“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
“After the gas station went under, and Kwon’s wife died amid the stress of it all, after he moved from his neighborhood in shame and the Internal Revenue Service changed its policy so no other small business would get steamrolled this way — the agency won’t give Kwon his money back. That’s $59,117.47 the IRS is holding on to. As recently as August — the last time Kwon, now 73, asked for his money back — the IRS said no. He’s heartbroken that the country he loves is treating him this way.”
“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.”
“President Trump has been in office for just 9 months, and he has already surpassed Obama’s murderous record with estimated numbers as high as 4,500 civilian deaths. Trump made headlines in December 2015, when he declared that if elected, he would not only kill members of ISIS—he would also ‘take out their families.’ He is following through on that promise, according to a report from Steven Feldstein, former U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State.”
Read more: http://thefreethoughtproject.com/trump-killed-more-civilians-obama/
“We are reliving the Vietnam War because no one was ever really held responsible for its horrors.”
Read more: https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/10/10/the-tragic-failure-of-ken-burnss-the-vietnam-war/
“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?
“Sanchez, as a result of his disability, didn’t obey officers’ commands, which led to the officers fatally shooting him, according to Oklahoma City Police Capt. Bo Mathews.”
“The ISO has decided not to approve two NSA-designed block encryption algorithms: Speck and Simon. It’s because the NSA is not trusted to put security ahead of surveillance.”
Read more: https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2017/09/iso_rejects_nsa.html
“If the administration succeeds in wiping the record clean, it will need to defend only Trump’s latest ban, which followed a three-month review of immigration procedures. Keeping the lower court rulings on the books would give opponents more support for claims that the new ban exceeds the president’s authority and discriminates against Muslims. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit had ruled that Trump lacked proof the earlier ban was needed, and the 4th Circuit appeals court said it discriminated based on religion.”
