"An era of corruption is built for those who lead corrupt lives. They revel in the era. They belong. They are home. They don't care what you call the prevailing system, they'll find their way, because they know the unspoken rules and how things actually work. Naïve idealists and academic hair-splitters? The corrupt eat them for breakfast." (The Underground, Jon Rappoport)

The recent acceleration of attacks on capitalism leaves no ground un-scorched. Whatever capitalism is, it's all bad. It needs to be banned. A wiser and saner alternative must be found—and naturally that alternative will be handed down from Above, where wondrous altruists in government can point us toward the Promised Land.

For the sake of humanity, they will assume the reins of power. They'll organize businesses and companies and corporations under the umbrella of government, and all will be well.

Forget the fact that they cooperate and collude and conspire and commit crimes with their erstwhile corporate and banking partners. That's a minor footnote.

When Heather Marlowe was drugged and raped in 2010, she went to the hospital and reported the crime to the police.

After the San Francisco woman did not receive any word regarding her case, she took matters into her own hands and began to investigate the investigation. Marlowe discovered that her rape kit, like hundreds of others, remained untested.

Marlowe is now suing the City of San Francisco as well as the San Francisco Police Department for the mishandling of her case. The lawsuit alleges that not only did the police department not test the rape kit, which can contain DNA evidence, a law enforcement official told her that he would not prosecute her case unless she met with her alleged rapist.

According to the lawsuit, Marlowe was taken by a police officer to the house where she said she believed the incident to have occurred during the annual Bay to Breakers event in San Francisco.

"[Officer Joe] Cordes instructed Marlowe to make contact with suspect, and flirt with him in order to elicit a confession that suspect had indeed raped Marlowe," the federal lawsuit filed earlier in January alleged. "Cordes also instructed Marlowe to set up a date with suspect to prove that Marlowe could identify suspect in a crowd. Cordes told Marlowe that if she refused to engage in these actions, SFPD would cease its investigation of her rape."

He stood on the mud, crows cawing overhead, pointing at unmarked graves. "Here's a mother with her baby. And here's another young woman. Over there, that's a 60-year-old man."

Buried beneath low mounds of earth, facing Mecca, lay Afghan, Iraqi and Syrian refugees who drowned this summer in the Aegean Sea trying to reach Europe in flimsy inflatable boats.

Scanning the area, Christos Mavrakidis, a somber, hardened man who looks after one of the main cemeteries on Greece's Lesvos island, listed the years of other deaths: "2013, 2014, 2015."

Now there is no room left in the narrow plot of land in the pauper's section of St. Panteleimon cemetery, close to where the colonnaded tombs of wealthy Greeks are built in the classical Greek style, and flowers adorn lavish marble graves.

"Something must be done," he said. "They are a lot. They are too many."

Exposing the double standard between police and civilians, the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office announced Wednesday that no criminal charges will be filed against the eight LAPD officers responsible for nearly killing an innocent woman and her daughter. Although the cops ambushed the unarmed women without warning and fired over 100 bullets without provocation, the district attorney justified the case of mistaken identity due to the fact that the officers involved were afraid and incompetent.

At 5 a.m. on February 7, 2013, Margie Carranza and her mother, Emma Hernandez, were delivering newspapers throughout a residential neighborhood in Torrance when eight LAPD cops suddenly opened fire. As Carranza suffered cuts from the flying glass, Hernandez was shot twice in the back while trying to protect her daughter. One bullet exited just above Hernandez's collarbone, while the other bullet struck her lower back, near her spine. A fragment of shattered glass also flew into her eye.

After firing 107 bullets at the innocent women, the LAPD cops ordered them out of the vehicle and immediately realized their mistake. Instead of a 33-year-old black man, two Hispanic women exited the pickup truck and demanded to know, "Why did you shoot at us?"

Is it just me, or are the highly publicized events in the war on terror taking a turn for the utterly absurd?

Australian teens have now been handed multiple charges for what we're being told is a rather involved terror plot... to load C4 into a kangaroo and paint an ISIS flag on it, after which it would be set loose at police.

Seems really plausible, right?

The attack was set for Anzac Day in Melbourne. A 15 year old has already been charged. Nineteen-year-old Sevdet Besim has recently pleaded not guilty to four charges related to the terrorist kangaroo plot. He faces a life sentence. The two reportedly communicated via telegrams because... I guess... they really wanted to make sure there was a paper trail old school style on such an amazing terror plot?

In a relatively free and reasonable society, heroin addiction would be treated as a medical problem, not as an excuse to put people in cages. The perverted priorities of prohibition, however, dictate that people struggling with addiction not only be punished as criminals, but be manipulated into an obscene inverted pyramid scheme in which they are offered a reduction in punishment for informing on their friends. This helps explain how 22-year-old Megan Meyer of Plymouth, Wisconsin faces up to 19 years in prison for selling fake heroin to a police informant.

