it? And guess what? We're not done yet.

Ithiel de Sola Pool

So the Simulmatics Corporation was responsible for this;

Sept 17, 2020 • In 1960, media reports of dark forces behind John F Kennedy’s winning presidential campaign caused what Jill Lepore calls a “national hullabaloo”. America’s new leader, it was widely reported, had clinched the victory with the help of a “secret weapon”: a super computer that crunched troves of data to profile voters, allowing Kennedy to better target his political messaging before the polls opened.

And now let's look deeper at somebody who worked at the Simulmatics Corporation, Ithiel de Sola Pool.

For all of Simulmatics’ efforts at automating prediction, it is company executive Ithiel de Sola Pool, an MIT academic with a focus on social networks, who in Lepore’s telling proves to be the most accurate prediction machine — foreseeing the “data-mad and near-totalitarian twenty-first century” that he was instrumental in helping to create. “In the coming atomised society, the information the citizen gets will arise from his own specific concerns,” he wrote in 1968, predicting a communications revolution, “customised news feeds” and the dismantling of party politics for a “politics of self, every citizen a party of one”. Source Here

That's extremely prescient. Did he predict the future or make it? What came first, the chicken or the egg? Don't matter. Don't care. Not at all. Because the end result is the same,
So what more can we find out about de Sola Pool? How about the fact that he studied Nazis and Communists? Heck, he studied totalitarianist speeches to figure out how words could carry power and influence. Over us. Overload us.
But how unethical was Pool? Well, the guy who risked everything to bring us the Pentagon Papers (the papers that proved the Gulf of Tomkins incident was a false flag) thought this: Daniel Ellsberg would later say of Pool, “I thought of him as the most corrupt social scientist I had ever met, without question.”
Not cool. Definitely. Not. Cool. Because if you naively believe that Pool’s research isn't being used by the Technocrats today, then more power to you. Believe what you want. Or should I say, believe what they want.
And who are "they"? They are the Rockefeller's and Rothschilds, the Technocrats, the World Economic Forum, the Bilderberg Group, CIA, NSA, and the Council on Foreign Relations.
Speaking of which.

At that point in his (Pool’s) career, he was a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, advising several countries around the world. Pool felt that the world was underestimating the importance of communications and technical change. Source Here

Oops. Pool was a member of the CFR advising several countries around the world. Ok. Next step.

2004 • The transformation of the United States into a power able and willing to take a leading role in world affairs was not achieved solely through policy changes in Washington, DC, let alone simply by changes in the structure of world power. This chapter examines the vital role of the CFR in transforming American public opinion from ‘isolationist’ to ‘globalist’ as an important aspect of America’s rise to globalism. In this regard, the Council focused its energies to undermine and marginalise isolationism while promoting its own internationalist views as the best means to achieve the American national interest. Source Here

So if a bunch of unelected officials are officially changing policy, why do you vote? Rock the vote? Don't make me laugh. More like Don't Rock the Boat.
They started running simulations back in the sixties. Remember, Nixon was the odds on favorite to win. Kennedy was a long shot. And then, Kennedy was the President. Nixon probably wasn't happy. After all, he was part of the power structure. He went to Bohemian Grove. And then he had the rug pulled out from underneath him. And what did he end of calling Bohemian Grove attendees? A bunch of fags. Oops. Who pissed in his cornflakes?
They run simulations. Then they have different scenarios that dictate policy. Then they use the CFR, the WEF, the Rockefeller Group, and other NGO'S to adapt and shape future policy decisions to steer society. Heck. They probably even use the Mickey Mouse Club at this point.

November 21, 1971 • Of the first 82 names on a list prepared to help President Kennedy staff his State Department, 63 were Council members. Kennedy once com plained, “I'd like to have some new faces here, but all I get is the same old names.” Source Here

So a "People Machine" helped get JFK "elected" and his State Department list was mostly comprised of Council members. It's starting to look more and more like our heads of state are manipulated just like us, doesn't it? Let's jump back into the Pool one more time.

In 1965, he wrote "The Kaiser, the Tsar, and the Computer," an essay about a computer-simulated international crisis. Later, his interest in quantitative analysis and communications would contribute to computer models to study human behavior.

Computer Models aren't Playboy Centerfolds

It doesn't matter who gets voted in. They may think they're in charge. They may go along. Or they may think they're making changes. But, I guarantee you the changes they make are the changes those behind the scenes want. Even if our leaders know it or not.
No way! Thats crazy! Insane! Ok. Sure. But remember this, in a world of insanity, a sane man is always perceived as being insane. So let's dive into the DEEP END OF THE POOL and see what we can find.

October 2, 2019 • With AI, the models suddenly become more realistic. “One of the things that has changed is an acceptance that you really can model humans,” says F. LeRon Shults, director of the Center for Modeling Social Systems at the University of Agder in Norway. “Our agents are cognitively complex. They are simulated people with genders, ages and personalities. They can get married, have children, get divorced. They can get a job or get fired, they can join groups, they can die. They can have religious beliefs. They’re social in the way humans are. They interact with each other in social networks. They learn from each other, react to each other and to the environment as a whole.”

Hold on. Agent's are cognitively complex? That's scary, isn't it? And this is a very strange situation we find ourselves in, isn't it? Agents. Simulations. Viruses. Sentinels. Didn't they try and block out the sun? Ahem. Bill Gates. And I've read that originally the script didn't have humanity as batteries, but instead used humans as their RAM. In other words, we we're used for our brains ability to think. More on this in an upcoming post. Just think about it for now.

Final Thoughts

The what if men and the people machine. They model society and we see what they want us to see. Kind of like the model in the Matrix wearing the red dress. We're too busy looking for danger everywhere but where we should look. And that's a mistake. This is why we can't dismiss anything. We have to question everything.
In the previous post I said that it was called the Sentinel World Simulation. I found the article. I made a mistake. It's called the Sentient World Simulation. Words matter. Always. But I still don't think my mistake alters what's going on. We are being steered by an unseen group. And this is why China + Russia + USA are heading towards a cliff. He who controls AI controls humanity. But who controls who?
More soon.

Previous Post Here
The New Normal. The word has been around for a lot longer then we realize. A lot longer. Know what else has been around for a while? New World Order.

Cicada 3301

Cicadas are strange, aren't they? You can't see them unless you look, and yet you can hear them everywhere. An omnipresent sound surrounding your environment. If you live in an area without Cicadas, and then travel to an area with Cicadas, you'll be acutely aware of the sound, and it'll throw you off at first. You'll find the noise annoying, but tolerable. And then slowly without realizing it, you ADAPT. It becomes your NEW NORMAL. And once it does, you don't give the Cicadas a second thought.
And maybe that's a mistake. Maybe there is no maybe, it is a mistake. So we're going to dive deep into Cicada 3301 and how it fits into the Not Normal New Normal.

Break the Code

People can be broken down into two categories, those who like solving puzzles and those who don't. Those who don't are generally ok with the status quo. They don't see anything wrong. They don't realize that the puzzle has missing pieces, and even if they do, they don't mind. Why? I have no idea. That mindset is foreign to me, as it is to anyone reading this series. So let's take a look into the Cicada puzzle peices.

But the challenge to find what was hidden in this picture intrigued him. He stared intently at the image. Someone on the IRC had heard rumors that terrorist groups encrypt secret notes in image files, ones that could be retrieved by opening the file in a different format. Running a text–editing program called Notepad, he opened the image and, sure enough, saw a strange string of words and garbage characters at the end: “TIBERIVS CLAVDIVS CAESAR says ‘lxxt>33m2mqkyv2gsq3q=w]O2ntk.’ ” Caesar, he knew, was one of the most ancient forms of encryption, dating back to Julius Caesar, who used the cipher to safeguard military secrets. It works by taking the alphabet and then counting down each letter based on a designated number (say, replacing letters with ones three letters down the alphabet).

Cicada posted the first puzzle January 4, 2012. 2012 was also the year that the Mayan Calendar predicted the end of the world. Or the transformation of humanity into an enlightened state of consciousness. Obviously the world didn't end. So are we heading into an enlightened state of consciousness? Perhaps. Time will tell, like it always does.

2013, November 25 • Eriksson didn’t realise it then, but he was embarking on one of the internet’s most enduring puzzles; a scavenger hunt that has led thousands of competitors across the web, down telephone lines, out to several physical locations around the globe, and into unchartered areas of the "darknet”. So far, the hunt has required a knowledge of number theory, philosophy and classical music. An interest in both cyberpunk literature and the Victorian occult has also come in handy as has an understanding of Mayan numerology. Source Here

Remember the Mayan Calendar.
Before anyone thinks Cicada was some kind of promotional stunt, or LARP, it wasn't. Nor was it the result of a single individual or a small group of individuals. Because if it was, the following would have been extremely difficult.

