“Pat Campbell talks with Shawn Jenkins about SQ 788, the Oklahoma Medical Marijuana Bill.”
Read more: https://art19.com/shows/pat-campbell-podcast/episodes/a8e2c969-b378-4978-9e8f-b1810850cb3c
“Gun owners and their sympathizers are as busily at work in the jury box as pot smokers.”
Read more: https://reason.com/archives/2017/12/12/rebellious-jurors-make-the-world-a-bette
“The five are being sought for five different crimes, including rebellion, sedition and embezzlement in a Spanish investigation into their roles in pushing for secession for Catalonia. In jailing the former regional Government officials the judge said that the suspects’ actions were ‘premeditated and perfectly prepared and organised.’ Judge Carmen Lamela said for the past two years they had systematically ignored decisions issued by the Constitutional Court in their push for independence.”
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5045879/Spain-warns-run-patience-Catalonia.html
“Spain dismissed Catalonia’s president and Cabinet and dissolved its Parliament on Friday hours after lawmakers in the autonomous region defied Madrid and voted overwhelmingly to declare independence. Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy called new elections and fired the Catalan police chief, as part of an unprecedented package of measures to seize control of the renegade administration in Barcelona. The European Union has backed Madrid in its handling of the crisis. The United States also voiced its support for the Madrid government.”
Read more: http://www.cnn.com/2017/10/27/europe/catalonia-independence-spain/index.html
“The European Commission has said its position ‘is well known’ and it continues to ‘respect the constitutional and legal arrangement of Spain’.”
Read more: http://news.sky.com/story/eu-backs-madrid-in-row-over-move-to-take-back-catalonia-powers-11095136
“The Spanish government has come under increasing criticism for raiding the offices of the .cat internet registry in the lead-up to a referendum on Catalans’ independence. On Wednesday morning, police entered the registry’s headquarters in Barcelona and seized all of its computers. The cops also arrested six members of staff, and held four of them for two days. Its CTO has been accused of sedition. The raid and arrest has sparked protests from the .cat company, as well as the Internet Society and the EFF.”
“Rajoy said Catalan authorities broke the law by holding the referendum and incited street protests to give an appearance of legitimacy to the vote. He did not refer to the violence with which police cracked down on voting day but said ‘nobody can be proud of the image’ Spain projected, adding the only ones to blame were the Catalan leaders.”
Kurdish radical democrats in Iraq and Syria have forced the US and Syrian governments to take positions at odds with their respective Western media portrayals.
In Iraq, more than 92% of the roughly 3 million people who went to the polls in Iraqi Kurdish-controlled areas opted for independence from Baghdad, according to official results announced Wednesday by the Kurdish electoral commission. While the US government ostensibly supports “color revolution” independence movements around the world in service of ‘democracy’ and ‘freedom’, US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson instead labeled the vote ‘illegitimate’.
Meanwhile, Kurds in the northern Syrian autonomous region known as Rojava held initial elections in 3,700 communes, in anticipation of elections next year to form a new federal state consciously modeled after that of Switzerland. In response, Syria’s foreign minister referred to the autonomy of the region as ‘negotiable’, urging further dialogue on the matter.
If the American Empire now openly opposes votes for independence when those developments contradict its geopolitical ambitions, and when a so-called ‘rogue state’ steps up to carry the torch instead, for how much longer can the popular legitimacy of an imperial foreign policy be sustained?
“The consequences of a government using force to control those it is sworn to protect must be high. When citizens are armed, the consequences for tyranny rise and its likelihood falls.”
Read more: https://fee.org/articles/catalonia-shows-the-danger-of-disarming-civilians/
“The Madrid government has refused to rule out invoking article 155 of the constitution. The article, which has never been used, makes provision for the central government to step in and take control of an autonomous region if it ‘does not fulfil the obligations imposed upon it by the constitution or other laws, or acts in a way that is seriously prejudicial to the general interest of Spain’.”