Last November, Meyer — who was on probation for previous drug-related convictions — was arrested after officers affiliated with the Lake Winnebago Area Metropolitan Enforcement Group (MEG), a federally subsidized narcotics task force, used another socially marginalized petty offender to target her for a "controlled buy." Since Meyer was already "in the system," police could have arrested her for probation violations without the trouble of manufacturing a drug charge. The incentive structure of the "war on drugs" dictated a different course of action, however. Accordingly, a confidential informant (most likely someone looking for a "downward departure" on her own charges) bought a small quantity of what looked like heroin and an unmarked pill identified as Percocet.

Lab tests showed that the alleged heroin was actually crushed dog food, and the "Percocet" was actually an aspirin tablet. In a society that valued property rights, and recognized that the government has no authority to punish people for freely consuming anything they choose, Meyers might have been charged with defrauding her customer. As things stood, the Sheboygan County Sheriff's Office had to wait for another opportunity to carry out a triumphant drug bust.

An Oregon judge who loves Hitler and hates just about everybody else, is under investigation by a state commission that just recommended his removal. They believe the judge's actions are so unethical they are likely even criminal in nature. The Oregon Commission on Judicial Fitness and Disability released a lengthy 48-page report that asked the state Supreme Court to remove Judge Vance Day from the bench, according to The Oregonian.

The nine-member panel said that Day had undermined public trust through many of his actions, such as refusing to marry same-sex couples, and even hanging a portrait of Adolf Hitler on the Marion County Courthouse's "Hall of Heroes" wall. He is also accused of communicating improperly with a felon as well as allowing another felon to illegally handle a firearm.

"Judge Day shows no outward sign of comprehending the extent or nature of his ethical violations," the commission explained. "His misconduct is of such a nature as to impugn his honesty and integrity."


The county's presiding judge said that Day must remove the portrait of the Nazi leader. The judge, however, said that the judge should not "go there because some very influential people in this town want it up," according to the commission's findings. Day was also found to have used taxpayer funds - twice - for the framing and mounting of the portrait of the Nazi leader.

A security exercise gone wrong saw tempers flare in a Paris airport, after fake explosive devices were discovered by FedEx workers in a ripped package, sources told AFP.

Employees of the American courier service at Charles de Gaulle airport were shocked to find a pressure cooker filled with nuts and bolts inside a package in transit from the US to Tunisia.

On further inspection they discovered a container of other similar devices, along with what appeared to be detonators, said Frederic Petit, who represents the company's employees for the CGT union.

The staff alerted authorities of "imminent danger," and officials arrived to test the device using sniffer dogs and X-ray machines.

A security source at the airport said the devices were actually decoys bound for the US embassy in Tunisia that were being used for a training exercise.

"This type of delivery is not common, but sometimes takes place," the source told AFP. "This is just the first time that a package has been opened."

But Petit slammed the exercise as "irresponsible," given the heightened security concerns since the Paris attacks in November, when jihadists killed 130 people.

"Nobody was aware of this cargo," he said, adding that FedEx employees want to see such parcels banned from transit through France.

Source: Agence France-Presse

Caught colluding with the Pentagon and endorsing the CIA's torture program, the American Psychological Association (APA) sent a letter to the Defense Department last year refusing to continue participation in national security interrogations. Instead of accepting the association's new policy, the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) recently responded with a veiled threat furtively blaming the APA's non-participation in enhanced interrogations for any future attacks against U.S. citizens.

Following the tragic events of 9/11, the Justice Department constructed a series of legal memos authorizing the Bush administration's use of torture against enemy combatants. In 2002 and 2003, Deputy Assistant Attorney General John Yoo authored the torture memos, which were signed by Assistant Attorney General Jay Bybee. The Authorization for Use of Military Force, the Military Commissions Act of 2006, and Executive Order 13440 became legal justifications for the utilization of enhanced interrogation techniques and a total disregard for the Geneva Conventions.

Copenhagen's new legislation aimed at containing the influx of migrants is a violation of international law, according to Kashif Ahmad, leader of the Denmark's pro-immigrant the National Party.

In an interview with Sputnik, Kashif Ahmad, leader of Denmark's pro-immigrant National Party, described Copenhagen's adherence to a new legislation on containing the influx of migrants as little more than a violation of international law.

"It is a violation of plenty of international conventions, including the European Convention on Human Rights, the UN Convention of the Right of Children and the UN Refugee Convention. I'm absolutely sure that the Danish government infringes on international norms by implementing this bill," Ahmad said.