There were more than a dozen (Cicada posters with QR codes), spread over four continents. The Street View images seemed random: a narrow street near the University of Warsaw, a parking lot on a busy intersection of Seoul, a country road on the North Shore of Oahu. One location came up in front of a prominent doctor’s house in a wealthy section of Seattle. (When RS called the doctor, he said that he had never heard of Cicada 3301.)
Amid the fervor, an anonymous person posted a mysterious confessional. “I was part of what you call 3301/Cicada for more than a decade,” the anonymous author wrote, “and I’m here to warn you: Stay away.” Any portentously dire and anonymous message on the Internet could be bullshit or trolling. But as the skeptical solvers read the screed, the author seemed knowledgeable enough about 3301 to give them pause. The author said he had been a military officer in an unnamed, non-English speaking country when, after a year of being unknowingly vetted in person, he was recruited by a member of 3301. He described them as “a group of like-minded individuals, all incredibly talented and connected, [working] together for the common good: the good of mankind.” But over several paragraphs, he cautioned about their cultish beliefs, a conviction, for example, in “the Global Brain as another kind of ‘God’ ” – 3301 was nothing more, he wrote, than a “religion disguised as a progressive scientific organization.” He concluded by saying he had since found Jesus. Source Here

The author claimed to be a military officer in an unnamed country. He warned of a Global Brain as another kind of God. Hmmmm.
AI WORLD Government. And don't go thinking this is just some half baked organization trying to make a dollar and meeting in Hotel Banquet halls. Take a look at some of the organizations behind AI World Government. Microsoft. Amazon. IBM. FEMA. Army Research Laboratory. Defense Intelligence Agency. Homeland Security. MITRE Corporation. NASA. IARPA. DOE. NVIDIA.
That's quite the Clubhouse, isn't it? Now take a look at the sponsors on this page If you don't find the sponsor list concerning, i don't know what to say and you should probably stop reading now. And for those of you who realize that Knowing is Half the Battle, Go Joe.

Prime Numbers in the Prime Timeline

Did anyone have Cicadas on their 2020 bingo card? No? That one was conspicuously absent from all those memes, wasn't it?

But researchers think this life cycle is all about tricking cicada predators — making sure that they can't sync up their schedules with the next cicada emergence. The cicadas generally follow an emergence schedule of either 13 or 17 years — both prime numbers. The schedule's indivisibility makes it more difficult for predators to predict the next emergence, research suggests. WHAT DO THEY SOUND LIKE? — One of the most noteworthy parts about a mass cicada emergence is the sound the swarms of cicadas emit. The screech of a cicada has been likened to an "alien-like wail" and "field of out-of-tune car radios." Source Here

This wasn't the only article suggesting that Cicadas have an Alien Like Wail. In fact, it was in a lot of them. And with five corporations owning and controlling the MSM information stream, the Alien Like Wail is something we need to take note of. Do I need to remind you of the sudden influx of UFO disclosure happening from the American Military? It's not a coincidence. It's also not going to be the main focus on this post, but it will be written about shortly in Flatten the Curve. So let's just hope the "Aliens" aren't the predators that we're hiding from. Although I am dying to say, I don't have time to bleed. Or. Get to the choppa.
So the Cicada puzzles involved Prime Numbers, Mayan numerology, and Runes, amongst other clues in their cryptographic and steganographic odyssey. But what other meaning is associated with Cicada, because the group didn't pick a random name out of a hat.

The cicada symbolises rebirth and immortality in Chinese tradition. In the Chinese essay "Thirty-Six Stratagems", the phrase "to shed the golden cicada skin" (simplified Chinese: 金蝉脱壳; traditional Chinese: 金蟬脫殼; pinyin: jīnchán tuōqiào) is the poetic name for using a decoy (leaving the exuvia) to fool enemies. In the Chinese classic novel Journey to the West (16th century), the protagonist Priest of Tang was named the Golden Cicada.

A decoy? I may have forgotten to include something about a decoy and the Cicada puzzles.

"WHOOPS Just decoys this way. Looks like you can’t guess how to get the message out”. Source Here

Clicking on the link takes you to a picture of a duck decoy. And anyone reading this series understands that we may be on the brink of WW3 with China over the environmental collapse that's upcoming, and that this war is also involving the race to AI supremacy, and that whoever controls AI, will now have dominion over the planet.

The earliest known fossil Cicadomorpha appeared in the Upper Permian period; extant species occur all around the world in temperate to tropical climates.Source Here

Whelp. There's something happening here. But what it is ain't exactly clear. There's a man with a mask over there. A-telling me, I got to beware. I think it's time we stop. Children, what's that sound? Everybody look what's going down.
Ahem. Sorry. But seriously, what's going on? Upper Permian period? Really? Ring a bell? It should if you've read Flatten the Curve from the start. Why? Because the BLUE planet that we call home seems to be entering into a period that reminds me of the End Permian extinction event. And that's not good. Trust me. Also, let me explain one more time, that while we are seeing troubling signs in our current environment, this doesn't mean that the ecosystem will collapse tomorrow, or next year, or even this decade. We don't know the timeline, so don't go and join an end times doomsday cult just yet. But be prepared for the unknown as best as you can. Because while the environmental collapse and our future may be unclear, the powers that be still seem bent on starting a war. With each or other, or with something. (Something? Really? What do I mean? Well, who knows if all of the recent Alien disclosure is real or fake, but it's not slowing down. Regardless, it has to be taken into consideration and examined)

Who is Dan Jefferies?

Dan is an Author. Dan wrote a two book series called The Jasmine Wars. Here's the synopsis.

When a Jasmine Revolution sweeps away the brutal Communist regime, China transforms into the world’s first AI-driven Direct Democracy, ushering in a golden age of peace and prosperity unlike anything ever seen in its five thousand year history. Now when an economic shock brings terrorism and ultra-nationalism roaring back, the nation’s favorite son, Colonel Ju-Long, races to uncover the traitors in his midst before his beloved country explodes into another devastating civil war. Source Here

AI Driven Direct Democracy. Sounds kind of like the AI World Government, doesn't it? Or maybe it's the opposite. Or maybe it's the same thing we have now, a Democracy that only works because it gives us the illusion of choice.
But he's only an Author, you might be thinking. Isn't this taking it a little bit too far? Seriously Greek, you may be losing it. Should you take a vacation and relax, get your head on straight again?
Long story short, no. I'm good. Completely and utterly good. Maybe working a little too much, and maybe I'll need a vacation after the pandemic protocols have been (hopefully) uninstalled, but not yet. And definitely not now.
So Dan's an author, but what else is he? Because it’s a really odd world up above us. Seriously odd. Because while we struggle with having a life and a single occupation, those who worship in this AI technocracy seem to be able to multi-task like the spooky action of quantum entanglement.

DANIEL JEFFRIES • Author, Futurist, Thinker, Engineer, Systems Architect, Podcaster, Pro Blogger. Science Fiction: Daniel is the author of four cutting edge sci-fi novels, including the popular nanopunk epic The Scorpion Game, which readers have compared to the early cyberpunk masterpiece Neuromancer. Pro BloggePodcaster: His massively popular Medium blog with over 50K followers, and his Daily PostHuman podcast covers a wide range of future tech from artificial intelligence to cryptocurrency. His articles have appeared in Bitcoin Magazine and he’s the number one writer for the popular magazine Hacker Noon. Engineer: For more than twenty years, Daniel created and implemented advanced tech solutions for early web companies and Fortune 500 companies, first with his own consulting company and later for open source pioneer Red Hat, using Linux, virtual machines, Docker containers and DevOps and now for the innovative MLOps AI startup, Pachyderm. Systems Architect: Daniel now designs cutting edge crypto and decentralized web platforms, starting with the Cicada concept project, and then rolling its ideas into stealth startups with gamified money solutions, decentralized IDs, reputation systems and advanced crytoeconomics architectures. Public Speaker: He’s also a well respected public speaker, having given talks all over the world on the future of cryptocurrency and artificial intelligence.

That's the kind of bio that leaves you feeling like an underachieving peon, doesn't it? Kind of like the bio of Lance B Eliot, isn’t it? Well, not quite, but it's still impressive. But he's not an AI algorithm like Lance (at least I don't think he is) seems to be. So why did I include him in this post about Cicada 3301? Did you notice that in his bio there is something called the Cicada Concept Project? Yeah. Strap in and hold on, cause this roller coaster is about to start.

The Cicada Concept Project.

So Dan Jefferies came up with the Cicada Project, does that mean that he also came up with or is a member of, Cicada 3301?

Oh yeah. I mentioned Cicada 3301. A lot of people have asked me over the years if I’m involved with that project or if I’m behind the mystery in some way? The answer is no. But it’s also not that simple. Of course, some asshole on Reddit will inevitably post this in the comments: Is Dan Jeffries behind Cicada 3301? TLDR. No. LOL. I just saved his lazy ass some time. He can cut and paste it. Source Here • (I strongly recommend reading his post. Make the time.)

LOL! OMG, that's too funny, don't you think so too? Dan Jefferies the writer and Cicada 3301, give me a break! Don't be that a$$hole on Reddit and make unsubstantiated claims, ok Greek?
Uh. Nope. Not ok. And my name is Biggreekgeek, not a$$hole. And if you insist on that nomenclature, then that's Mr. A$$hole to you. Because if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, then it's probably a 3301 Duck Decoy.
Call me crazy, but I'm finding his assertion that it's all a mere coincidence too convenient. Now I know that you can't prove a negative, but trying to explain the name connection away by claiming synchronicity and it's just a result of the universe laying out your path, well, that doesn't work for me (read his post, this is what he actually claims).

Jasmine Wars • In the story Cicada is a massive distributed artificial intelligence and nation-state operating system. She’s a voting and communications platform and a fantastic alien mind. In many ways she embodies the best of the human race, while mitigating the worst of our dark dual natures. She seemed like the perfect choice for a chunk of killer future tech so I set out to create an early version of her.

Now let's do a little coincidence checklist for our New Normal reality.

