Little is known in the outside world about the National Security Act in South Korea. It was enacted in 1948 and has been used to quash any opposition to the US military in South Korea or to the South Korean political establishment, which was founded by Washington when it selected the subservient and traitorous Korean collaborators that worked for the Japanese during Tokyo's occupation of the Korean Peninsula to run South Korea instead of allowing the fiercely independent Korean resistance fighters that had fought against the Japanese during the Second World War takeover.

Under the National Security Act in South Korea praising North Korea and questioning the stance of the South Korean or US governments on North Korea or Korean unification have been persecuted as crimes and threats to the security and the safety of South Korea. Ordinary South Korean citizens who visit North Korea are imprisoned for life, which is an improvement from the past when South Korean authorities use to execute South Koreans who visited North Korea. Even political parties and groups that are supportive of Korean unification or North Korea are disbanded and persecuted by South Korean authorities. In summary, the National Security Act has been used to censor support for North Korea or calls for unification, to violate human rights, and to neutralize legitimate opposition movements. Many innocent South Koreans have been executed or arrested as political prisoners under it.

The Turkish mutiny: a response to change in foreign policy paradigm

On the night of June 15th-16th, Turkey faced an attempted coup d'etat. According to the country's authorities, the military men who organized the rebellion were tied to the network of Fethullah Gülen, who has lived in the United States since the late 1990's and has close links to the CIA. After the coup was suppressed, more than 100 generals and admirals were arrested. The main organizer of the rebellion was found to be Akin Öztürk, former commander of the country's Air Force. The Air Force, which is most closely of all integrated into NATO structures and has long since been a stronghold of Gülen's supporters, played a leading role in the coup. Turkish authorities suspect foreign powers of supporting the coup and have hinted at the United States.

The rebellion took place after Turkey's foreign policy was radically changed by President Erdogan who apologized to Russia for the destruction of the Russian plane in November 2015 near the border with Syria. This new course intended to restore friendly relations with Russia. Prime Minister Binali Yildirim also designated a course for restoring all working relations with neighboring countries, including Syria and Iraq.

Before these events, the former prime minister responsible for the doctrine of neo-Ottomanism and the architect of Turkish foreign policy for the last decade, Ahmet Davutoglu, who was closely tied to the United States, Qatar, and the Muslim Brotherhood movement, resigned. Erdogan then in fact began to review the whole of Turkey's foreign political strategy and initiated a turn towards realist pragmatism as previously insisted upon by the supporters of Turkey's sovereign development, the Kemalists.

The Empire is becoming thoroughly unpredictable. It is attacking on all fronts. It lost all its shame and decency. New Cold War is now in full swing and the West is using both old and new tactics, in order to demonize and discredit all of its opponents: from Russia to China, Venezuela, North Korea, South Africa and Iran.

Our anti-imperialist media outlets, including those of the RT, TeleSUR, Press TV, CCTV and Sputnik are being labeled as 'propaganda' channels. Defensive and internationalist initiatives of our countries are branded as aggressions. Those governments that are relentlessly working on behalf of the people are defined as 'evil' or at least as 'dictatorships'.

The Empire is erecting complex and destructive web of lies and manipulations, literally trapping some countries in grotesque pseudo-legal concepts, as recently happened to China, which was confronted by The Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) at The Hague, which has recently ruled against, what F. William Engdhal described, as "any and all claims of China to various islands or even rocks inside what is known as the 'Nine Dash Line' between China's coast and The Philippines." China actually never asked for any 'arbitration'; it is repeating that it has been ready to negotiate directly with the Philippines. But the West and the previous servile administration in Manila decided to turn this historical dispute into a yet another ideological and propaganda battle.

The War against the "coalition of unwilling" is constantly diversifying. Propagandists in North America and Europe are inventing new 'weapons' of mass intellectual and information destruction. Nothing is left intact. The latest 'battle' is truly unconventional, one could even say 'innovative' - it is an attempt to demonize Russian athletes, and even to prevent them, at lease some of them, from participating in the upcoming Rio de Janeiro Olympic games!

Without additional details, the United States sees Russian humanitarian initiative in Syria as a demand for the country's opposition to surrender, the US embassy in Syria stated on its Twitter on Friday.

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said on Thursday that Moscow and Damascus had launched a joint large-scale humanitarian relief operation in Aleppo, establishing three corridors for civilians and one for militants wishing to lay down arms. He said Russia offered international organizations working in Syria to join this operation.

"W/o [without] further clarification, Russian announcement on humanitarian corridors appears to be demand 4 [for] surrender of oppo [opposition] grps [groups]," the twitter said.

Around 400 German police conducted raids at a mosque and eight apartments in a "hotbed" of radical Islam near Hannover. It came as police near Stuttgart arrested a 15-year-old who they believe was planning a mass shooting.

