“Should the CIA be allowed to carry on its criminal activities just to protect Seymour Hersh’s sources? Should the truth about germ warfare be buried for ever behind a shield of deniability?”
“The command has deflected questions about the killing in Mali, offered murky and shifting explanations of the attack in Niger, and cleared U.S. personnel of wrongdoing in Somalia before launching a new investigation into the killings. All of this comes as the Defense Department as a whole has become less transparent and accessible, according to numerous journalists who cover U.S. national security. At the same time, according to the Pentagon’s Inspector General, there has been a rise in complaints of misconduct by senior officials, as well as reprisals against whistleblowers.”
“University of North Carolina anthropology professor Dwayne Dixon is the leader of armed Antifa group Redneck Revolt, who admitted to using armed intimidation to chase James Alex Fields, Jr. into a group of fellow counterprotesters which resulted in one death and dozens injured last August.”
“The BBC reports 250 ISIS fighters were permitted to leave Raqqa with 3,500 family members to ISIS-controlled territory. The U.S. and British-led coalition reportedly knew about the deal brokered by Syrian Democratic Forces and monitored the exodus. Quentin Sommerville of our partners at BBC report.”
“South Korea’s interest is to a) avoid war with the North, and b) restart peace negotiations with Pyongyang and move toward fulfilling the promise of reunification. Both countries have ministries devoted to reunification and there is much political capital to be gained if progress can be made along this path. The fact is that Washington is the third man out on this date.”
Read more: http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2018/01/08/korean-crisis-completely-phony/
“Are you a dictator in need of public support for your latest draconian clampdown on dissent? Or a deep state plotter hoping to topple a foreign government who doesn’t comply with your every wish? A low-level Machiavellian schemer looking for the ultimate trick for defeating your enemies without lifting a finger? Then look no further than this handy-dandy guide to ‘How To Engineer A Crisis.'”
“Green Party presidential Candidate Jill Stein is being investigated by the Senate Intelligence (sic) Committee for ‘Russian connections.’ What has brought Russiagate to Jill Stein? The answer is that she attended the 10th Anniversary RT dinner in Moscow as did the notorious ‘Russian collaborator’ US General Michael Flynn. RT is a news organization, a far better one than exists in the West, but if you were one of the many accomplished people who attended the anniversary dinner, you are regarded by Republican Senator Richard Burr from North Carolina as a possible Kremlin agent.”
Read more: https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2017/12/21/de-facto-travel-restrictions-now-exist-americans/
“Sadly, the consequences of high minimum wages, excessive taxation, and mandate-happy public policy are not limited to the death of cheap sandwiches. The cost of doing business in Seattle is higher than the Space Needle, and the unintended consequences of those policies are piling up too. Seattle’s city government might claim that it’s looking out for workers’ best interests by mandating higher wages and other benefits. But if the cost of doing business continues to climb, workers will be hurt, not helped. The end of the five-dollar footlong is likely only the beginning.”
Read more: http://reason.com/blog/2018/01/10/seattles-minimum-wage-killed-the-five
“California was home to the Haight-Ashbury counterculture movement, the Grateful Dead and Cheech & Chong. It’s also the home state of Richard Nixon, who birthed the modern drug war, and Ronald Reagan, the president who made Nixon’s war metaphor all too literal. Today, we’ll look at cannabis in California up until about the late 1960s.”
“Although ‘knock-and-talk’ policing has become a thinly veiled, warrantless—lethal—exercise by which citizens are coerced and intimidated into ‘talking’ with heavily armed police who ‘knock’ on their doors in the middle of the night, the Supreme Court will not make the government play by the rules of the Constitution. The lesson to be learned: the U.S. Supreme Court will not save us. No one is coming to save us: not the courts, not the legislatures, and not the president.”