1. Nation State Operating System • Ai World Government. ✔
2. Ultra Nationalism. ✔
3. Voting Problems. ✔

Strange how so many current events could be solved by the Cicada platform. And what about that curious word choice of a Fantastic Alien Mind? It might not rhyme with Orange, but didn't a lot of the 2020 articles about Cicadas mention an Alien-like wail? Yes. They. Did. Are you enjoying this roller-coaster yet? I hope so, cause this ride isn't going to be over for a while, despite the promised land just being two weeks away. (Edit: I've had this written for a while, but held back. Why? To see how the times went as we moved forward. And now we have our answer)
Before we carry on like the wayward sons we are, let me give you the link to the Cicada Concept Project. Source Here READ IT!

Let's Pull It All Together.

Dan Jeffries is the chief technical evangelist at Pachyderm. Evangelist. His title at Pachyderm is a little strange, don't you think? Cause I do. Really strange. Let's look up what the definition of an Evangelist is, shall we?
e·van·ge·list /əˈvanjələst/ • noun • 1. a person who seeks to convert others to the Christian faith, especially by public preaching.
Cute, isn't it? Nice little wordplay there. Not freaky at all. Nope. Sign me up to the cult.
So Danny Boy came up with a concept called Cicada that can be a Direct Democracy system that uses secure BIO-ID, protects your privacy, and who's participants generate Cryptocurrency biologically. Didn’t some company get involved with these concepts at some point? I think so. What company was it? Hmmmm, let's see...was it...MICROSOFT?
ID2020 SOURCE HERE WO2020060606 - CRYPTOCURRENCY SYSTEM USING BODY ACTIVITY DATA Source Here
Yep. It was Microsoft. And guess who else Microsoft is involved with?

2020, August 19 • Pachyderm Secures $16 Million Investment Led by M12 - Microsoft’s Venture Fund • Company raises Series B round on back of Fortune 500 enterprise adoption. SourceHere

AI WORLD GOVERNMENT is sponsored by Microsoft as well.

Ah Billy Boy, you sure are one clever little bugger, ain't ya? I've said it before and I'll say it again, AI will be the savior that will solve the Pandemic problem. Eventually. Some day. Not soon. Definitely. Not. Soon. Why? Well the pandemic disruption hasn't reached the proper level of disruption yet, that's why. (And should I point out that M-12 reminds me of MJ-12, or, Majestic 12)

Final Words.

Look. The Big Picture of Big Brother isn't an easy one to see, and it's an even harder one to explain. Like it or not, we're living in an epoch of civilization, a pivotal moment in time. The deeper I dig, the deeper my limited understanding becomes. This is disruption by design. And yet, I'm left wondering is this is a human designed disruption, or are we dealing with an unknown AI construct capable of not only deceiving and manipulating us common folk to advance an endgame, but also manipulating those who have engineered it. Implausible? Don't be too confident in that assumption. Why? Do you remember Billy Boy Gates smug look in certain interviews where he was advocating the vaccine? It reminded me of that look that parents get when their child just doesn't understand something they're trying to explain. "One day you'll understand". We've all heard that at one point by our parents, haven't we? And yet something changed in Billy Boy as the pandemic went forward and nobody was embracing him as our very own Marvel Superhero. His look went from smug to exasperated, almost confused. It was almost like he felt society wasn't acting in a preordained manner, as though a carefully thought out BLUEprint was suddenly developing problems out of the BLUE.
I know everyone likes to talk about a plandemic. And I know that the majority of readers in this subreddit like to call it a low mortality virus, and maybe it is. But I find it hard to accept that human agents came up with something this intricate in depth and overarching in scope. Seriously. Just think about Cicada 3301 > Dan Jefferies > Microsoft Patent 060606. Because the similarities are too close for my liking to be coincidental. Especially when you consider the continued chaos of the economy, wealth inequality, tax evasion, the elections, the racial tensions, issues of policing and abuse of power, and I hope that I'm wrong, but it even appears that we may have even more upcoming chaos in our trust of the scientific research institutions and corporations. Out of chaos, order. Right? What order? AI world government. New World Order. New Normal. Great Reset. Build Back Better. Everyone has to be on board the Great Reset, right Klaus fourth industrial revolution Schwab?

October 18, 2019 • She noted that the number of people using the Internet exceeded half of the world’s population in 2018, with 80 per cent of Europeans having access compared to less than 25 per cent in Sub‑Saharan Africa. Almost half the world’s population remains offline and excluded from the benefits of digitalization. Source Here

Less than 25% in Sub-Saharan Africa have access to internet. And now we have Operation New Normal happening in Africa. Flatten the Curve. Part 60. Source Here
And don't forget the military backed starlink to provide worldwide internet for those who aren't connected yet. Yeah. We're All In This Together. Right?
Nicholas Negroponte is the founder and chairman Emeritus of Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Media Lab, and also founded the One Laptop per Child Association (OLPC).
Ah right. The failed attempt to get every child a laptop. From Nicholas Negroponte who accepted money from Jeffrey Epstein’s tangled web of foundations. And I quote; "If you wind back the clock, I would still say, 'Take it.'"
Charming. The ends justify the means. Remember that. Wake up every day and repeat it to yourself. The ends justify the means. Why? Because that's how a lot of them think, and we are the means to the ends.
Heads up and eyes open. Talk soon

