i know. you're surprised;


Each year, state lawmakers across the U.S. introduce thousands of bills dreamed up and written by corporations, industry groups and think tanks.
Disguised as the work of lawmakers, these so-called “model” bills get copied in one state Capitol after another, quietly advancing the agenda of the people who write them.
A two-year investigation by USA TODAY, The Arizona Republic? and the Center for Public Integrity reveals for the first time the extent to which special interests have infiltrated state legislatures using model legislation.
USA TODAY and the Republic found at least 10,000 bills almost entirely copied from model legislation were introduced nationwide in the past eight years, and more than 2,100 of those bills were signed into law............https://www.cryptogon.com/?p=54681

the true believers accept whatever the empire serves them but the rest of us know its all lies or half truths, and julian is one of the few sources of real truth we've had;


The WikiLeaks Twitter account has announced that it has high level information that the organization’s founder Julian Assange could have his political asylum the Ecuadorian embassy revoked for him to be arrested by the British government within hours. We need to be ready to shake the earth should this happen. We need all hands on deck for this one.
“BREAKING: A high level source within the Ecuadorian state has told @WikiLeaks that Julian Assange will be expelled within ‘hours to days’ using the #INApapers offshore scandal as a pretext–and that it already has an agreement with the UK for his arrest,” the leak publishing outlet tweeted, with a link to a story about the INA Papers leak.
The pretext that is being used is almost irrelevant, because it has nothing to do with truth or reality. Assange has been a target of the US-centralized power establishment ever since WikiLeaks began publishing authentic documents exposing the malfeasance of its leaders a decade ago, and strings are being pulled around the world to funnel him into its jaws. That’s all that this is, but it should surprise no one that the pretext is bogus as well. Journalist Elizabeth Vos wrote an article for Consortium News the other day summarizing the false narrative being spun by the Ecuadorian government that the conditions of asylum have been violated by the WikiLeaks account (not Assange) tweeting about a scandal that has rocked Ecuador’s president Lenin Moreno...........https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2019/04/05/be-ready-to-act-wikileaks-source-says-theyre-coming-for-assange/

here's your daily serving of the thin blue line;


Utterly shocking body camera footage was released on Thursday showing what led to one officer’s arrest and felony assault charges and the suspension without pay of two others. What started over an alleged noise complaint quickly turned into a gang-style beat down of several innocent men.
On March 16, police were responding to a call over a loud party. When officers showed up, however, there was no loud party and all the lights inside the home were off. This wasn’t good enough for the cops, so one of them kicked the door into the home and ripped the occupant out onto the street and began beating him as he doused him in pepper spray.
For several moments, officers hold the man down as one of them kicks him repeatedly.
In total, three men were were all forced out into the street where they received this gang-style attack by uniformed assailants.
One of the most flagrant clips from the released footage shows officer Luke Deer shoving one of the men as he stood there with his hands in the air. Deer appears to snap and then jumps on top of the innocent man and starts savagely beating him............https://thefreethoughtproject.com/good-cop-steps-in-stops-bad-cop/

the following exploration of the empire's methods and goals is a thing i've had in my doc file intending to send it to the local electronic fishwrap, but haven't so far;

“We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated, governments in the civilized world—no longer a government by free opinion, no longer a government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a government by the opinion and the duress of small groups of dominant men.”   Woodrow Wilson

We’re secretly one of the most peaceful cultures on the planet. We voted for Bush, because he promised us a non-interventionist foreign policy. Obama promised to bring the troops home from the Bush wars. Trump promised to end foreign adventures. We’ve been voting for peace for 30 years, and all we get is war. American democracy doesn’t care what you want and is never accountable.  The deep state always gets its way. So when ‘our’ government wants a war, you can bet that we’re going to war.

‘Our’ politicians talk about ‘our’ wars as if it was some kind of game because it costs them nothing. Consequences that apply to the ‘little people’ in the Empire don’t apply to ‘our leaders’. Ambassador Chas Freeman said; “America has now chosen publicly to redefine itself internationally as the foreign relations equivalent of a sociopath; a country indifferent to the rules, the consequences for others of its ignoring them, and the reliability of its word. No nation can now comfortably entrust its prosperity or security to Washington, no matter how militarily powerful it perceives America to be.”

America publicly destroyed its fictional reputation as a defender of freedom and democracy. Americans have been lied to for so long that we cope with the absurdities presented to us by not caring, which only empowers the gangsters more. International law applies to every country except Israel and America. As disgusting as that is, it’s made even worse by the bold references to exceptionalism and the repetitious chants about ‘our’ wild-fantasy that the Empire is protecting the world from terrorism, protecting human rights, peace and justice.  That clear fabrication shows the bankrupt soul of the members/supporters of the Deep State. 

