Comment: Everyone's got problems! You'd think low crime would be reward enough, but nope - gotta fill those quotas.

Comment: As we now know, the whole 'Kony 2012' media campaign was a total Psyop front to back. But the Angelina Jolie story just underscores, along with the recent Russiagate campaign, White Helmets documentary, and host of other stories how the Deep State just loves using Hollywood to help shape people's perceptions of reality. Wake up, La La Land!!

Comment: Nope, Columbus wasn't the source of all ills in the Americas. He was just a part of many of them. History is complex. Demonizing past figures isn't always the answer. Neither is whitewashing them.

• Columbus statues in US vandalized on Columbus Day
• Capital of Texas joins other major US cities in replacing Columbus Day holiday with Indigenous Peoples Day
• Expect more chaos: Antifa plans to hold nationwide statue defacings for Columbus Day
• Columbus and the Indians: By Howard Zinn

Comment: Before getting fired from his own company, Weinstein apparently reached out to top Hollywood executives for support (including Discovery Networks CEO David Zaslav, former DreamWorks Animation CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg, NBCUniversal vice chair Ron Meyer, WME-IMG co-CEO Ari Emanuel and CAA managing partner Kevin Huvane). Here's the letter he sent:

My board is thinking of firing me. All I'm asking, is let me take a leave of absence and get into heavy therapy and counseling. Whether it be in a facility or somewhere else, allow me to resurrect myself with a second chance. A lot of the allegations are false as you know but given therapy and counseling as other people have done, I think I'd be able to get there.

I could really use your support or just your honesty if you can't support me.

But if you can, I need you to send a letter to my private gmail address. The letter would only go to the board and no one else. We believe what the board is trying to do is not only wrong but might be illegal and would destroy the company. If you could write this letter backing me, getting me the help and time away I need, and also stating your opposition to the board firing me, it would help me a lot. I am desperate for your help. Just give me the time to have therapy. Do not let me be fired. If the industry supports me, that is all I need.

With all due respect, I need the letter today.

And it wasn't just media and the Hollywood scene running damage control for Weinstein. Apparently the NYPD was ready to arrest Weinstein in 2015 after an Italian model accused him of groping her. Weinstein had invited her to his office. When she arrived, the assistant left, Weinstein asked her if her breasts were real, then groped her, stuck his hand under her skirt, and asked for a kiss, according to the model, Ambra Battilana. She left 31 minutes after arriving in the building, according to surveillance cameras, and a friend took her to the nearest police station. Before she could make a "controlled call" to Weinstein, suggested by the police in the hope that he would incriminate himself, he called her, asking for another meeting. At the detectives' urging, she agreed, but wore a wire. According to an NYPD commander, he "basically apologized", then invited her up to his room - "Just to show you how incorrigible the guy is".

Ambra Battilana excused herself to use the restroom and she was met by a detective from the special victims unit, which had been using two cellphones to record this March 28, 2015, meeting in the bar/restaurant at the Tribeca Grand Hotel in downtown Manhattan. Battilana seemed close to panic. The detective promised her that she would be safely under protective surveillance if she went along with Weinstein's request.

Battilana agreed and headed upstairs with Weinstein. The detectives were close behind, ready to move in immediately if Weinstein tried to grope her again as she alleged he had earlier. He would have been caught in the act.

But Battilana suddenly backed away and departed.

"She got scared," the police commander says.

Battilana returned downstairs. Weinstein joined her. The detectives moved in. They took him away for questioning that immediately ceased when he asked for a lawyer, in particular an attorney from the firm whose partners included former Mayor Rudy Giuliani. A Weinstein spokeswoman would deny the allegations.

The detectives were still able to bring the Manhattan district attorney's office a case that was considerably stronger than is routinely needed to convict less illustrious gropers in the subway.
...
But by several accounts the Manhattan district attorney's office was still feeling the aftershocks of the disastrous Dominique Strauss-Kahn case in 2011. ... Since then, the DA had seemed to knowledgeable observers to be leery of another high-profile debacle. That worry could have only increased as prosecutors learned that Battilana had accused a wealthy elderly boyfriend in Italy of forcing her into sex when she was just 17. She had also figured in the prosecution of Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, testifying that she had witnessed one of his "bunga bunga" sex parties when she was 19.

At the prospect of her now figuring as the victim in a case against a high-profile figure such as Harvey Weinstein, the DA's office seemed to hesitate. The DA's office asked the SVU questions and the SVU answered them and the DA's office asked more questions that the SVU also answered.

"They knocked it around about a week, back and forth," the NYPD commander says.

The DA's office finally reached an official determination, following what a spokesman rightly described as "a thorough investigation."

"After analyzing the available evidence, including multiple interviews with both parties, a criminal charge is not supported," the spokeswoman announced.

The NYPD commander offers a different analysis based on long experience.

"When you say no after a week, it's not usually over the facts," he suggests.

Hesitation by prosecutors does not engender confidence in victims. Battilana had initially seemed sure of a speedy resolution, posting on Instagram three days after the alleged groping, "Don't stop dreaming just because you had a nightmare." She seems to have afterward lost faith in the system and is said to have reached a monetary settlement with Weinstein, apparently leaving town so she was unavailable.

"They paid her off," says someone with inside knowledge of the Weinstein response to the incident.

Filmmaker Alex Gibney, who is working on a documentary on Roger Ailes, says this is just the beginning:

"Anybody who's in the entertainment business or in the movie business had heard rumors [about Weinstein], but you know you have to be careful. The trick is proving that the rumors are true, but yeah, this had been one of those stories you kept hearing about and kept wondering," he said.
...
"There are lots of rumors of men in power who abuse that power for sexual favors. And there are a lot of beautiful women in the movie industry," Gibney said. "There are a lot of rumors swirling around a lot of people both in the present and the past."
...
"It's not just Hollywood, I think it's power in general. There's a reason why the powerful escape scrutiny for so long - it's because people want something from them. If you're an actress, you want to get a role, if you're a producer, you want a deal, and along the way people start making little compromises that end up being one big compromise. I don't think it's limited to Hollywood. We're talking about Scientology, we're talking about the Catholic Church. Wherever there's power, there's abuse of power, and there's a kind of collective responsibility for allowing those abuses to continue."

Comment: On another level we can say that many of these 'hate crimes' and 'mass shootings' events are, indeed, acts of terrorism; as SOTT has pointed out on numerous occasions, these atrocities are very likely set up by elements of the State - for political purposes ie. to enact further legislation, to keep the public subject to authoritarian governance, etc.

The recent tragedy in Las Vegas is only the latest iteration of this:

• Behind the Headlines: What Happens in Vegas, Stays in Vegas
• The Las Vegas Massacre and Occam's Razor

Comment: Reminds us of another similar story that recently caught our eye - from Uganda:

Psychopathic plague: Children are being sacrificed by witch doctors in drought-stricken Uganda