Below is the result of too much free time thanks to the pandemic. It's the true story of Alan Moore's rise to super-stardom, his own record on his precious Creator's Rights and answers to all the questions that have never been answered (Why does he hate Marvel and why did he ban them from reprinting Captain Britain, Just how devious was his Watchmen Contract, Why did he fall out with his Closest Co Creator(s) etc. etc.) elsewhere. Everything is based on extensive research, interviews, rare documents and actual quotes by Moore. If you think something needs verifying, let me know and I'll respond in the replies.
Alan Moore is the most famous and respected comic writer in the world today. But despite the endearing success, wealth and critical acclaim they brought him, he has recently disowned his own work and spent the last few years condemning the medium, its publishers, employees and audience. And Moore gives a very good reason for this; he's repeatedly stated that he was 'cheated' and 'robbed' of his creations and his creator rights by unscrupulous 'gangster corporations' who never 'valued or respected' the creators producing the work. Unsurprisingly a lot of people support his stance; Moore is seen as a deeply principled figurehead for creator’s rights, but the truth is it’s utterly contrived to garner sympathy and support for what is in fact a very personal vendetta, his claims have no basis in fact and his accusations reflect better how Moore himself has always behaved and mistreated his fellow creators.
Moore's self-written history is a fictional re-imagining of reality, emboldened by all the interviews, articles and biographies that echo it across the world. Like most of his more celebrated works it involves intricately described imagined chronology and events, evocative and emotive language and metaphors and twists; invisible at the start but delicately planted and nurtured and apparent at the end, rewarding subsequent rereads. In this particular Moore tale, the victim is revealed to be the villain; all his imagined abuses overtly visited deliberately by him on others; stealing from closest collaborators, erasing author's contributions to his own work, damaging innocent co-creator's careers and livelihoods as mere collateral and in a typical Moore tribute to a simpler golden age of vaudevillian chicanery; cheating a sick children's hospital. Moore's issues with the comic’s industry are borne of very personal grudges and he’s willing to use anyone in his orbit as fodder to damage those that dared to disrespect him.
In a recent interview, with ‘Deadline’ Magazine, Moore again eviscerated the industry that made him a star, using metaphor's that would make the medium's most infamous critics blush. He suggests comics are responsible for infantalising their readers as well as the election of Donald Trump (who recently retweeted one of Moore's 'V for Vendetta' quotes, albeit in entirely the wrong context). Supporters suggest this is a joke, if it is it's an old one; in previous interviews he suggested the Klu Klux Klan were the inspiration behind superheroes and that the Mafia created the comics industry. He is now working in the more genteel and nobler Film industry, having cut his teeth a few years ago working on a since abandoned project with Hewlett Packard whose dalliances with fraud, bribery and Human Rights violations don't seem to have deterred him. In the ‘Deadline’ interview Moore says of the comic industry; “All of these characters have been stolen from their original creators, all of them. They have a long line of ghosts standing behind them“. The reality however is that in his entire career only Moore, not the companies that employed him, was involved in stealing from a fellow creator, damaging colleague's careers and livelihoods and ensuring that other's contribution to his critically acclaimed work was removed.
HBO’s 2019 ‘Watchmen’ series; a sequel to the acclaimed 1985 comic series, was lauded by critics and audiences alike; sweeping the Emmy awards and even featuring on Barrack Obama's 'Best of 2019' list. This was even more impressive given the orchestrated campaign, by family, friends and fans of Moores, to boycott the series. These supporters parroted his declaration that his creations were “stolen” and “swindled” from him. The HBO series creator Damon Lindelof even spoke about how the guilt and angst he felt, as a result of Moore's claims, almost killed the project and has announced he will not work on the series in the future. In November 2019 Moore’s daughter and fellow writer, Leah Moore, tweeted a long missive regarding the morality of the HBO series, writing of her father: “His problem was that the medium he adored was ruled by corrupt despots, that the people who made that magic were abused, that their contribution was not valued, that it was stolen from them. He already hated that before Watchmen....So when it happened to him, and then again, and then again, it wasn't just a business deal gone awry, or a bit of bad luck, it broke him.”. Even Moore’s most famous protégé; the respected author Neil Gaiman (Stardust, Coraline, American Gods, Sandman) chimed in, tweeting to his millions of followers: “I’m not watching it. It might be brilliant but the taste in my mouth over Watchmen and how Alan was treated is too unpleasant, I’m afraid.“ (Gaiman is currently working for ‘Watchmen’ publishers and owners DC/Warner Bros on a Netflix project). Ironically Moore’s supporters’ tweets, while in no way reflective of the facts concerning DC’s treatment of him over ‘Watchmen’, are perfect when it comes to how he personally treated its precursor ‘Marvelman’s’ co-creator; artist Alan Davis. ‘Marvelman’ (later renamed ‘Miracleman’ for the US) was created before ‘Watchmen’ and similarly was a modern re-imagining and realistic take on a classic superheroes from vintage comics. A trope that would make Moore a star.
Moore’s self-proclaimed victimisation is relatively recent given the 1985 genesis of the ‘Watchmen’ comics and only actually went mainstream in 2006, in the wake of the ‘V for Vendetta’ film. In an interview with the NY Times where he publicly launched his new rebooted history: “they were stolen from me, knowingly stolen from me." In Mr. Moore's account of his career, the villains are clearly defined: they are the mainstream comics industry, particularly DC Comics..... But by 1989, Mr. Moore had severed his ties with DC......Mr. Moore says he was objecting to language in his contracts that would give him back the rights to "Watchmen" and "V for Vendetta" when they went out of print, language that he says turned out to be meaningless, because DC never intended to stop reprinting either book. "I said, 'Fair enough,' " he recalls. "You have managed to successfully swindle me, and so I will never work for you again.”. This false narrative regarding his 'Watchmen' contract and it's standard 'rights reversion' clause is the one Moore and his supporters have stuck to ever since and reiterated dozens of times across media. Observers have questioned how someone who casually demonstrates a genius level of retention, recollection and understanding of the intricacies of everything from prehistoric practices to cutting edge quantum theory would be so ignorant of the standard reversion clauses in the most important contract he ever signed. Moore has an explanation for that; saying in numerous interviews that he'd never seen a contract before his ‘Watchmen’ contract, never properly read it or even got a solicitor to look at it for 25 years, telling Kurt Amacker in 2012: “Now, I've since seen the Watchmen contract, which obviously we didn't read very closely at the time. It was the first contract that I'd ever seen, and I believe that it was a relatively rare event for a contract to actually exist in the comics business.”.
Moore's supposed naive ignorance concerning contacts doesn't even stand up to even the most cursory scrutiny. For his repeated defamatory description of DC's contracts to have any basis it depends on his co-creators, who also signed these contracts, being equally ignorant or gullible. His 'Watchmen' co-creator, artist Dave Gibbons, however has never publicly accused DC of “swindling” or “stealing” from him, while his 'V For Vendetta' co-creator artist David Lloyd (whom Moore says he actually persuaded to sell the creator owned title for the exact same 'Watchmen' deal years later) has stated that he is “very happy with the results of what DC have done with it, and I have no complaints.”. In a public audience, in 1986, Moore actually pointed out the basics of the standard reversion clause in his contract; “if the characters have outlived their natural life span and DC doesn’t want to do anything with them, then after a year we’ve got them and we can do what we want with them, which I’m perfectly happy with.”; no mention of a ‘time period’ or the ‘books going out of print’ as Moore now suggests. The following year in 1987, in between working on 'Watchmen' games and taking meetings with Hollywood producers who had optioned it, to ensure it's 'life span' to DC for years (In the late 90's he contacted Dave Gibbon's about ideas for a video game), Moore sold his V for Vendetta series for the same specific deal. At the time of signing his 'Watchmen' contract in 1985, Moore had already been a member of the British ‘Society of Strip Illustrators' for several years. The S.S.I. was an organisation for professionals in the comics industry that met regularly in London both socially for networking and formally for lectures, discussions and newsletter articles on Copyright, Syndication and Contracts. 'V For Vendetta' artist David Lloyd was even Chairman of the Society whilst Moore worked with him. Despite all the interviews he's given as the victim of a duplicitous contract that he ‘never looked at’, by 1985 Moore was already expert in contracts, copyright and creator's rights. He even showcased his comprehensive knowledge of the industry's contracts in a letter he sent in September 1984 to Marvel UK's Managing Director and Publisher Robert Sutherland. Moore sent the letter on both his and co-creator Alan Davis's behalf (though without consulting or informing Davis) regarding their contracts for Marvel UK clarifying specifically their creator's rights regarding copyright and the irrelevance of any “verbal agreement” under British copyright law regarding reprints. In the same letter Moore generously also offered to provide any additional information Sutherland might require to clarify any confusion he may have over contractual rights and copyright laws. This was a year before he now claims the 'Watchmen' contract was the first he'd ever seen.
Despite Moore's current reference to assurances being given and “broken promises” regarding his 'Watchmen' contract, it's clear that he knew well that verbal agreements were worth the paper they were written on. Moore now also retroactively claims that he quit working for DC over the ‘Watchmen’ contract rights and this is the version of history bolstered by all his supporters, biographers and interviewers; this is a lie. He very publicly and famously at the time, quit working for DC in 1988 over a proposed labelling/rating issue that subsequently wasn't even introduced. In a 1991 interview he even conceded that his ‘Watchmen’ contract facilitated his being able to quit DC: “I don't own 'Watchmen', I don't own 'V for Vendetta', I don't own 'Marvel Man', I don't own 'Swamp Thing'. I get royalties from it, but that's a pretty recent innovation. 'Watchmen' has made me hundreds of thousands of pounds, but that's not a fraction of what DC made out of it. I'm one of the lucky ones, I'm somebody who became famous and have got enough financial clout to have some say in what they did with their lives”. In 2000, twelve years after he currently claims to have quit DC over ‘Watchmen’ rights, Moore was still working directly for them to promote new editions of the ‘Watchmen’ collection, ensuring an even greater extended 'life span', and spin-off merchandise and toys, with his blessing and improved profit participation. In an interview with Newsarama he clarified this: “Legally, DC doesn’t need my approval to bring out the toys or anything like that. They own the book, and they have exercised that option in the past 15 years”. But shortly before this ‘Watchmen’ 15th Anniversary marketing campaign could happen, DC angered him by refusing to publish (as was their right according to the new contracts Moore agreed to) a story inspired and illustrated by his then girlfriend (now wife) Melinda Gebbie. It was only after this perceived very personal snub (and personal grudges have always trumped creator's rights throughout his career) that he adopted the deliberately emotive narrative that 'DC had stolen ‘Watchmen’ and ‘V for Vendetta’ from him' (Moore knows well the power of words). Since then he’s used the media publicity around any high profile DC/Warner release of his work (that he happily signed contracts repeatedly for) to attack, insult and defame his employers, peers, audience and even friends regardless of the financial or reputational damage for his co-creators who don’t share his personal grudges or his considerable income. Moore realised that ‘creator’s rights’ was a far more noble whip to wield to justify his public flaying of fellow creators, than revenge over the refusal to print his and his then girlfriend’s work, as per the contract they both signed.
As for the ‘Cheating, swindling and stealing’ Moore and his supporters regularly point to, in the only verifiable instance involving Moore; he was the instigator and his then closest co-creator was the victim. Prior to ‘Watchmen’, in 1984 Moore and artist Alan Davis had worked together for three years on four critically acclaimed series in the UK; ‘Captain Britain’, ‘Marvelman’, ‘DR & Quinch’ and ‘Night Raven’ when Moore secured much more lucrative US comics work from DC with the monthly ‘Swamp Thing’ comic and several other DC projects including one featuring their recently acquired Charlton Comics company characters, which would become the ‘Watchmen’. As his US workload increased Moore began quitting his much poorer paid UK work. Even though his artwork was on most of the stories that got Moore hired by the US, Alan Davis wasn't hired by DC and he had just quit his full time factory job to focus on his comics career. In 1985 Davis heard through the grapevine that Marvel US wanted to reprint the ‘Captain Britain’ strips which would have afforded him both his first exposure in the US Comics market as well as some financial stability, but Moore who had learnt of reprints months earlier, had secretly killed the deal, without discussing it with him or even subsequently informing him. To make matters worse, Davis learnt from a mutual friend that the only reason he did this was Moore felt Marvel Editor in Chief; Jim Shooter had 'disrespected' him when he visited the US Marvel offices in August 1984. Shooter told Moore he wasn't a fan of his DC 'Swamp Thing' as it was too 'Stephen Kingish' and much preferred his 'Captain Britain' work, which he planned to reprint. Once Moore returned to the U.K and confirmed he had more DC work commissioned, he set about killing the 'Captain Britain' reprints purely to spite Shooter, regardless of the serious collateral damage to his friend and co-creator's livelihood and career (an attribute Moore would later use again and again against other co-creators).
Moore has offered two very different implausible explanations in multiple interviews and biographies; where he is always either a victim or a hero. One excuse is that he refused the reprint and quit working for Marvel in solidarity with a colleague who was fired (knowing how that would reflect poorly on Davis, who didn't quit). It's a commendable excuse; telling Lance Parkin in 2013: “As I remember it, when Bernie Jaye was fired, we were both of us filled with young man’s testosterone, you know, we both really liked Bernie, and as I remember it, we were both saying ‘well, that’s it for us and Marvel.'. The colleague referred to is Bernie Jaye; his and Davis' Editor on ‘Captain Britain’ and she wasn't fired. Jaye chose to leave the role for other pursuits in November 1983, and this was even acknowledged at that time by Moore who wrote (and Davis illustrated) a humorous ‘good luck’ strip, printed by her employers Marvel UK, bemoaning her decision to leave them. Moore did not even leave ‘Captain Britain’ for another 7 months until June 1984 when he quit all his UK work including 'Marvelman' and his 2000AD comic work. Moore's visit Marvel in New York where he met with Jim Shooter was in August 1984; almost a year after he now claims to have cut all ties with them. Moore's other commendable excuse for screwing over his colleague is equally false. In other interviews he claims he refused US Marvel permission to reprint ‘Captain Britain’ over their insistence (which he saw as “bullying”, a phrase he likes to use repeatedly against others) that 'Marvelman', be renamed over Marvel's copyright of the word “Marvel”. Except Marvel never said the character had to be renamed; in September 1984 Marvel UK's solicitors sent a letter to Dez Skinn; editor and owner of the UK publishers of ‘Marvelman’, Quality Publications. The letter stated that the word “Marvel” couldn’t appear on the title of a UK comic in the UK, where there was already several Marvel UK titles (weeklies and monthlies) featuring the word “Marvel” in their title, confusing the Newsagents who were ordering the comics. At this time Moore had already quit working for Quality Publications months earlier and despite neither creating or owning the 1950's 'Marvelman' character, nor being mentioned or even referenced in the letter (and despising Quality's Skinn to the extent of never talking to him again) says this letter led to him severing all ties with Marvel including the ‘Captain Britain’ reprints: telling biographer George Khoury “it was over the Marvelman thing that I decided wouldn't work with any kind of version of Marvel in the future.”.
In fact Dez Skinn, the publisher of ‘Marvelman’, had already decided a year earlier to change the name for the US, having realised on a trip there in 1983 to sell or syndicate the strip, that no publisher (including Marvel) was interested in publishing a comic with 'Marvel' in the title and ironically the name change to “Miracleman” was in fact Moore's own idea. In his original pitch for ‘Marvelman’ in 1981 to Skinn, Moore suggested changing the title to 'Miracleman' should any copyright issues arise or if they were unable to secure permission to revamp the character from his original creator Mick Anglo. Even his noble vow never to work for Marvel in anyway shape or form wasn't true either. Moore went on to do exactly what he states he never did and worked (albeit outside of Jim Shooter's purview) for Marvel's 'Epic' magazine a year later in November 1985. His clandestine actions, which could have destroyed his closest co-creator's career and damaged Davis' and his families livelihood, were personal, and against a single individual; Jim Shooter (whom Moore later referred to as a “fuhrer” despite never working for him), but worse was to come. In early 1985, the same time as he was signing the 'Watchmen' Contract, Moore facilitated the actual theft from and swindling of his 'Marvelman/Miracleman' co-creator. At that time Davis still considered Moore a friend; they had spoken several times since Moore had quit his UK Titles and in all that time he never mentioned cancelling the 'Captain Britain' reprints months earlier.