The war on terrorism has been increasing terrorism for years. What would you do if your family was attacked? ‘Our’ government has no idea who most of the people that it murders with drones are. The war makers say they serve a grander purpose; sometimes it’s law and order, other times spreading democracy, other times weapons elimination, other times simply revenge.

“So you’re on the side of the criminals, you must love ISIS, or Putin”; is the common childish reply when questioning ‘our’ wars. Even peace groups have fallen for the “pick a side” routine on Syria. The Pentagon claims to favor peace.

The Empire and the ‘homegrown’ death squads we’ve created have murdered millions of men, women, and children around the world.  We’ve bombed and invaded a long list of countries that posed no threat to us to advance the interests of the corporations that own ‘our’ government, and their ongoing quest for global hegemony.  ‘Good’ Americans support the removal of government leaders the TV tells them are bad guys. WWJS/D

Coincidentally, a lot of these bad guys, in addition to being hideously evil, have been at the time of their removal, interfering with the vital interests of the corporations that own ‘our’ government.

Russian TV covered 1,000,000 Yemenis protesting American/Saudi’s Bombs. American TV covered 8,000 Russians protesting Putin’s government. If they’re both propaganda, then which was more honest news that was worth covering? Neither the New York Times nor the Washington Post reported the million Yemenis. Both reported widely 8,000 demonstrating in Moscow led by someone who polls less than 1% in Russia as their great and groundless hope to replace Putin.

There’s certainly a reason for making the Russian molehill seem like a major political event, and there’s a propaganda reason for those million Yemenis not being seen by ‘consumers’ in ‘our free press’ non-coverage of the million people in Yemen which told the American and Saudi governments, “stop bombing and starving us.”

America raises ‘humanitarian virtues’ to chase imperial and financial interests, and mysteriously fails to see these virtues when their appeal would hurt imperial financial interests. Hypocrisy, one of the main ingredients of the Empire’s culture, is why we hear about human rights in Iran and North Korea, and nothing about human rights in Saudi Arabia, Israel, Egypt, and Colombia to give a few examples of major human rights-violating regimes that are heavily supported and assisted by the Empire.

We’re told ‘consumers’ should “look backwards” regarding Syrian human rights violations, but shouldn’t look backwards at these same violations when ‘our’ government is involved.  ‘Consumers’ should also abstain from looking backwards at American war crimes wherever we intrude, particularly those ordering the war crimes.

Other nations are accomplices with America and Israel in regard to so many flagrant violations of the Geneva Accords, UN Resolutions and International Law.  How many wars of aggression/regime change have been instigated by America, Israel and the UK with the participation and support of countries like Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Pakistan?  The good old boys club commits the crimes it accuses those it attacks of doing, and worse, all the while granting themselves immunity.

‘Our’ government says its criminal unprovoked attacks on Syria are to show the violation of ‘international norms’ will no longer be tolerated.  Washington and Israel are the greatest violators of ‘international norms’ in modern history. We bomb people to save them.

As Bush launched the War on Terror administration officials remained obsessed with memories of Vietnam.  They wanted wars in which there would be no prying journalists, no body counts, or body bags heading home to provide truth fueling protesting citizens.  There were only two roles available for the American public.  The first was, in W’s: “go down to Disney World in Florida, take your families, and enjoy life”: go shopping.  The second was to eternally thank and praise America’s “warriors” for their deeds and efforts. The wars were to be in distant lands that wouldn’t disturb American life: another fantasy.

America is an unpredictable psychopathic monster that can only be handled by creating defensive deterrence to irrational attacks.  Gaddafi didn’t have a bayonet experience until he gave up his WMDs. America is and has been rampaging around the world attacking any who deviate from its catechism. Without the continuing cooperation of America’s ‘news’ media in our serial crimes, we wouldn’t be heading toward World War III.

Kim Jong-Un fired an ICBM that might be able to hit Alaska. We’re supposed to believe that he’s going wake up one day and decide to bomb Anchorage, knowing that if he did so his country would be radioactive ash within minutes. I remember yellow cake and aluminum tubes, the Axis of Evil, Saddam, cross-dressing Panamanian dictators, Gadhafi in his tent, ayatollahs, Russian commies, Chinese commies, mullahs, Cubans, Sandinistas, Grenada, Panama, Somali pirates, bird flu, anthrax and lions and tigers and bears, oh my. We’re supposed to think that we’re always threatened.