The raids took place in Hildesheim, a town which Lower Saxony Interior Minister Boris Pistorius described as "a hotbed of radical Salafist" activity. He said that up to 400 police and special forces took part in the operations, though no figures were released regarding how many arrests were made.

"The German-speaking Islamic circle (DIK) in Hildesheim is a nationwide hot-spot of the radical Salafist scene that Lower Saxony security authorities have been monitoring for a long time," the state official said, as quoted by Reuters.

He said he wants to ban the DIK, which he blames for radicalizing German Muslims and influencing some to want to travel to the Middle East to join up with terrorist organizations such as Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL).

Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette indicted six state employees for their alleged connection to the dangerous levels of lead in the city of Flint's drinking water. "They had knowledge and ability to stop the problem, but they failed," Schuette said.

The charges were authorized by Judge Nathaniel C. Perry II early Friday against three employees, each from the state's health and environmental departments.

At a Friday press conference, Schuette and Todd Flood, the private lawyer leading the attorney general's investigation, said that there will be justice for families in Flint.

"In Michigan the system is not rigged," Schuette told reporters. "There's one system of justice - it applies to everyone equal, no matter who you are."

Hillary Clinton has made clear she intends to dramatically raise taxes on the American people if elected. She has proposed an income tax increase, a business tax increase, a death tax increase, a capital gains tax increase, a tax on stock trading, an "Exit Tax" and more (see below). Her planned net tax increase on the American people is at least $1 trillion over ten years, based on her campaign's own figures.

Hillary has endorsed several tax increases on middle income Americans, despite her pledge not to raise taxes on any American making less than $250,000. She has said she would be fine with a payroll tax hike on all Americans, she has endorsed a steep soda tax, endorsed a 25% national gun tax, and most recently, her campaign manager John Podesta said she would be open to a carbon tax. It's no wonder that when asked by ABC's George Stephanopoulos if her pledge was a "rock-solid" promise, she slipped and said the pledge was merely a "goal." In other words, she's going to raise taxes on middle income Americans.

Hillary's formally proposed $1 trillion net tax increase consists of the following:

Income Tax Increase - $350 Billion: Clinton has proposed a $350 billion income tax hike in the form of a 28 percent cap on itemized deductions.

Business Tax Increase -- $275 Billion: Clinton has called for a tax hike of at least $275 billion through undefined business tax reform, as described in a Clinton campaign document.

"Fairness" Tax Increase -- $400 Billion: According to her published plan, Clinton has called for a tax increase of "between $400 and $500 billion" by "restoring basic fairness to our tax code." These proposals include a "fair share surcharge," the taxing of carried interest capital gains as ordinary income, and a hike in the Death Tax.

But there are even more Clinton tax hike proposals not included in the tally above. Her campaign has failed to release specific details for many of her proposals. The true Clinton net tax hike figure is likely much higher than $1 trillion.

For years we have complained against both the BLS' and the BEA's comical seasonal adjustments, which "serve" just one purpose: to goalseek the data to a desired, politically-mandated outcome, and which culminated last May when the Department of Commerce announced it would seasonally adjust last year's woeful Q1 GDP data not once but twice in order to get a better result. Now, it appears that there indeed was a problem: government statisticians announced that they have found "evidence that efforts to adjust the country's measure of economic growth for seasonal fluctuations have not been fully successful."

The Bureau of Economic Analysis said this week that a component-by-component investigation found evidence in quarterly GDP data over different time spans, Reuters reports.

"We did find some evidence of residual seasonality both over the most recent 10-year period and over a 30-year period," Brent Moulton, associate director for National Economic Accounts at the BEA, told reporters.

Commenting on the results of the recent meeting on Syria in Geneva between Russia, the UN and the US and on the prospects of a possible ending of the Syrian war, Russian political expert Vyacheslav Matuzov suggests that much will now depend on the talks between Russia and Turkey: if they agree, the rebels and their US masters will lose the war.

"Turkish President Erdogan is set to visit Moscow on August 9. Prior to his meeting with President Putin there have already been a number of announcements on the joint economic projects and the readiness to open Turkey for Russian tourists," Matuzov, former diplomat and an expert in Arab studies told Russia's Izvestiya newspaper.

"This means that certain political agreements are also being prepared," he added.

The political analyst further explained that first of all, it could be about closing the Turkish-Syrian border and, as a result, cutting-off of the influx of rebels and arms into war-torn Syria.

A teenage university student who spent his entire student loan attempting to join Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) in Syria has been sent to a young offender institution for three-and-a-half years.

Cubeyda Jama, 19, was arrested at London Stansted Airport in February on a plane bound for Bucharest, Romania - from where he intended to make his way to Syria.

The Finnish national of Somali descent spent his loan on equipment for the trip, including a map of Turkey, protective clothing, torches, a solar-powered charger and a laptop.

A search of his USB stick revealed instructions on how to travel to IS-held territory and 13 copies of the group's Dabiq magazine.