As soon as Davis found out he phoned Moore asking him to reconsider or at the very least explain himself. Davis recalls that Moore tried to justify his actions with “rambling nonsense” he knew wasn’t true; he'd already heard that it was over a perceived snub. Davis told Moore to undo the damage he'd done. That was the last time Moore ever spoke to him (another common experience with Moore’s co-creators) and carried on launching the series ‘Miracleman’ that they were partners on and held equal rights and ownership to. Davis felt he only had one recourse, to show Moore the effect refusing permission to reprint had on a co-creator. In July 1985, just before 'Miracleman' was due to be published in the US, Davis sent Moore two letters to his home, by both standard and registered post (which had to be signed for by the recipient) stating that he was refusing any and all permission for any of his 'Marvelman' artwork to be reprinted as well as any of the characters he had designed to be used in future issues. Davis made clear he had not signed any contract with Eclipse allowing them to reprint his work and he still genuinely believed at this stage, with one series reprint in limbo and another about to join it because of Moore’s actions, that “Alan would back down. At that time I still thought he was a friend who was acting like a temperamental child. I never thought he was capable of what he subsequently did”. Davis’ letters, by way of an olive branch and solution to the impasse, pointed specifically to Moore's own refusal of the 'Captain Britain' reprints as the sole cause for his own reciprocation, unequivocally making it clear that he could resolve the impasse.
For his part Moore was desperate to get his acclaimed 'Marvelman'/'Miracleman' work to an American audience to solidify his reputation alongside 'Watchmen' and despite knowing that Davis had refused permission and hadn't signed any contract so wasn't being paid a cent, he proceeded to work on, write new material for and promote all the 'Miracleman' issues featuring Davis’ 'stolen artwork' and then wrote new stories featuring the characters Davis designed. Six years later when Moore had wrapped up his 'Miracleman' story having been paid and received royalties for all the issues, he gave the series to his friend Neil Gaiman to continue. Gaiman, who like Moore is another avowed champion of creator’s rights, later produced a ‘Miracleman’ statue based on Alan Davis’ design without contacting, licensing or paying him. When Moore addressed this issue in the book 'Poisoned Chalice' by Padraig O' Mealoid on Marvelman/Miracleman's history, he blamed others for it; the Editor and Publisher of 'Miracleman' stating they somehow tricked him into thinking Davis had signed a contract, committing to the exact opposite of what he had personally informed Moore he was doing and why. While the publishers Eclipse dubiously claimed they had a contract from Dez Skinn allowing them to reprint the series, the truth remains that Moore was the only person in the process who knew no such contract had been signed by Davis, exactly why he refused any reprint or use of his 'Marvelman' work, how to redress him and was the only person on earth who could do so. Speaking to O'Mealoid in 2010 Moore states: “I asked - I wanted something on paper that said that Alan Davis was OK with everything.....and promised me faithfully that they had got this paperwork, or they were getting it, and if I could just start writing, then they would be getting it to me. They never got it to me, because it didn't exist, and I felt that Alan Davis had probably felt that I was party to screwing him, which was not the case, and was regrettable.”. In a later interview, this time with Lance Parkin in 2013, Moore decided to insult Davis, making his own failed attempts to avoid “screwing” him all the more admirable; “By the time I was enmired with Eclipse I wasn’t in contact with Alan Davis, and I was totally at the mercy of what I was being told by [Eclipse editors] Cat Yronwode and Dean Mullaney . . . genuinely the reason I was stickling over delivering new work to Eclipse was because, while I didn’t much like Alan Davis at that point, and I thought he was a bit of a grumpy person who I hadn’t got any interest in talking to again, I didn’t want him to be cheated. I didn’t want anyone to be cheated. “. Even though Moore doesn't elaborate on why he felt the need to demean his co-creator (other than to make himself all the more admirable in his fruitless efforts to stop Davis being cheated, whilst knowingly cheating him), Moore’s supporters can now at least understand why Alan Davis might have been a bit 'grumpy'.
Every single book or interview has accepted and promoted Moore’s implausible and factually impossible accounts on previously reported events. I asked Padraig O'Mealoid, who interviewed both Moore and Davis for his “comprehensive” Book on 'Miracleman'; ‘A Poisoned Chalice’ why he didn't focus on any of the facts, revealed to him by Davis (or Eclipse Editor Cat Yronwode), that reflected negatively on Moore. O' Mealoid responded that the reason he didn't confront or even correct Moore was he didn't want to disagree with him and wouldn't report any damaging facts about people who “are friends of mine”. O’Mealoid also dutifully echoed Moore’s claim that Yronwode was to blame for all of Davis’s mistreatment despite never meeting her, not interviewing her and ignoring all her evidence to contradict Moore’s account because ‘he didn’t like her’. Moore has now cut off all contact with his “friend” over something he wrote, though O' Mealoid admits he doesn't know what. This is a common experience with Moore's assosciates, co-creators, peers and friends; disagree with him, or more commonly if he thinks you have, he'll attack and defame you to his much wider audience. For someone who has repeatedly hailed his own (false) travails against bullying, Moore has an extremely long history of employing it, especially against those who don't have his means or stock with the media to defend themselves. Davis' treatment was the most egregious but his 'Swamp Thing' and ‘John Constantine’ co-creator and former friend Steve Bissette can't reprint a creator-owned series ‘1963’, he and almost a dozen others worked on and would benefit from; because Moore refuses permission purely to spite him. Without Bissette, two of Moore’s most lucrative creator owned works might not exist, he commissioned and funded Moore and artists Eddie Campbell 'From Hell' and Moore’s and his future wife Melinda Gebbie's 'Lost Girls' for his own anthology magazine ‘Taboo’. 'From Hell' one of Moore's most popular works owes its existence to the fact Bissette turned down an initial submission by Moore, telling him it wasn't scary enough. Not only did Bissette suggest and approach Eddie Campbell as the artist for the project, but years later after Moore, busy on more lucrative work for hire projects, allowed the ownership of 'From Hell' to fall into the hands of third party, it was Bissette who encouraged Campbell to regain control to reprint the work.
Despite his midwifery he never received nor ever sought any of the millions of dollars those works generated, Bissette took pains to ensure the creators of the work he commissioned had full ownership and rights. When it came to re-printing the creator owned ‘1963’ they both worked on however, Moore refused permission. Apparently (Moore has never clarified) he objected to something Bissette said in an interview, (an interview he courteously sent to Moore in advance for approval before publishing). By punishing Bissette for an unknown transgression, all the dozen other artists and contributors involved are collateral in Moore’s revenge; denied any reprint exposure, fees and royalties. Worse still Bissette doesn't even have to be involved in a project for a co-creator to feel Moore’s wrath.
'In Pictopia' is considered by many to be Moore's finest work, even though most of his audience have never seen it. Written by Moore and illustrated by artist Don Simpson (with assistance from Mike Kazaleh, Pete Poplaski and Eric Vincent) it was a clever, poignant and terrifying tale of the familiar archetypal denizens of a comic book city; a premise Moore would revisit, without co-creator Simpson, years later with his 'Top 10' comic for DC. Neither Moore nor Simpson were paid for 'In Pictopia', as the project was for charity, but while Moore reaps the royalties from the multiple reprints of books with his name on the cover, Simpson has the misfortune of being amongst the collateral casualties of Moore's revenge against Steve Bissette, on the only other Moore work he co-created; ‘1963’. 'In Pictopia' was reprinted in 2 tribute collections of Moores’s short stories dedicated to and approved by Moore; with his name writ large in the titles. Currently a victim of Covid’s harsh economy, Simpson was approached to reprint 'In Pictopia' in its own dedicated book and in a format that would better reflect the artwork, but Moore won't allow his co-creator use his name to promote or sell the book; aware of the sales effect this will have. Despite polite enquiries, Simpson still doesn’t know why but suspects Moore’s vendetta against Bissette may be the reason. Even though he isn’t in any way involved in the project (he had been suggested but recused himself from writing an introduction to the reprint) Moore repeatedly refers to Bissette as a “pathological liar” in correspondence to Simpson denying use of his name on the story he wrote; which would be ironic if it weren’t so sad. Don Simpson is currently working through the pandemic on the night shift at a plastics factory while Moore still collects royalties from the work for hire 'Top 10' DC series their work together inspired.
Still referred to as a champion for creators rights across the media, the only one’s that matter and have ever mattered to Moore are his own, his bibliography illuminates as much. He started his career using characters created by others, even his ‘Watchmen’ pitch was intended to feature obscure characters created by others (but DC baulked at the tone and insisted on new original pastiches). Post ‘Watchmen’ for over 30 years he has signed lucrative Work-For-Hire contract after contract featuring other creator’s characters and even his most recent self-owned work has featured a myriad of historical fictional characters created by other authors. Meanwhile he incandescently rages, demeans and defames, through any outlet, anyone and those in their orbit who works on characters he co-created and sold. The Comics Industry he loathes made Moore a millionaire, he was the highest paid writer in the industry, he made a small fortune just from selling his own film options and receives more in royalties in retirement than most of his co-creators put together. Enjoying a frugal modest lifestyle Moore, unlike like many of his co-creators never needs to work or worry about money again. He can easily afford to use his own creator’s rights to stop reprints and their income to punish co-creators he deems have transgressed against him regardless of who else is affected. The “Gangster” and “Corrupt” corporations that Moore rails against for “Stealing”, “Swindling” and “driving creators to an early grave” demonstrably treat creators far better than Moore does; it was Marvel Comics who recognised and addressed all the legal costs and remunerated 'Marvelman'’s co-creator Alan Davis and all the other talents involved. In response to Marvel finally clearing up the copyrights mess and ensuring all parties were properly financially compensated, Moore insists his name be removed from all reprints and collections of his work, because y'know; Marvel. DC comics pays the ‘1963’ talent better royalties on their DC work for hire than the work they actually own and co-created with Moore. Both media giants Marvel and DC acknowledge and credit the original creators of their characters, while Moore who owns and has complete creative control over his more recent works ‘League Of Extraordinary Gentleman’ and ‘Lost Girls’ doesn’t even acknowledge the creators of the central characters he uses.
In every single instance where Moore himself can dictate it, he is the only author credited in his works centred on other author's characters. There isn't even 'thanks to' the original creators of Jekyll and Hyde, Captain Nemo, Professor Moriarty, Alice, Wendy, Dorothy and many others. Despite the premise of these books, the history, characterisation, promotion and even some of the sales appeal of these new works being dependant on their creations. They are deliberately forgotten and any contribution to Moore’s own work erased. Even with the printed evidence, Moore and his supporters truly subscribe to his daughter Leah’s 2019 explanation for his hatred of the comic's industry: “His problem was that the medium he adored was ruled by corrupt despots, that the people who made that magic were abused, that their contribution was not valued, that it was stolen from them. He already hated that before Watchmen.”. Amongst those he’s disowned are ‘V For Vendetta' artist David Lloyd who has been described by Moore as “wretched” and an ungrateful, insulting hypocrite while 'Watchmen' artist Dave Gibbons has been painted by Moore as unscrupulous, disloyal and greedy. Moore's last public comments on his most prominent co-creator and friend for over 3 decades come from a 2016 interview with Dominic Wells; “Moore [Northampton accent suddenly stronger in anger]: “Dave Gibbons. Oi hope Oi never see that fucker for as long as Oi live.” (said to a fan on the street who congratulated him for 'Watchmen').
Moore's disregard for other creator's doesn't just extend to whitewashing them and their work. In 2006 Moore released a graphic novel through publisher Top Shelf, illustrated by his now wife Melinda Gebbie; 'Lost Girls'. The book featured famous characters from children's literature; Alice from 'Alice in Wonderland', Dorothy from 'The Wizard Of Oz' and Wendy from 'Peter Pan'. The character's established origins and fictional histories, created by others were crucial in the promotion, marketing and even narrative of the book and as with the other works owned by Moore where he controls the acknowledgements, the three creators of the central characters are forgotten. Annoyingly for Moore though, one of those authors created a problem with selling the $75 book in Great Britain, which had sold out of approximately 35,000 copies in the US alone. In his will, J.M. Barrie bequeathed all his copyrights to 'Peter Pan' to Great Ormond Street Children's Hospital; so that sick children would benefit from his creations, and under EU law this copyright which granted the Hospital control over the use of the characters as well as a royalty entitlement didn't expire until 2008. Moore and his publisher had never consulted or sought permission from the hospital to publish the book and couldn't do so in the UK without their permission until January 1st 2008. Their solution was simple; ignore Pan's creator's bequest and simply delay publishing in the UK until after the hospital's copyright expired. As he did the media rounds for the books release in the US, Moore used the sick children's hospital to create publicity and promote the book in the UK.
First he did an interview with the BBC (and although it was decided to delay UK publication till the hospital's copyright expired) where he suggested that the hospital was trying ban his book, as nothing generates better publicity in the book market than the notion of a banned book. After devising the notion of the banning, he then went on in the interview to argue against his own invention: "I don't really see that you can ban anything in this day and age. It wasn't our intention to try to provoke a ban,". But at this time, when Moore was referring to his actions in the past tense, neither he nor 'Lost Girls' publisher had been in contact with the hospital, who had no idea of the book's existence. Great Ormond Street Children's Hospital didn't even learn of the book’s use of Barrie's creations until a journalist phoned them, after the interview was broadcast, to ask why they were banning it. Moore's 'banning' generated publicity that couldn't be bought across the world, leading to retailers in the UK and elsewhere buying in copies from the Publisher’s US stock to sell at a premium. Moore carried on exploiting his non-existent ban, expressing bemusement on it in subsequent interviews, telling the AV Club he couldn't see any reason why a sick children's hospital would want safeguard a valuable source of revenue: “I tend to think this is a bit of a storm in a teacup.....I think they seem to be making a bit more of it than I'd expected from people who've been gifted by a fantasy writer. It seemed a bit odd that they should take on so vociferously.”. 'Lost Girl's' was published in the UK in January 2008 for £50 and subsequently published Europe wide. There has been three different updated versions published in the UK alone, not including a recent digital release, but despite all the references to 'promises', 'verbal agreements' and 'moral agreements' cited by Moore and his supporters of his own history with publishers of his work, Moore and his publishers ‘forgot’ something.
While EU law ensured that Great Ormond Streets Hospital's copyright and control of Peter Pan; it's character's and adaptations thereof ceased in 2007, a bill recognising the Hospital's work was passed in 1988 in the UK (the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988) which specifically granted Great Ormond Street an extension, in perpetuity. This extension does not allow the Hospital to retain copyright but does ensure that they are legally entitled to a royalty for all UK published works (in print and digital) that feature adaptations of Barrie's characters. As Moore said in an interview in 2006 regarding the hospital's 'banning' of his work: “Not to condescend or overlook Great Ormond Street Hospital, and I mean, me and Melinda and [Top Shelf publisher] Chris Staros have got no problems with giving them a royalty or something. It's a children's hospital, you know? Who's going to say no?”. Which is very noble, but also an actual obligation as per the 1988 extension. So how much did Moore and or his publishers contribute to the sick children's hospital over the last 12 years? When contacted in late 2020 regarding royalties generated in the UK by 'Lost Girls', from either Moore or Gebbie or publisher Top Shelf or even UK publisher Knockabout a spokesperson for Great Ormond Street Children's Hospital confirmed they hadn't received any contributions or donations from the named parties or others relating to 'Lost Girls' to date.
Although his supporters all point to Moore's cherishing of creator's rights in spite of his repeated victimhood as the reason for his constant attacks on the medium, industry, friends and fans that made him, the only thing that Moore has actually held dearly throughout his career is personal grudges. For all his claims of being the victim of liars, thieves, bullies and blacklists, the only actual examples that facts support, are where he's a pathological liar, the defamatory bully or the perpetrator or instigator of fraud and theft. As a writer Moore is a genius, but as a person he's a paranoid, vindictive individual, with a magical ability to charm and manipulate interviewers. Most pertinently as an advocate or figurehead for principled ethical and moral creator's rights he's the epitome of hypocrisy.

