“These are all, by definition, conspiracy theories – but they are also all things done by the other. Conspiracies happen over there. They are done by the bad guys. We don’t do them. ….except of course, when we do.”
Read more: https://off-guardian.org/2017/10/29/conspiracies-dont-happen-here/
“If your income is between $100,000 and $200,000, for example, those extra taxes may represent what you would have saved for your child’s college tuition, meaning you’ll have to borrow it instead. Or, it might mean the difference between hiring that extra employee to grow your small business. It’s precisely these people, who are by no means rich, who will bear the brunt of the GOP’s politically-motivated tax redistribution. And it just so happens that policies like this one further insulate the very richest 1 percent from the competition represented by upwardly mobile 10 percenters, many of whom work seven days a week to rise out of paycheck-to-paycheck, wage-earner status.”
Read more: https://fee.org/articles/big-spending-republicans-seek-tax-hikes-on-blue-states/
“It was the impetus that caused the American people to force Congress to enact the JFK Records Act in 1992, which forced the CIA and other federal agencies to disclose their JFK-assassination records to the American people. If Congress had not inserted the provision into the law that gave the CIA another 25 years to keep its records secret, the American people would have seen the records that the CIA is still steadfastly keeping secret 25 years ago.”
Read more: https://www.fff.org/2017/11/02/oliver-stone-right-cia/
“Every week brings a new story of police officers abusing their power to extort sex from women, especially women whom they’ve known to engage in prostitution. Since the start of October, at least five cops and a police dispatcher have made headlines for prostitution offenses, sometimes with underage women. And of course these are only the ones getting caught.”
Read more: https://reason.com/blog/2017/10/13/cops-are-harvey-weinstein-of-sex-work
“After their DNA was found on 18-year-old ‘Anna Chambers’ in September, the two Brooklyn narcotics officers who she accused of raping her admitted to sex with the young woman. But they claimed the contact—which occured after police pulled over Chambers on a traffic stop, found loose prescription pills in her bag, and took her into their custody—was consensual. Now they’re trying to discredit her by pointing prosecutors to her ‘provocative’ social-media selfies and to tweets where she lashes out at someone accusing her of lying.”
Read more: https://reason.com/blog/2017/10/23/nypd-slut-shames-teen-who-says-she-was-r
“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
“Declassified files have revealed new details of U.S. government knowledge and support of an Indonesian army extermination campaign that killed several hundred thousand civilians during anti-communist hysteria in the mid-1960s. The thousands of files from the U.S. Embassy in Jakarta covering 1963-66 were made public Tuesday after a declassification review that began under the Obama administration. The Associated Press reviewed key documents in the collection in advance of their release.”
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?
“Although the states are arguing over their differences, it is their similarities that are the real root of the crisis.”
Read more: http://theduran.com/5-things-need-know-whats-going-qatar/
“After New Jersey state troopers arrested Rebecca Musarra for remaining silent, they informed her, ‘You have the right to remain silent.’ That should have been a clue that something was amiss with their legal justification for hauling her off to jail.”
Read more: http://reason.com/blog/2016/05/06/after-arresting-driver-for-silence-cops