What would you call a regime which is clearly acting in direct opposition to the will an overwhelming majority of the people and which acts in the interests of a foreign power?  Whatever may be the case, what’s clear is that in every election Americans consistently vote for less war and each time around they get more. 

America lied about Saddam’s nuclear weapons,  lied about torpedoes in the Gulf of Tonkin, lied about a Spanish mine sinking the USS Maine in Havana Harbor, lied when we said Lusitania wasn’t smuggling weapons to Great Britain, lied when we claimed Assad gassed his own people, but you can trust us when we say Assad gassed his own people this time, even though we can’t show you any proof, because after all Putin is lying about Ukraine, even though we can’t show you proof of that, and Putin lied about the Malaysian airliner, and we can’t show you proof about that either. You’re just going to have to trust the CIA and just because we lied to JFK about the Bay of Pigs is no reason not to trust us now.

Presidents come and go but American politics stay the same because of ‘our’ powerful bureaucracy. When a person is elected, they may have some plans. Then well-dressed people with briefcases arrive, who explain how things are done, and suddenly, everything changes. This happens with every administration when faced with an immovable ‘dark state’.

‘Consumers’ are encouraged in their ignorance by leaders who are equally foolish. The days of America dominating the world in an arrogant, heavy-handed fashion and dictating to other nations what they can and can’t do in their own backyards are over. The South China Sea, just for one easy example, is none of America’s business and the Empire should stop whipping things up which are none of its business or concern.

How would you feel if China started conducting freedom of navigation and freedom of overflight operations off the coast of California? Remember how America reacted when Cuba began basing Soviet missiles on Cuban territory. If you think because there’s no shooting going on yet that a war isn’t happening, then you don’t understand the nature of warfare.

The exceptional America is always at work making it clear that America never recognizes problems it creates. America doesn’t only interfere in elections. It overthrows governments it doesn’t like, and installs military dictatorships. The contrived ‘scandal’ that Russian ‘influence’ serves to distract from the actual crimes that are committed daily by ‘our’ government, and only make the rich and powerful bolder. The media systematically suppress and distort, and when they do present facts, the context obscures the actual meaning. The mass media brainwashes ‘consumers’ to keep them submissive to large corporate interests. The media serve, and propagandize for the powerful interests that control and finance them.

You are eight times more likely to be killed by a cop than by a terrorist.

Our laws are written by people we believe to be liars and thieves.

conspiracy theory is waved in your face to reduce your chances of acceptance, and here are twenty such 'theories' now known to be officially true, so remember that when hearing of others;

There are a remarkable number of conspiracy theories that are now widely recognized as fact. This list of 20 — some widely known, some lesser-known — merely scratches the surface. Nonetheless, we are providing it as a useful rebuttal to those who use the term “conspiracy theorist” as a disparaging label synonymous with “crazy.” Keep in mind though that — given the disappearance of independent and ethical journalism, the increasing censorship of social media and the growing star chamber justice system — proven criminal conspiracies such as these will be increasingly relegated to rabbit holes.  Although not all conspiracy theories are valid or should be treated equally, we hold that there are many truth bombs that are widely discounted and ignored by the public.

1. Project MKUltra / LSD Conspiracy

Theory: The CIA tested LSD and other hallucinogenic drugs on Americans in a top-secret experiments on behavior modification.

Fact: FOIA documents have revealed that indeed the government did conduct such experiments for a special program known as MKUltra. It was very real. The CIA started the program with volunteers, and the novelist Ken Kesey was one notable subject. But program heads soon began dosing people without their knowledge. MKUltra ultimately left many victims permanently mentally disabled.

From 1953 to 1964, the CIA secretly dosed individuals with LSD to test the potential effects of mind control. The MKUltra project involved thousands of U.S. citizens, who were given LSD without their knowledge or consent. The CIA resorted to fessing up to the program, and President Clinton offered an apology. The truth however is that this program today is as advanced as ever..........https://www.winterwatch.net/2019/04/conspiracy-truthers-20-theories-now-widely-accepted-as-fact/

the video is two minutes and the description below is the lead in;


Watch Richard Stengel openly support using propaganda on the American public. He’s currently employed as an on-air analyst for MSNBC. He worked as managing editor of Time magazine from 2006-2013, and served as Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs under Obama where he led “counter disinformation efforts”. He’s also a Distinguished Fellow at the Atlantic Council.

https://youtu.be/xOPmx1LCzwY

seven minute video sent by a friend making the point its ok to criticize joos;


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_9k_yUUmC0