Welcome to part two of my two-part series comparing American democracy with the rest of the world, based on the modern classic of comparative politics Patterns of Democracy (2nd edition) by Arend Lijphart (rhymes with pipe-heart), published in 2012. Yes, part one is very long (and very fascinating, I’m told), but you don’t need to read it unless you want to, because I’ll briefly summarize the parts you need to understand.
In his book, Lijphart classifies democracies into two broad categories, based on the question: who should the government be responsive to when the people are in disagreement? The answer provided by the majoritarian model of democracy is that government should be responsive to a majority of the people, or often in practice, a plurality of the people. In contrast, the consensus model of democracy accepts support from the majority as only a minimum requirement, and instead seeks to foster broad participation in government and broad agreement on policies.
There are two complementary approaches to building a consensus democracy (or building a majoritarian democracy, if the antithesis of each approach is used). The first, the joint-power approach, seeks to broadly share power within institutions, for example multiparty systems, proportional representation, and coalition cabinets. In contrast, the divided-power approach diffuses power across separate institutions, for example across central and regional governments (federalism), upper and lower houses of the legislature (bicameralism), independent central banks, and constitutional courts with the power of judicial review.
Note that these two approaches are complementary, not mutually exclusive. A democracy can embrace both joint-power and divided-power approaches, reject both, or embrace one while rejecting the other. As such, every democracy can be roughly divided into one of 4 quadrants. Here is a table displaying a prototypical democracy from each quadrant.

