Militarized cops attack journalists covering pipeline protest

Of course they would.  Government, like the cockroach, hates sunlight.  From The Intercept:

“The arrests of journalists and filmmakers covering the front lines of the Dakota Access pipeline fight highlight the limits of press protections and the central role of police, prosecutor, and court discretion in deciding whether or not members of the press should face legal consequences when covering protests. The arrests and violent crowd suppression tactics also reflect the refusal of police to discriminate between peaceful protesters, aggressive agitators, and journalists.”

The tactics being used by the militarized thugs won’t be forgotten.  That’s why the protesters will win.

The federal government is the primary retailer of “fake news”

Through an endless geyser of propaganda.  See John Whitehead’s latest article on the topic.

Fake news dragged the U.S. into the Iraq War, the Drug War, and every other program where the result is a pillaging of taxpayers, present and future.

Warnings about “fake news” usually come from those who also despise the internet, and would like to see it controlled, China-style.  Indeed, the term “fake news” is authoritarian Newspeak for alternative opinions.

Also see this wonderful column by Fred Reed from earlier in the year, on the revolution of the internet.

 

U.K. Parliament legalizes total surveillance

The Intercept

The ‘Investigatory Powers Bill’, dubbed by critics as the “Snooper’s Charter”, has been approved by the UK Parliament, which means the British government now has sweeping power to spy on its citizens, and force internet service providers to record and store information on its customers’ internet activity for up to 12 months.

“Law enforcement agencies will then be able to obtain access to this data without any court order or warrant.”

The UK government has been engaged in this type of total surveillance for awhile now, thanks to Ed Snowden’s revelations, the Snooper’s Charter merely retroactively legalizes it.

Links

Spanish government tries to ban memes.  A good political meme captures the essence of the ridiculousness of a situation involving a political parasite.  The best ones, the most popular, are those memes that have viewers nodding their head while laughing, because that particular meme made plain the truth.  A simple picture with a few words typed across it can turn the subject into a laughingstock, and in these days of instant social media, a good meme can tear through the cyberverse in seconds, and pretty soon everyone is laughing at Mr. or Mrs. corrupt so-and-so.  Memes are powerful, which is why the corrupt fear them.

FBI may have distributed half of all child porn on dark web. 24 websites may have been FBI-run, and visitors’ computers were exposed to malware that sent information about them to government computers. Half.

Crime lab chemist confessed to falsifying evidence for over 8 years, putting 20,000 drug convictions in doubt.  These people are still in jail as officials drag their feet. Unbelievable, yet all too believable.

Marijuana is the real winner of 2016. California weed will flow outward.  2016 is the extinction-level event for Prohibitionist dinosaurs.

As bad as Trump is, his election hasn’t instigated the wave of hate-crime that some of his detractors seem to want to happen.

Trump may pick a Bush-era torture architect to run the CIA: “Rodriguez, the former director of the National Clandestine Service, helped developed the CIA black sites, secret prisons operated in foreign countries where interrogators used a range of torture tactics, including the use of “waterboarding,” the simulated drowning technique once used by the Khmer Rouge and Nazi agents to glean information from detainees.”

When Politics Becomes Your Religion, from the wonderful Rod Dreher at The American Conservative.  Everyone has seen political disagreements reach such a level of animosity that friendships and goodwill are utterly destroyed.  All this over garbage candidates Trump and Hillary?  Politics is poison.

Brainwashing Your Kids About Politics Is Not Healthy Or Cute.  Everyone brainwashed into believing Presidential politics is somehow desperately relevant to their lives or the future of the country were either screaming in ecstasy or bawling their eyes out on Tuesday.  They of course dragged their poor kids into the swirling emotional vortex.  As a child, I never would’ve believed that adults would behave like this.

Did the EM Drive violate physics?

DEA prepares to ban synthetic opioid, U-47700, also known as “pink”

Morning links