	joint-power	non-joint-power
non-divided-power	Israel	UK
divided-power	Switzerland	USA

The United States’ approach to democracy almost uniformly rejects joint-power, while embracing divided-power, so we sit somewhere between a majoritarian democracy like the UK and a consensus democracy like Switzerland. In the last post I discussed non-joint-power in the United States, and in this post I’ll be covering divided-power.
At the end, I’ll finish up with Lijphart’s conclusions on the effectiveness of consensus democracy vs. majoritarian democracy in general (spoiler: consensus democracy is better), and I’ll give my thoughts on the future of democratic institutional reform in the United States.

Divided-power in the United States

Let’s take another look at Lijphart’s conceptual map of democracy (democracies further to the left embrace the joint-power approach, while those toward the bottom embrace divided-power). As you can see from the conceptual map, out of the 36 sufficiently large and long-lived democracies in Lijphart’s sample, the United States ranks as a very close second to Germany in its strong approach to divided-power. Other notable divided-power democracies include Australia, Argentina, Canada, and Switzerland, with Switzerland being the joint-power black sheep of the group (Germany is also joint-power, but not to the same extent).
Lijphart describes five institutions that can be used to build a divided-power democracy, and the United States has fine examples of all of them.

1. A federal government instead of a unitary government
2. A bicameral legislature instead of a unicameral legislature.
3. A rigid constitution that can only be changed by an extraordinary majority, as opposed to a flexible constitution that can be changed by a simple majority.
4. A Supreme Court with the power to review legislation, rather than the legislature having the final say on the constitutionality of its own legislation.
5. A central bank that is independent from the executive, as opposed to a central bank that is controlled by the executive.

Let’s talk about each of these aspects of divided-power, and how they are implemented in the United States in comparison to the rest of the world.

An exceptionally strong federalism

At its most basic, federalism means that there is a guaranteed division of power between central and regional governments. But how do we guarantee that such a division of power remains stable? There are typically three institutions that serve that purpose. Notice that these are the same as 2, 3, and 4 in the list of divided-power institutions above.

1. A bicameral legislature with a strong second chamber dedicated to representing the regions of the federation.
2. A written constitution outlining the federal division of power. To keep the division of power stable this constitution needs to be rigid, meaning that it should be difficult to amend.
3. A supreme or constitutional court that can protect the constitution with the power of judicial review, meaning that the court has the final say on the constitutionality of executive and legislative actions.

What is federalism good for though? Federalism is particularly well suited to very large countries (in terms of both population and geographic size), and to very diverse countries (in terms of religions, ethnic groups, languages spoken, etc.).
The United States is the second most populous democracy in the world, with the first being India, which is also federal. The least populous federation is Switzerland, though it is still relatively large, being approximately in the middle of Lijphart’s 36 countries ranked by population.
In terms of diversity, the US is only semi-diverse according to Lijphart’s classification, and in any case, state lines are not and probably could not be drawn with regard to separate racial, ethnic, and religious groups, as they can be in some other countries.
In the case of India, a highly diverse society, British colonial authorities drew administrative lines without regard for linguistic differences, an unfortunate situation which was not corrected until the 1950’s, providing additional representation for linguistic minorities. Canada and Switzerland are other examples of federations with regional lines drawn (at least roughly) to contain cultural and linguistic minorities.
It’s not common, but for diverse societies it’s also possible to have federal territories that are not defined geographically, for example Belgium’s three cultural communities.
There is another possible purpose of federalism, and that is to allow the regions to experiment with different forms of government. In practice, however, regional governments tend to be extremely similar to the central government. If you’ve ever wondered why almost every US state has a bicameral legislature, even though state governments are not federal and some states are extremely small, then there’s your answer: there is no good reason, except that it mirrors the form of the central government. Presidentialism, too, has leaked into the states, with governors essentially acting as presidents for each state, despite the flaws of presidentialism I went over in the first post.
There has been some experimentation with electoral systems among the states, for example ranked choice voting for congressional and presidential elections in Alaska and Maine and for local elections in many other states. There has only been one notable exception when it comes to majority/plurality electoral systems, in the state of Illinois, which used cumulative voting (a semi-proportional method) for its lower house from 1870 to 1980.
Another notable case outside of the USA is Australia, with the state of Tasmania and the Australian Capital Territory using the single-transferable-vote form of proportional representation for electing their regional assemblies, unlike the Australian House of Representatives and the regional lower houses of every other Australian state which all use ranked choice voting, a majority/plurality voting method. However, single-transferable-vote is far from unheard of in Australia, as it is also used to elect the national Senate.
Of course, in the United States there has been a great degree of experimentation with state laws, including of taxation, drug prohibition, environmental regulations, etc. This has allowed some states to learn from the experiments of others, and at times has allowed certain states to lag far behind the others, depending on your perspective.

Bicameralism taken too far?

Bicameralism, meaning the division of the legislature into two differently constituted chambers, is closely associated with federalism, as the purpose of the second chamber is typically to give additional representation to the regions of the federation. In Lijphart’s sample, all 9 of the federal countries are bicameral, while only about half of the 27 remaining non-federal countries are bicameral. The unicameral countries tend to have smaller populations. Worldwide, about ⅔ of countries are unicameral.
Typically, the first chamber tends to be the more important of the two, with the second chamber in a subordinate role, though there are notable exceptions: the United States, Argentina, Italy, Switzerland, and Uruguay all have chambers with approximately equal powers, or arguably in the case of the United States, greater powers. Second chambers that are directly elected tend to be more powerful, as direct election gives the second chamber additional democratic legitimacy and thus greater political influence, which is true for the five countries with powerful second chambers except for Switzerland, where most but not all members of the second chamber are directly elected.
Some less important differences are that the first chamber also tends to be the larger one (with the only exception being the British House of Lords). Terms of office tend to be longer in second chambers, and second chambers tend to have staggered elections.
One of the most important differences is that second chambers are often designed to overrepresent certain minorities, the most common example being the overrepresentation of regions with smaller populations, as seen in federalism. In this table you can see the degree to which different countries overrepresent the smaller regions.
The three countries with the greatest degree of overrepresentation of smaller regions are Argentina, the United States, and Switzerland. These are also countries where all regions have equal representation in the second chamber regardless of population size. The same is true of Australia, which ranks 5th on the chart. In the United States, a staggering 10% of the best represented voters control 39.7% of the seats in the Senate. Other countries like Germany and Canada give greater, but not equal, representation to smaller regions, while Belgium gives only slight overrepresentation to its French and German-speaking minorities.
In the United States the second chamber has some unique powers, such as ratifying treaties and confirming members of the federal judiciary, that the first chamber does not have. This, combined with the Supreme Court being one of the most powerful activist courts in the world, has produced an unusual situation where a minority controls an arguably more powerful second chamber. And the situation is only getting worse: by 2040, two-thirds of Americans will be represented by only 30% of the Senate.
Having a bicameral legislature with special representation for smaller regions is an important guarantor of federalism, but as we can see from other countries like Canada, Australia, and Germany, the amount of overrepresentation seen in the United States is not necessary to maintain a strong form of federalism. Only time will tell whether the United States can maintain a stable and legitimate government in a state of continually strengthening minority rule.

The most rigid constitution in the world

A rigid federal constitution is another important guarantor of federalism, and the United States has the least flexible constitution in the world, with two-thirds majorities in both the House and Senate as well as the approval of 3/4ths of the states being required to pass a constitutional amendment. There are several other countries where supermajorities are required, as you can see in this table, but not to the same degree as in the United States. It is one of the reasons the United States has the shortest written constitution in the world at 4,400 words, despite being one of the oldest constitutions.
Having a constitution is not itself enough to guarantee federalism, an institution is also needed to defend the constitution. Independent courts with the power of judicial review fulfill that purpose, and the United States has one of the most vigorous federal courts, as you can see in this table. The German Constitutional Court arguably ranks in second place. Judicial review is particularly strong in several other countries besides the USA and Germany: India, and recently, Canada, Costa Rica, and Argentina. When it comes to the United States, Lijphart notes that, “The activist American courts and the Supreme Court in particular have been accused of forming an ‘imperial judiciary.’”
A rigid constitution and the courts with independent review to back it up are an important anti-majoritarian device, while having a flexible constitution and no judicial review allow unrestricted majority rule. The UK is a prime example of majority rule, and is also one of only 3 democracies of Lijphart’s 36 with no written constitution, the other 2 being New Zealand and Israel. Switzerland is an odd outlier, being an otherwise completely consensual democracy with no judicial review, despite having a strong form of federalism. Perhaps this demonstrates that judicial review is helpful, but not essential, to maintaining federalism.

The paradox of the US Supreme Court

As explained in the last section, activist courts with the power of judicial review are an anti-majoritarian device, but the US Supreme Court is majoritarian in its makeup in almost every respect, in contrast to the German Constitutional Court and the Indian Supreme Court which follow a more consensual pattern.
One example of the Supreme Court’s majoritarianism is its small number of justices, only 9, compared with 16 in Germany and 29 in India. This places a hard limit on the amount of broad representation of different population groups on the Supreme Court. A second majoritarian aspect is that justices are chosen by majority in the Senate, unlike the two-thirds majorities required in both German chambers. The court itself makes decisions by majority, which increases the power of the court to make decisions, but decreases the consensual nature of the decision-making.
There are a couple more reasons the Supreme Court is majoritarian in its makeup: one is that vacancies are filled as they occur, allowing majorities to sequentially pick their favorites, whereas if justices were chosen as a group it would be more likely for minorities to be chosen. A second reason is that US justices have very long terms, which tends to be an obstacle to broad representation in an evolving society. In Germany and India, justices have mandatory retirement ages of 68 and 65, respectively, and in Germany they are chosen to 12 year non-renewable terms.
This paradox of a consensual institution with majoritarian rules is seen not only in the Supreme Court, but in many other institutions of American democracy. The presidency, for example, represents a division of power between the executive and legislative, an expression of divided-power, while the presidency itself, a single person elected by majority, is the antithesis of consensus decision making.

One of the most independent central banks… at least until the 90’s.

Central banks are crucial policy-making institutions, particularly when they are strong and independent. Having a strong and independent central bank is an important aspect of the divided-power approach to building a consensus democracy (recall that an independent central bank is one of the five divided-power institutions enumerated above).
The most important duty of central banks is making monetary policy – the regulation of interest rates and the supply of money, which in turn has effects on price stability, inflation, unemployment, economic growth, and the business cycle.
According to the Cukierman Index of Independence, central banks are at their most independent when they have exclusive jurisdiction over monetary policy and their only or primary task is to maintain price stability. Central banks may be less strong when they have multiple, possibly conflicting goals, such as both price stability and full employment. Other important aspects of bank independence are the independence of the bank’s governor from the executive, and when the bank is in full control of the terms of lending to the central government.
Until around 1994, central bank independence was strongly correlated with federalism, another important divided-power institution, and the five central banks with the greatest independence were all federal systems: Germany, Switzerland, the United States, Austria, and Canada. As you can see in this table (continued here), these five banks reigned supreme as the most independent central banks in the world for 50 years, from 1945 to 1994.
After 1994, many European central banks became remarkably more independent as a condition for participating in the euro, per the 1992 Maastricht Treaty, for example the Spanish, French, and Italian central banks which all increased by approximately .5 on the Cukierman Index in 1994, easily surpassing the United States. The establishment of the European Central Bank in 1998 and the adoption of the euro transformed the central bank for those countries into an element of the international system. After that, the correlation between federalism and central bank independence shrank considerably, as the central bank was no longer a domestic institution, following the same divided-power approach as the rest of the domestic government.
The United States, in contrast, has remained completely static from 1945 until the present day, with a Cukierman Index of .56, putting it in 17th place among Lijphart’s 36 major democracies as of 2010. It’s beyond the scope of Lijphart’s book, and my own expertise, to say whether this has had any effect on economic growth or the ability of the Federal Reserve to maintain price stability, compared to EU countries.

Categorizing democracies using joint-power and divided-power

I want to talk about how majoritarian and consensus democracies perform in practice in the next section, but first, I would be amiss if I didn’t mention what Liphart describes as “one of the most important general findings of this book”, which is that the five variables representing divided-power tend to be clustered with one another, and also the five variables representing joint-power tend to be clustered with one another.
For example, democracies which are federalist also tend to have bicameralism, constitutional rigidity, judicial review, and central bank independence (that last one only prior to 1994), all examples of divided-power institutions. Likewise, democracies with a lower percentage of minimal winning one-party cabinets also tend to have more political parties, less executive dominance, more proportional election systems, and greater interest group pluralism, all important divided-power institutions. Take a look at this factor analysis for a more precise picture. The numbers may be thought of as the correlation coefficient between the variable and factor 1 and 2, which represent joint-power and divided-power, respectively.
Meanwhile, between the two approaches, joint-power and divided-power, there is very little correlation, for example federalism is not well correlated with the number of political parties. The United States is a perfect example of mixing the two approaches, as it closely adheres to the divided-power approach, while rejecting joint-power. These correlations are of immense interest to comparative political scientists, because it represents a useful way to categorize democracies along two dimensions.
How is it that democracies end up embracing either of the two approaches? Taking another look at the conceptual map, one of the most striking patterns is that countries on the right side, the non-joint-power side, tend to be former British colonies, with some exceptions such as Argentina, Costa Rica, Greece, Spain, South Korea, and France. As Lijphart notes: “France is an especially interesting exceptional case: in view of French president de Gaulle’s deeply felt and frequently expressed antagonism towards les anglo-saxons, it is ironic that the republic he created is the most Anglo-Saxon of any of the continental European democracies.” The left side of the map, in contrast, includes most of the continental European democracies, and all five of the Nordic countries, which have a common Scandinavian cultural heritage of consensus decision making and arbitration.
There are some exceptions on the left side as well (the joint-power side): Ireland, India, Israel, and Mauritius all were formerly under British colonial rule, the difference is that these are highly plural societies, where majoritarianism and its associated non-joint-power approach just do not work well in practice, often leading to sectarian violence, as I explained in the first post.
What about the divided-power approach, signified by the bottom of the conceptual map? As explained earlier in this post, the size of the country (both in terms of population and geographic size), as well as diversity, are significantly correlated with the divided-power approach. In other words, the countries embracing divided-power tend to be larger and more diverse.

Wrapping up: majoritarian vs. consensus democracy

So how do majoritarian and consensus democracies stack up in practice? The conventional wisdom is that majoritarian democracies are less representative of the population, but are more decisive, and therefore better at governing effectively. Lijphart argues that faster decisions are not always wiser decisions, in fact the opposite is often true, and policies that are supported by broad consensus are more likely to be successfully implemented. He also observes that non-joint-power democracies like the United States have the disadvantage of frequently flip-flopping between contrasting policies whenever government control changes hands from one party to the other.
Lijphart runs a regression on 17 indicators of government performance, such as government effectiveness, rule of law, and control of corruption, and finds that the joint-power approach is favorably correlated to a statistically significant degree with 9 out of 17 of them, while non-joint-power is only correlated with economic growth, but not to a statistically significant degree. In general, all of the correlations with economic variables are weak, such as with unemployment, budget balance, and economic freedom. Divided-power, meanwhile, has such weak correlations with all of the government performance variables that no firm conclusions can be drawn.
Lijphart concludes that while joint-power democracies are not necessarily proven better than majoritarian democracies at all aspects of governing, they are almost certainly not worse, as the conventional wisdom goes, and along many aspects they are significantly better.
One major exception is that when it comes to the control of violence, joint-power is very strongly correlated with a lower degree of violence, an intuitive result considering the discussion in my first post of the incompatibility between majoritarianism and diverse societies, as exemplified by Northern Ireland.

Consensus democracy: the “kinder, gentler” democracy

Consensus democracies may not always be superior decision makers, but Lijphart is able to draw other conclusions on the tendencies of joint-power democracies, but not so much on divided-power. He finds that joint-power democracies are more likely to be welfare states, have a better record of protecting the environment, put fewer people in prison and are less likely to have the death penalty, and are more generous with economic assistance to developing nations.
When it comes to putting people in prison, the United States is such an extreme outlier among other democracies that Lijphart found it necessary to remove it from the analysis, but still, the effect of joint-power on incarceration rates was strongly negative and statistically significant. The USA has 743 prisoners per hundred thousand people, twice as many as the next democracy in Lijphart’s analysis, the Bahamas. Even extending the analysis to non-democracies, the USA has the highest incarceration rate in the world, with either Russia or China in second place, depending on the survey.
When it comes to government effectiveness and “kinder, gentler” policies in general, the problem with all of these correlations, as Lijphart points out, is that culture may be a confounding variable, and “consensus democracy may not be able to take root and thrive unless it is supported by a consensual political culture.” But he offers hope that the cause-and-effect may go both ways: consensual democratic institutions may have the effect of making an adversarial political culture more consensual. Switzerland and Austria have not always had a consensual culture, their histories being marked by violent strife, while today Belgium, India, and Israel have adversarial cultures and consensual institutions. One hopes that over time those country’s institutions will have a positive effect on their contentious political cultures.

Where does the United States go from here?

The bad news is that the United States is probably not going to change one bit along the joint-power and divided-power dimensions. Some few countries have made a move towards federalism over time, and even more rarely a handful of countries such as New Zealand have moved towards proportional representation and a joint-power approach, but in general all democracies have been extremely stable along the joint-power and divided-power dimensions from 1945 to 2010, especially the United States, with its exceptionally rigid constitution. The bottom line: if you’re an American looking for a relatively “kinder, gentler” democracy with more proportional political representation, your best bet is to pack your bags.
However, if you are ever in the extraordinary position of framing a new constitution or amending one, my advice is to learn from our experience and the experience of other democracies around the world: avoid presidentialism like the plague, embrace the parliamentary system, and adopt a proportional electoral system. This advice is doubly important for highly diverse societies, where majoritarianism (particularly of the non-joint-power variety) frequently leads to violence.